I'm in complete agreement about the Roman Pornos. I'd love to see the Sex Rider sequel surface some day. Maybe I should ask Toei Channel
As for the Delinquents, it's been a decade since I saw those two. I rated them higher but I also recall the 2nd film being the weakest. The
立看 poster is one of my most cherished items, though.
Impact: Prostitution Capital (衝撃!売春都市) (Japan, 1975) [TV] - 2.5/5
G-man Tatsuo Umemiya infiltrates a narcotics/prostitution racket in a poorly crafted, but astonishingly on-your-face morality lesson. Structurally it's all over the place with zero charisma gangster Jo Shiraishi getting the lion's share of the screen time, and no real tension between him and Umemiya, however the film has something else in its pocket. The first questionable highlight comes in form of a disgusting educational shock footage accompanying a doctor's explanation to a woman how she's got syphilis from sleeping with strangers and is going to die a horrible death after her body deforms. And even this scene pales in comparison to the jaw dropping moral punch ending that must be seen to be believed! The film features the real life anti drugs/prostitution campaigner Tsusai Sugawara as Umemiya's boss. There was a trio of entertaining Sonny Chiba films (A Narcotics Agent's Ballad, Terrifying Flesh Hell, Tokyo-Seoul-Bangkok Drug Triangle, 1972-1973) "based on" the guy’s ramblings, but in true Toei fashion the films were exploitative and seductive enough to occasionally beat the “purpose”. In Impact, however, Sugawara's pathos was back with a vengeance.
(I'll post some screencaps of this one next week or next year when I get back to Nippon)
Yatappe of Seki (関の弥太っぺ) (Japan, 1963) [DVD] - 3/5
Classic, often filmed matatabi tale of a young wanderer who saves a little girl whose pickpocket father is killed. The second half of the film picks up 10 years later when the protagonist has grown into a full-fledged yakuza wanderer and once again crosses paths with the same girl (now a woman). This Toei version pairs Kinnosuke Nakamura with soon-to-be ninkyo yakuza master Kosaku Yamashita. It's certainly a good film, but perhaps not as much my cup of green tea as Yamashita's “modern ninkyo” films. In this film as well I enjoyed the more yakuza oriented 2nd half the best (it's also beautifully filmed, especially the ending where Nakamura walks into a fight that is to begin after the film's end - the whole scene is just magnificently put together).
