大学の山賊たち / Daigaku no sanzokutachi / University Bandits (1960)

Release date: July 31st, 1960

Director: Kihachi Okamoto
Studio: Toho
Cast: Tsutomu Yamazaki, Akira Kubo, Mickey Curtis, Makoto Satō, Tatsuya Ehara, Yumi Shirakawa, Misa Uehara, Ken Uehara, Sachio Sakai, Kin Sugai, Akihiko Hirata, Ikio Sawamura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Koji Tsuruta, Tadao Nakamaru et al.

Availability: Online streaming on Japanese Amazon Prime only within Japan; DVD release.

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This is an exciting one: a movie from Toho's "golden age" with all the dudes in it, directed by Kihachi Okamoto shortly after his solo debut, with a soundtrack by Masaru Satō - and it takes place in some kind of haunted cottage? Sign me up. Wacky unofficial English titles for this film include "The Spook Cottage", "Bad Boys at University", and "University Rascals". (This has nothing to do with Daigaku no Oneechan.)

This film is not obscure at all if you live in Japan; anybody with an Amazon Prime account can chuck it on right now. But having a DVD is so much more fun, isn't it? Almost as fun as having a VHS tape, which is almost as fun as having a LaserDisc.

Together, we're going to find out the answer to the foremost question on my mind: does he ski? (Spoiler: No.)

The film begins with the end of a film: the head of Marukyu Department Store (Ken Uehara) watching a film about skiing. Uehara's character, Niwa, plans to buy up huts on a mountain to take advantage of the current skiing fad. Hirata plays the manager of the department store, and Yasuhisa Tsutsumi plays the store's publicity manager. Tsutsumi's Wikipedia page notes that he turned down invitations to go hang out at Ishirō Honda's house - an invitation that Honda extended to many of the actors he frequently worked with, including Hirata, who apparently would go over there and sing. (Oh to be a fly on the wall, am I right?)

I digress. At the same time, an all-male college mountaineering group calling themselves "Sanzoku" ("mountain bandits") is recreating on a mountain. At the same time as that, a separate group of all-female climbers is also on the same mountain, hearing the college group's antics from farther away.

Sidenote: Mickey Curtis was a very inexperienced skiier when he was cast here, in a role that required him to ski. Yūzō Kayama, who had yet to debut as an actor at the time but was known to be a good skiier, taught Curtis during production. According to Curtis, this may have led to Kayama catching Toho's eye and eventually becoming one of their big stars throughout the 1960s, but it's just an anecdote, so take it at face value.

Mickey Curtis shibari? Alright, fine.

Niwa meets up with Officer Ikio Sawamura as he departs his train to the mountain. Sawamura's character tells him that the hut he's intending to scope out and buy is supposed to be haunted. There was an accident where a man died thirty years ago, and now his widow (chanson singer and Takarazuka lady Fubuki Koshiji) lives there with her servant Rokusuke (Sachio Sakai). The deceased man, as we will see, looked identical to Niwa.

I want to know specifically who got to paint Ken Uehara's portrait. I wish it were me.

Meanwhile, the college boys and the girls become aware of each other's presence because Makoto Satō's character Hara ("stomach", since he's always talking about how hungry he is; they all have nicknames) keeps yelling their catchphrase "Bakkyaro" (バッキャロー) loud enough for the whole world to hear. This is kind of a slangy colloquial term that comes from "bakayarou" ("stupid bastard", basically). Anyway, one of the girls bakkyaroes back at Hara and the two climbing teams begin singing in tandem as they draw closer to each other's camp, with the girls trying to ignore the guys.

Mickey Curtis' character Guinea (I'm thinking there's some kind of pun going on here considering that he is an OB/GYN student... "Guinea" could sound vaguely like "GYN" if you pronounce it a certain way) is pretty bad at skiing even within the film, which makes the anecdote I mentioned at the start of the film even funnier - he was so inexperienced, he had to be taught to be even a bad skiier. He's not as bad on a mountain as Niwa, though, who passes out during a blizzard on his way to the hut. The group - now an amalgam of the guys and the girls - has to rescue him.

The group takes him to the creepy mountain hut so they can all wait out the storm. They meet the widow who lives there and introduce themselves. She's a little "off", and I love how Koshiji is playing this character. It's perfect to have a stage actress in the role, her theatrics feel over-the-top outside of a stage setting and it works great with how eccentric the widow is meant to be.

The widow takes them upstairs to her terrifying cobwebbed attic where the ghost of her husband sits in a chair. Only she can see him. The room is decorated with nude portraits he did for which she was the model. While Niwa is still delirious, the group realizes how much he resembles another portrait: the one of the widow's deceased husband! The widow's behavior is creepy on the outside, but really just kind of sad.

"Shujin desu." ("The man of the house.")

[all bow confusedly]

Sidenote: I really wasn't ready for baby Makoto Satō's super fluffy hair in this.

After Niwa wakes up, the widow just assumes he's her husband - she has been seeing, hearing and interacting with him all this time, so it's not strange to her that he's there in the flesh. But it's quite strange to him.

Uehara being called "boya"

One of the girls (Otora, played by Rumiko Sasa) can see the ghost too, and it's a great scene: she wakes up in the night to use the toilet, encounters the ghost-husband sitting by the fire, asks where the restroom is, and he extends his arm for her to link elbows with him, but when she tries, she passes right through him. The ghost is actually very much a part of the film, and he's distinguishable from the living Niwa by his pipe and his wig. He skis. He gets hit with snowballs. There's another cool (and very trademark Okamoto) shot here where the ghost getting hit in the face with a snowball segues into Niwa getting splashed with water as the ghost squeezes out his wet gloves back at the hut. (The ghost can, of course, teleport.)

I'm really not used to seeing Ken Uehara in a comedic role like this. Like, that's Metalder's dad! What's he doing sledding down a flight of stairs?

Niwa does reveal eventually that he's not the woman's husband, he's from a department store and he wants to use her for land development. He explains his plans to develop the cabins into exclusive hotel-style resorts and all the skiiers are against it. Even the ghost is against it.

We are now just over a half hour into the film and the main villains are introduced: Tadao Nakamaru as "Ken", a gangster posing as a foreign prince who is really on the run from the police, and Akira Wakamatsu as "Sabu", posing as his servant. They are being pursued by Yoshio Tsuchiya keibu. The two gangsters convince Rokusuke that they're bigwigs so he will escort them safely to the hut and away from the pursuing detective and cops. I should mention that Masaru Satō score: for most of the film it's very stately and not too distinctive, but there's a faux-Arabesque leitmotif that plays when Ken and Sabu are around that is very much the Satō we're used to.

The cops vs. thugs shootout triggers an avalanche. The skiiers are now snowed in at the cabin along with the widow, the president, and the ghost. They sit down to eat together, but the widow, realizing Rokusuke has been caught outside and is probably dead, wants a moment of silence. During this silence, Rokusuke enters, carrying the two gangsters with him. Back down the mountain, the president's staff and the police are all now well aware that there's trouble going on up at that hut, and send a team up after them.

Akira Kubo's character Uchuu ("Space", kind of the nerdy one) fixes up an old radio, and the group is able to hear a report about what's been going on while they're snowed in. They're relieved to hear that people know they're missing. The gangsters are less than relieved that the skiiers now know they're gangsters and not foreign dignitaries. They order the skiiers to hand over their limited supply of food at gunpoint and also order Tsutomu Yamazaki's character Okashira ("Head" since he's the leader) to escort them down the mountain.

This ends up being their downfall, since Okashira is a much stronger skiier, and leads them down a difficult trail, watching them struggle to keep up while he's doing just fine. He and Tatsuyoshi Ehara's character Zeimusho (literally "tax office"... yeah, I don't see the logic behind that one) leave the gangsters in the lurch and return to the hut with their stolen food.

The widow remarks with pity on how the two gangsters were left to basically die of exposure, which makes Okashira realize that leaving people to die on the mountain is not the way real mountaineers do things, and he decides to go rescue them. Zeimusho objects but is overruled by all, including the ghost. So now we're partying with the gangsters again.

Ken has a knife, but Zeimusho has a gun... an unloaded gun. Ken and Sabu seize the stores of food and begin spitefully devouring it all as the widow and the non-ghost watch. But then it happens: Ken develops appendicitis. Noooobody expects the Sudden Appendicitis. The closest thing they have to a doctor is Guinea. Guinea is forced to do a jury-rigged operation on Ken, but he needs blood; fortunately the widow is a universal donor. (Funny bit here where the group is asked what their blood types are and Otora replies "C!")

With their food stores running out, something has to be done. Okashira and Zeimusho leave the cabin to try to find help. They're gone for a long time, and the group fears the worst, but eventually Okashira returns with a bag full of food. However, with Ken still recovering from his super gross mountain hut blood transfusion, Sabu is in charge, and Sabu is the mean one. He wants that food, and takes one of the girls hostage. The ghost turns on maximum spook mode, but there's only so much a ghost can do, and Sabu escapes down the mountain. Hara, Uchuu and Okashira pursue, catching up to them easily since they're on skis and the gangsters aren't. While Hara is slapping the stuffing out of him, we see the rescue team crest the mountain.

Niwa rips up the contract he brought to try to get the widow to sign over her property to him. The police and everyone else arrive, and the detectives and cops escort the two gangsters out in handcuffs and a stretcher. Koji Tsuruta is here too, but he's got a very nothingburger role. I guess they just wanted him in this. At the very end the actual crown prince who the gangsters were faking affiliation with shows up but I did not take screenshots of him because he's Arihiro Fujimura in brownface. (Everybody is kinda in brownface here because they're all sunburnt to hell, but Fujimura is in, like, brownface brownface.)

This was a fun watch. Kihachi Okamoto is in full swing after crafting his earlier directorial efforts in a relatively restrained, "just doing a job" mode. The flourishes that we love to see in his movies - creative cuts that blend scenes into each other; irreverent, often lewd humor; a little absurdity and a little bit of heart - are all here. I love how the story about the widow living with her husband's ghost looks strange on the surface but is handled with so much empathy - and, really, she's not delusional at all, because the ghost does objectively exist. My only complaint is that this had just the tiniest smallest most inconsequential role for Hirata but I'm plenty used to that at this point.