Murder Unincorporated was our first feature tonight. It's a 1965 Japanese crime comedy that's part of the Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Collection Volume 2. It's directed by Haruyasu Noguchi, he only directed 9 movies in the 1960s, one of which is Daikyojû Gappa. It was called Monster from a Prehistoric Planet when originally released in the US. The IMDb doesn't list a writer so I'll forget about that. I wouldn't know who he was anyway.
Murder Unincorporated starts with the murder of a member of a criminal gang by a guy called Joe Of Spades. He says he's going to kill the rest of the members. They call in some assassins to kill Joe. That's some of the assassins up above. All of them have a radically different style in dress and murder technique. Many of their weapons are hidden in common everyday objects like books and baseball bats.
Jô Shishido appears in a good number of Nikkatsu films. That's him on the right above. This is the only comedy movie of his I've seen. The fight between Joe The Spade and the gang continues and there's plenty of dead littering the streets. It's all pretty silly but sadly not quite funny enough to make me laugh out loud. It's kind of slow paced for a comedy. It's all very colorful and that helps. I was happy enough to see it but I think I'll be watching some of the more serious Nikkatsu crime movies more often than this one. It was nice to see a Japanese comedy. I just don't see that many Japanese comedies.
The House Of Seven Corpses is a 1974 horror film about some film makers in a haunted house. Paul Harrison is the directer, co-producer and co-writer with Thomas J Kelly. John Ireland is the annoying director, Faith Domergue is the aging star and John Carradine is the caretaker of the old house. The place is filled with death in it's past, plenty of murder and suicide. The movie moves along at a slow pace and there isn't much happening a good bit of the time. It's about average, nothing too much out of the ordinary here. You might think you've seen it before but it you hadn't. You can check it out on YouTube for free in the link in the title.
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