Japan Society Delves Into the Twisted World of Shin Toho

After a fallow period following the decline of the DVD market, we are finally getting more opportunities to wander off the beaten path of Japanese genre cinema from the 50s and 60s. Last November brought the release of Eclipse's "When Horror Came to Shochiku," collecting the goofy X from Outer Space and the visual freakout Goke: Bodysnatcher from Hell, along with oddities The Living Skeleton and Genocide. Now the Japan Society is getting into the act with a traveling series from another smaller studio, Shin Toho, collecting everything from exploitation to traditional Kabuki-based horror.
The series, which will run from February 27 to March 10 has something for every genre fan. Exploitation fans will want to check out the historical nudity in display in Revenge of the Pearl Queen (1956), featuring Michiko Maeda (see above) in the first Japanese nude scene, or Flesh Pier (1958), a noir set in the sex industry mileu.

Going fully noir, viewers will definitely want to check out Yellow Line by the always gonzo Teruo Ishii (for more on Ishii, click here) , a thriller starring the reptilian but charismatic Shigeru Amachi as a hitman with a heart not quite made of gold who gets mixed up with the "yellow line," a group of leering locals and Westerners kidnapping Japanese office ladies for the sex trade. Ishii postulates the port of Kobe as the ninth circle of Hell, teeming with cross-cultural prostitution, drug addicts and murderers, in a style similar to Nikkatsu's contemporary "borderless action" productions. By Ishii's later standards, this is a bit tame on the ero-guro scale, but he more than compensates for the lack of straight-up shock value with an engaging plot and great performances. In particular, Yoko Mihara is great fun as the dancer kidnapped by Amachi - even in mortal peril, she is resourceful and sassy. Ishii also flexes his filmmaking muscles - the film's opening scene, with its faceless, gloved killer, could have escaped from a giallo and the quasi-documentary style prefigures Kinji Fukasaku's later masterpieces. Yellow Line was actually the third in his successful series of "Line" films (no knowledge is needed from one film to another) and he would follow up with the more overtly comic Sexy Line before moving on in the wake of Shin Toho's bankruptcy and turning Ken Takakura into a superstar with films like Flower and Storm and Gang and the phenomenally popular Abashiri Prison series.

Afficionados of traditional ghost stories and modern J-Horror alike will want to check out two classics: Yotsuya Ghost Story (1959) from the master, Nobuo Nakagawa, and Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960) from his disciple Yoshiro Ishikawa. Traditional Japanese ghost stories present an interesting opposition to the prevalent Western theme of innnocents being haunted - kaidan usually flip the formula by setting up a situation where the audience actively roots for the spectres to visit horrific revenge on those who wronged them in the first half of the film. Yotsuya Kaidan is the poster boy, but while Nakagawa's films have seen something of a revival in the last decade, Ghost Cat is a fun surprise, utilizing the same atmospherics but with lurid colors enhancing the mood. Don't expect a arthouse freakout like Kuroneko though - these films are steeped in the theatricality of the Kabuki tradition (if you ever find yourself in Tokyo in the dog days of summer, make sure to check out a "chilling" performance, it's great fun).
Full information can be found here:
::: Into the Shintoho Mind Warp: Girls, Guns & Ghosts from the Second Golden Age of Japanese Film