AKA: Don’t Touch Me I’m Dangerous, Ore Ni Sawaru To Abunaize
Recently got in two films by Japanese director Yasuharu Hasebe. I watched Black Tight Killers first and later skimmed over Assault! Jack the Ripper! to just check the quality -if it is bad then I have to find another rip somewhere- and was fairly stunned at how different the two films were. Not only in style but content matter as well. Surely Black Tight Killers falls more into the category of films I prefer more and that is not to say the more graphic content matter of Assault! offended me in some way. It did not. But I am talking here of film style and presentation. A review of Assault! Jack the Ripper! will be made after I have watched all of the film but just from the few moments I watched I can tell it is more in the syle of the Pinky Violence films of the seventies -which along with the softcore Roman Porno films is what Nikkatsu wound up making almsot exclusively by the end of the 70′s- while Black Tight Killers is a stylized Nikkatsu Studios Yakuza type film which is paying homage in many scenes to the James Bond films of the time. Some of the scenes are similar to what Seijun Suzuki –for whom Hasebe worked as assistant director for eight years- was doing at the time though Suzuki seemed to prefer luscious b/w for his noir/gangster films. I do have some earlier Seijun Suzuki films that are in color but, to be honest, have not got around to watching them though what I have seen of them look marvelous. Anyway for Black Tight Killer Yasharu Hasebe chose not only to work in color but in a bright and lurid style of color that is reminiscent of some of Mario Bava’s work during the 60’s. Black Tight Killers has been compared to Bava’s 1968 Danger Diabolik and not without good reason though Black Tight Killer’s predates Danger Diabolik by a couple years so it could hardly have been influenced by Bava’s film. Both films have a comic book feel to the look and feel. Both films are lit rather garishly to say the least and both seem to be inspired by the Sean Connery James Bond films as far as the use of life saving secrets gadgets go. Of course Danger Diabolik was actually based a comic book character. I have actually read a couple reviews that said the lighting and photography of Black Tight Killers is horrible and I am at a complete lose as to what the hell these folks are talking about. And before moving on another element of the film that reminds me of Bava’s superb work of the 60’s is Hasebe’s use of how to stage and frame a shot. The technical word is mise-en-scène and there is some dispute over what the term actually refers to. I tend to keep things simple and define at as the total visual aspects of a scene. This includes the lighting and all props and placements of the objects in the scene. Bava –as an art director and cinematographer himself- understood this in his early films. I have only seen one complete Hasebe film –but have other lined up for downloading soon- and am not qualified to comment on those films at the moment but I can say I love the visual style of Black Tight Killers.
While I am working on my post for Black Tight Killers thought I would share these incredible Jim Steranko covers he did for some of Marvel’s horror themed comics. He actually redid his own covers here*. The pen and ink covers at the bottom came first for Supernatural Thrillers. Later when Marvel released a line of b/w titles under Curtis Publishing he reworked the covers in a more painterly fashion for the short lived Masters of Terror. Thought it would be nice to lay the covers out side by side and let you compare them. The design and layout stays basically the same with some slight changes from the pen and ink works to the painted covers. I really miss this style of rendering. I am not knocking the comic books artists of today who have fantastic technical prowess. The contemporary stuff I see can be as awesome in many cases and yet it lacks some simple magic that a man like Steranko possessed. Great works from one of the true legends of comic book history.
*IMPORTANT UPDATE: Tony from thedrawingsofsteranko.com cleared up the fact that the two magazines covers at the top were not in fact painted by Steranko but most likely by either Gray Marrow or Dan Adkins. I made the assumption they were drawn by Jim Steranko and I was wrong. Thanks Tony. They are still great covers as are the original comic books at the bottom that inspired them.
Can any help me and tell me who the singer is on the great theme song here for Yasuharu Hasebe’s stylish spy thriller Black Tight Killers. I am working on a review of the film right now and expect it to be my next post. The music is by Naozumi Yamamoto but I am curious as to who the guy singing the song is. It is simply great to say the least. I loe the filma dn will save my comments and critiques for the post but the opening title sequence is so cool that I made a clip of it and uploaded to my Viddler account. It is certainly paying homeage to (or simply ripping off) the James Bond opening theme songs but who cares because this is so nice to look at. Japanese girls in 60′s style hairdos, go-go boots and mini-skirts look so darn cute even when brandishing a swithblade. Unlike the James Bond theme song sequences that are elaborate but end when the film begins the luridly stunning visual techniques of The Balck Tight Killer’s theme song continue throughout the movie. I hope to have that review up in a day or two. Damn, in fact I still have twenty minutes of the film to finish and I had better get on that first. Enjoy this sample for now of some nice Nikkatsu style go-go dancing action.
UPDATE: The singer on the song is actor Akira Kobayashi himself. The song’s title is Don’t Cry Drifter. Lyrics by Hiroko Sekino and music by Jun Kitahara. Got this from the hardcodes subs over opening credits of all places though was not easy as the subtitles are white they are all but impossible to read in some places as they blend in with the white background. I had to guess at a few letters but think I got it right.
My homemade video clip for the Joseph Losey film The Servant now has half a million hits at my Youtube site. Maybe you didn’t know I have a Youtube site but now you do. Please check it out. I have over 200 uploads there but I do not really do much in the way of posting bulletins or responding to comments. Sorry. Lot of effort to maintain it via proxies from China where Youtube is blocked. But I was happy to get a little notice from the gents at Youtube along with some weird offer to make money off of the clip with Google Adsense. I am not interested in that at all and am saddened to see some sites I love now plastered with Google ads and Amazon.com stuff. No doubt I would slap a big ad on my site if it paid off in big bucks but I don’t think that will happen so I will not litter it with Adsense or Amazon stuff. Anyway, instead of making some offer to be a ‘partner’ with Adsense I would prefer if Youtube stopped blocking videos and sending me nerve-racking warnings because a nipple pops out of a fat girl’s blouse in a 60’s exploitation trailer or because Bettie Page gets spanked, tied up, gagged and thrown in a car trunk. Regardless I am happy this video is so popular but I disagree with some of the comments that slam Sara Miles. I love her. She’s hot in that real snobby way. Like I would need some sort of freaky shoe fetish to get anything going with her at all. That will never happen but let an old man dream okay. My link to the original post is here and it is a great film I have seen several times and will maybe re-watch again here shortly. I am of course including the award winning video here. The quality is pretty poor I see now and I could probably do it better these days since I am monkeying with the more advanced Sony Vegas 8. This meager experiment was done using ULead 10 and Windows Movie Maker and I remember having lots of problems as it was my first experiment in making clips from videos. For nostalgia’s sake watch at the very end and there is a little advertisement clip promoting my website way back when the URL was different. History in the making my dear readers.
1967/Director: Freddie Francis/Writer: Robert Bloch
Cast: Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Barbara Ewing, Robert Hutton, Michael Ripper
I remember the first Amicus film I ever saw was Tales from the Crypt on late night TV. I had always been intrigued by the film’s poster art which I saw on one of the issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland. That film and Vault of Horror typify the Amicus approach to many of their pictures as they were patterned after the EC comics of the same name. There are usually four or maybe five stories linked together in some fashion and sometimes featuring a host. In the case of Torture Garden the host is the sinister sideshow carny Dr. Diablo played to the hilt by Burgess Meredith. This sort of story telling –called portmanteau- was certainly not invented by Amicus and probably goes back to the 1945 film Dead of Night. Of course there is the classic Black Sabbath from 1963 by Mario Bava, one of my all-time favorite films, with three supernatural yarns woven together by host Boris Karloff. But the format would become practically synonymous with Amicus though they did produce feature length films as well. Some of their excellent feature films included the atmospheric City of the Dead, The Beast Must Die and At the Earth’s Core. It can be easy to think that you’re watching a Hammer film when watching an Amicus production. The style is often visually similar –though the Amicus stories and settings are less Gothic than Hammer’s– and often the cast and crew included many Hammer notables. Like Hammer Amicus was a British production company though it was founded and ran by two Americans, producer Milton Subotsky and screenwriter Max Rosenberg. Torture Garden lacked Christopher Lee –a decision made by the American producers who felt he did not have box-office power and replaced him with Jack Palance– but was capably directed by Oscarwinning cinematographer and Hammer director Freddie Francis. Francis also directed the first Amicus portmanteau Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors as well as Taled from the Crypt. Hammer institution Michael Ripper has a small but vital role and the film’s final and best story features Peter Cushing. And if you read the credits –like I do looking for some familiar name in the music or make-up department- you will see that the film’s score was composed by James Bernard who did some of the best Hammer soundtracks. In fact during the 60’s it is hard to find a good Hammer film that Bernard did not score.
Click on the album cover above to get to the original post featuring the complete seventeen track version of Goblin’s Zombi (Dawn of the Dead) original sountrack. Tracks are joined to make three longer -but easier for me to deal with- files. A couple tracks had some technical issues and had were uloaded separately. I probably could have solved the problem but just wanted to get this stuff up. Still have to update my Jimmy Page Death Wish II OST and the Sream for Help OST by John Paul Jones then I am pretty much caught up with all my old audio files that went belly up when my last ‘free’ hosting service deactivated them for no reason. The fielsa re hosted now through my site and as long as I make my payments once a year they will be available to the needy public.
1958/Director: Edward Bernds/Writers: Charles Beaumont, Ben Hecht
Cast: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Dave Willock, Laurie Mitchell, Lisa Davis, Paul Birch, Patrick Waltz
Producer of many cheesy sci-fi yarns Walter Wanger had just finished serving a four month prison sentence for shooting his wife’s (Joan Bennet) suspected lover in the leg and crotch – only four months since he successfully pleaded temporary insanity -when he began to put together this project based on a story by Ben Hecht. Hecht’s original story was more of a farce but Wanger wanted it the story to be more serious and turned the production over to Ben Schwalb. Schwalb had worked for Sam Katzman on some Bowry Boy episodes and director Edward Bernds had done some of those Bowry Boy films and some Three Stooges as well. I guess that is way Queen of Outer Space is sort of an odd little story at best. Many of the props and costumes seem to be left-overs from other sci-fi films – Forbidden Planet, World Without End, Flight to Mars – and the actors are playing it pretty straight but it is a cheese fest from the get go.
The film follows a story line that had already become familiar in previous sci-fi films of the early 50′s – Cat Women of the Moon, Missile to the Moon (see my reviews at the link), Abbot and Costello Go to Mars, Fire Maidens from Outer Spce and others I will get around to here one day – and that is an adventure built around a group of male astronauts stranded on a planet of beautiful Amazon type women. The women are usually sexually frustrated and really seem to like Earthmen from the USA the best. Crew includes Eric Fleming and Paul Birch and the queen is Laurie Mitchell and her rival is prima donna Zsa Zsa Gabor. Story has it that Gabor was so difficult to work with that Ben Schwalb wound up in the hospital from stress and ulcers. The story’s action takes place on Venus -often the number choice for space amazon adventures – and there is a great spider in the cave sequence that usually accompanies these space maiden films. The color is nice and while the story drags for the most part it is worth the moments when the dialog gets really strange and to see the maidens drooling over the earth guys. The scene at the end where a flock of vivacious and nubile Venusian girls are pawing all over an ecstatic Paul Birch – as egg-head Professor Konrad – sums it all up. Fans of cheesy sci-fi, like myself, will love it. Others may be a bit confused by it all.
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