The Oddity That Is (or Oddities That Are) "Ankokugai" Export Dubs (and More!)

I was initially going to make this post solely about The Last Gunfight, but according to Stuart Galbraith's comprehensive Toho Studios Story, The Big Boss and Big Shots Die at Dawn received English dubs as well, so we're going to look at all three. Galbraith doesn't provide specifics on when the films were released stateside or how widely, so let's see what else we can find out about the English-dubbed versions of each of these three films and how they were released in the U.S., if at all. (There are, of course, more films in the Ankokugai series, but we're only going to be talking about these for [gestures to blog] obvious reasons.)

The Last Gunfight (1960)

It would appear that the U.S. release of The Last Gunfight was limited strictly to television. Introducing Mifune's character with a shot of him socking Hideyo Amamoto in the face can almost make us forget that the trailer omits Hirata entirely. In addition to the above trailer, there's also a far less flashy one where their approach to dubbing seems to be "just don't include clips of anyone speaking".

Distribution was handled by National Telefilm Associates, who had launched their own network four years prior and would shortly become the largest independent television distributor in the nation, and the much less successful Commonwealth United. The dub was produced in Tokyo. Judging from the fact that the dub was first featured in Toho's catalogue of 1962 international releases, it seems that it was available for TV syndication by that point, although whether or not it was actually ever aired on TV is unknown to me. Despite ultimately being relegated to television, the dubbed version was intended for theatrical release; this is evident from the way the closing credits are cropped. Why a theatrical release was aborted is unknown. Who currently holds the full dub, if it is extant, is unknown. Interestingly, though, I've found a list of inventory once held by NYC's Movielab, a defunct film post-processing facility, that includes the film.

The trailer was featured on Vol. 5 of Something Weird Video's Dusk to Dawn Drive-in Trash-O-Rama Show trailer compilation VHS tape series.

Big Shots Die at Dawn (1961)

While we don't have a trailer for this one, I was able to find the film featured in the same catalogue of 1962 international releases mentioned above:

I also came across potentially the most unexpected thing I've ever found in the course of doing research for this blog: there is a no wave album called Ninja Star Danger Rock by Henry Kaiser, Charles K. Noyes and Weasel Walter where every track is titled after a Kihachi Okamoto film. Big Shots Die at Dawn is included, as is The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman and At This Late Date the Charleston. I bought it, I listened to it, and... it's just no wave. It doesn't have anything to do with Kihachi Okamoto. Fortunately, I do like no wave, so I enjoyed it. (And I thought the Pittashi Kan-Kan Soundcloud rap was weird.)

The Big Boss (1959)

A dub of this may exist, but it doesn't seem to have been included in the same deal as Big Shots and Gunfight, and was probably promoted, dubbed, and distributed by different companies. It's almost impossible to Google this movie due to the existence of a Bruce Lee film with the same name. Even more confusing is that our beloved patron saint of weird Toho stuff SpaceHunterM has contributed to the preservation of the English dub of the Bruce Lee film. I'm not sure if the fact that I can't find anything out about an English dub of our Big Boss is because there genuinely wasn't one, or if the proliferation of similarly-titled films is obfuscating the English dub beyond my reach.

However.

In the "really didn't see that one coming" category of archaeological finds I've unearthed, we have the Cuban theatrical release of this film. The newspapers that advertise the film are from mid-October to early November 1959, so it was dubbed/subbed (not sure which) and distributed incredibly quickly. I can find three ads that ran in Diario de la Marina and one from Prensa Libre, which shut down the next year due to being occupied by the Cuban government:

The text under the ad says "We protest the closure of the Universal Cinema due to an illegal strike" and was under every cinema ad on the page.

This one says "The wildest gunfighters filmed".

This one says "Luxurious and violent like no other movie ever made - don't miss it!"

I think "El Submarino Heroico" MIGHT be Submarine E-57 Will Not Surrender.

Five years later, in 1964, the film was released in Mexico. I'm really having to grub around for any evidence of this Spanish-language release at all, so I have no idea if the same dub/sub was used for both the Cuban and Mexican markets. I do know one thing: we have lobby cards! Somebody in Japan even cared enough to import one at some point, since there's one for sale on Yahoo! Auctions.

The tagline reads "Who took care of you when the crime syndicate took over Tokyo?" Also, is that supposed to be Mifune? It looks like Joe Pesci in Home Alone.

 

That's all for now. While I've always respected dubbing and the efforts to preserve international versions of Toho movies, I've never been that personally interested in the hunt for lost dubs; however, that may be changing, as lately whenever I sit down to write about the international release of a film, I end up going down a huge rabbit hole.