Dry Ice Factory

I've mentioned before that Netflix has a lot of movies available for streaming that aren't otherwise available on home video. This includes a number of rare film noirs that I've been wanting to see for years. So what do I watch instead? Kenji Fukasaku's goofy Star Wars-by-way-of-Seven Samurai rip-off, Message from Space, which I've been dying to see again ever since watching it for the first time on Night Flight many years ago. At the time, I was impressed with the low-budget special effects and the earnestness of the cheese. Well, you know, it's a good stoner movie, let's just say that. If you take the right attitude, it's still good fun.

Fukasaku had an interesting career. He made stylish, mod crime films like Blackmail is My Life (Kyokatsu koso Waga Jinsei, 1968), surreal tales of amour fou based on the stories of Edogawa Rampo like Black Lizard (Kuro tokage, 1968), downbeat WWII movies like Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (Gunki hatameku motoni, 1971), gritty, anti-romantic yakuza films like Battles without Honor and Humanity (Jingi naki tatakai, 1973), exploitation samurai films like Samurai Reincarnation (Makai tenshô, 1981), and a number of science fiction films of varying quality, including his final film, Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, 2000), which is supposed to be very good. Science fiction fans of a certain age will remember his other foray into international science fiction productions, Green Slime (1968), which recently became available from Warner Archive. I'm waiting for a sale before I splurge on that one up.

This movie is often referred to as a sequel to Black Lizard (Kurotokage, 1968), but it isn't a sequel, really. It was made because Black Lizard was a hit, and it features the same star, the female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama, so it is definitely a follow-up of sorts, but not a direct sequel. Various sources stress a connection with Kabuki, possibly because it has a man playing a woman, although the director Kinji Fukasaku also mentions in an interview that he tried to keep introducing interesting, sharply drawn characters as the story progresses and says he took this from Kabuki. The story is a high camp melodrama about a beautiful nightclub singer (Maruyama) who carries a black rose that she believes will turn red when she finally meets her true love. She is irresistable to men, and the plot, such as it is, revolves around the conflicts between the various men who have fallen madly in love with her. There is more than a hint of sadomasochism involved in these affairs. If I were to compare it to anything else it would be to the movies that Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich about love and power and humiliation.

There is a bit of Pop Art psychedelia thrown into the fairly European mix (Mozart's Clarinet Quintet is heard frequently, and Maruyama sings several cabaret songs). The Black Rose mansion is a private men's club decorated in marble busts and wood paneling. Men in dinner jackets smoke cigars and drink martinis. It's all highly stylized and symbolized, perhaps another influence of Kabuki. I kept thinking that it was Brechtian in the way that you are constantly but subtly reminded of the artificialty of the production, especially via the mere presence of Maruyama and his glamor drag. The story drips with obsession and fatalism. It drags (ho ho) at times, especially in the middle as a father and son are both reunited and riven by their mutual love for "that woman." But it has a fever dream beauty throughout the working out of its inexorable logic. True love is an ever-receding horizon drawing us toward a beautiful death.

Kinji Fukasaku is a fascinating figure in Japanese film-making whose work I've started to explore. (Thanks to Craig Smith and AP McQuiddy for helping me on this project.) He is most famous for his violent yakuza films, particularly the five-part Battles Without Honor or Humanity (1973-1974) and Graveyard of Honor (1975) (he apparently had no use for the romantic concept of the honorable gangster), but he also made campy science fiction films (Green Slime (1968) and Message from Space (1978)), samurai fantasies (Samurai Reincarnation (1981) and Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983)), romantic comedies (The Fall Guy (1982)), these strange Pop Art tales of amour fou (Black Lizard (1968) and Black Rose Mansion (1969)), and I don't know what else. Oh yeah, he directed the Japanese parts of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). His last film was the apocalyptic science fiction movie Battle Royale (2000), which he made at age 73 and which was so controversial that it has never been released in the US. I'm looking forward to further exploration.