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Yasuzo Masumura amazes us with yet another sensual stunner. This period way-of-all-flesh tale is almost a horror film, but the supernatural shivers are far outpaced by the daily Evil that Men Do. Japanese superstar Ayako Wakao blazes across the screen as a self-decreed avenger of the female sex, who allows men to destroy themselves and uses them to destroy each other. The bloody killings orbit around the desire to possess the irresistible Spider Woman, an in an ‘annihilating noir.’ The screenplay is by the equally famous Kaneto Shindo, from a Japanese ‘amor fou’ novel by Junichiro Tanizaki.

Irezumi

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 86 min. / Street Date June 22, 2021 / Spider Tattoo / Available from Amazon / 39.95

Starring: Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto, Kei Sato, Fujio Suga, Reiko Fujiwara, Asao Uchida, Kikue Mori.

Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa

Production Designers: Hiroaki Fujii, Shiro Kaga

Art Director: Yoshinobu Nishioka

Film Editor: Kanji Suganuma

Original Music: Hikaru...

Yasuzo Masumura may be practically unknown to the west, but he is quite famous and respected in Japan, with filmmakers like Shinji Aoyama and Nagisa Oshima considering him as one of the precursors of the Japanese New Wave of the sixties, and one of the most important creators in postwar Japan. Thankfully, Arrow Films has done a significant effort to change the fact, by releasing a number of his lesser known titles. “Irezumi” is of the first films that established his exploitation style, which was later implemented in his most well known ones, like “Hanzo the Razor: The Snare” and “Blind Beast.”

Based on a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and scripted by the great Kaneto Shindo, the story revolves around a true femme fatale named Otsuya, a daughter of a rich merchant. In the beginning of the film, she persuades her lover, Shinsuke to betray her father,...

Music can be one of cinema's great pleasures. When used with inspiration—not dictating our viewing experience with a death grip or slathered like bad wallpaper over the rest of a sound mix—it can transform either solitary shots or spliced sequences of moving images into entirely new expressions, galvanizing details within the raw photographic cinematographic material or contrapuntally complicating the initial impressions of the image.

Given our love for movie music in all its forms, whether a soundtrack features original orchestral compositions, near-abstract soundscapes, or acts as a curatorial force for collecting, exposing and (re-) contextualizing existent music, Lost Sounds and Soundtracks will serve to highlight some of our favorites, obscure and not so obscure, commercially available and ripped directly from audio-tracks where necessary. Unless analyzed within their original context, all will be divorced from their image-tracks in hopes that we might briefly give them their singular due.

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