Release date: January 3, 1966
Director: Takashi Tsuboshima
Studio: Toho
Cast: Hitoshi Ueki, Kei Tani, Hajime Hana, Hiroshi Inuzuka, Reiko Dan, Mie Hama, Jun Tazaki, Yū Fujiki, Akihiko Hirata, Senri Sakurai, Etaro Ishibashi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Shin Yasuda, Noriko Takahashi, Ikio Sawamura et al.
Availability: Available as a DVD on amazon.jp; also streaming on Amazon Prime Japan. No known internet streaming outside of Japan.
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This was apparently a film with no small amount of production trouble. According to Japanese Wikipedia1:
- The director was essentially handed a script and told "here, shoot this, the staff are already preparing to work on it". This initial script that Tsuboshima was given only covered a single scene in the film.
- Crazy Cats' schedule was so tight at the time that production was cut down to 20 days, from an average of a little over a month.
- Because the initial script was so fragmented, new scenes would be delivered at start of shooting each day, but the final part of the script did not arrive until a week after shooting had wrapped.
- When this final script was delivered, it was realized that Hiroshi Inuzuka, who was supposed to be in the film, had not had a role written for him. His role was therefore created in great haste and with a reused costume. (I've heard that this was only a rumor, but I believe it comes from the director himself.)
- The reason for the title dropping the typical "Kureji no" format that all other Crazy Cats movies have was also due to the rushed script; during production, the director did not know what the film's official title was. Staff only realized the title was missing "Kureji no" at the film's preview.
Even for Toho, that sounds like sheer chaos.
Hitoshi Ueki plays the film's main character, Sangoro. He narrates the opening of the film and he is a bit of a braggart. He declares himself the sexiest man in Japan, like "Mt. Fuji made into a man". He then gets chased up a tree by a random dog. Moving quickly on, he stops at a restaurant, nearly eats them out of house and home, then tries to pay with basically an IOU, and gets in a fight with the owner (Ikio Sawamura!). They chuck him in prison, where he gambles recklessly with the other inmates.
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| this was post-song and dance sequence |
I have to admit, I'm having a really hard time writing this, because nothing actually happens in this movie. It's just kind of, like, Sangoro trying to get meals for free, going to jail, escaping jail, deciding he likes jail, trying to get back into jail, running afoul of Jirocho's guys, running afoul of the guys who hate Jirocho's guys, getting into fights, ad nauseam. You know how they say "this meeting could have been an email"? This movie could have been a comedy routine. There is virtually no plot.
Akihiko Hirata's character is credited as "taisē" (something like "chief officer") with no given name mentioned, but according to Wikipedia he is playing Masagoro Yamamoto, also known as Omasa, who was a real person that served under Jirocho. You can read about him (and even see his picture!) here. Hirata is not in this very much but that is par for the course.
Kei Tani plays Ishimatsu, who was also (maybe) a real person; my favorite Ishimatsu is and will always be Hibari Misora.
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| Were this not a Crazy Cats movie, Toho would have had the opportunity to do something REALLY funny with the casting for Ishimatsu here |
Almost the weirdest part of this is when Yū Fujiki comes in and plays it completely straight. (Well, almost completely straight. Sangoro nut-shots him.)
This is also where there starts to kind of, sort of be some plot happening (almost 45 minutes into the movie): Fujiki's character, Genba, was bodyguard to the Takaoka family, who sought to wipe out Jirocho (played by Hajime Hana) and his men, but after Sangoro whomps him, he returns to his boss, Kansuke (Somemasu Matsumoto), and admits defeat, promising to find a better bodyguard than himself. His replacement is a swordsman named Hayato, played by Jun Tazaki. Two new players also enter the scene: Seiji and Shinsuke, played by Etaro Ishibashi and Shin Yasuda.
It turns out that Seiji and Shinsuke have a grudge against Hayato for having killed people close to them, so they challenge him to a fight in the middle of a festival. These people know Sangoro and so he reluctantly defends them, but it turns out Hayato doesn't actually want to kill him, so they stage a mock fight for the large crowd that has accumulated. Sangoro "wins" and is feted by all.
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| Bin Furuya sighting |
The film builds ("builds", it happens in about five minutes) to a climax in which Jirocho's clan and the Takaoka clan mount a huge fight outdoors. Sangoro shows up in the middle of it, and the heads of both clans decide that the outcome hinges on him. Sangoro opts to voluntarily give his life to de-escalate the conflict, so the two families put him in a barrel and chuck him into the ocean. Like everything else he's done, this is, of course, a ruse. Sangoro escapes and crashes his own funeral, is thanked by Jirocho's family for his help, and the film ends.
I can tell this would have been a really good movie if it hadn't been so rushed. From a technical standpoint, this is probably one of the worst Toho movies I've seen, but it's still really obvious that the talent is there. This is just what happens when you put a bunch of people who are generally good at making movies on such a tight schedule that the end product suffers for it. Also, for such a slapdash movie, the sets are surprisingly nice. I have a feeling they probably reused them from something else.
And: Hitoshi Ueki carries literally this entire film. This is his thing. If he wasn't so dynamic and fun to watch, this would have been a non-starter. The other Crazy Cats (sans Inuzuka, who appears in only one scene) are there too, but it is his character that makes this worthwhile at all. Both Ishimatsu and Sangoro have romantic interests, played by Mie Hama and Noriko Takahashi; I didn't mention them because even though both actresses are always fun to see, their roles here are very forgettable. There is a sequel to this which I will be covering at some point; hopefully it's a little more fleshed out.
I'd really recommend scrolling through the reviews of this film on Kinenote, especially the long one at the bottom. The people there talk about it much more fairly than I could do while viewing it with machine-translated subtitles.
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