#38 - Branded to Kill

So...this film was one I was looking forward to.   I'm a big fan of Noir, and the Japanese Noir, (like these movies that the Nikkatsu studio put out) are some of my favorites.   The first Eclipse set I ever viewed was "Nikkatsu Noir"  -

and I've seen a couple of Seijun Suzuki's films - but this is by far one of the most surreal and weird ones - LOL - in fact, it was so out there the studio fired him and he didn't work for several years.  There were some excuses and scapegoating in that firing of course.

The movie itself has almost no plot or exposition - merely a hitman trying to shoot his way to the number one spot - (they have a ranking in the film apparently - he's #3, and there's a mysterious #1, etc) - There's a crazy wife and the femme fatale, and some bizarre fetishes from the lead character, played by Joe Shishido - (he needs to sniff rice to get an erection...yes, you saw that correctly.)

Because he's not in the next film, I'll talk about Joe here.  Joe is...well, a guy who got some serious cheek implants - think chipmunk.   He was told he couldn't be a major leading star with his thin cheeks so he got these things that make him look like he has food stuffed in his cheeks, and ironically - also make it hard to smile or show facial expressions.   As a result in most of the films I've seen him in he is stern faced no nonsense Yakuza, but in this film, he has room to act out and eventually have a bit of a breakdown so they gave hi ma lot of flexibility on that.   It also helped they had to spit this script out in a hurry and there was a need to improvise some stuff. 

I didn't realize this till watching the special features, but at the time Nikkatsu was putting out a double feature every week - imaging a studio doing two films a week! - Like Hollywood, you had contract directors and actors who worked for the studios.  Nikkatsu did mostly the B-movie and Yakuza stuff that doesn't get seen a lot in the west but had massive appeal in Japan.

This film would probably benefit from a second viewing - I had to watch it over 3 nights and totally forgot about some killings in the opening that actually play a part in the later part of the film, but again, there's no exposition here really - like one writer said, you just assume at this point you know they're Yakuza, bad guys, and they have a code, etc...

but it is very creatively shot - Seijun reached for something bigger than another Noir film, and hit something close to Surrealism or New Wave - I liked it even if there were times where I felt like I was barely keeping up :)

RB