Midnight EyeĪuthor Mark Schilling has been reviewing Japanese films for The Japan Times since 1989 and is currently Japan correspondent for Variety.
Also featured are career interviews with director Toshio Masuda, a Nikkatsu Action hitmaker and starmaker for more than a decade, and Joe Shishido, the puffy-faced star of many Seijun Suzuki classics, including Branded to Kill, Youth of the Beast and Gate of Flesh.Īn excellent introduction to a vastly overlooked but crucial chapter in the history of Japanese film. Illustrated with rare posters and stills, the book presents a detailed history of the Nikkatsu studio, profiles of leading directors and stars and reviews of dozens of Nikkatsu Action films, including the cult classics Velvet Hustler and Black Tight Killers. No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema is the first book in English about this major, influential, but previously under-appreciated cinematic movement and the talent that created it. Nikkatsu New Action hits included Crimson Pistol, Dirty Work, A Colt Is My Passport, Warped Ones, Slaughter Gun, Gangster VIP, Rusty Knife and countless others. Stars included Meiko Kaji, who shot to fame in hits like Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter, playing the kick-ass boss of a girl gang, and later went on to become Quentin Tarantino's muse in the Lady Snowblood films - one of the most notable influences on the acclaimed Kill Bill epics. In the late 1960s Nikkatsu Action spawned a sub-genre, Nikkatsu New Action, that reflected the era's go-go excess in films about renegade hoods, bikers with attitude and vixens in mini-skirts. The studio's trademark genre was Nikkatsu Action - films set in a cinematic world neither foreign nor Japanese, but a mix of the two, where Japanese tough guys had the swagger and moves of Hollywood movie heroes.
Seijun Suzuki did his best work for Nikkatsu - including classics such as Tokyo Drifter and Tattooed Life - and Japan's most popular movie star, Yujiro Ishihara, made his biggest hits there.
Nikkatsu Action - the film genre that brought the West to the East - and taught a whole generation the Japanese meaning of cool!įrom 1954 until 1971, Japan's Nikkatsu studio was more than just another movie factory - it was the creative home to directors, stars and a genre Nikkatsu Action, that shaped the styles, attitudes and dreams of millions of young Japanese. No Borders No Limits is Volume 2 of the Cinema Classics Collection from FAB Press.
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