What In The World Was Italy Doing With "Saga of the Vagabonds"?

I swear to god someday I'm gonna turn up a poster for Secret of the Telegian that says "Thaddeo Nakamaru"

I'd like to thank this Letterboxd review for turning me on to this subject. Sometimes I read something online and immediately think "Oh yeah, that's gonna have a whole post written about it."

In 1959, Toho released Sengoku gunto-den, retitled for the English export market as Saga of the Vagabonds. The English title is fairly accurate to the original; a more literal translation could be "Sengoku Bandit Legend", or something like that. But I think Saga of the Vagabonds is just fine. However, when the film reached Italy in 1962, it was retitled Le scimitarre dei Mongoli, or "The Sword of the Mongols". 

So, first of all, yikes. Secondly: yikes. Third: I want to know more.

An Italian censorship visa was given to the film in March of 1962. (If you're wondering what a "censorship visa" is, it's this.) This preceded an official Italian theatrical release in August of that year. Thanks to a website archiving Italy's censorship decisions, we know that when the film was submitted to the censorship board, it was given approval. In practical terms, this means that the board viewed a dubbed version of the film and decided that it was fine for public viewing with no changes necessary. From other sources, I've been able to verify that the film was indeed shown in full, so nothing else was cut from the dub for reasons other than censorship, which is always nice.

Nino Cacace Cinematografica, the Italian distributor of the film - who I assume was responsible for the retitling - appears to only have had two other films credited to them: the Russian film Planet of Storms, which was retitled to The 7 Space Navigators, and the Yugoslavian film Signal Over the City, retitled Assault of the V Battalion. The company does not appear to have done anything other than import these three films.

Some of the lobby cards and posters are actually quite nice, but there's a few posters that I genuinely would not feel comfortable showing on here.

Although the film premiered in Palermo in 1962, it kinda hung around. My best source for the film's Italian half-life in the 1960s is a communist newspaper(!) that shows it having a robust existence as a third-run picture in May of 1963, playing at a total of five theaters: the Boito, the Corallo, the Doria, the Apollo and the Espero. I believe the Boito, Corallo, and Doria are still open, but the Apollo has long since been abandoned, and the Espero became a bingo hall. The newspaper also provides ratings for the films it advertises in its showtimes page; Scimitarre is rated "mediocre" - the meaning is the same in English as in Italian.

Credit to Elizabeth Graziani on fb

IMDb also lists a third Italian run of the film in 1965, which is more difficult to find specific information about. Turning to Google Books, however, did confirm that the film was being screened in the country in 1965. A book published in that year called Di riffe o di raffe (objectively a really good title, no matter what language you speak) by Italian screenwriter Giuseppe Marotta mentions the film briefly: "Damn it. A storm in a teacup; add to that the fact that I have to see a film for you, but the theaters are showing The Scimitars of the Mongols and The Titans Are Coming. What do I do, slit my throat or blow my brains out?"

I don't think Marotta cared for it.

It's pretty easy to conclude that this movie was marketed in Italy as a kind of Hercules-adjacent action picture of the type that were produced domestically on the cheap. Since the film evidently wasn't cut, though, all audiences would have had to do was actually go and see the movie to find out that the sword-and-sandals adventure with shirtless brawny men and damsels in distress vs. looming barbarian hordes they were promised was really just an average Japanese historical drama with an unusual amount of horses. This isn't specific to Italy; a lot of countries (including the U.S.) have historically not seemed to care much about marketing imported Japanese fantasy and historical films as anything other than exactly the same type of schlock they themselves were putting out.

You can spell out "Toshiro Mifune" but Toshio Sugie just gets called "T. Sugie"? Come on, there's only one letter of difference between "Toshiro" and "Toshio".

Actually, I'm going to stay on the topic of marketing for a bit longer, because it seems like the Mongolian connection went further than just an eye-catching title. I've turned up a synopsis for the film which I'm thinking might actually date back to its initial release - I have no way of proving that, but I think it might be a situation like how eiga.com and Kinenote will often use synopses that are from the first run of a film, even if said film is 70+ years old. Anyway, translated, it reads thusly:

"There is the hand of the great Akira Kurosawa, author of the script, in this compelling and well-shot war fresco. Protagonist Toshiro Mufune[sic], a Mongolian prince who turns into a sort of Robin Hood of the steppes, making raids to steal from the rich and redistribute the loot among the most humble populations. Released in Europe under the title 'Saga of the Vagabonds'."

So they really doubled down on that, huh? (Note, also, that this synopsis is different from what you'll find on the back of the DVD box; this is part of why I believe it may be original to the initial release.)

The film is still going by its Scimitarre title within Italy today but, as indicated by that Letterboxd review, it seems like people these days find it more baffling than anything else, given the total absence of either Mongolians or curved swords in the film. However, the Italian dub of the film is definitely still extant and available on DVD, although it seems to be out of stock in most places I’ve looked. And...

...yeah, that is absolutely, 100% a screenshot from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster on the back cover.

We're talking strictly about the Italian release here, but in the interest of completeness I'll mention that Saga of the Vagabonds did get exported to quite a few different overseas markets as well. In Spanish it was retitled Los Diablos Rojos, which is actually a more accurate translation of the roving band of thieves' moniker than what the English subtitles provide. This Spanish release is relevant to the Italian release, because the Italian DVD cover is just the Spanish poster with some extra art added and the Italian title slapped on.

The film also got a Cuban release under a direct Spanish translation of the English title and, my dear friends, I am delighted to inform you that the Cuban poster slaps.

It slaps so much, I actually decided to print it out and put it in a frame on my wall.

As a last, ephemeral footnote, I've also found a listing in a TV guide for the film from 1981, so it was shown on television in Italy at some point as well. I'm not sure if it was cut for television broadcast.

So, no real point to this post, I just found something that I thought was a true oddity and decided to explore it a little further. I'm very curious about that Italian dub - I'd really like to know if there's any dialogue where the characters refer to themselves or each other as Mongolians or if that was purely a marketing decision. If you have a copy of the dub or happen to have seen it, I'd appreciate it a lot if you dropped me a line.

この恋！五千万円 / Kono koi! gosanmanen / This Love Costs ¥5,000

Release date: January 3rd, 1954

Director: Kozo Saeki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Junzaburo Ban, Tony Tani, Aiko Mimasu, Akemi Negishi, Shinobu Asaji, Kingoro Yanagiya, Toshiko Tsubouchi, Akihiko Hirata, Norihei Miki et al

Availability: One confirmed television broadcast; no known theater screenings. No home media release.

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It's Valentine's Day where I am in the U.S.! Let's talk about ❤️ love ❤️

...or, at least, a movie with "love" in the title.

When I look really quickly at this poster I sometimes think Tony Tani looks like Kenji Sahara here.

This movie has always stood out to me from the rest of Hirata's filmography because for some reason it is almost impossible to verify that he was in it. If you look at his Japanese Wikipedia page, it's right there with everything else, simple as. But Wikipedia is the only website that lists him as part of the cast. Kinenote? Nope. Allcinema? Nope. Filmarks? Nope. The almighty Miyata Gyaos Geocities site? Nope. Eiga.com? Nope. Hell, the actual posters from the film? Nope!

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to see, however, that the poster does list an Onoda: Isamu Onoda, an extremely prolific lyricist/screenwriter/playwright who also acted a little. Because of his prevalence in the film industry, we have talked about his work a few times on here, but despite his surname he is apparently entirely unrelated to our man. By "acted a little" I do mean "a little": as an actor, he has just three credits to his name, including this film.

I think the reason for Hirata's role getting omitted so frequently is pretty simple: it was probably vanishingly small. His Wikipedia page lists his character's name as simply "Policeman" (keiji). Yes, I know "Keiji" is also a given name, but the kanji used to spell this character's name cannot be used to spell the name "Keiji". So, basically, I would imagine that he was "Cop #2" in the background of a random scene, or something like that.

He's not even in the realm of having his name on posters for this one.

To run quickly through some people who were in the movie before we move on: the film was directed by Kozo Saeki, who began his career in the silent era; written by Toshio Yasumi, who got his start at PCL as a screenwriter at around the same time; and adapted from an audio drama by the extremely prolific Kazuo Kikuta. The cast includes many people who we've seen frequently here, including comedians Tony Tani, Kingoro Yanagiya, and Norihei Miki. If I may get my amateur film scholar hat on, this particular period of Japanese cinema has always fascinated me because it feels like such a turning point for the industry as a whole: directors and writers who began their careers in the silent era and watched the birth of cinema itself were now working with a new generation of actors who had never grown up without it. It felt like film and older mediums such as stage plays and rakugo could coexist equally side-by-side, at least for a little while.

While we can't find Hirata on the film's Eirin (Japan's MPAA, basically) page, we can find out who had a vested interest in its production. The film was sponsored by Mie Prefectural Tourism Federation, Ise Shima National Park Association, Watarukano Tourism Association, Mie Kotsu Co., Ltd., and Kinki Nippon Railway.

I have confirmed one television broadcast of the film, which is always, always what we want to hear, because (modern) television broadcasts mean that someone, somewhere has digitized the film, and if someone has digitized it, then we don't need to worry about any physical prints rotting away in a warehouse somewhere. As per a defunct message board related to the kabuki bookstore Kobikido Shoten, the film was broadcast sometime in October 2000; unfortunately, I'm not sure on what station. The poster does not include their opinion on this film in specific, but lists it as part of what they call a solid lineup.

Speaking of screenings and broadcasts, I had a hunch that this was probably a "B" picture on a double bill due to its obscurity, and it turns out I was right: the film screened alongside Jirocho Sangokushi pt. 7, directed by Masahiro Makino.

Some promo stills exist:

Tony Tani and Akemi Negishi (hey, that's Noguchi's girl).

So, that's basically it. We can say that a digitized version of the movie may exist somewhere (if television network reorganizations over the years haven't led to it being lost at some point), but that's essentially it. I cannot find record of a single theater screening outside of its original run. I'm really curious about just how small Hirata's role in the film was, but unfortunately it seems like my chances of finding out are slim to none.

2 Years of guzareshirei...

I have been writing this blog for 2 years now. I don't think anybody reads it, but writing it makes me happy, so I'm going to continue to do so. To celebrate my anniversary, in addition to revamping the blog's theme - I feel like can never quite get it to look good, I have to settle for "halfway decent" - I've done fansubs for episode 55 of Taiyo ni Hoero!, which introduces Hirata's character Chief Nishiyama, one of his more well-known roles within Japan despite its near-total obscurity overseas. Apart from its broadcast on Hawaiian TV decades ago, this is the first time this episode has had English subtitles.

Check it out here. It'll be on archive.org until and unless people with say-so (or their lawyers) decide it shouldn't be. Also note that Toyoko Takechi, who has a guest role in this episode, is what I (somewhat embarrassingly) like to call a "triple crown" actress: she worked with Hirata and both of his siblings at various times.

As always, there will be more posts; I have plans for the coming year. And if anyone is reading this, thank you, sincerely. 

It's been an expensive two years. 

A very, very expensive two years.

復讐浄瑠璃坂 / Fukushu jorurizaka / Revenge at Joruri Slope pt. I + II [1955]

Release date: December 11th and December 21st, 1955

Director: Kyotaro Namiki & Buntaro Futagawa

Studio: Produced by Takarazuka, released by Toho

Cast: Kanjuro Arashi, Denjiro Okochi, Senjaku Nakamura, Ryotaro Oki, Chikage Ogi, Tamao Nakamura, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: VHS releases. Infrequent theater screenings. No other home media or streaming availability.

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Today in the "I wish these were more accessible" department, let's look at a duology of films with a cast full of jidaigeki heavy-hitters that have somehow not had a decent home media release in the past 70 years. The first film was subtitled "Ambush at Onibushi Pass" [Onibushi-toge shougeki], the second was subtitled "Bloody Battle at Dawn" [Akatsuki no kessen].

These films are based on an actual historical event, which I'll only give the broad strokes of here since I'm not terribly familiar with it. An argument broke out during a memorial service for Tadamasa Okudaira, former lord of the Utsunomiya domain, on March 2nd, 1668, between members of separate branches of the Okudaira clan, supposedly in response to one of them being late to the service. One man was killed, and in response not only his killer but also his killer's family were punished, stripped of their stipends, and some sent into exile, including a 12-year-old boy. The boy, Genpachi, drew popular support, and some members of the Okudaira clan abandoned their posts and became ronin in service of revenge against the murderer. Ultimately, a group of 42 ronin raided the mansion where the murderer, Hayato Okudaira, was hiding. This occurred 30 years before the more famous Ako Roshi incident, popularized across the world as Chushingura or some variation on the title "47 Ronin".

The story was disseminated widely throughout the country (which is why it should probably be taken with a grain of salt) in various contemporary publications, and was also adapted into plays and other forms of storytelling, including, eventually, this set of two films by Toho that we're going to look at today.

Jorurizaka in 2017. Credit to Tokuzo Edomura.

Kyotaro Namiki also directed Kurama Tengu Goyo-to ihen, a favorite of mine which we looked at quite a while ago (it's the one with Dr. Serizawa in it). Aside from that, his career doesn't seem to have produced much in the way of hits; he worked with Kanjūrō Arashi's production company on many occasions as well as Shōzō Makino's, and was active from 1929 to 1960. The two Joruri Slope movies were actually co-directed by him and Buntaro Futakawa, brother of Eisuke Takizawa, who did another dear favorite of mine, Tetsuwan namida ari. Futakawa was 56 at the time, and retired after directing these two films, dying only nine years later. Namiki, on the other hand, lived to be 99, and wrote a little bit after retiring from filmmaking.

A few other names from the staff: the original work was written by Sanjugo Naoki, a man of many pen names who also knew Masahiro Makino, and it was adapted to the screen by Ryo Takei and Rokuhei Susukita, two people who do not have Wikipedia pages. Takei has writing credits for many things we're familiar with here, such as the two Tea-Picker's Song of Goodbye films and Wharf with the Weeping Girl. Susukita worked for over 50 years and wrote a whole hell of a lot of things, but these movies are the only ones he wrote for that are relevant to our interests.

Speaking of writing, there was also a manga adaptation of these films which I unfortunately can't find any pictures of besides a Mandarake listing.

Hirata plays a character named Kyubei Okudaira. He is on Hayato's side, and is one of Chikage Ogi's character Kikuno's three brothers. He gets killed in the second film. That is about all I can tell you. We have three press sheets featuring his character:

Hirata's character on the left-hand side, third from top

We love grainy photos here. Hirata's character is fourth from left in the row of portraits, recognizable by his chonmage and because Toho's in-house portrait artist/s was (were?) pretty consistent in the way they drew him.

I swear that at some point I saw a larger version of this image and could make out that Hirata is on the very bottom right.

Fortunately, though, we don't have to rely entirely on grainy pictures of press sheets. The last time a VHS tape of the first film was sold at auction, the seller decided to take screencaps of nearly the entire movie and include them in the auction photos, so we do have some actual stills featuring Kyubei as well. (The full listing in case for some odd reason you have a desire to see other parts of the movie.)

As for screenings, both of these films have played, like every other Japanese movie ever made, at Laputa Asagaya. They have also been aired on pay-per-view TV at least once in 2021. I don't have a lot to go off of in terms of critical reception, but one reviewer felt very strongly that bad character writing made the second part take a sharp downturn and essentially ruined the rest of the film. Another reviewer calls the films "fairly entertaining".

That, unfortunately, is kind of it. It's surprising there isn't more out there about these, considering that they do have a physical release. The tapes seem to be quite rare, but rest assured that if they ever do come up for auction again, no matter how expensive, I'll be getting my hands on them.

Brand New English Subtitles for Young Season [Wakai kisetsu / 若い季節] !

I am, as ever, utterly delighted to bring you brand new English subtitles for a movie featuring Akihiko Hirata that had not previously been available with subtitles. As with many things I talk about on here, there's really no reason why this shouldn't have been subbed a long time ago - it's a funny, charming, well-made film that I think will appeal to a wide audience. In this post I'm not going to spend much (if any) time on the plot, I just want to provide some supplemental information about the film itself.

Watch it for yourself here. I'll be linking back to this page on archive.org as well, so if you're coming from there: hi, hello, yes I am like this all the time.

The first thing to note about Young Season is that it features every member of the band Crazy Cats but is not itself technically A Crazy Cats Movie. At this point, the band was still kind of getting the hang of doing movies as an ensemble, so you'll notice that compared to much grander features like Mexican Free-For-All, the bandmembers are all just kind of... there. They are not in particularly important roles, they just happen to be part of the cast. Kengo Furusawa directs; he would later become prolific within the Crazy Cats series, but did a lot of other features for Toho as well.

The film version of Young Season we're looking at today was based on a popular NHK television drama by the same name, which ran from 1961 to 1964. It was a musical workplace comedy, one of those wonderful genre hybrids that either no one bothers to make anymore or, if they do, they suck. The cast is largely the same as in the film, although Kiyoshi Atsumi had a role in the TV drama but was absent from the film. The crew is much the same as well, with Isamu Onoda having an "original work" credit as well as a co-screenwriting credit. (We have talked about this Onoda on here before; he is of no relation to one Akihiko Onoda.) Hirata did not appear in the TV version, which I believe was due to his exclusive contract at the time. There was also a sequel film produced two years later.

The theme song (which is sung by a chorus in the film version) was originally sung by The Peanuts; listen to it here.

Some of the cast of the Young Season TV series.

According to the film's Wikipedia page, it was obscure for a long time after its initial release until it was aired on television in 1986 and subsequently released on laserdisc. It was then issued on DVD twice in 2008 and 2014; I own the 2014 edition, which is where I sourced the file that I subtitled from. Young Season was released simultaneously with Yamaneko sakusen (English title "Operation Enemy Fort"), another film in which Hirata had a very small role (and a bad fake beard).

As for its stateside release, Hawaiian theaters got the first movie with English subtitles in November of 1964 (surprisingly late, considering how popular Kyu Sakamoto was; I'm betting there was an earlier release I'm not aware of). The first film had another theater run in January of 1965, and its sequel ran a few months later in July. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser describes the first film as "a musical comedy with Kyu Sakamoto, Hitoshi Ueki and Reiko Dan heading an all-star cast of funsters." (Interestingly, different theaters seemed to flip-flop on advertising the film as starring Kyu Sakamoto and Hitoshi Ueki or Kyu Sakamoto and Hajime Hana.) I have not been able to find English-language reviews of the film from its original run.

More of the cast from the TV drama who also appear in the films.

Something that I can also do in this post is talk about translation specifics that I couldn't convey within the subtitles. Since I'm not a fluent speaker, a lot of my fansubbing work just comes down to doing a whole hell of a lot of research. One fun ("fun") thing I discovered was that a line I was having a ridiculous amount of trouble with was not difficult because I wasn't hearing it right - I was hearing it fine, it was just actual, literal made-up nonsense words; kind of a Showa-era meme. (My translation of these lines had to be very indirect in order to convey the meaning of the dialogue.) There are a few other "localizations" that I had to do as well, most of which is too insignificant to really warrant mention¹ - for example, Japanese has the phrase "sly as a monkey" whereas we have "sly as a fox", but I went with "sly as a fox" because I felt like it sounded more familiar to an English-speaking audience.

I also had no real way to convey that a lot of the character names in this movie play off of their actors' real names. For example, Ichiro Arashima plays a character named "Arima"; Shinchou Kokontei III plays a character named Chota Shindo, nicknamed "Shinchou"; and Jerry Fujio plays a character named, uh, Fujio Fujio². Usually with these Crazy Cats movies, the bandmembers' characters get names that relate to their real ones (so Hitoshi Ueki can play "Ueda", Kei Tani can play "Tanida", etc), but here, the writers didn't bother. They're just Ueki, Hana, Inuzuka, and so on.

This leads us into talking about Hirata's character Minamikawa, who is actually an exception to the name wordplay; "Minamikawa" has nothing to do with his real name either phonetically or with the kanji used to write it. If I had to guess, I’d say that roles for the “guest stars” (Shinchou, Fujio, etc) were probably written with those specific actors in mind, and the rest of the roles were just filled out with Toho’s usual cast of players.

Minamikawa fits exactly the kind of smug, arrogant so-and-so archetype that Hirata was so good at playing. It's implied that Minamikawa is taking care of the financial aspect of the scam Tres Bien is trying to pull, but otherwise he doesn't have that much of a role in the proceedings. He doesn't really do anything solo, he's usually part of a group of people scheming and plotting in a room together. We do, at one point, get to see Jerry Fujio go undercover on an intel-gathering operation targeting Minamikawa and the other saboteurs which for some reason involves Fujio giving him a massage and lighting his cigarettes for him. (IMHO, Fujio Fujio deserved everything he got for that godawful "Indian Twist" song.)

He smokes A LOT in this movie, even for him. Also I guess Minamikawa is married.

Yeah okay I just liked these shots

The last we see of Minamikawa, he and a Tres Bien executive he was colluding with are getting the hell out of Dodge under threat of physical violence from Kenji Sahara. Minamikawa does not appear in the sequel.

I've never worked an office job, is this typical?

I'll wrap up by saying that I really had a lot of fun subtitling this one, and I'm very heartened to see so many Crazy Cats and Crazy Cats-adjacent movies getting subtitled these past few years. There is, of course, also the sequel to Young Season, which does not currently have subtitles; I may not be the person for that job, but I do hope it gets done someday. In the meantime I'm sure I'll pick up other projects along the way but for now I need to get some sleep. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

translation: "[squirming]"

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Footnotes:

1 One that I do want to explain is the "Liquistick"/"ick" pun. In the original Japanese, the proposed name is "Ekibeni", which sounds like "Ekiben", a boxed lunch you can buy at train stations. ("Ekiben" is also slang for having sex standing up, but I don't believe the term was in usage in that capacity ca. 1962.) Other puns I considered include "Liquistick"/"Bisquick" to retain the sense that the pun was referring to a food item, but I was not sure everybody watching the movie would know what Bisquick is.

2 Written 藤尾富士男. I assume nobody has this name in real life, but if they do, my condolences.

あの娘が泣いてる波止場 / Anoko ga naiteiru hatoba / Wharf with the Weeping Girl (1956)

Release date: May 17, 1956

Director: Shigeaki Hidaka

Studio: Toho

Cast: Akira Takarada, Michiya Mihashi, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, Machiko Kitagawa, Shoko Masa, Tetsu Nakamura(?)

Availability: No known home media release or online streaming. No known screenings.

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This is a movie that was adapted from a song! In 1955 Michiya Mihashi recorded Anoko ga naiteiru hatoba, written by Kimio Takano and Tōru Funamura, as a B-side on a King Records single. The song became incredibly popular with fishing boat crews in the port of Kamaishi and sold 1.8 million copies, which made it one of Mihashi's biggest hits. The next year, the song was adapted into a film, featuring Mihashi himself in his debut screen role. The song is just three minutes long and the lyrics seem relatively sparse, so it's fascinating that it ended up being adapted into an entire film. (To be fair, though, the film itself only runs just about an hour.)

Aw come on guys, I thought you hashed this out already like 2 years ago.

Director Shigeaki Hidaka co-wrote the script with Hirosuke Takenaka. Hidaka was active for a relatively brief period of time and didn't produce much of any note, save for a co-screenwriting credit alongside Takeo Murata on a blatant cash-grab sequel to some movie about a giant irradiated lizard. Hidaka is obscure enough that the date of his death is unknown. Takenaka is even worse; he has no Wikipedia page, but evidently he was the screenwriter for both Tea-Picker's Song of Farewell movies, which we have covered here previously. The cinematographer for the film was Jun Yasumoto, who is a bit more prolific; he worked on several Ozu features as well as some good Toho stuff like The Vampire Moth and Samurai I and II.

This is a pretty obscure movie. No reviews on Kinenote or Filmarks; 2 people on Kinenote have logged it as "watched", 2 logged it on eiga.com and 1 logged it on Filmarks (but maybe those are all the same people using different websites). While researching the film, I found a website that I could only access through Wayback Machine where someone wrote about a memory they had of the song. I want to include it for some cultural context.

To my classmates who graduated together in March 1957:

I graduated from a small junior high school in a mountain village famous for the amount of snow in the prefecture. There were 23 of us in my class, and 21 of us, except for two who went on to high school, have now jumped out into the real world. At the time, [...] "The Wharf with the Weeping Girl" was very popular in the school, and the boys often sang it with a parody version. "Goodbye, goodbye, everyone in the class, money is calling me, so I'm off..." It was a pretty intense parody version, but after that, everyone lived an honest and modest life. Every time I attend a class reunion, I think to myself, "Oh, I'm so glad I was in the same class as these people." The classmates who I studied with at the same desk in the classroom are my lifelong friends. Hayaboshi, Funaka-cho, Fushiki-gun, Toyama Prefecture.

From this ad we can infer that this film was the second picture on a double bill with Nobuo Nakagawa's Koi sugata kitsune goten at some point.

The film seems to have played at Cine Tokachi during its original run, but I cannot verify any screenings in recent (or even not-so-recent) memory, which probably means bad things for the chances of a print of this film currently being extant. The song is far more famous than the film. I wish I could give you more on this, it's very intriguing to me since it features a Godzilla cast reunion (and, apparently, Serizawa vs. Ogata, round 2).

33号車応答なし / 33-go sha oto nashi / No Response from Car 33

Release date: May 31, 1955

Studio: Toho

Director: Senkichi Taniguchi

Cast: Takashi Shimura, Ryō Ikebe, Yōko Tsukasa, Akihiko Hirata, Akemi Negishi, Momoko Kōchi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Gen Shimizu, Senkichi Omura, Renji Ishibashi et al.

Availability: None outside of theater screenings and at least one television broadcast.

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Today we're looking at a movie that, despite its lack of home media release, is not forgotten, and has a relative wealth of visual information as well as viewer impressions. It's also kind of a Christmas movie.

You will note that this movie's cast boasts three out of the four main players in Godzilla '54. This is something you take for granted if you're familiar with Toho films, but I need to stop writing under the assumption that everyone has intimate familiarity with the same things I do, so I will mention the "five-studio agreement": for several decades, the five major film studios in Japan had rosters of contracted actors who were exclusive to each studio. Freelance actors did exist, of course, but for actors who were not already famous enough that just their image could serve as an audience draw - this includes Hirata - and especially the kind of small-time actors who would show up as extras in the forefront of crowd scenes, for as long as the five-studio agreement existed (it fell apart in the early 1970s), they were with one studio or another and that was it.

This movie was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, who we have mentioned before since he was one of Toho's more prominent directors (and had the chance to direct Godzilla but passed it up). One can see Toho's general attitude towards films change by looking at Taniguchi's filmography: after the mid-1960s, the work he directed was less what we might call "arthouse" and more geared towards popular consumption; for example he directed the rollicking Lost World of Sinbad (Samurai Pirate), several of the International Secret Police entries, and even comedies like A Smell of Money (Idiots and Scissors). Were he asked to make Godzilla ten years later, it may not have seemed so antithetical to his work.

Taniguchi (in the white hat) on set of No Response from Car 33

The screenplay for No Response from Car 33 was co-written by Taniguchi and Keiichiro Ryū (who also wrote under the name Ichiro Ikeda). Between the two of them, Ryū was apparently the only one not allergic to science fiction - he managed to write one single episode of Mighty Jack!

No Response from Car 33 is a cop movie. Set on Christmas Eve, the plot follows officers Murakami (Ikebe) and Harada (Shimura) as they carry out their duties while driving patrol car #33. After warning a driver against speeding earlier in the night, they later discover the body of a murder victim with evidence surrounding it that connects back to the speeding incident. Their investigation into the murder leads them to the culprit: Asanuma (Hirata), a criminal wanted for killing a police officer, who is hiding out in the home of a local philanthropist along with his accomplice Yuri (Negishi). A struggle ensues, but as is usually the case, the cops win out and officer Murakami is able to return to his wife on Christmas.

Momoko Kōchi has what sounds like a very small role in the film. She plays a pregnant woman who car #33 escorts to the hospital along with her husband (played by Yoshio Tsuchiya). Another cast member I want to mention is Renji Ishibashi, who is still alive and still working. I know him from the yakuza movies he was in during the 1970s, but most people apparently know him from his more recent work, when he was much older. Here is a sort of not very good picture of him in Car 33. A few reviewers say "he still looks the same today".

Here's a grainy picture of Hirata dressed as a police officer, from a point in the film where his character had knocked out Shimura's character and stolen his uniform:

And here's another still of him with Akemi Negishi, so we can all pretend Noguchi from Farewell Rabaul got a happy ending (even if they did end up on the run from the cops):

The film has made the rounds in Japan's theaters that specialize in older films (Laputa Asagaya, Cinema Vera, etc) and so we have a few impressions from people who have seen the film. This is valuable information, since it tells us more about what the film is actually like than a simple plot synopsis which has been copied and pasted between sources for the past 70 years. From reviews, we gather that there's a distinct first half/second half structure to the film, with the first half containing mostly mundane police business and the second half focusing on the murder investigation and eventual apprehension of the culprit. The most recent screening was actually a matter of days ago as of the time of writing (although this post will go up much later), on June 29th, 2025. That gives me a feeling of gladness. You can read an example of one of the many reviews of the film here, and read a very detailed summary here (both in Japanese).

From Twitter we can also learn that in 2021 it was shown at Laputa Asagaya as part of a "vehicle film festival" along with a Truck Yaro movie and - wait, hang on, is that Makoto Satō's son saying this?

I'm really fond of the press sheets Toho would put out that include little portraits of the actors in whatever film they were promoting. These would be used the way ad copy was; newspapers or other media looking to promote the film could paste together ads using the image elements and logos provided by Toho. So that means we have these:

I wish I knew who Toho's in-house artist for these sketches was. I assume it's one person since the style is so consistent, but I suppose it could have been a team of artists trained to work in the same style.

That is all for today, I will remain hopeful that I'll get to see this movie someday. While not the most well-known movie, it's nice that prints of this do exist, with a theater screening every couple of years (yes, this counts as "relatively un-obscure" around here).