The two prior 'September is.... π΄ππππ π΄ππππ....' posts have received a decent amount of views so perhaps there are some movie fans here. Or some of you could be interested in other things besides gravure models and J-Pop Idols though nothing wrong with those as your interests! My goal was to view one movie a night for all of September's thirty days and have done so up until now, will achieve that goal and am glad I concentrated on films for an entire month. I do enjoy old films so much but had been neglecting them and can't give a good reason why on that. But won't be doing so in the future though I won't be having another marathon like the one I'm currently on. One other minor goal is to have one of these posts each month and by doing so it does force me to view films to talk about, everything I watch is on a DVD I've purchased. So thanks if you checked out the two prior posts, will have one more post for September's movies and there's not one kind of genre I tend to watch more of. Well, horror and action films are my faves but will watch a little bit of everything and a good idea for the October post(s) would be to watch a few horror films around Halloween and do the monthly post for them.
For these posts have a few pics from the movie, it's trailer and some musings of mine about the film. Keep these segments short at no more than two paragraphs and will quickly look at five movies. First up is one that Kumi had a large role in which was the 1966 film "War of the Gargantuas" and was based on the classic Frankenstein story. Though I've had the above DVD for a decade this was only the third time I've viewed the movie. As you can see the main feature was "Rodan" and that I've watched numerous times, I am an oddball as black and white films tend to be my favorites.
Not every film I view is a huge winner and that goes for "War of the Gargantuas", if it wasn't included in this set not sure I would have ever viewed it. The movie is decent enough and there is quite a bit of action, the Frankenstein monster first came from the sea. It had attacked a few boats then made it to Tokyo where is rained havoc on Haneda Airport! Kumi played the role of Akemi who was an assistant to the doctor that created the original monster and she was my sole reason for viewing this film! Especially for the bottom pic below and who wouldn't want Kumi feeding them milk?(gulp!), if you're a fan of these older monster movies it's worth a watch but it's not a fil that merits many repeat viewings.
As I said above have such a wide variety of movies I view, rarely more than two in a row that have the same theme.... horror, sci-fi, gangsters, etc. Usually I talk about the less popular movies for they are mentioned enough at other sites but this movie was a very popular one that came out in 1968 and turned into an eight film series! Am talking about "Red Peony Gambler" and I have the first four DVD's of the series, need to watch the other four. Sadly my top site for ordering DVD's that are rare in America closed down about five years ago, that was Kurotagi. Their discs were never expensive and they did ship them fast, they mainly had movies not released over here. The subs were good, there were bonus features along with some other big positives so how I miss them.... my wallet doesn't though!!!!
On to this flick and watched the first two for about the tenth time. The star was Junko Fuji, she retired in 1972 when she got married but made a return in 1989 and uses the first name of Sumiko. That was her real name and used Junko as a stage name, I've seen her in quite a few other things and on December 1st will be hitting the age of eighty! In these films the hero gambler was named Ryuko Yamo but Oryu was the name the drifting gambler mainly used in these films which were set right around 1900, no cars but there were phones. When the series began Oryu was looking for the killer of her father who had been murdered a decade ago at a gambling den and she did find him. Oryu had become an unbeatable gambler hence the title of the film, she has a Red Peony as a tattoo. You wouldn't think it but there is so much action in these movies and these first four films I highly recommend, there's also many other notable actors in the series. Because this movie was so successful there were a lot of spinoff series but don't think I've seen many of those movies.... yet.
In my last movie post talked about "Black Test Car" from 1962, this 1958 film "Giants and Toys" had many similarities. Both were directed by Yazuso Masumura and starred Hideo Takamatsu who is on the right in the second pic below. Hideo played Goda in this film and like "Black Test Car" the story revolved around rival companies though there wasn't much espionage. There were three candy companies who were all releasing new flavors of caramel, with a plot such as that you wouldn't think there would be all that much intensity but that was far from the case!
There was quite a bit of backstabbing between those who worked together and at the end you wondered how much longer Goda had to live? For he worked himself close to death in order to increase his World company's caramel sales and the world of candy isn't so sweet! The woman below was the company's new image character/promoter for the candy, those teeth looked like they had too many caramels but the public ate her up! Very little action but this movie was so fast paced and quite interesting, I give this film a very high recommendation. Much more happened that what I mentioned but want to keep these musings very brief and there are some good reviews already out there for this movie.
Won't go into too much detail for it would take me 25,000 words to describe this work of art(a disaster?) or maybe only a hundred words as who knew what happened? I've watched this film about a dozen times and it so difficult to explain, there is a story but an incredibly odd one that revolved around three semi-lunatic scientists working with Ether and they also created something very sinister they called DDD. You will see very little lab work by the scientists but plenty of mayhem, eyes bursting(!), screaming, fighting and too many off the wall events to list. For films such as this the term Cyperpunk is used and you can see that on the above DVD cover. If you are a fan of that genre this movie would be one that has to be watched but if if you are a Cyperpunk fan you've probably already seen it.
The DVD also had had about forty minutes of special features and the director was interviewed. His name is Shozin Fukui who came off as being a likable and interesting man but one with some oddities which he admitted to! Besides being the director Fukui also wrote, produced and edited the film so he did just about everything. This movie was released in 1996, five years earlier he had another movie in this vein titled "Pinocchio 964" and that too is so difficult to describe. I also have that DVD so seeing how it's been a while since I viewed it will watch it again this week and have it in that next movie post.
Will end off with my top movie of the day and once again won't go into much of what took place. There's plenty of reviews for the movie out there and most are very positive, nothing I could add in about it. Except for the fact that if you haven't seen this yet how do you live day to day?! My most watched movie of all time is the first of the "Stray Cat Rock" series, that movie was from 1970 and have seen it over a hundred times! My second most viewed film would be this one, "Ping Pong" from 2002, and have seen it eighty or so times! I can never get tired of it and it's hard to explain why I love this movie so much, to me most films after 1999 aren't nearly as good as ones released prior to this so this is a rare exception to the rule!
Obviously this movie is about table tennis and it was set in the years 2000/2001 when a group of five high school students main reason for living was to win the city championship. Have noticed the athletes in Japan seem to be much more intense about the sport they play, at times it could be do or die which was almost the case in this movie. I've seen many of the five players in quite a few other dramas and films, all were superb in this film along with a high school coach and the owner of the local ping pong parlor. No sense describing anything more and it's hard for me to recommend a movie more than this one so if you haven't seen it yet DO SO!!!! Did have a comment a few years ago where a viewer said this was their favorite movie of all time, not for me but it's in my top three for films that have come out since 2000. Ooooh, almost forgot to mention the soundtrack which gets a grade of A++++ from me, especially the tunes from Supercar.
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