Branded to Kill was one of the first DVDs I ever bought. I heard it was a movie that was so weird and made so little sense that the director got blacklisted by the Japanese movie industry. That sounded like my kinda movie. But I didn’t like it. I nodded off watching it for the first time. The end made me so angry I literally threw my shoe at my TV. It wasn’t a happy ending!
I rewatched it a few days later, cuz I’d spent money on it, it had great box art, and while I was dumb enough to hate it the first time I was also smart enough to know that anything that inspired such emotions in me should be studied. I loved it that second time. It was one of the few times I watched the special features on a DVD. Suzuki was a good interview and I bet all that shit is on youtube and worth watching.
I’m sure everyone up in here has seen it by now. I watch it every few years. I take a billion screenshots whenever I do. Here are some of them.
I hope that many images isn’t a problem. Please let me know and I’ll delete some. Or feel free to pare them down.
There was a Seijun Suzuki month at the local cinema last winter. I missed most of them because I had no money and no car and there was so much snow. But I did see Carmen From Kawachi for the first time, which was fun and sleazy, and Branded to Kill for the nth time. There wasn’t much of a crowd. Mostly old people. Very confused old people. It was a lot of fun. I missed Tokyo Drifter. That one’s in color. That one is very funny.
Yesterday I went digging for Persona 4 screenshots. I didn’t find them. I did find this though. I didn’t want to put it in the main post because I got hangups. I may play anime sometimes, and I may take anime screencaps every time, but I’m not proud of it.
Ghost Dog lifted pretty heavily from Branded To Kill and Jarmusch owned up to it. I refuse to believe No More Heroes isn’t indebted to it as well. I’ve seen Suda claim it was inspired by El Topo. I say that’s fuckin bullshit. I haven’t seen El Topo – it was out of print forever, ok? and the box art on the bootlegs I found really scared me – and maybe the hitman ranking thing is some common yakuza movie trope but…I still call bullshit.
Tokyo Drifter is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve had the theme song running through my head for at least half my life, even though I’ve only seen the movie one and a half times. It doesn’t have Jo Shishido though. I’ve spent most of my adult life considering getting absurd cheek implants, in the style of Jo Shishido. It is such a good look. But am I charismatic enough to pull it off? I’m not so certain.
I haven’t seen Pistol Opera and I’m not sure I wanna watch any of Suzuki’s post BTK output, even though I’ve seen some Lupin. I want to buy into the myth that he was blacklisted for life. I know he did some raunchy movie about tennis players that sounds amazing but there’s no way it could ever live up to my expectations. I will just dream about it until the day I die, or, maybe, find some money mark to fund my own version of that movie.
