Message From Space (1978)

aka Return to Jelucia

Original title: Uchu kara messeji

Silver-faced, kabuki-inspired intergalactic villain Rockseia (Mikio Narita) and his black-clad troops have conquered Jelucia, a planet full of people who dress like space hippies (crappy robes, leaves on their heads and all), though their not non-violent but only really bad at fighting. The planet's last hope lies in sending out eight magical space walnuts to find eight heroes to rescue it. Two of the Jelucians, Esmeraldina (Etsuko Shihomi!, wearing what looks like a white silk bathrobe - and the leaves) and Urocco (Makoto Sato) are supposed to follow the leaves in a space ship that looks like a clipper and help bring the heroes in.

Turns out magical space walnuts have no taste at all when it comes to heroes, and choose a bunch of dumb space jocks (Hiroyuki Sanada, Philip Casnoff, Peggy Lee Brennan), a shady gambler type guy (Masazumi Okabe), a former space general played by Vic Morrow and his pet robot. Later - much too late - Hans (Sonny Chiba!), the true heir to the throne of Rockseia will join in too, but before that, it's mostly scenes of the crappy non-heroes selling Esmeraldina into sexual slavery (from which she is freed by the bad guys to be kidnapped), pouting a lot and being annoying. Well, and Vic Morrow talks a lot with his robot (turns out it was a good thing R2D2 didn't talk back).

Anyhow, after the audience has spent too much time with the film's crappy heroes, Rockseia falls in love with Earth and decides to conquer it too, so off he and his minions go by way of having Jelucia turned into a giant spaceship without any of the inhabitants having noticed. Will our intensely crappy heroes ever do anything about it?

By now, Kinji Fukasaku is actually better known for his great yakuza films and his general awesomeness than for the weird pieces of cracktastic nonsense he produced whenever he took on the job to be really commercial (for the uninitiated: you can usually recognize these films by featuring an "international" cast or being made during the 80s). If you only know Fukasaku from his more earnest-minded work, Message From Space will come as a bit of a shock, for not only is it nonsensical bordering on totally incomprehensible, it's also a film that barely seems to have been directed at all.

There's certainly little on display of Fuksasaku's usual dynamic (sometimes chaotic) visual style - much of the film seems done with a nailed-down camera, and concentrates on framing and staging everything in the least interesting way imaginable. The film's visual side is clearly not helped by sets that are the opposite of lavish. Jelucia and what we see of Earth are the sort of brown, sandy non-entities that make the rock quarries that so often tended to stand in for alien planets in SF movies look colourful and fanciful.

The script is no help at all, either: there's not much actual plot, nor dramatic tension. Nobody does much - and that slowly - until the film suddenly remembers that it's supposed to end soon after, and everything that might have been interesting had it been developed in the time that came before suddenly happens at once.

Despite these failings - and I haven't even mentioned the film's wasting of Sonny Chiba on a longer cameo and of Etsuko Shihomi on the classic princess role - there is something about it that makes Message eminently watchable, namely, its utter, ludicrous silliness that makes it a brother in spirit to the great Alfredo Brescia's Star Wars rip-offs. Kabuki traditions, truly bad space opera, moments of surprising violence and childish silliness collide in the most ridiculous ways. Space clipper ships meet horned helmets galore; an evil emperor is under the thumb of his mother, who is played by a guy (again the kabuki influence?). Tetsuro Tanba pops in for a minute as the new chairman of Earth; there are space fireflies. Earth is home to a wicked witch with her Plutonian son; Vic Morrow goes on a diplomatic mission dressed up as the camp version of an 18th century navy admiral. I'd say there's always something happening, but the film's tone (until the grand finale which by the way makes no sense at all) is so sedate it's more honest to say there's always something to look at.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,sf,kinji fukasaku,etsuko shihomi,sonny chiba,hiroyuki sanada,vic morrow,reviews

In short: Hepcat in the Funky Hat - The Case of the 2,000,000 Yen Arm (1961)

aka Vigilante in the Funky Hat: 200,000 Yen Arm

Three Japanese major league baseball teams are fighting to sign the student league star pitcher Kawahara. The young man suddenly disappears. Although his father and his manager pretend nothing is wrong, one of the teams, the delightfully named Nantetsu Kinki Socks, hires Ichiro Tenka (Sonny Chiba) to find out what really is the matter. Ichiro isn't an actual detective, but he is rather good at catching phone calls meant for his father, a big shot Tokyo detective.

At first, Ichiro isn't all that interested in actually cracking the case he took on. He prefers to stalk a young woman (Hitomi Nakahara) he has seen in a cafe and now very much wants to get to know. When he learns that she is a sports reporter working on a story about Kawahara's disappearance, the not-quite-a-boy-anymore detective changes his tune and goes to work on the Kawahara problem. He'll have to punch quite a few people in the nose and to weather more than one ride with the most frightening cab driver of Japan to win "his" girl's heart.

Like the Drifting Detective film I talked about some months ago, Hepcat is an early cooperation between the future inventor of the jitsuroku yakuza film Kinji Fukasaku and one of the most beloved scene chewers on the face of the planet, Sonny Chiba.

Both men are at very early points in their respective careers here, and therefore working on films which are obviously meant to cheaply fill slots in a double or triple feature. As is usually the case with films like this, Hepcat is awfully slight and scripted with a sense of propulsion but not much logic.

There really isn't much to it. The plot is of no interest to anyone, not even the characters, but it is fun to see a young boyish Chiba mug into the camera in a rather disarming fashion, which is all he ever seems to do when he's not punching people in the face in one of the film's enthusiastic action scenes.

Fukasaku already shows some of the flair he'd later bring to his more personal work. Some of the scenes are much more interestingly framed than is strictly necessary, but I'm not sure if I'd realized that if I hadn't been looking out for signs of the future Fukasaku.

What is already obvious here is the nervous energy that seemed to propel all of Fukasaku's films until the beginning of the 80s. This gives the film a nice forward drive that helps make it the fun, fast-paced time it is meant to be.

Hepcat is also a timely reminder that Nikkatsu wasn't the only Japanese studio trying to reach a younger, hipper audience with its productions. This Toei film features obvious Western influences, youthful protagonists, a fine jazz score and makes jokes about traditional Japanese morals.

It seems as if Fukasaku was part of a wave of directors dragging Japanese cinema into pop culture right from the beginning. That is especially fitting for a director who has made his interest in "youth" and the place of young people in his society a central theme for much of his career.

 

Technorati-Tags: japanese movies,comedy,mystery,sonny chiba,kinji fukasaku,hitomi nakahara,in short

In short: Drifting Detective - Tragedy In The Red Valley (1961)

A small airplane carrying the industrialist Mr. Nagumo crashes in the snowy Akaiwadake Valley, killing Nagumo and his pilot. The Powers That Be decide that the crash was caused by bad weather and a too reckless pilot, but the pilot's sister Misako (Harumi Sone) can't believe that her brother would have risked his life senselessly.

She travels to Akaidawake Valley where she stumbles into the conflict between the evil, yakuza-employing developer Kido and a saintly father daughter duo running an orphanage on land belonging to the dead Mr. Nagumo. Can it really be a coincidence that Kido suddenly has paperwork signed by Nagumo that transfers the land the orphanage is built on to him?

Fortunately, Nagumo's former corporation has asked the detective Goro Saionji (a very young Sonny Chiba) to look into the matter. Goro and his remarkable skills at fisticuffs, rifle-shooting and horse-riding will surely bring light into the affair, but not before he has earned the respect of Kido's newest henchman, the clownishly dressed sharp-shooter Tetsu the Spade.

Young Kinji Fukasaku directing an even younger Sonny Chiba in a programmer that plays out like a serial-minded Western - what could possibly go wrong? Not much, I have to say. Unless you're one of those people who just can't abide films that are made only to let their audiences have a fun time, that is. In that case this surely isn't the film for you.

Everyone else should be too distracted by fake but fun brawls, flying dynamite, pleasant shoot-outs and a permanently laughing and smiling Sonny Chiba to care about the slightness of the whole enterprise.

Fukasaku was already a perfectly capable director at this stage of his career, with a real gift for the fast pacing this type of film needs to have to work. His energetic style is a perfect fit for a pulpy adventure film like this one.

 

Technorati-Tags: japanese movies,pulp,adventure,in short,kinji fukasaku,sonny chiba