Jugyo Yoshida

Japanese "mondo" film.

The story of the Japanese woman who with a sense of pagan fatalism has been able to sacrifice herself to mechanize her spirit in a sort of absurd voluntary human planning: of the woman who knows how to pose the folds of her kimono in the precious depictions of traditional dances and who knows turn on the eyes of the spectators with morbid attention in the studied movements of a strip-tease: of the woman who burns all her perceptive powers in the factories of the microscopic transistors in two years, of the "loves" who, with a centuries-old technique, dive for fishing corals and pearls; of the Japanese woman, essential actress of a drama of transformation taking place in a country of very ancient civilization that only for a century has opened the doors of her fantastic world in the eyes of the foreigner.

Live-action adaptation of Ko Kojima's manga "Sennin buraku".

Shintoho studio boss Mitsugu Okura was furious that actress Junko Ikeuchi had married against his wishes. In an act of revenge that could have come out of one of his movies, he cast her against the girl-next-door persona she had established to play a dancer who survives a great fall only to become a disfigured beast.

During the naval battle of Midway in WWII, the battleship Mutsu was in its home port in Japan. The ship's officers and crew were frustrated at not being able to take part in the fighting. They had been held back by orders from the Naval Ministry, but there was also a plot by saboteurs, who were trying to prevent the sailing of the Mutsu. Director Komori developed a suspenseful plot by including a fictional adaptation of the Russian spy Richard Sorge, who had been captured in Japan and subsequently executed. Komori brings a fictional Russian spy to the screen by portraying him as a military attaché at the German embassy. As Germany was an ally of Japan in WWII, a secret agent being a mole in the German embassy is a perfect cover. The interaction of the saboteurs and the officers and crew of the Mutsu make an exciting story.

Arrested for the murder of her wealthy businessman father, convicted on false evidence and sentenced to death, Kyoko is determined to prove her innocence.

Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.

Japanese war film.

1959 film directed by Teruo Ishii for Shintoho.

War drama about army nurses.

First film in Teruo Ishii's Line series.