Tag: Arrow Video

October 21, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. As the 1960s wore on, Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura survived in a studio system in decline. Financial strictures meant that the director’s projects had scaled down in recent years, though the cinematic explorations at the core of his work remained in sharp focus. A prime example of this is his 1969 film, Blind […]

September 3, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. Despite a studio system in decline, monster movies continued to roar on into the Japanese film industry of the 1960s. While icons like Godzilla, Mothra, and many other gargantuan creatures dominated screens through studio Toho, rival studio Daiei threw their hat in the ring with the enduring Gamera series. However, while Daiei’s […]

July 5, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. By the mid-1970s, the decline of the Japanese studio system had led to the rise of pinku eiga, low-budget soft porn movies that were targeted at a male theatre-going audience. However, this transition towards films dominated by eroticism had already begun almost a decade earlier for auteur filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura. The director had continued […]

June 20, 2021 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. As three caramel companies, World, Giant and Apollo duel for market share, fresh-faced World employee Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) assists his ambitious boss, Goda (Hideo Takamatsu) in making a star out of the rotten-toothed tomboy Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe), who is to be the face of their space-themed campaign. As each company’s marketing drive […]

May 15, 2021 · 0 comments

By Jeremy Clarke. With a title that seems to proclaim, “look at me, I’ve arrived”, Daiei’s The Invisible Man Appears (1949) is a Japanese manifesto, a statement that they can match American movies. Eiji Tsuburaya‘s effects are as good as anything in Universal’s The Invisible Man (1933) and were almost certainly produced at a fraction […]