Lady Snowblood

So he's

basically stealing Lady Snowblood, but through the lens of Quentin Tarantino, like stuff like that, which is really funny.

Yeah, that's really funny.

I watched Cube, which came out in 1997, which is OK.

Hosei Komatsu makes a good Frankenstein's monster, or Franken, as the young Emily ends up calling him, though he doesn't have very many credits to his name.

You might have heard him as Jinba slash Abmiz in Timeslip of 10,000 Years Prime Rose, Raizuri in Lupin III, Farewell to Nostradamus, or as Genzo Shibayama in the live-action Lady Snowblood film.

But other than that, most of his pretty small body of work wasn't really as notable.

Nachi Nozawa does a pretty good job playing Victor Frankenstein, but he is much better known for his roles as Coach Jim Munikata in Aim for the Ace, Cobra in Space Adventure Cobra, and Hans Axel von Furstein in The Rose of Versailles, just to name a few.

All right.

Nishimura was also in Lady Snowblood, Red Beard, High and Low.

But he's best known in Japan for playing the title character in a TV show called Mitikomon.

Tom Mez said in his commentary that from a certain angle, he looks like Christopher Lee.

And if you know anything about early seventies, Japanese cinema, uh, she is the goat of this era.

Um, this is like the kickoff to this insane run of, uh, basically what became franchise cult films female prisoner scorpion stray cat rock and of course lady snowblood um you can see some of those future roles are present in the way she kind of carries herself in this movie um you know and you can just tell like she is the star and she is going to be a mega star um you know and one who's cast a very long shadow that we talk about in cinema to this day um it's directed by another luminary the the kind of preeminent cult film director from Japan at this time, Teruo Ishii, who's most known for erogoro films, which translates, or without the abbreviation, is erotic grotesque.

This one falls loosely into that categorization.

You can see that it's certainly got some of those elements.

I am the worst, no.

I bought that Criterion Blu-ray when it first came out, and I absolutely have not watched it.

And every time I go looking for a Japanese movie to watch, I pick up Lady Snowblood and I say, no, I don't feel like that right now.

We need that shirt.

Yeah, I think all of those things.

I think the other thing I would say is, you know, I think the gritty grindhouse samurai films like Lady Snowblood, Lone Wolf Cubs, sort of do those movies all sort of like were important to us as we go.

But like the fun thing we kind of took inspiration from or most wanted was, boy, that's a that's a really active combat, like, you know, high, high action that felt like it could really fit in and inspire us to kind of put the focus on combat.

And that kind of really was a you know, kind of an inspiration for us there for the most wanted, just in terms of the overall vibe and fantasy of it.

Iconic scene.

The second track comes from an awesome Japanese movie called Lady Snowblood, which was a big influence on Kill Bill, and it plays when Uma Thurman duels Lucy Liu in Japan.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

He's still, he's still creating music and still, like, uh, at least until very recently, was still doing some, some form of acting.

Uh, but, uh, yeah, Japanese actor and singer who had a long stint with Toho Pictures, and, uh, his other credits include '69's Too Young to Die, uh, ni- and also 1973's Lady Snowblood, and also 1973's Horror of the Wolf.

This album cover on the left, you, you've got, like, a sailboat mast-

Yeah

Yeah.

Uh, so, uh, so yeah, he's in there.

Uh, and then he's, he, he's also in, let's see, uh, S- Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance from '74, um, and then, uh, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo from 1970, and then I already mentioned the biopic that he was in.

So I think Kishida rules in this.

That's a, that's a, that's a dark spot for me.

A really, a really classic one is this Japanese movie called Lady Snowblood.

Okay, that's the one-

It came out in 1973

... that's the one that I was gonna say was, is a dark spot for me that I think I didn't wanna come out of this sounding like we're super uneducated, but I think that's one we all need to watch if we haven't seen it.

Lady Snowblood?

Yeah, I've never seen Lady Snowblood, so that's-

Dude, I like that title