Kazuo Katō

High and Low

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

その人は炎のように

Film by Deme Masanobu

The Villain from Edo Kochiyama Soshun

Kotiyama is a swindler and extortionist, the head of a whole gang of crooks, usually posing as a poor monk; once he really took vows, but he was kicked out of the monastery long ago. He is enterprising, smart and not too cruel, so his accomplices love him. Posing as an envoy from the abbot of the Kennei Temple, Kotiama plays a show in front of Lord Matsue with an income of 150,000 koku, and extorts money from him. The film is based on the famous play by Kawatake Mokuami.

The Yoshida School

Coinciding with the LDP presidential election of the entire national public, a masterpiece depicting the reverse side of Showa political history released, superimposed cast, a group image of real politicians centered on Shigeru Yoshida and political history after the war.

Judge and Jeopardy

It is based on the story "The Lawyer" by attorney Hiroshi Masaki and his account of Japan's "Headless Murder Case" in which a police officer beat a suspect to death during the Pacific War.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo

Wild young people kidnap a wealthy woman and she becomes attracted to one of them. When she tells the man that she is the mistress of a religious leader, he and his posse make plans to rob her partner.

The Beast Shall Die

Kunihiko Date (Hiroshi Fujioka), a young criminal genius, puts a perfect crime plan into action to take revenge on the men who once drove his father to ruin.

The Beast Shall Die

Kunihiko Date (Hiroshi Fujioka), a young criminal genius, puts a perfect crime plan into action to take revenge on the men who once drove his father to ruin.

Dodes'ka-den

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

Ran

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

I Live in Fear

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.

Kaito Ruby

Toru Hayashi is an unremarkable bachelor who lives with his mother, until one day a young woman named Rumi moves in in the apartment upstairs. Rumi is a self-proclaimed master thief, but she needs socially awkward Toru's help to actually kickstart her so-called career.

The Longest Tunnel

After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife.

Island of Horrors

Two women are ferried to a small prison colony on the remote and barren prison island, where they and their fellow inmates are forced to perform perilous slave labor along the island’s treacherous cliffs, overseen by both an unforgiving sun and a crew of abusive male wardens. Meanwhile, the arrival of a newcomer among the island’s administrators, a disgraced policeman who is also the son of Nagasaki’s governor, creates dissension between the officials that, along with an untimely outbreak of bubonic plague on the island, ultimately sets the stage for a daring escape attempt on the part of the prisoners.

Sword and Flower

Masuda Toshio film starring Watari Tetsuya and Mori Masayuki, about a lone-wolf type (Watari) seeking love and defending the honor of an elderly widower (Mori).

Gate of Youth

The story of Shinsuke, a young man who lives through a stormy life as a poverty-stricken coal miner. Ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of his life. Shinsuke's father a group leader at the mine, dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a friendly Harley-riding yakuza boss. This movie has it all, drama, romance, sex, yakuza and violence! It is based on a story by Hiroyuki Itsuki that was originally serialized in the magazine Shukan Gendai in 1969-70.

House of Terrors

A hunchbacked caretaker presides over a forlorn mansion inhabited by the ghosts of his previous masters. An unbelieving trio (a doctor, his assistant and his niece) fail to heed the caretaker's warnings and are slaughtered horribly by the jealous occupants.

18 Roughs

Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.

Goké, Body Snatcher from Hell

The survivors of a plane crash in a remote area are attacked by blob-like alien creatures that turn their victims into blood-thirsty vampires.

The Black Battlefront Kidnappers

A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.

Zankoku! Shōjo tarento

After appearing on a TV program a young woman is recruited to be an advertising idol much to the dismay of her boyfriend.

Mermaid Legend

A couple of abalone divers has to confront brutal investors setting foot in their coastline.

Human Revolution II

Dramatic story of one man trying to make a difference.

Without Complaint

Based on the novel of the same name by Seichô Matsumoto.

Bullet Wound

Yuzo Kayama is an American-Japanese operative working for the US to uncover an arms deal between an American seller and Chinese communists, and to take out both parties. After almost getting assassinated himself, he takes a wounded civilian with him despite living in a world where no one can be trusted.

I Want to Be a Shellfish

On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder.

Grudge Girls Academy: Serial Murder of Fear!

There are two bizarre rumors spreading about a girls' high school called “Seiwa Joshi Gakuen.” The first is a “Hanako-san in the Toilet”-like story about a painting that hangs in the principal's office = young twin sisters who escape from the painting at night and promenade around the school. The other is about Ryoko Mizumura, an art teacher who is too beautiful to be true and the object of the students' admiration, but who may actually be two people.

Main Line to Terror

Akiyama is an intern, disgusted with the noise pollution caused by the bullet trains and the heart attacks that noise has been causing in older hospital patients, plots to disrupt and, in ten days, destroy a unit of the operation. He warns the Japan National Railway, that, if nothing is done to reduce the noise, he will derail a bullet train. Takigawa is the police detective sent to stop him.

The King

Based on a popular play from 1947.

And Then

Daisuke is supposed to be out looking for a respectable job and equally respectable wife. He is 30 years old and devotes his attention to music and literature; his family is wealthy and can support his interests. When his friend Hiraoka returns with his wife Michiyo, problems arise.