the brattle theater in harvard square is showing a bunch of 60's japanese movies in the upcoming weeks...

anyone seen any of these before?

here's a blurb, and then the page that lists all the movies...


Nikkatsu Action & 60s Japan
Friday, April 18 - Thursday, April 24, 2008
The label said it all: Nikkatsu akushon. Nikkatsu was a studio that had been around since the silent days and akushon was "action," written in the katakana syllabary for foreign words. During their peak, Nikkatsu Action films evoked a cinematic world neither foreign nor Japanese. It was a mix of the two, where Japanese tough guys had the swagger, moves, and even the long legs of Hollywood movie heroes. It was a place where the Tokyo streets, Yokohama docks, and Hokkaido hills took on an exciting, exotic aura, as though they were stand-ins for Manhattan, Marseilles, or the American West. Where one guy with guts, smarts, and a pair of quick fists could beat a whole gang of baddies.

Although Nikatsu director Seijun Suzuki has risen to Western cult fame, foreign critics still dismiss most of the films of his studio colleagues as hack work, despite having seen so few of them. The aim of this retrospective series, first presented at the 2005 Udine Far East Film Festival, is not to challenge the critical consensus but to provide opportunities for the discovery of new classics of Japanese genre cinema that may stand alongside those already enshrined in the critical canon.

As a complement to the special prints from Nikkatsu, we present this brief selection of the other films being produced in Japan in the 1960s. Our selections include dense psychological dramas from arthouse titans like Nagisa Oshima's DEATH BY HANGING and Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES and one amazing, gritty neo-noir from the immortal Akira Kurosawa. And, in line with Nikkatsu's B-movie epics, we're also showing some genre classics including the surreal, cute-and-cuddly giant monster movie MOTHRA, B-movie master Kinji "Battle Royale" Fukasaku's just plain bizarre BLACK ROSE MANSION, and, of course, the series wouldn't be complete without at least one samurai... how about THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI?

Special thanks to Marc Walkow and Outcast Cinema.

http://www.brattlefilm.org/brattlefilm/ser...8/nikkatsu.html