TITLE:  Crazed Fruit                                              
GENRE: Drama
DATE: 1956
RUNNING TIME: 86 min
RATING: Not Rated
FORMAT: DVD, VHS
SCRIPT: Shintarô Ishihara
DIRECTOR: Ko Nakahira
STARRING: Ayuko Fujitshiro, Taizo Fukami, Mie Kitahara

One of the earliest and best of Nikkatsu Studios' "Sea Tribe" films which form a sort of cultural corollary to the American teen angst films coming out at that same time.  Still, it's a little bit shocking to consider a film made just eleven years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be about essentially spoiled upper middle class teens who discuss and dismiss Marx in favor of trendy Western consumption, joke about adopting boredom as a manifesto.  They're punks who look like Mouseketeers.

Two brothers, Haruji and the older, more experienced Natshisa, are competing for the same girl.  The girl Iri joins innocent Haruji and they sunbathe together.  The date is chaste, silent, sexually charged.  When they're together onscreen, Nakahira uses every filmic license at hand to push  up the emotional ante and create an over-the-top dark suburban romanticism the super real equal of _American Beauty_.

Natshisa has been with an addle-brained young prostitute, thinks he knows a bad girl when he's seen one.  He discovers that Iri is several years older than Haruji and that she's married to an American businessman, presses his advantage to sleep with her.  Everything comes to a stylish very bad end but the self-seriousness of the teenage nihilism hangs a bit ripe in the air immediately after the last title card.

The music by Masaru Sato relies on Hawaiian guitarist Toru Takemitsu's phsychedelic chromatic slides to support Nakahira's visions, especially in theatrical close-ups against rear projections while water skiing or sunbathing.  The moonbathing scenes are delirious.

Mie Kitahara gives a subtle and knowing performance as the "older" Eri.  She was one of the finest young actresses then working in Japan and this is one of her best films.

TITLE: Road House
GENRE: Drama
RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes
RATING: R
FORMAT: DVD
SCRIPT: David Lee Henry
DIRECTOR: Rowdy Herrington
STARRING: Patrick Swayze, Kelly Lynch, and Sam Elliot



I've been thinking about Road House.