Retaliation (Japan, 1968)

By Hollywood standards, you’d think that Yasuharu Hasebe barely had time for a bathroom break between making 1967’s Massacre Gun and its sequel, Retaliation, which came out less than a year later. But that’s just the way Nikkatsu, with its systematic approach to quickly and economically churning out low budget genre entertainment, did business in those days. And directors like Yasuharu, who reliably churned out one crowd pleasing pulp movie after another, were the studio’s life blood. Hell, he even turned out a third film The Singing Gun¸ between the two.

Massacre Gun was only Yasuharu’s second film, following his psychotronic debut Black Tight Killers. In comparison to that film, Massacre Gun is a surprisingly conservative film, with very little of the stylistic experimentation of its predecessor, which may account for its success. As the career of Yasuharu’s mentor Seijun Suzuki attests, Nikkatsu didn’t put a lot of effort behind films that it thought were weird. And Black Tight Killers may just be as weird as Suzuki’s chosen method of career suicide, Branded to Kill, which famously featured Jo Shishido as a rice-sniffing hit man.

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etaliation is less of a direct sequel to Massacre Gun than it is a spiritual one. Both star Jo Shishido and Hideaki Natani as similar but differently named characters. Both films concern a trio of Yakuza foot soldiers who rebel against their boss and become hunted by them as a result. And though the differences between the two movies are mostly formal they are nonetheless considerable.

For one, that Massacre stars Jo Shishido and is filmed in shadowy black and white makes it seem more akin to the Nikkatsu New Action films that came before it. While Shishido has a substantial role in Retaliation, the above the title role goes to Akira Kobayashi, one of Nikkatsu’ touted “Diamond Line” of charismatic male stars. This fact made the studio loosen the purse strings enough to give Yasurahu a decent budget this time. And his most obvious expense was to film in Eastman Color, giving him the opportunity to splash around a lot of that fire engine red blood that Japanese filmmakers of the time were so fond of, and also lens a lot of naked female flesh. The resulting increase in violence, simulated sex and nudity makes Retaliation read like a precursor of the more violent “Pinky Violence’ and “Roman Porno” films that the studio started making in the 1970s. Acting as a harbinger of this is Female Convict Scorpion/Lady Snowblood star, Meiko Kaji, who has a small role as a captive farmgirl.

The film begins with Yakuza assassin Jiro, played by Akira Kobayashi, returning from an eight year bid to visit his boss, the godfather of the Ichimanji Family, who is on his deathbed. The godfather tells him that Hasama (Hideaki Natani), the Godfather of a rival clan, has been paying his medical bills and asks that Jiro pay him a visit and thank him for his kindness. Hasama is impressed by Jiro and recruits him on the spot. He asks that Jiro go to Takagawa City, a rural farming community turned boom town thanks to a factory being recently built there. The reigning Yakuza clan there, the Tono, are rapidly being displaced by a new gang, The Aoba Clan, who are driving the remaining farmers off their land and selling their property to the factory’s owner at a profit. Hasama promises that, if he can put an end to the conflict, Jiro can have complete control of the city. Taking Hasama at his word Jiro heads to Takagawa with JoJi (Jiro Okazaki) an ambitious younger Yakuza, by his side.

Meanwhile, another assassin named Hino (Jo Shishido) is tailing Jiro, planning to avenge Jiro’s murder of his brother. His first attempt fails when Hino’s tearful wife intercedes. This happens a few times in the film as, Hino’s wife appears to always be hovering on the sidelines waiting for her chance to jump in and tearfully plead with him to give up his life of crime. Each time, Hino begrudgingly accedes, reminding Jiro “You’re mine. Don’t forget that.” As Hino’s dogged pursuit makes him Jiro’s virtual traveling companion, the two of them eventually forge a reluctant bond, Hino agreeing to accompany Jiro to Tagakawa City.

And when the trio of Jiro, Hino and Joji reach the city, Retaliation doubles down on the Kurosawa homage. A la Seven Samurai, Jiro, Hino and Joji find themselves sympathetic to the plight of the humble farmers and appalled by the strong-arm tactics of the Aoba clan. The Aobas, you see, are a new strain of Yakuza: crude young street thugs with none of the respect for honor and decorum that their elders have, and prone to rampaging through the streets and terrorizing the women and children for fun. Thankfully, a la Yojimbo, Jiro manages to escalate the conflict between the gangs until it leads to an apocalyptic gun battle that greatly reduces their numbers.

It is appropriate that Retaliation concerns itself with generational conflict, as it is a film which occurred at a time of transition for a studio that famously survived economic turbulence by changing with the times. And it’s audience. Given those times were the 1960s and 1970s, that’s no small accomplishment. During that time, Yasuharu Hasebe was one of the few directors who directed films in every one of Nikkatsu’s cycles, including New Action, Pinky Violence, and Ero Guro. When the studio started leaning more toward full-on porn at the start of the 80s, he finally called it quits, thought not before directing such appetizing titles as Rape!, Raping! And Rape! 13th Hour. He then closed out his career directing for various television series, including the classic Tokusatsu show Spectreman.

Of course, people like myself who yell about movies on the internet tend to spend too much time parsing genre. The truth is that, if a film is well made, which Retaliation certainly is, your enjoyment of it should not depend on how it’s bagged and tagged. That I enjoyed Retaliation very much is largely due to Yasuhara Hasebe’s unfailing commitment to his craft. It’s beautifully lensed, well-acted, fast paced and peppered with expertly staged action throughout. File it under: recommended.

Massacre Gun (Japan, 1967)

It’s been said that every man must have a code. And, if we’re in a movie, that’s likely to be the code decreeing that no cruelty must go unmatched, no betrayal unpunished, and no slight un-avenged, no matter the cost to you, your loved ones, or society at large. According to this credo, men are nothing more than unfeeling puppets animated by an irresistible moral symmetry that sees violence as its own reward and no brutality too great if settling a score is the goal.

This scenario is often presented as a cautionary tale; as the camera slowly pans over the corpse-littered landscape at the film’s conclusion, it’s difficult not to imagine an unseen narrator clucking his tongue somberly and saying “Do you see?” However, it’s very difficult to imagine what is to be gained from seeing this tableau played out as often as it is in pop culture.

Fortunately for the Japanese, they had directors like Seijun Suzuki and Yasuharu Hasebe to astheticize these revenge dramas to within an inch of their lives, ornamenting their nagging ritualism with the quirks of personal expression. Though, of course, not all of Suzuki’s films were Branded to Kill, and not all of Yasuharu’s Black Tight Killers. Both men, while contributing their share of eccentric oddities to the Japanese crime film canon, were also well capable of towing the line for their masters at Nikkatsu and reliably churning out artful and competently made potboilers.

Such a film is Yasuharu’s Massacre Gun. It is a film generic enough to be a genre template, while at the same time being noteworthy for its style almost to the exclusion of its content. Which is to say that it is a very nice looking film, as dense with gloomy atmosphere and signifiers of urban cool as its heroes are with honor and regret.

The film opens with hitman Kuroda (Branded to Kill’s Jo Shishido) being ordered by his boss, the sadistic Akazawa (Takashi Kanda) to murder his lover. Shockingly, Kuroda dutifully heads straight to his girlfriend’s apartment and, under the guise of an out-of-town getaway, drives her to a remote stretch of road and summarily executes her. Kuroda is a little conflicted about this, as you would be, so, later, when he confesses to his younger brother Saburo (Jiro Okazaki), he responds to Saburo’s outraged pleas that he quit Akasawa’s gang by doing that very thing, thus incurring the kingpin’s wrath. Never mind that he could have quit the gang before killing his girlfriend, which clues you in that Kuroda may have more problems than an exaggerated sense of honor.

Saburo, an aspiring boxer and jazz drummer (accompanying Stray Cat Rock’s Ken Sanders as Chico, whose mournful torch songs comment on the action like a Greek chorus) is also in the employ of Akazawa. When, acting as a sparring partner for the boss’s star fighter, he loses control and KO’s him, Akazawa, already enraged by Kuroda’s defection, responds by having his goons crush Saburo’s hands.

At this early point in the film, it’s clear that Kuroda and his two brothers have been chafing under Akazawa’s grip for some time, and the final straw comes when the gang trashes Club Rainbow, the nightclub owned by third brother Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji, likewise of the Stray Cat Rock films.) At this point, the brothers decide to strike back against the crime lord, taking over a handful of his operations with surprising ease.

This turn of events puts Kuroda at odds with his best friend and former fellow gang member Shirasaka (played by Tokyo Drifter’s Hideaki Natani), who runs the Black & White Bar with his lover Shino, whom actress Tamaki Sawa gives a spooky, Cassandra-like presence. Of course, since the world of Massacre Gun is one in which men are rendered incapable of acting in their own best interest by their sense of honor, Shirasaka swears fealty to Akasawa and tells Kuroda that, the next time they meet, they will meet as enemies.

Finally, brother Eiji assassinates Akasawa and is taken down by the gang in a veritable tsunami of bullets that is downright comical in its overkill. Because this is not only hurtful, but rude, the stage is set for Kuroda to have his revenge.

Throughout all of this, Ysuharu employs all the arty bellwethers of alienation and isolation to portray his protagonists’ state of mind. These guys are incapable of relating to anybody, he seems to be shouting, much less even hearing them! I lost count of how many deep focus shots there were of a person having a conversation with a person whose back was turned to them while standing a good twenty feet behind them. Lessening the chances of boring old sanity prevailing is the fact that the only people suggesting that maybe all of this killing isn’t necessary are mere women, those same mewling killjoys who have been keeping us guys from setting off fireworks in our mouths since we were in short pants.

The film’s climax, when it comes, really puts the “mass” in massacre, an all-hands on-deck gun battle featuring a towering platform that seems to only exist so that Jo Shishido can assume his trademark sniper’s pose and pick off all of his former friends and associates with alacrity (I was wondering if Kuroda built it himself, which would have been difficult in the middle of enemy territory, even if he was disguised as a TV repairman or something.) In keeping with the film’s allusions to Greek Tragedy, this scrap ends with everyone dead, except for the relative innocent Saburo, who is left behind to assess the horror.

And the lesson of all this is… what, really? “Don’t try this at home?” But how can us men be expected to heed such a warning when our sense of honor compels us to murder our friends and loved ones simply because someone with a bigger gun told us to?

I’m sorry; I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t enjoy films like Massacre Gun. I do. It’s just that, as someone who grew up with a very different idea of masculine strength from the one presented in this film, I sometimes have to step back and remark upon how absurd it all is.

OK, I’m done.