Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And hey, folks, I said
Speaker 3: this on yesterday's episode, but I want to say again,
Speaker 3: if I sound unusual in today's episode, if I sound
Speaker 3: a little hoarse, it is because I've got a bit
Speaker 3: of a cold. But a bit of a cold could
Speaker 3: not stop me from talking about today's movie on Weird House,
Speaker 3: which is nineteen sixty eight. It's Black Lizard.
Speaker 2: We should have worked it into the picture and so
Speaker 2: that you sound like you do because a strange woman
Speaker 2: with demon yellow eyes through a constricting snake at your neck.
Speaker 2: But it's more mundane are the causes here? But yeah,
Speaker 2: we have yet another cult favorite gem from Japanese cinema today,
Speaker 2: and it follows the traditions of danger diabolic and that
Speaker 2: it is another super criminal film, full of style, full
Speaker 2: of visual pizazz. It's campy, it's bizarre, but also I
Speaker 2: think with a lot of interesting depth. As you dig
Speaker 2: into it, we're going to be talking about nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight's Black Lizard. Today's film is also notable in that
Speaker 2: it is entirely centered around a charismatic drag performance. The
Speaker 2: title character, Black Lizard or Cororo Tokagi, is a stylish
Speaker 2: female super criminal played in this film by prominent drag performer,
Speaker 2: really famous and legendary drag performer, Akihiro Miwa, who will
Speaker 2: have more information about here in a bet, but a
Speaker 2: true legend, but a cultural figure of note, and it's
Speaker 2: all played out seriously and thoughtfully, never for a giggle
Speaker 2: in a wink. I've seen descriptions of this film as
Speaker 2: a comedy. I think the current Internet movie database summary,
Speaker 2: for example, says it's a comedy in the summary, and
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't think that's one hundred percent accurate.
Speaker 2: It is a tremendously fun film. It is certainly camp,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't really seem to play for laughs. But again,
Speaker 2: it is tremendously fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are funny things in it. It certainly has
Speaker 3: an over the top sensibility, but I would say it
Speaker 3: plays a lot more as kind of a serious tragic
Speaker 3: romance and as a crime thriller more certainly more than
Speaker 3: as a comedy. I would say it is no more
Speaker 3: a comedy than danger diabolic as a comedy, and also
Speaker 3: in Diabolic there are funny scenes and an absurd gratuitousness.
Speaker 3: There's similar movies in a lot of ways, but neither
Speaker 3: one really has the moment to moment focus on laughs
Speaker 3: that a comedy usually does.
Speaker 2: All right, elevator pitch for this film, I want to
Speaker 2: approach it two ways. One, I would say it's the
Speaker 2: forbidden love of a super criminal and an ace detective
Speaker 2: realized in a stylish sixties counterculture Japanese cinema festival for
Speaker 2: the eyes. But I also think that there's one line
Speaker 2: in particular in translation here. Of course, we both watched
Speaker 2: it with subtitles. I don't think a dub exists, and
Speaker 2: I don't think I would want the dub. I think
Speaker 2: I would want the subtitles. But there's one great line
Speaker 2: where our main character, Aketchi, the number one detective in Japan,
Speaker 2: is speaking to Black Lizard, the super criminal, and says,
Speaker 2: black Lizard, you were an old fashioned romanticist in this
Speaker 2: age soiled by corruption and murder. You believe that crime
Speaker 2: should wear a gorgeous gown with a train fifteen feet long,
Speaker 2: just like the primordial dreams of lizards.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's I mean, if you love that line,
Speaker 2: you'll love this film. This film perfectly delivers on like
Speaker 2: the glorious, poetic weirdness of that statement. All right now,
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to find what I could one hundred
Speaker 2: percent feel certain about concerning a trailer, Japanese or otherwise.
Speaker 2: So what I did find was a that was uploaded
Speaker 2: by Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater, which I've never been to, but
Speaker 2: it looks amazing. It's a collectively run screening space run
Speaker 2: by movie loving volunteers and they play a lot of
Speaker 2: just great looking stuff, including some films that we've covered
Speaker 2: on Weird House before. Like just at the time of
Speaker 2: this recording, I'm like, oh, what are they playing this
Speaker 2: week at this place? And they're playing Doctor of Doom,
Speaker 2: which is a wonderful Mexican luchadora film that we've covered
Speaker 2: in the past. So so go check them out Brooklyn
Speaker 2: Spectacle Theater. We're going to borrow part of the trailer
Speaker 2: they uploaded. Again. I'm not sure if this is part
Speaker 2: of an original trailer part of a trailer that they made,
Speaker 2: but either way, it'll give you just a little sonic taste.
Speaker 4: Of black lizards, you know, it give climateg.
Speaker 1: Too much.
Speaker 2: On all. Right now, if you want to go out
Speaker 2: and watch Black Lizard before proceeding with the rest of
Speaker 2: this episode, well, I'm sad to say this one is
Speaker 2: tragically hard to find right now as of this recording,
Speaker 2: as of this moment, despite the film having had an
Speaker 2: official international and US release, even if a limited one
Speaker 2: back in nineteen sixty nine, even though it had subsequent
Speaker 2: re releases in Japan and and abroad over the decades
Speaker 2: to follow. It might have been released on VHS at
Speaker 2: one point, as Michael Weldon, who loved it, references a
Speaker 2: tape in his Psychotronic Video guide book. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if he's referring to a legit tape or more of
Speaker 2: a gray market sort of thing, but yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: real shame because this is a fabulous film with a
Speaker 2: cult following. It has cultural significance historical significance as well,
Speaker 2: and it deserves to be seen by more film fans
Speaker 2: than the best quality possible. If you look around, you
Speaker 2: can find some sources for it. But I also have
Speaker 2: to stress that this is the nineteen sixty eight Black
Speaker 2: Lizard or Coro Toakagi film, not to be confused with
Speaker 2: other films titled Black Lizard, including an unrelated Shaw Brothers
Speaker 2: Hong Kong film titled Black Lizard from nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: or a nineteen sixty two Japanese film titled Black Lizard
Speaker 2: that is actually an earlier adaptation of the same novel
Speaker 2: in the same play. I've seen part of the sixty
Speaker 2: two film, and it's also quite stylish and quite good.
Speaker 2: I was about like twenty mins and it's into it
Speaker 2: before I realized, Oh, I have the wrong movie. I
Speaker 2: need to find I need to look around a little art.
Speaker 2: I think the sixty two win is actually maybe you
Speaker 2: can stream it through Criterion Collection. So, but it would
Speaker 2: not be a loss to watch the sixty two version.
Speaker 2: You're going to hit a lot of the same plot
Speaker 2: points we're hitting here. But we are talking about the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight adaptation here today.
Speaker 3: Now when it comes to the sixty eight version, the
Speaker 3: director is actually somebody quite familiar on Weird House.
Speaker 2: That's right. It's Kimji Fukusaku, who lived nineteen thirty through
Speaker 2: two thousand and three. He directed nineteen seventy eight's Message
Speaker 2: from Space.
Speaker 3: And Nice Best of the Star Wars Repulse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a one we covered early on on
Speaker 2: Weird House, and he also directed nineteen sixty eight so
Speaker 2: The Green Slime, which we covered far more recently, both
Speaker 2: very enjoyable films in their own distinct ways and also
Speaker 2: rather different from today's entry. Yes, now, Fukusako has sixty
Speaker 2: eight directorial credits on IMDb, and probably the big one
Speaker 2: for a lot of listeners, as I mentioned before, is
Speaker 2: two thousand's Battle Royale, which was a huge late career
Speaker 2: hit for him, to the extent that it can to
Speaker 2: a casual fan, you might, you know, only focus on that,
Speaker 2: but other films of note include at least the Japanese
Speaker 2: portions of nineteen seventies Tora Tora Tora. He apparently was
Speaker 2: brought in after Kurosawa backed out nineteen seventy three's Battles
Speaker 2: Without Honor and Humanity. He directed a number of action
Speaker 2: yakuza and samurai movies, as well as the high budget
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty sci fi film Virus, which featured a host
Speaker 2: of Japanese and American actors. He also directed the two
Speaker 2: thousand and two video game like PlayStation video game clock
Speaker 2: Tower three, which I think I did play, and in
Speaker 2: doing so, this was my earliest exposure to Fukusaku's work.
Speaker 3: Is that like a horror game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's the one I'm thinking of. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of like creeping around and trying to avoid like killers,
Speaker 2: you know, like mass killers that you can't actually directly stand.
Speaker 2: So in a way, it's kind of a similar vibe
Speaker 2: to like the Alien Isolation game that came many many
Speaker 2: years later. I don't remember anything about it where I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, of course Fukusaku was involved in this anyway.
Speaker 2: Fukusaku's a director often associated with the Japanese New wave
Speaker 2: cinema movement of the sixties and seventies, but he was
Speaker 2: also a big commercial success, highly acclaimed both in Japan
Speaker 2: and by filmmakers around the world. I've seen the likes
Speaker 2: of Tarantino, Paul Schraeder and others talk about how much
Speaker 2: they admire his work. All right now, in terms of
Speaker 2: the writing here, they'll basically be like three levels because
Speaker 2: the original source for this is a novel by Rampo
Speaker 2: ed Ogawa, who lived eighteen ninety four through nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: This was the pen name of Japanese author Tero Hirari.
Speaker 2: Crafted this pen name Rampo ed Ogawa was apparently crafted
Speaker 2: to resemble Edgar Allan Poe or PO. Edgar Allan So
Speaker 2: PO Edgar Allan Rampo ed Ogawa So and Edgar Allan Poe,
Speaker 2: along with Arthur Conan Doyle and others, were our big
Speaker 2: influence on Rampo's work. I have to admit I was
Speaker 2: really not familiar with Rampo prior to this. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you'd ever run across discussion of his work before.
Speaker 3: Joe, possibly, but not that I recall.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, apparently a huge name in the world of
Speaker 2: Japanese mystery, detective and horror fiction, known for such works
Speaker 2: as The Boy Detective's Club, The Fiend with Twenty Faces,
Speaker 2: and of course The Black Lizard had His many short
Speaker 2: stories include The Caterpillar and The Human Chair. Film and
Speaker 2: TV adaptations of his work go back as far as
Speaker 2: I believe nineteen twenty seven, and while he did write
Speaker 2: I think just one screenplay, pretty much all of the
Speaker 2: cinematic and TV treatments of his work were adapted by
Speaker 2: other writers in the adaptations I've continued in film and
Speaker 2: TV and manga and anime. Some of the more famous
Speaker 2: adaptations and cclued nineteen sixty nine's Blind Beast and Horrors
Speaker 2: of Malformed Men. So some of these are titles I'm
Speaker 2: familiar with, but I didn't really know much about the
Speaker 2: Rampo connection. And then twenty tens Caterpillar, and it's previously
Speaker 2: mentioned Black Lizard was adapted numerous times as a play,
Speaker 2: and then two separate adaptations of that play, the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two film and this nineteen sixty eight one.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's the original novel. But there's another intermediary
Speaker 3: literary source, which is the play which is eventually adapted
Speaker 3: into the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the play here was adapted by another rather
Speaker 2: famous figure in Japanese culture. This is Yukio Mishima, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen seventy. So he wrote
Speaker 2: the stage adaptation upon which this is based. And there's
Speaker 2: a lot potentially unpacked here with Yukyo Mashima. You could
Speaker 2: do a whole podcast just on this guy. He's ultimately
Speaker 2: a very controversial figure. Mishima was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor,
Speaker 2: and model. Is a highly successful writer said to affused
Speaker 2: modern Western trends with traditional Japanese elements. With a general
Speaker 2: focus on beauty, eroticism, and death. In his private life
Speaker 2: and revealed in some of his writings, he was apparently
Speaker 2: bisexual and often dealt with themes of same sex love.
Speaker 2: He was also a shintost and an ultra right wing
Speaker 2: nationalist who founded a militia known as the Shield Society,
Speaker 2: and on November twenty fifth, nineteen seventy, this, of course,
Speaker 2: is the year of his death, he essentially attempted a
Speaker 2: coup with four members of the militia invading a Japanese
Speaker 2: military base, taking the commandant hostage, and trying to encourage
Speaker 2: the Japanese Self Defense Forces to overthrow the government and
Speaker 2: restore her like the full rule of the Emperor. In
Speaker 2: this attempt culminated in Mishima's own death VI. A Sepaka
Speaker 2: and Yeah Again. He's remained a very controversial figure because
Speaker 2: of all of this, though on the other hand, there's
Speaker 2: always been a lot of interest in him in his
Speaker 2: work in and out of Japan. American director Paul Schrader,
Speaker 2: for example, directed a biopic in nineteen eighty five titled Mishima,
Speaker 2: A Life in Four Chapters, starring ken Ogata in the
Speaker 2: lead role. We were actually chatting about this with our
Speaker 2: excellent producer JJ Possway off Mike before we went in here,
Speaker 2: because I don't think either of us have seen this
Speaker 2: particular Paul Schrader film, but JJ has and said that
Speaker 2: it's really worth saying. It's quite excellent.
Speaker 3: Now, if I'm not mistaken, Mishima appears bodily in Black
Speaker 3: Lizard as well, doesn't he.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, Mishima himself was, in addition to all
Speaker 2: these other things, he was an actor and a model.
Speaker 2: He was a noted bodybuilder and act. Yeah, has a
Speaker 2: very memorable non speaking role in this film. I mean,
Speaker 2: you could say it's a cameo, but I don't know
Speaker 2: when a cameo has like this much weight. I don't
Speaker 2: want to dismissed it as such.
Speaker 3: He's the So there is a sequence later in the
Speaker 3: movie with these frozen human figures. They're sort of described,
Speaker 3: I think as stuffed bodies, though there's a something almost
Speaker 3: supernatural implied about the way that they're frozen, because they're
Speaker 3: clearly just they're not mannequins, they're human bodies, and their
Speaker 3: human bodies just kind of like trembling. You can see
Speaker 3: them moving a little bit and he's one of them, right,
Speaker 3: He's the one who's like in the middle of a
Speaker 3: knife fight with another guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it's it's the classic, like
Speaker 2: you know, wax museum effect of having people being really
Speaker 2: still pretending to be models or some sort of preservation
Speaker 2: of formerly living humans. So it does have that inherent
Speaker 2: creepiness that we often touch on. But yeah, this is him.
Speaker 2: It's a very pivotal scene as well. We'll get to.
Speaker 2: It's also notable in that, yeah, this can't be relegated
Speaker 2: as a cameo because a lot of times the poster
Speaker 2: art has Mashima on the poster alongside the star, which
Speaker 2: generally you don't do with your cameo appearances. Like the
Speaker 2: detective Acecchi, who is in many respects the protagonist of
Speaker 2: the picture, is not on the poster or not on
Speaker 2: many of the posters that I was looking at, So yeah,
Speaker 2: worth keeping in mind. As for Mishima, he has at
Speaker 2: least some other acting credits, including the nineteen sixty yakuza
Speaker 2: film Afraid to Die, in which he starred, and nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six's Patriotism, which he also wrote and co directed.
Speaker 2: All Right, and then the screenplay based on the play
Speaker 2: based on the novel. The credit here is Masashigi Narusawa,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twenty one. An
Speaker 2: award winning screenwriter and director. His films include nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six as Street of Shame, sixty eight's Curse of the Blood.
Speaker 2: He was active from nineteen fifty through seventy five, with
Speaker 2: a final Rampo adaptation airing on TV in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: All right, so that's the director, that's the folks involved
Speaker 2: in the writing of the picture. But now we have
Speaker 2: to talk about are the true star of this and
Speaker 2: that is Akihiro Miwa playing Black Lizard. This is just
Speaker 2: a fabulous performance. This is one of those performances where
Speaker 2: Miwa is almost constantly on the screen and is it
Speaker 2: a light whenever he is on screen?
Speaker 3: I agree Miwa makes this movie what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Miwa was born in nineteen thirty five and
Speaker 2: as of this recording is still alive, and it's it's
Speaker 2: essential to note that here in this starring role as
Speaker 2: Black Lizard, the title character, the master criminal, we have
Speaker 2: one of, if not the most famous Japanese drag performers
Speaker 2: of the fifties and sixties, if not of all time.
Speaker 2: Drag culture does still seem to be going strong in Japan.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm assuming the only Western comparison would be
Speaker 2: like someone like Rue Paul, Like this would be like
Speaker 2: having Rue Paul appear as the title character or super
Speaker 2: criminal picture. Maybe there's a better comparison to be made
Speaker 2: right in if you've got one. Anyway. MIA's cabaret career
Speaker 2: goes back to I Believe nineteen fifty two, and he
Speaker 2: rose to popularity, transcending eventually from stage to film, TV,
Speaker 2: music writing, and directing. He put out five albums between
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three and nineteen ninety five, all centered around
Speaker 2: as drag persona. He also became an outspoken voice on
Speaker 2: political and social issues in Japan, and he worked his
Speaker 2: way up to this glorious leading role through often smaller
Speaker 2: appearances sometimes it's like a singer or background character, and
Speaker 2: number of films, and then followed this one up with
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine's Black Rose or Black Rose Mansion, which
Speaker 2: was also directed by Fukusaku. I haven't seen it, but
Speaker 2: it's apparently classified as kind of like a dark romantic drama. Now.
Speaker 2: While there's some additional live action roles after this Mea
Speaker 2: was biggest contributions moving forward after this point are mostly
Speaker 2: voice roles in animated projects, but boy did they include
Speaker 2: some big ones. He voiced the three hundred year old
Speaker 2: wolf goddess Moro Nokimi in Miyazaki's nineteen ninety seven masterpiece
Speaker 2: Princess Mononoki. If you've only seen the dubbed version, this
Speaker 2: would be the character that Gillian Anderson dubs. You know,
Speaker 2: this big wolf goddess creature. He also voices the Witch
Speaker 2: of the Waste in Miyazaki's two thousand and four film
Speaker 2: Howell's Moving Castle, and for you Pokemon fans out there,
Speaker 2: he also voiced a Pokemon by the name of Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure on this one, Arsius or Archias. I
Speaker 2: asked my son about this real quick, and he was like,
Speaker 2: people might get mad at you. But he was like,
Speaker 2: they may say Archias or may they may say Arsius,
Speaker 2: but be prepared to be corrected. So okay, I am prepared.
Speaker 2: But anyway, this is like an important Pokemon like the
Speaker 2: title Pokemon and the two thousand and nine TV movie
Speaker 2: Arsius and the Jewel of Life.
Speaker 3: If people are going to be mad at us. I
Speaker 3: hope it's about Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always happy to be corrected.
Speaker 3: But to come back to Black Lizard, Akihiro Miwa is
Speaker 3: phenomenal in this movie, so much like passion and charisma
Speaker 3: in this performance.
Speaker 2: Absolutely every scene, and also so many costume and hair changes.
Speaker 2: This is definitely one of those pictures where we will
Speaker 2: call out the costume designer because you know, any new
Speaker 2: scene with Black Lizard, you're gonna get a new costume.
Speaker 2: You make it an entirely different hair going on as well.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 3: It's also a surprise for like a crime thriller, it
Speaker 3: is a surprisingly dialogue heavy film, and I think that
Speaker 3: may be based on the fact that it was This
Speaker 3: is adapted from a stage play, so there are fewer
Speaker 3: just straight action scenes than you might imagine. A lot
Speaker 3: of it's just sort of dialogue and and and there
Speaker 3: is There are a lot of thrills, but a lot
Speaker 3: of the thrills are like twists that are revealed through dialogue.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so it's talkier than you might expect, but
Speaker 2: luckily the dialogue is often just tremendous. We already quoted
Speaker 2: a little of it, and you know, it often has
Speaker 2: that flavor, that weird character to it, and yeah, and
Speaker 2: when we do have punctuations of actual action, it generally
Speaker 2: is also really weird and jaw dropping. All right, now,
Speaker 2: it's important to talk about the Ace detective. This is
Speaker 2: Detective Akechi, played by Issau Kimura who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: three through nineteen eighty one. The interesting thing here is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: Detective Akechi is in many respects the actual protagonist of
Speaker 2: the film and is essentially Rampos Sherlock Holmes character, appearing
Speaker 2: in multiple novels and short stories. So while many viewers
Speaker 2: may watch this and you just see the sort of
Speaker 2: you know, typical noir detective character, you know, a little
Speaker 2: bit tortured, a little bit jaded, smoking and drinking, trying
Speaker 2: to solve the crime, maybe falling a little bit in
Speaker 2: love here and there. So while many viewers I just
Speaker 2: dismissed that this character is like the detective figure in
Speaker 2: Japanese pop culture and was in fact the first recurring
Speaker 2: detective character in Japanese fiction. So he's a big deal
Speaker 2: and has been played by numerous actors over the years,
Speaker 2: including Tadanobu Asano, who have played of course, is the
Speaker 2: star of Ichi the Killer, and also had a really
Speaker 2: great role in the recent FX adaptation of Showgun. He
Speaker 2: was in two thousand and five's Rampo Noir.
Speaker 3: So a catchy we are told is Japan's number one detective.
Speaker 3: But he also, I don't know. It makes a lot
Speaker 3: more sense to me knowing that this is a recurring character,
Speaker 3: because there's a sort of prologue in the film that's
Speaker 3: almost like, well here I am, I'm in the club,
Speaker 3: now sucked into this crime, And it makes more sense
Speaker 3: if this is kind of a character we would recognize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in a way, it kind of gives you
Speaker 2: more license to let that character become secondary. He does
Speaker 2: have this like iconic place already, you know, in the
Speaker 2: same way that you can have a Sherlock Holmes film
Speaker 2: certainly these days, and allow secondary characters to sort of
Speaker 2: take the forefront.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Kamu right here playing the role, frequently worked in
Speaker 2: supporting roles in Akira Kurosawa films, including fifty four to
Speaker 2: seven Samurai and fifty seven's Throne of Blood. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think his performance here certainly hits all the world. Weary
Speaker 2: noir detective notes that you'd expect, and I suppose this
Speaker 2: in many ways. This helps like ground the flashier elements
Speaker 2: of the picture as well. But he's good. It's a
Speaker 2: good performance. Yeah, all right, this is all going to picture,
Speaker 2: This is all going to center around in many respects,
Speaker 2: a damsel in frequent distress, a youngerly, a young woman
Speaker 2: that Black Lizard tries to kidnap multiple times. Her name
Speaker 2: is Sane, and she is played by Kiko Matsuka, and
Speaker 2: she was born in nineteen forty seven, and she was
Speaker 2: in a number of sixties and seventies films, including an
Speaker 2: uncredited role as a diver girl in nineteen sixty seven's
Speaker 2: Bond film You Only Live Twice. Her other credits include
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight's The Living Skeleton, Black Rose Mansion, and
Speaker 2: a Rampo TV series in nineteen seventy all right. Another
Speaker 2: important secondary character is the is the despondent musician Yunichi Amamiya,
Speaker 2: played by Yusuku Kuwazu, who lived nineteen thirty five through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. This apparently is his best known role,
Speaker 2: but his credits include nineteen sixty one's Killers on Parade,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three's Godzilla, versus Mega Godzilla two and nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, nineteen ninety eight s Gamma A three Revenge
Speaker 2: of Iris. So, I mean, it's a solid performance this
Speaker 2: this tragic character in this film. But also props to
Speaker 2: anyone who was ever in both a Godzilla and a
Speaker 2: Gamera movie.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, this is a very sad, pathetic, abject
Speaker 3: role and this guy does well with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, as we'll discuss, like even when he has
Speaker 2: his moments of seeming bravery like, there's still this wrinkle
Speaker 2: to them that makes it even more tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all revealed that it's just the ultimately even
Speaker 3: more pathetic than you would have thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see. Another fun secondary character is Private Detective
Speaker 2: Keniji Matoba, who I guess is like he's not the
Speaker 2: number one detective Aketchi is the number one detective. This
Speaker 2: is somebody further down the list that has no problem
Speaker 2: with at all with the possibility of making a fool
Speaker 2: out of a catchee or you know, or coming in
Speaker 2: to clean up a catchy's mess.
Speaker 3: You can just see this guy's displeasure with the full
Speaker 3: knowledge that he is the number four detective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is played. Yeah, so He's a rival stern
Speaker 2: faced private detective, played here by award winning actor co Nishimura,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty three through nineteen ninety seven, best
Speaker 2: known for his roles in such Krosawa films as nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty is The Bad, Sleep Well ones Yo Jimbo, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three is High and Low. And he was also
Speaker 2: greatly praised and awarded for his starring role in the
Speaker 2: bear movie Matagi from nineteen eighty two. So he was
Speaker 2: definitely the star of Matagi in eighty two. But yeah,
Speaker 2: as for these Kirosawa films, several, some of which I
Speaker 2: haven't seen and others I haven't seen in a long time.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly off the top of my head
Speaker 2: how far up the cast he is in those, but
Speaker 2: I love his performance series kind of like a Japanese
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's very very stern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, Sanya's dad is also important. Iwasa played by
Speaker 2: yun Usami who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: His credits include nineteen seventies Tori Toar Tora in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty eight, The Man in the Moonlight Mask.
Speaker 3: This is sort of our rich Mark. The guy who
Speaker 3: is targeted by Black Lizard for both the kidnapping of
Speaker 3: his daughter and the stealing of his precious jewels.
Speaker 2: Right, and you know, he's rather proud about the fact
Speaker 2: that he can afford Japan's number one detective. So it's
Speaker 2: a fun, fun role. But he's also like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're of course you're gonna get taken advantage off by
Speaker 2: super criminals.
Speaker 3: He also complains immediately about the cost of Japan's number
Speaker 3: one detective when his daughter is discovered to have been kidnapped. Yeah, like,
Speaker 3: throw back the blankets on the bed and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's just a mannequin in there. He's like, you know
Speaker 3: how much money I paid you to protect her?
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. We also already alluded to the snake woman
Speaker 2: with the yellow demon eyes. We'll come back to her,
Speaker 2: just not a lot about her, but just to credit
Speaker 2: the actor. This is Toshiko Koboyashi, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two through twenty sixteen. Oh okay, so we recently received
Speaker 2: a listener mail from someone saying, hey, you guys need
Speaker 2: to single out the costume folks, the costume designers more well,
Speaker 2: this is certainly a movie to do it on. We
Speaker 2: have so many great costumes, especially for Black Lizard, and
Speaker 2: the costume designer on this was Masako Watanabi. She's worth
Speaker 2: singling out in part because, again, the costumes here are amazing,
Speaker 2: but she's also a notable manga comic writer and artist,
Speaker 2: known for such titles that I'm not familiar with as
Speaker 2: Master of Morley, Jack, Ryerdon's Baby and Heidi. So if
Speaker 2: you know more about about her and her work, write
Speaker 2: in and we'll get the full details from you, all right.
Speaker 2: And then finally the music. Oh, we have another huge
Speaker 2: name here. This is a guy with a number of
Speaker 2: credits in Japan film wise, but in general though just
Speaker 2: a musical icon. Isautomita, who lived nineteen thirty two through
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. This is a name that I think is
Speaker 2: going to register with a number of you. Not so
Speaker 2: much for film though he does have associations with various films,
Speaker 2: But this is this guy was one of the pioneers
Speaker 2: of electronic music and space music, both in Pan and
Speaker 2: ultimately internationally as well. His work prior to this film
Speaker 2: included the TV series Mighty Jack, which I believe was
Speaker 2: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: interesting thing is that around the same time of this
Speaker 2: picture is when and again the score for this movie
Speaker 2: for Black Lizard is not particularly I don't think it's electronic.
Speaker 2: I think it's very traditional when you say but around
Speaker 2: the same time as he would have been working on
Speaker 2: this film, he heard Wendy Carlos's nineteen sixty eight album
Speaker 2: Switched on Boch for the first time and was reportedly enraptured.
Speaker 2: I heard. I read one account which I said, like, basically,
Speaker 2: he's like, give me a ticket to New York and
Speaker 2: like flies to the United States just so he can
Speaker 2: bring back a mug synthesizer. He's like, I've got to
Speaker 2: get my hands on this. Like he just saw the
Speaker 2: tremendous potential and then started experimenting with synths and goes
Speaker 2: on to again have become this pioneer of electronic and music,
Speaker 2: known for such works as nineteen seventy two is Electric
Speaker 2: Samurai Switched On Rock, which I think was released in
Speaker 2: the US, and seventy four nineteen seventy six is the Planets,
Speaker 2: which I was listening to while finishing up my notes
Speaker 2: here is.
Speaker 3: That an electronic adaptation of Holst's the Planets.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure. I listened to the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure of him. They didn't have Holes
Speaker 2: credited on the tracks on Spotify, which may mean nothing,
Speaker 2: but a number of his works are synth treatments, electronic
Speaker 2: treatments of pre existing works, like I know he did
Speaker 2: a version of John Williams Star Wars theme song for example. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he's an international legend. You'll find loads of his work
Speaker 2: wherever you get your music. Again, I don't think we
Speaker 2: really hear any electronic stylings in The Black Lizard's score,
Speaker 2: as I think he flied to acquire his first synth
Speaker 2: in around seventy two. But still, it's an amazing connection,
Speaker 2: so we get like pre electronic to me to hear
Speaker 2: he'd go on to score such films. Two thousand and
Speaker 2: four is The Hidden Blade, and I've read he was
Speaker 2: apparently Ridley Scott's first pick to score Alien. Would that
Speaker 2: have worked? I don't know, but it's an interesting connection.
Speaker 3: Okay, is it time just talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's jump into it.
Speaker 3: Well, warning, this plot has twists and reveals a plenty,
Speaker 3: so if you do want to experience the movie without
Speaker 3: having anything spoiled. I guess you should pause here and
Speaker 3: go watch it before you listen to this part of
Speaker 3: the episode. Now we open with the kind of prologue
Speaker 3: before we get into the main caper that will involve
Speaker 3: most of the movie. There's like a hippie technicolor acid
Speaker 3: freak out sex party opening. It's like a go go club.
Speaker 3: We've seen this in movies from the sixties before. They
Speaker 3: try to put you right in the middle of a
Speaker 3: swinging happening go go club to like get your mind
Speaker 3: right where it needs to be for the feeling of
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: And with strong cabaret elements. I think as well, like
Speaker 2: this is where this is where the counterculture happens. This
Speaker 2: is where the bohemi and vibe is strong.
Speaker 3: That's right. So it's a feeling of the sixties, a
Speaker 3: feeling of cultural and sexual energy. But I think also Rob,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you detected the same thing. There's
Speaker 3: kind of a point of view the camera takes that
Speaker 3: implies some kind of distance or hesitation, maybe like it's
Speaker 3: it's celebrating everything that's going on in the club, but
Speaker 3: it's also a little bit afraid. Maybe it's like this
Speaker 3: this is an alluring but also a dangerous and confusing
Speaker 3: frontier of freedom and pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll see, there's danger here and there's sadness
Speaker 2: here as well.
Speaker 3: In fact, that sort of point of view of the
Speaker 3: camera maybe the point of view of the character we're
Speaker 3: about to meet, because we go to this man, a
Speaker 3: lonely looking man, sitting at a table overlooking the dance
Speaker 3: floor in this freak out go Go club, and we
Speaker 3: hear his voiceover. He says, I came here by mere chance.
Speaker 3: A friend said he would guide me to a secret club.
Speaker 4: This.
Speaker 3: We never see the friend, by the way, do we Yeah?
Speaker 3: He says, this was a world unknown to me until
Speaker 3: a gaudy crime dragged me into it. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: everything stops. The action freezes and darkness falls over the
Speaker 3: go go club, and then there is somber, humming music,
Speaker 3: and then we see Black Lizard in three forms. First
Speaker 3: the character so we see Akihiro Miwa in jewels with
Speaker 3: a cigarette holder, and then the image of a black
Speaker 3: Lizard silhouette, and then the title Black Lizard. Now I
Speaker 3: warned there would be spoilers. Technically, the character we are
Speaker 3: meeting here is not revealed to be black Lizard the
Speaker 3: titular criminal until a twist that comes later. But I
Speaker 3: was in no suspense at all about this, and I
Speaker 3: wonder if the audience is supposed to be in suspense
Speaker 3: at all. It seems to me one hundred percent clear
Speaker 3: from the very first frame of seeing Black Lizard that
Speaker 3: she is Black Lizard.
Speaker 2: I think so. Like from what I watched the sixty
Speaker 2: two ADAP takes, I felt like it was maybe a
Speaker 2: little less obvious, but here it's clear and been. Part
Speaker 2: of that may be the fact that, Yeah, you have me,
Speaker 2: this famous individual playing this title character, and you know
Speaker 2: there are gonna be several twists in the film that
Speaker 2: I think most viewers will see coming a mile away.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't feel like a limitation. In a film
Speaker 2: like this, A twist may be telegraphed, but what sort
Speaker 2: of feast will the film make of the twist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a dark, mysterious melody as the credits play.
Speaker 3: I think this may be Black Lizard singing. Actually, I
Speaker 3: think so.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure when I first watched it, but then afterwards,
Speaker 2: when I was diving more into me was musical credentials. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I assume this is his actual singing voice because he
Speaker 2: put out all these albums and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it belts out of tune.
Speaker 3: So Black Lizard. After the credits, Black Lizard navigates the
Speaker 3: club and comes up to meet the lonely man sitting
Speaker 3: at the table above, and Black Lizard says, this is
Speaker 3: an unusual night, an oppressive night, a night made for crime.
Speaker 3: I love a night like this. Sleep won't come easily tonight.
Speaker 3: And you So the lonely man tells her he's impressed
Speaker 3: by her words. He's like, wow, you are a poetess.
Speaker 3: And Black Lizard says, are you a critic because beauty
Speaker 3: fails to intoxicate you? Your eyes tell me that.
Speaker 2: And this is a catchy she's talking to This is
Speaker 2: the number one detective, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, But then Black Lizard backs off of a catchy
Speaker 3: and goes to visit a different man at the bar.
Speaker 3: She goes up to this sad looking guy and says,
Speaker 3: thinking of death?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 3: And she then seemingly telekinetically moves his whiskey glass to
Speaker 3: the edge of the table until it falls and shatters.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what's going on here, but I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great weird moment. That is important
Speaker 2: because we come back to it. But I guess it's
Speaker 2: like a here as a metaphor or a splash of
Speaker 2: magical realism, because there's nothing else to indicate that this
Speaker 2: character has any kind of telekinetic I think it's just
Speaker 2: to convey the charismatic power of the Black Lizard. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, the inevitable trajectory of unobtainable obsessions. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the film plays it marvelously vague. But again, it is
Speaker 2: important because we'll come back to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an ambiguous question about the presence of the
Speaker 3: supernatural in this film. The movie is, you know, ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent grounded in realism, but there are a few
Speaker 3: things in it that are like, wait, was that magic
Speaker 3: or not? I can't tell. So there's the whiskey glass telekinesis.
Speaker 3: There's the lady with yellow eyes who the snake Lady later,
Speaker 3: who sometimes seems to maybe do magic or I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on with her snake eyes. The statues
Speaker 3: at the end of the movie, which are people, They
Speaker 3: appear to be frozen in some way that almost suggests magic,
Speaker 3: but it's not clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So there are a few moments like that,
Speaker 2: and it keeps things wild and unpredictable as well.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the man at the table, who was allegedly thinking
Speaker 3: of death leaves the club with black Lizard, and then
Speaker 3: we smash cut to a newspaper headline that tells us
Speaker 3: a quote despondent young musician has died by suicide. And
Speaker 3: then we also see a different article in the newspaper
Speaker 3: that a corpse was stolen from a medical dissection room
Speaker 3: at the Morgue. Right, yes, okay, So then detective at
Speaker 3: catche is suddenly there. He is at the Morgue looking
Speaker 3: into it and finds there is a toy black lizard
Speaker 3: at the scene.
Speaker 2: Yeap peels it right off the floor there.
Speaker 3: And then also, what is the deal with all these
Speaker 3: cadavers floating in like a tank of dark green liquid?
Speaker 3: This is so weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found this creepy, but I don't know, like,
Speaker 2: maybe this is actually how it was done. At the time,
Speaker 2: I have no idea, and I have to admit I
Speaker 2: was reluctant to go down the goolish avenue of researching it.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know, I'm just gonna accept
Speaker 2: it as is. Maybe I'll come back and look into
Speaker 2: it later, but at least within the context of the film,
Speaker 2: this is just where they put recently dead bodies instead
Speaker 2: of having like freezers, the sort of freezer drawer scene
Speaker 2: that we're accustomed to. Instead we have the vat scene
Speaker 2: that we have here.
Speaker 3: But anyway, okay, so all this is sort of prologued
Speaker 3: to the main caper of the film, which is the
Speaker 3: iwasa kidnapping and the Star of Egypt.
Speaker 2: I only looked this up just before we came in
Speaker 2: to record, but the Star of Egypt is an actual diamond.
Speaker 2: I was reading about it on Christie's. It first appeared
Speaker 2: on the London market in nineteen thirty nine. There's a
Speaker 2: listing for it on Christie's. I think it recently sold
Speaker 2: for you know, several million dollars, so it's it's a
Speaker 2: real thing, not just a made up gym.
Speaker 3: So we get into act one here with the main plot,
Speaker 3: and it is that Detective Atketchi has been hired by
Speaker 3: a rich man named iwasa to protect his daughter Senne,
Speaker 3: who has been threatened with kidnapping. I think they get
Speaker 3: a note in the mail or something saying that she's
Speaker 3: going to be kidnapped, and so they hide out in
Speaker 3: a hotel room under the supervision of a ketchee who
Speaker 3: intends to set a trap for the would be kidnappers.
Speaker 2: That's right, number one detective in Japan, the most expensive,
Speaker 2: only the best for this guy's daughter.
Speaker 3: Now, technically, even though we said it's clear who Black
Speaker 3: Lizard is at this point in the plot, Black Lizard
Speaker 3: has not been revealed and is in disguise as a
Speaker 3: woman named Midori Kawa. And so this is how she's
Speaker 3: known to a ketchee from the club. You know, he
Speaker 3: knows her as Midori Kawa. And then we go to
Speaker 3: the hotel lounge where Sinay is hanging out. And then
Speaker 3: also Midori Kawa and a handsome, well dressed man named
Speaker 3: Yamakawa are getting to know Sinay. They like they're talking
Speaker 3: to her in the hotel bar. For some reason, Sinay
Speaker 3: has been permitted to hang out at the bar by herself,
Speaker 3: even though she's being targeted by kidnappers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's weird. It was the same way in
Speaker 2: the sixty two versions, So I guess it's straight from
Speaker 2: the play and or book. Maybe the bar is considered
Speaker 2: a safe public zone, or maybe Medora Kawa is just seeming.
Speaker 2: She's just such a long time trusted client of dads
Speaker 2: that you know she's perfectly safe as long as she's
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 3: But Midori Kawa is being so creepy. It is like
Speaker 3: she's like, hey, did you play volleyball in college? I
Speaker 3: would like to possess your body as a doll.
Speaker 2: She's like, if I told you had a beautiful body,
Speaker 2: would you hold it against me if I preserved you
Speaker 2: in a perfect soul? Estate more poetic than that, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but Black Lizard is always hitting on folks.
Speaker 3: Yes, So Midori Kawa and her accomplice they lure Sina
Speaker 3: back to a room in the hotel, I think, on
Speaker 3: the promise of showing her like an antique doll. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we have this interesting artifact, and she's like, okay, I'll
Speaker 3: go look at it. But of course they kidnap her.
Speaker 3: They like chloroform her and then stuff her into a
Speaker 3: trunk and back.
Speaker 2: Lizard is also like, go ahead and take her clothes off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for no particular reason, Well.
Speaker 2: Didn't she does he change into those clothes. There's kind
Speaker 2: of an initial fake out that I think maybe initially
Speaker 2: she replaces Snae in Sanna's clothes with her back turned
Speaker 2: to her father, and then they end up replacing her
Speaker 2: in bed with the very dummy that you know would
Speaker 2: have been the doll in the box originally, that's why
Speaker 2: it is okay, yeah, but it is also played for
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, for for more alluring purposes here too.
Speaker 3: So also somewhere in here, Yamakawa is revealed to be
Speaker 3: Unichi a'ma mia. This was the same guy, the despondent
Speaker 3: young man at the club earlier, right, yes, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is now Black Lizard's accomplice. And of course we know
Speaker 3: Midori Kawa is Black Lizard, but we are to understand
Speaker 3: the detective Aketchi does not know. So they pull a
Speaker 3: clever maneuver. Amamiya takes Sannae inside the trunk and boards
Speaker 3: a train going to some other city while Black Lizard
Speaker 3: stays at the hotel, and she tricks Iwase into thinking
Speaker 3: that Sennae is totally safe in the hotel room. First,
Speaker 3: she like throws her voice and poses as her, like,
Speaker 3: pretending to be her from the other room, and I
Speaker 3: guess ita is He's like not, I don't know. He's
Speaker 3: not thrown off by the fact that this is not
Speaker 3: his daughter's voice.
Speaker 2: Right, or it's a perfect replica for voice somehow, I
Speaker 2: don't know. At any rate it works.
Speaker 3: And then she tricks him into thinking that Senne is
Speaker 3: in her bed in the hotel room. It will later
Speaker 3: be revealed that it's a huge doll under the blankets.
Speaker 3: But he Oh, but Black Lizard has a message delivered
Speaker 3: stating that Senne will be kidnapped exactly at midnight. So
Speaker 3: while it wasa sleeps soundly thinking that Sennae is asleep nearby,
Speaker 3: a catchy stands guard in the living room of the
Speaker 3: hotel suite, passing the time by hanging out with Black Lizard,
Speaker 3: not knowing who she is. And this leads to a
Speaker 3: great dialogue see where Black Lizard again in disguises. Midori
Speaker 3: Kawa and Detective Aketchi play cards and talk about crime
Speaker 3: and love and their careers and their character. A lot
Speaker 3: of really fun dialogue here. Just one example is they
Speaker 3: start talking about like what it takes to make a criminal,
Speaker 3: and Akechi says, consider three women. A man gives a
Speaker 3: woman a bouquet of roses. A caterpillar crawls out from
Speaker 3: between the petals. Disgusted, the woman throws the bouquet into
Speaker 3: the fireplace. Akechi says, this woman does not have what
Speaker 3: it takes to be a criminal. Now consider a second woman,
Speaker 3: same thing. She gets the flowers, caterpillar crawls out of
Speaker 3: the flower. Instead of throwing the flowers into the fire,
Speaker 3: she plucks out the caterpillar and throws it alone into
Speaker 3: the flames. Akechi says, she also is not a criminal.
Speaker 3: But consider a third woman. She sees the caterpillar crawl
Speaker 3: out of the blossom, she throws neither the flowers nor
Speaker 3: the insect. Instead, she pushes the man who gave her
Speaker 3: the flowers into the flames. Akechi says, this woman can
Speaker 3: be a criminal, but ironically she is the most tenderhearted
Speaker 3: of the three.
Speaker 2: I'd be lying if I said that I one percent
Speaker 2: understood what the point is here. But I still love it,
Speaker 2: and I do want to see a line of black
Speaker 2: Lizard Valentine's Day cards. Based on this and other quotes
Speaker 2: from the film.
Speaker 3: I think Aketche is making some kind of point about
Speaker 3: like passion and boldness, that it's like the same thing,
Speaker 3: the same thing that makes someone that have the deepest
Speaker 3: kind of love is also what makes someone the most
Speaker 3: like violent and dangerous.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so maybe we're getting back into the territory
Speaker 2: here of, you know, of believing that crime should wear
Speaker 2: a gorgeous gown with a train fifteen feet long, both
Speaker 2: stylistically but also in terms of passion somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they also talk. So they start playing cards
Speaker 3: and they put a wager up. Aketchi is like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know you're you're rich. I can't really bet against
Speaker 3: you because you've got all this money, and Black Lizard says, well,
Speaker 3: I'll bet all my jewels, but you have to bet
Speaker 3: your career as a detective. So I guess if Black
Speaker 3: Lizard wins the card game, a Catchee will no longer
Speaker 3: get to be Japan's number one detective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great scene, and I love the
Speaker 2: way it was shot too. They're like playing on a
Speaker 2: glass countertop, I believe, and so we get some wonderful
Speaker 2: shots from below up through the card game as it's
Speaker 2: taking place, and yeah, it's I believe. It's in this
Speaker 2: scene that we get a lot of contemplation about the
Speaker 2: idea that aketche is like the negative photo of a criminal. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and in a way, even though although Aketchi doesn't know
Speaker 2: that he's playing cards with the Black Lizards. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is very much a we're much the same you and
Speaker 2: I speech that has become a standard trope, but it's
Speaker 2: constructed in a fresh way. It has a very fresh
Speaker 2: feeling to it.
Speaker 3: This is better than most I mean it. This comes
Speaker 3: before things that would make same point later. I think
Speaker 3: you know, this is sort of the same point made
Speaker 3: in like Manhunter about the Thomas Harris character Will Graham.
Speaker 3: It's like that he is able to think like a killer,
Speaker 3: or think like a criminal, and that's what makes him
Speaker 3: a great detective, and Black Lizards saying the same thing
Speaker 3: to a catchy here. It's that like, in order to
Speaker 3: be a great detective, you must be able to think
Speaker 3: like a criminal.
Speaker 2: Now is this the place I may be skipping around?
Speaker 2: I may be thinking about something earlier or later. But
Speaker 2: there's one part where Black Lizard has an extended monologue
Speaker 2: anguishing over the fact that beauty must age and that
Speaker 2: is the ultimate tragedy, and therefore she pines for a
Speaker 2: soulless existence and the heart made of pure, made as
Speaker 2: pure and unbreakable as a diamond, both in her in
Speaker 2: herself but also in others.
Speaker 3: I think Yeah, it might be the scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah either way, Like the Quest for the Diamond Heart
Speaker 2: is one of the central themes of the film that
Speaker 2: we come back to again and again.
Speaker 3: And this is the scene where Black Lizard and a
Speaker 3: Catchy do seem to be falling in love. Yes, but
Speaker 3: then remember the thing was supposed to be. He's standing
Speaker 3: guard there until the kidnapping, which is supposed to come
Speaker 3: at midnight, And midnight comes and nothing happens. What gives
Speaker 3: Sannae's absence at this point is revealed. They go in
Speaker 3: and like pull back the covers on the bed and oh,
Speaker 3: it's just a doll in there. But it's a double
Speaker 3: twist because we find out a catchy knew all along.
Speaker 3: He lets his men run into the room and he
Speaker 3: reveals that he knew that Senne had already been taken
Speaker 3: and he had his men collect the trunk and bring
Speaker 3: her back.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, Black Lizard really does feel like the main
Speaker 2: character in all of this, in part because we're generally
Speaker 2: clued into what her plans are far more than a catchy's.
Speaker 2: Like a catchy ultimately ends up being like two steps
Speaker 2: ahead of even the viewer. And I guess this corresponds
Speaker 2: to the often observed soft rule of caper films, and
Speaker 2: that you lay out all the beats of the caper
Speaker 2: that's going to ultimately fail, but you reveal the beats
Speaker 2: of a successful caper in its very real time execution. Again,
Speaker 2: a catchy is essentially Sherlock Holmes here. He is a master,
Speaker 2: you know, figuring out the criminal scheme and then trying
Speaker 2: to be ahead of that. And I wonder too if
Speaker 2: that adds to why we might be rooting for Black Lizard,
Speaker 2: because it's like, if you don't know who a catchy is,
Speaker 2: he's just another detective. But if you know that he's
Speaker 2: the master detective, then you kind of know the fixes
Speaker 2: in from the beginning, like this is an unbeatable adversary
Speaker 2: for Black Lizard, and therefore maybe we root for her
Speaker 2: a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, later in the story they do try to
Speaker 3: get ahead of that by showing a catchy like doing
Speaker 3: something sneaky and you think that he's being he's being
Speaker 3: caught getting one over on on Black Lizard, and then
Speaker 3: she gets one over on him. But then there's like
Speaker 3: a triple twist where it's like, oh no, he actually
Speaker 3: was there all along, Yes, but Anyway, Sola escapes this
Speaker 3: trap by stealing a catche's gun from his coat pocket,
Speaker 3: using it to escape the hotel room, and then she
Speaker 3: gets out of the hotel by disguising herself as a man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fun sequence, and I guess really
Speaker 2: the only nod that we see to me was drag performance.
Speaker 2: I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So on to fight another day. So this sort
Speaker 3: of gives way to Act two of the movie, the
Speaker 3: previous plot having been foiled, we cut to the home
Speaker 3: of Iwasa where Black Lizard is determined to strike again.
Speaker 3: So this middle sequence of the movie involves Black Lizard's
Speaker 3: second attempt at kidnapping Sinne and using the leverage of
Speaker 3: her kidnapping to acquire the jeweled necklace the Star of Egypt.
Speaker 3: So we meet a large cast of Hinchman here, hired
Speaker 3: by Awasa to protect the family. The gang is commanded
Speaker 3: by a new private detective met And so there's like
Speaker 3: a furniture delivery truck that arrives at the house and
Speaker 3: we see the whole gang run out to like menace them.
Speaker 3: The delivery guys seem very frightened, but then they decide
Speaker 3: it's okay, you know, it's a beautiful new futon that
Speaker 3: IWASA did apparently actually order. So they bring it inside.
Speaker 3: They talk about how it cost a bazillion bucks and
Speaker 3: so forth, and the whole time Matoba is there just
Speaker 3: looking like he's just a statue.
Speaker 2: He's great, just scowling the whole time.
Speaker 3: Now, I think at this point we're supposed to believe
Speaker 3: Aketchy has been dismissed from the case, or maybe he
Speaker 3: actually has been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if he's like been completely pushed out,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's Matoba is now seemingly in charge of things,
Speaker 2: and he seems a little rth that a catch. He's
Speaker 2: even showing up. It's like, no, you failed, dude, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm I'm top now.
Speaker 3: But later that night there is an attack from inside
Speaker 3: the house. I think it's Matoba catches. Itwasa's housekeeper, Hena
Speaker 3: sending secret coded messages to someone via radio. She's like
Speaker 3: talking into a radio, saying like the sea is a
Speaker 3: flame and stuff like that. But the tables are turned.
Speaker 3: How exactly is it revealed? Is it that Hena and
Speaker 3: the big lug Hinchman guy both gang up on Matoba.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if Matoba vetted these henchmen, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like they all were in the pocket of Black Lizard.
Speaker 2: We'll find out. So, yeah, everybody's looking working for Black
Speaker 2: Lizard here except for Matoba.
Speaker 3: And this is the first reveal of Hena's like powers
Speaker 3: and snake associations. What's the deal with this lady?
Speaker 2: Oh? I mean this is again? Is it magic? Is it?
Speaker 2: Is it metaphor what's going on here? I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's tremendous because we see, yeah, her eyes glitter, yellow,
Speaker 2: demon's fire. She flings constricting snakes as a weapon. So
Speaker 2: we've watched movies with projectile snakes before on the show,
Speaker 2: namely nineteen eighty one's Venom, where we get to see
Speaker 2: Klauskinsky with a rubber snake, and it's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that can easily look very rubber and fake. But
Speaker 2: I totally bought her and her snake bolos as a
Speaker 2: legitimate threat. So like she leaps out, you know, cool
Speaker 2: lighting on her face and eyes, lands this constricting snake
Speaker 2: right around Matoba's neck, and the actor Nishi Mura just
Speaker 2: sells the living daylights out of it, just thrashing around
Speaker 2: against the walls, trying to pull the snake off of
Speaker 2: his throat.
Speaker 3: Oh but it doesn't end there, right, everybody comes out
Speaker 3: because of the commotion, and then they find what they
Speaker 3: find black Lizard's calling card.
Speaker 2: Here, right, there's the rubber lizard, but it is on
Speaker 2: the palm of a disembodied hand that is on the couch,
Speaker 2: which is now bloodied. They're gonna have to get rid
Speaker 2: of that thing. And then they find Matoba in the bathtub,
Speaker 2: like seemingly dead. I don't know, I can't remember if
Speaker 2: he still has a snake on his neck or not,
Speaker 2: but he has a bloody stump. This is clearly his
Speaker 2: hand out there, left on the couch with the with
Speaker 2: the calling card on it. But the like there's several
Speaker 2: you know, guys looking in on this scene. And then
Speaker 2: Matoba rises up out of the tub like a like
Speaker 2: a rampaging zombie and comes rushing towards them with the stump,
Speaker 2: and they all freak out and slam the door on
Speaker 2: him as he thrust his bloody stump out through the
Speaker 2: door after him, and then he finally busts through into
Speaker 2: the hallway, slumps against the wall, slumps down and dies
Speaker 2: just a legit jaw dropping sequence from me that that
Speaker 2: scene is true, deeply crazy. I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 2: really good. Yeah, it's like there's a lot of dialogue,
Speaker 2: but then when the movie busts out these action sequences
Speaker 2: like this, it's just they really go for it.
Speaker 3: But as you mentioned, this all part of the plot.
Speaker 3: The uh, of course, the attack gets blood all over
Speaker 3: the expensive new futon and in the middle of Senne
Speaker 3: having been kidnapped again and all that, Uh, they're like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, well get the get this bloody futon out
Speaker 3: of the house.
Speaker 2: Yeap, what do you know? And this is and we
Speaker 2: know what's up right, I mean, this is another most twists.
Speaker 2: You know that they hit her in that couch, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. Like this all plays out like a
Speaker 2: like a myth, like a like a fairy tale, and
Speaker 2: you just follow it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there is. They're setting up an exchange at
Speaker 3: the pier, so Black Lizard promises that Senay will be
Speaker 3: returned safely if iwasa gives up the Star of Egypt
Speaker 3: at a drop off point at the port, and he does.
Speaker 3: He shows up with the jewels, but Black Lizard is
Speaker 3: treacherous and does not return his daughter because it seems
Speaker 3: like Black Lizard wants Sinnay even more than she wants
Speaker 3: the jewels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so she's just gonna keep them both. So sorry,
Speaker 2: you've been double crossed. But Black Lizard gets what Black Lizard.
Speaker 3: Wants and this leads to a chase with like private
Speaker 3: detectives and cars and these motorcycle henchmen with smoke screens.
Speaker 3: These movies of the time really loved a like multi
Speaker 3: colored smoke screen getaway that's in danger diabolic as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this whole sequence was very danger diabolic. But they
Speaker 2: and this is one of those things we have to note.
Speaker 2: They get away but sort of don't like we have
Speaker 2: to again do all the math of Aketche's scheming and
Speaker 2: counter scheming versus Black lizards scheming and counter scheming. The
Speaker 2: viewer is just along for the ride.
Speaker 3: So Black Lizard escapes to her steamership with both Sennae
Speaker 3: and the jewels. But will Aketchi be able to save
Speaker 3: the day? And here we go to a scene in
Speaker 3: Black Lizard's cabin on the boat that can you describe
Speaker 3: this realm?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we know the deal with this futon. This
Speaker 2: is how they just kidnapped her successfully for the second time,
Speaker 2: and here's the couch that the futon in Black Lizard's chambers,
Speaker 2: and she begins to realize what we the viewers suspect
Speaker 2: that Aketchie has hidden himself in that futon, and so
Speaker 2: she starts speaking to him in there. She has her
Speaker 2: her game come in and like strap the dow straps
Speaker 2: around the futon so that he can't get out, and
Speaker 2: then she sends the gang back outside, and she kind
Speaker 2: of gets this like this this tender sequence where she
Speaker 2: speaks to Aketchee imprisoned in the futon. She reveals her
Speaker 2: love to him, as well as her great fear of
Speaker 2: that love, fear for what will change in her, because
Speaker 2: it is all the antithesis of the diamond heart. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like if I give into my love for you,
Speaker 2: then then I'm changing in a frightening way, and I
Speaker 2: can't have that, you know. And also you're my enemy,
Speaker 2: so either way, I'm gonna have to kill you. And
Speaker 2: so that's what she seemingly does. She runs the couch
Speaker 2: through with a sword from the wall. Blood drips out
Speaker 2: onto the floor. At that Up until that point, I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure it even had anyone in there, because that's
Speaker 2: the thing. You know, Aketchi's not in there really, you know,
Speaker 2: he's a tape recorder or something. But blood comes out,
Speaker 2: and then she has the gang throw the skewered straps
Speaker 2: sofa overboard into the wace.
Speaker 3: We see it like disappearing rapidly into the dark water
Speaker 3: behind the ship. It's a very evocative shot.
Speaker 2: And she's out there on the deck, you know, feeling
Speaker 2: a bit melancholy by herself. And then a new character emerges,
Speaker 2: who we quickly learn is a trusted hunchback com minion
Speaker 2: of hers, and he kind of like you know, saunters
Speaker 2: up onto the deck there and he apologizes to her
Speaker 2: for not having been there when all this went down.
Speaker 2: He says, I was asleep. He offers some comfort and
Speaker 2: she's like that that's nice. I appreciate it, but I
Speaker 2: need some time alone. And of course this is one
Speaker 2: of those moments we're already like.
Speaker 3: Hmm, yeah hm about this guy. We're never seeing his face,
Speaker 3: like his face is always downturned. Wonder about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you will have your suspicions. Those suspicions may
Speaker 2: prove correct, but again in this film, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: You're along for the ride. Because if this, if you
Speaker 2: suspect that this hunch back is actually a catchy okay,
Speaker 2: then the question is when will he dramatically reveal himself?
Speaker 2: And that's what we're we're on board for.
Speaker 3: So we're here at Act three where we make it
Speaker 3: all the way to Black Lizard's Fortress of fortress of
Speaker 3: I don't know of Crimtude. Yeah. So the ship arrives
Speaker 3: and Rob, can you describe this place? I would kind
Speaker 3: of compare it a bit to Scare Manga's Layer in
Speaker 3: The Man with the Golden Gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a campy de light
Speaker 2: that brings that to mind. It brings to mind the
Speaker 2: various layers of doctor fibes as well as danger diabolic fibes.
Speaker 2: Would very much approve of this because it's essentially a
Speaker 2: cabaret ballroom where we see the taxidermied or otherwise preserved,
Speaker 2: you know, the exact science that this doesn't matter, the
Speaker 2: preserved bodies of the beautiful ones that she's collected on display,
Speaker 2: these dolls, wax figures, however you want to make them.
Speaker 2: There are all these curtains we see these often topless figures,
Speaker 2: and as always in these films, these are of course films.
Speaker 2: These are of course live actors frozen and still live,
Speaker 2: which just compounds the creepiness of the situation.
Speaker 3: So she's like going through here showing Sinnay all of
Speaker 3: these these frozen people, and it's leading up to the
Speaker 3: explanation that, like, Senay, I'm going to make you one
Speaker 3: of my frozen wax dolls here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we see that one of the main tableaus,
Speaker 2: because they're all posed in dramatic poses, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like a wax museum. One of the tableaux concerns a
Speaker 2: pair of knife fighters, with a particularly absolutely jacked combatant
Speaker 2: like just you know, rippling muscles, stabbing his opponent in
Speaker 2: mid grapple. The shirtless stabber here is played by Mashima,
Speaker 2: and a brief backstory is kind of revealed visually where
Speaker 2: we it looks like these two men were made to
Speaker 2: fight to the death for Black Lizard's affections, and I
Speaker 2: guess both both victor and the defeated here end up
Speaker 2: being immortalized as a doll.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if there was a victor. It looked
Speaker 3: like they were both stabbing each other at the same time.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, they well, in a way then I guess
Speaker 2: they both lost and boast both won, because that's the thing.
Speaker 2: You lose and that you die, but you win to
Speaker 2: a certain extent in that you are immortalized in Black
Speaker 2: Lizard's layer and in this form without life, without a soul,
Speaker 2: then you know you have come as close to the
Speaker 2: Diamond Heart as possible and therefore are deserving of her
Speaker 2: true affections.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems that men are just sort of like
Speaker 3: lining up to die for Black Lizard and be preserved
Speaker 3: as a statue in her layer forever. They're ready for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and women too. I guess it's like men and
Speaker 2: women on display. But this is this moment where again
Speaker 2: it's far more than cameo because the jacked stabber played
Speaker 2: by Mashima here, she moves in and she kisses him
Speaker 2: on the lips in what is I think the only
Speaker 2: kiss that we see in the picture. Could be wrong
Speaker 2: on that, but it certainly is the most important one,
Speaker 2: and it's a really powerful moment and a moment that
Speaker 2: is also very crushing for the musician i'm A Miya
Speaker 2: who is watching on because this is what causes him
Speaker 2: to turn against Black Lizard because he tries to help
Speaker 2: Sana briefly locking the master criminal in her own cell.
Speaker 2: But then we eventually learned that this kiss didn't so
Speaker 2: much as turn him against Black Lizard. He's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm really not into you, you know, kissing the preserved
Speaker 2: bodies of dead men. No, it made him turn against
Speaker 2: Black Lizard because he realized the only way to fulfill
Speaker 2: his obsession was through death. A bold action like this
Speaker 2: he hopes will result first in his death and then
Speaker 2: in his immortalization as one of her dolls.
Speaker 3: Right, so he's like, now I'm just the unappreciated lackey
Speaker 3: of Black Lizard, But he realizes that she truly loves
Speaker 3: her sort of stuffed statue figures, and the only way
Speaker 3: he can really be loved by her is to make
Speaker 3: her kill him in punishment for his treachery and turn
Speaker 3: him into a statue, and then he'll be loved by her.
Speaker 2: So that I'm amia Redemption Arch. He enters a very
Speaker 2: like like even more tragic and weird section because again,
Speaker 2: for Black Loser, perfect love is soulless. It's the diamond heart,
Speaker 2: and the only place she truly knows where to find
Speaker 2: this is in her is in her dolls. As a
Speaker 2: means of cultivating it as well in herself.
Speaker 3: Oh man, But there are some more twists that come in.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: One of the weirdest choices I thought is so Sinay
Speaker 3: and Emma Mia are both kept in this prison cell.
Speaker 3: Emmia discloses everything here. He's like, yeah, here's what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do. I'm trying to get turned into a statue.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then Sinay reveals I'm not actually Sinnay. I am
Speaker 3: a body double. I am a woman named Yoko who
Speaker 3: was hired by a Catchee to pretend to be sent
Speaker 3: to keep her safe from Black Lizard. And I think
Speaker 3: this is not just for part of the movie. I
Speaker 3: think this character the entire film has actually just been
Speaker 3: this body double named Yoko.
Speaker 2: I believe. So that's the way I interpret it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Also, Yoko the body double and I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: a they sort of bond over the fact that they
Speaker 3: are both both frauds in some way, and then they
Speaker 3: fall in love while imprisoned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so then we get the redemption arc more
Speaker 2: less back on track for our men. I'm amia here,
Speaker 2: but from here we work our way into the big finish. Okay,
Speaker 2: that hunchback reveal that we saw coming a mile away.
Speaker 2: It happens. It is a catchy. It's been a catchy
Speaker 2: the whole time. The actual hunchback was in the futon
Speaker 2: and was stabbed through. The Snake Woman goes in for
Speaker 2: the kill. Okay, well, also Aketche's men like the fuzz
Speaker 2: show up there on the scene. I don't know where
Speaker 2: they came from, but they, you know, backups have arrived.
Speaker 2: Snake Woman goes in for the kill against a ketchi,
Speaker 2: but Black Lizard stops her and kills Snake Woman dead.
Speaker 2: Black Lizard then retreats into her inner chambers. A Ketchee follows.
Speaker 2: He pursues, but when he finds her, she has already
Speaker 2: taken a fatal poison, and so the two of them
Speaker 2: lounge together on her couch like lovers, sharing a tender moment,
Speaker 2: and she observes that she has at last found the
Speaker 2: perfect diamond heart in a catchy because he was able
Speaker 2: to outsmarter and out double and triple cross her, you know,
Speaker 2: and then she dies in this yeah, this this tragic
Speaker 2: and beautiful like Shakespearean moment. And then I'm a Mia
Speaker 2: and Son or the fake sna run off together there
Speaker 2: now a couple. The case is solved, but we close
Speaker 2: out with a lot of stylish shots of Black Lizard
Speaker 2: as the credits roll, because it's you know, we got
Speaker 2: to leave everything on a stylish happy note.
Speaker 3: To a certain extent, I almost took the happy ending
Speaker 3: for Ama Mia and the sane body double. I almost
Speaker 3: took that as is, like it was supposed to be funny,
Speaker 3: the way they're just allowed to run off together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe that is a splash of comedy
Speaker 2: where it's like, hey, we're both fakes, but we're in
Speaker 2: love now. And then then they run off together, Like
Speaker 2: where are you guys going? You're on like a criminal mastermind,
Speaker 2: Like you should probably hang around and leave with the police.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I thought Black Lizard was a rollicking good time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I had high hopes for this film, and it
Speaker 2: didn't disappoint. I was interested when I read about it
Speaker 2: in Fukusaku's filmography when we talked about him previously, and
Speaker 2: then when I went and rented it at Video Drum
Speaker 2: here in Atlanta, John, one of the crew there, really
Speaker 2: talked it up, and again, the film absolutely delivered. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm a romanticist but now I too believe that crime
Speaker 2: should wear a gorgeous gown with a train fifteen feet long,
Speaker 2: just like the primordial dreams of lizards.
Speaker 3: Well said, all.
Speaker 2: Right, well, we're going to go and close it out here.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed our chat about Black Lizard, and
Speaker 2: more importantly, I hope you enjoy Black Lizard. I hope
Speaker 2: you're able to get a hold of it, and I
Speaker 2: hope that, hopefully in the not too distant future, we
Speaker 2: see an actual like Blu Ray release for this film.
Speaker 2: It's very deserving of it, and hey, you might be
Speaker 2: lucky enough to see it at a film festival somewhere,
Speaker 2: and if you get the chance, make sure you do it.
Speaker 2: Reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but we do listener mail on Mondays, short form episodes
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you want to see a complete list
Speaker 2: of all the movies we've covered thus far, and sometimes
Speaker 2: a peek ahead at what's to come, go to letterbox
Speaker 2: dot com. It's l E T T E r box
Speaker 2: d dot com. Our username is weird house, and we've
Speaker 2: got a wonderful list there that you can peruse and
Speaker 2: see what might be up your alley and what you
Speaker 2: want to add to your own to watch list.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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