squizzix

It's a shame this movie can't be found on home video. See it if you get a chance. It was distributed in the U.S. under the name "The Human Bullet," and tells the story of a Japanese soldier in WWII who eventually finds himself launched on a kamakazi mission against a U.S. ship.

The free spirit of 1968 is very much evident in the film as, for example, our hero's blathering superiors are compared to an endlessly skipping vinyl LP. A funny savaging of the dehumanization of wartime and the military in general.

Though it comes in the guise of a Roger Corman thriller, this movie gets very interesting in the second half as we start to find out what kind of man our hero is. There are some well-directed sequences that one usually doesn't find in this kind of flick. The female lead, Vanessa Angel, went on to star in Kingpin, Sleep With Me, the Weird Science TV series, and she certainly bares her all in this.

The cinematographer, Jennifer Stoltz, is actually a nom de plume for Janusz Kaminsky, who now shoots most of Spielberg's films. Scott Valentine is pretty weak in the main role, but this is an intriguingly written and directed movie.