Obscure Japanese Film #195
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| Tamio Kawaji |
Kasahara (Tamio Kawaji) is a young man who bungles an attempt to rob a bank in Yokohama, shooting one of the staff in the process, and is forced to flee the scene without the loot. Detective Kizaki (Hideaki Nitani) is assigned to the case and soon discovers that the bullet matches a gun stolen from a detective killed in Osaka a few days before. Kasahara seeks refuge in the house of his sister (Tomoko Ko), but the police soon arrive and he only just manages to give them the slip.
Hideaki Nitani
Kizaki’s investigations reveal that Kasahara was orphaned during the war and subsequently slid into a life of delinquency and petty crime. He loves Yoshiko (Hisako Tsukuba), who reciprocates his feelings, and we learn that he attempted the bank robbery after happening to see a vox pop interview in a cinema newsreel in which Yoshiko was asked by a reporter what it was she most wanted and replied ‘Money!’ The police now realise that all they have to do is follow Yoshiko and Kasahara will turn up sooner or later…
Hisako Tsukuba
This Nikkatsu noir credits notable future director Kei Kumai with its screenplay (his first) and has a separate credit for the prolific Hajime Takaiwa for ‘adaptation’, although it seems not to have had a literary source. Director Hiroshi Noguchi* directed his first eight feature films for Nikkatsu between 1939 and 1941, after which the war led to the studio becoming part of Daiei until 1954, when Noguchi became a director again, having spent most of the intervening years as an A.D. at Shochiku. He never made the top tier and remained a B-picture man until his premature death from a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54, shortly after having completed his 85th film, Nikkatsu’s only monster movie, Gappa, the Triphibian Monster. However, if Wounded Beast is anything to go by, he was clearly not without talent, as it’s a fast-moving, stylish and entertaining piece of work.
Joe Shishido
The majority of the cast are not terribly well-known (at least outside Japan), but – as one of the detectives – it does feature a young Joe Shishido, who appears to have begun but not yet completed the cheek augmentation surgery that would eventually lead to him resembling a hamster with the mumps. The underrated Yoko Minamida also pops up as Detective Kizaki’s girlfriend.
Yoko Minamida
The opening credits sequence benefits from a cool jazz theme by composer Teizo Matsumura featuring what sounds like metal pipes being struck; this is followed by an abrupt silence and an attention-grabbing opening shot of a gun pointed directly at the camera. Noguchi also makes effective use of real locations and handles the action sequences very well. However, the most surprising aspect of the film is the amount of sympathy it has for Kasahara, even though he’s killed two people, one of whom was a police detective. The film’s liberal message is clearly that he’s really just a scared kid who’s had a lousy life and is desperately trying to act tough because he lacked a positive role model.
*Aka Haruyasu Noguchi, real name Shigeichi Noguchi
Bonus trivia: Hisako Tsukuba later produced Piranha (1978) and several of its sequels.
Watched with dodgy subtitles
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