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After two successful entries in the series, Daiei Studios closed out the year 1966 with the third and final in the Daimajin saga, with Kazuo Mori taking on the adventures of the stone statue guardian of the oppressed. Initially never released in America until a VHS release in the 1990s when the series was first introduced on the format, this slightly underwhelming but still fun venture comes to home media courtesy of a box set from Arrow Video.

In a mountainous region of Japan, evil warlord Lord Arakawa (Toru Abe) kidnaps the men of nearby villages to use for slave labor, producing gunpowder from his sulfur pits. After learning one of his prisoners has escaped, he invades a peaceful lakeside village during one of their annual festivals. In the course of burning down buildings, executing helpless civilians, and generally looting and pillaging, the warlord’s men blow up...

It is most certainly no secret that visiting at least one of the houses, parks or cathedrals designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí is pretty much a must when visiting Barcelona. Houses like the Casa Milá or the unfinished Colonia Güell are among some of the most amazing, breathtaking pieces of modern architecture. However, both of them pale in comparison to the sheer scale and splendor of the La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s most famous work as well as one of Barcelona’s most famous sights, if the line of visitors every morning is any indicator. Gaudí’s has excited and impressed many, among them Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara who has repeatedly expressed the profound effect Gaudí’s designs had on him, which he even associated with with his father Sofu Teshigahara and his work as an artist.

In 1984, Teshigahara would once again visit Barcelona, this time...

A hypnotic homage serving as part-travelogue, part visionary curation of Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi’s (1852-1926) masterworks in Barcelona, Japanese auteur Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1984 documentary on the artist will reveal little about either its subject or its director beyond the latter’s loving penchant for the former’s achievements. Gaudi, a founder of Catalan Modernism and eventually what became known as the Modernista movement, is the creator of, among many idiosyncratic structures, Spain’s most visited touristic attraction, the unfinished church of the Sagrada Familia (a visual exploration of which is where Teshigahara’s film ends). A beautiful rendering of Barcelona’s exceptional landscapes, the trance-like documentary is enhanced by an exceptional, often moody score from Shinji Hori, Kuroda Mori and Toru Takemitsu (who scored Teshigahara’s 1964 masterpiece Woman in the Dunes (read review) as well as Kurosawa’s 1985 Ran and the Philip Kaufman feature Rising Sun, 1993).…

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