Yozo Tanaka Movies

In the mid-'80s, when the rising hardcore video market was hurting Nikkatsu's business, they launched a series of "nostalgic" S&M remakes starting with Hana to Hebi: Jigoku-hen. Masaru Konuma, popular director of the landmark Ikenie Fujin, began the Nikkatsu studio's series of S&M films with this well-done tale of an investment banker named Yoshi (Yasuhiko Ishizu) who is scarred by a childhood trauma. As a boy, Yoshi kills a black American soldier for consorting with his mother. He grows up impotent unless he is able to bind and whip his sexual partners. No one at his company knows, until the president (Nagatoshi Sakamoto) asks Yoshi to give his frigid wife (sex film queen Naomi Tani) an education. Needless to say, the education Yoshi provides is hardly what his boss or his new student had in mind. Hiroko Fuji co-stars. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

This is an enigmatic and challenging film in many ways. It is set in the 1930s and colored with nuances of the strange and sinister, one component of the Nazis' "world view" at that time. Japan's connections to Germany during this period leading up to World War II are brought forward in the German title, the name of a song by Pablo Sarasate that is a part of the story. This tale features the relationship between a Japanese professor of German and Nakasago (Yoshio Harada), a former friend he runs into while on vacation. Nakasago has been charged with murdering a married woman who ran away with him. As the two former friends become more and more involved, the professor begins to get a glimpse of Nakasago's odd life, and undertones of witchcraft provide an eerie overlay to the fate of the missing woman. Cerebral and intriguing, the film seems to take place on several levels at once. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this romantic and erotic drama, Oda has achieved a place in the world which makes him think that it would be appropriate for him to find a mistress. He is a well-known poet and is married. He selects Yuko, a girl still in school, and duly finds an apartment for her. However, he is seldom around, and she spends a lot of her time waiting for him to come around and make love to her. Their relationship is very uneven: she is not allowed to play around, while he carries on with a divorced woman next door. They almost have a child, but he insists on an abortion. Later, when he dies, she shows up at his funeral. Her presence there is unwelcome, though everyone knows who she is. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A young jazz musician's desire to advance in his career runs afoul of organized crime in this thriller from Haruki Kadokawa. After a saxophonist starts playing at a particular nightspot, a thug from the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) adopts him as a special friend for no greater reason than he plays one of his favorite songs well. As the dangerous life of the gangster intertwines with that of the musician, it brings harm to the musician's girlfriend, who is raped. This changes the young saxophonist's attitude about his patron, but his Yakuza "friend" is still too embroiled in his own problems to worry about anything else. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The final film in his acclaimed Taisho trilogy, maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki directs his bizarre, hallucinatory tale about the tortured inner world of famed 1920s painter Yumeji Takehisa. The film opens with Takehisa (played by former rock star Kenji Sawada) at a garden party, entranced by a woman in a gloriously red kimono. He's utterly struck by her beauty and mystery, and also by the fact that she is standing on a tree branch and appears to have no face. At nights, he is plagued with dreams of dueling a faceless man in a frock. When his adversary is about to make his final lethal blow, Takehisa quickly wakes. Later, he ventures to scenic Kanazawa where he plans to meet his lover, Hikono (Masumi Miyazaki). Instead, he meets a recent widow named Tomoyo, whose husband, Wakiya (Yoshio Harada), was slain by a murderously jealous man named Onimatsu. Feeling his act of rage was justifiable considering he discovered Wakiya in bed with his wife, Onimatsu is more than a little distraught when his would-be murder victim comes back to life sporting a blonde wig. Wanting to finish the job, Onimatsu chases Wakiya, while Takehisa seduces Tomoyo. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi