Hobo With A Shotgun was our first movie and it was something else. Canadian. It's got Rutger Hauer in the title role of the hobo with a shotgun. He wanted a lawnmower to start a grass cutting business but the corrupt town of Scumville made him buy a shotgun and start cutting down criminals. He goes head to head with the crime family that runs the place. Most everyone dies. It's a pretty brutal film with a pitch black sense of humour. You can see a lot of that nastyness, and some of the humour, on YouTube in a unrated trailer. It's a pretty chaotic movie with lots of characters and stuff going on. Rutger is joined by the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold. She befriends him and patches him up. He tries to get her a better life when he kills the cop who's raping her. In a humourous way, mind you. It's the first film for Jesse Eisener and it looks pretty interesting. They do a lot with blood and paint. It's so over the top and unreal looking that you can only laugh. Even so it's rather unpleasent at times and not everyone would like it. I'm not as inclined to buy it now that I have seen it. It's just not something I want to see that often.
Akira Kurosawa's 虎の尾を踏む男達 or The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail is a short 59 minute film from 1945. It's Kurosawa's 7th film as a director and he wrote it too. It's based on a Kabuki play that's based on a Noh play. In fact there are several songs in the movie and some dancing. There's been a falling out between rival groups and one bunch is on the run disguised as priests. They have a goofy, continuously mugging porter who is guiding them along the route to safety. They come to a barrier in the road and they have to trick the guards into letting them pass. There's lots of talking and sitting before the commander lets them pass. He sends them saki later. It all could mean more than it does or less. I have no idea. It's an interesting bit of cinema and something that I hadn't seen before. Turns out I have a copy but hadn't even gotten around to watching it. They ran it on TCM a year or more ago with several other early Kurosawa films. I slapped them on a disc to watch later and later never came until today. Joe Netflix'd the Criterion disc. It looked pretty good. Probably better than the dvdr I have. Not that I'm going to want to watch this movie that often. There's nothing overly special about the movie but it's an interesting bit of Japanese movie history. For those that don't know Kurosawa would go onto direct The Seven Samurai, Rashoman, Yojimbo and several other very interesting films. Watching those would be the best idea.
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