Mike brought a copy of Dai tozoku, the 1963 Toshiro Mifune movie that came out in the USA a couple of years later under the title of The Lost World of Sinbad. There is no Sinbad in this movie, it's just made that way. Mike's copy seemed to be from France where it's sold under the name of The Samurai Pirate. A quick glance around the internet shows a bunch of people offering bootlegs. Toshiro plays the sort of character he's so good at. He's a swaggering adventurer who escapes from certain death in the opening scene only to have his ship sunk by the Black Pirate. He washes up on shore and is befriended by a horny old man, who turns out to be a wizard with a libido problem. The wizard part is a good thing, he has to battle an old, snaggletoothed witch. She has no upper teeth except for her two massive canines. Creepy to say the least. The king is being poisoned by the Chancellor, who's also in cahoots with the Black Pirate. While the king lies sick, the evil guy, guided by snaggletooth, rules the land. He takes young women when the family can't pay their taxes. Some he makes dance for him and the rest get locked up in the dungeons. Toshiro hears of this and decides to make things right. There are sadly no big monsters or clever stop motion animation like the better Sinbad movies. There is a castle and a princess played by Mie Hama, who was also in You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery. You can see a poor video clip with bad dubbing on YouTube. If you watch Japanese movies pretty often you'd recognize several of the other actors in the movie. While not a great movie it was enjoyable. There's some action, some comedy, some sailing, some special effects of various quality. The giant man carrying kite scene does not look nearly so good in the movie as on that poster, which takes liberties depicting what's on the screen.
We watched a second Japanese film. More modern this time. Kiseichuu: kiraa pusshii is a 2oo4 made for video movie about a parasite that embeds itself in a woman's vagina where it grows teeth. It's called Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy over here. There's nothing much to recommend with this movie. It's not well written, it's unimaginately filmed, and it's got annoying characters. Yay, it's only an hour. During the first scene, supposedly set in the Amazon, a snaggle toothed witch doctor warns the group about the dangers of that fish. The wriggly, ugly fish busts through the styrofoam box and sticks itself you know where. After fading to black we see some 20 something's in a van. There are three women and two men. The van breaks down and they break into a hole in the wall. They settle in confiscating the booze and smut magazines of the bunker's owner, who is nowhere to be seen. A couple of them leave the walk in freezer door open and a frozen woman is revivied to start the killin'. Yep, typical boilerplate stuff so far. Then comes the vagina monster. Chomp goes that one guy's weiner. Then the blood starts flowing. Believe me there's nothing that cool about it. You can see some pictures here. Beware, contains a lot of bare breast. Don't all rush off at once.
Comments