Tattoed Life & Fiend without a Face

Tattoed Life is a Seijun Suzuki yakuza film. It's also, notoriously, the first film to get him a warning from Nikkatsu, the studio that fired him after the brilliant Branded To Kill, and the film starts out completely normal at the beginning of the Showa period with two brothers involved in a yakuza murder and then going on the run. They end up at a construction camp and try to stow away to Manchuria but fail. So they end up falling for the wife and daughter of the construction organization head. The only strange thing throughout the first hour is the policeman's bright red shoes. Then, when the older brother goes to fight his yakuza enemies, it goes all arty. A shot from below a glass floor of fighting, lots of bright blue and yellow doors, fancy lighting, and just in general, think of the House of Blue Leaves sequence of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 with less blood, and a less hot vengeance seeker. There is no doubt in my mind that Tarantino saw this film before making that one.

Fiend without a Face is one of the first films to include gory effects. And, in comparison with today's films, or even older films like Romero's Dead trilogy or the Evil Dead trilogy, they pale in comparison. But compared to The Blob, for example, it's outstanding. Certainly the film is basically crazy professor performs crazy experiments which with the help of a nuclear reactor involved in long distance radar experiments disembodied brains and spinal cords move around by themselves and eat brains. You know, that age old story. Of course, the acting is nothing special, and the film only lasts 75 minutes, so it's over quickly, but it's worth it for the final scene, of the brains attacking our heroes in a scene that's basically just like Night of the Living Dead save it's brains not zombies. If you ever wanted to see brains attacking people, this is the movie for you. Also, note that this is a Criterion Collection DVD.

It's weird that both films were nothing particularly special until the final act. Both of which were very special.