Three Films Make A Post: Their thoughts can kill!

Scanners (1981): This is sometimes treated as one of the lesser movies in David Cronenberg’s incredible run as a director from 1977 to 1996, but there’s so much to love in this version of the 70s conspiracy thriller as seen through the eyes of Philip K. Dick. Performances that are spot on or so weird they actually are spot on exactly because of their weirdness (Stephen Lack), a plot that starts in the realm of semi-plausible spy-fi but drifts further and further into the realm of the outright surreal, and a direction whose by now proverbial cool eye is all that stands between the material and utter, screaming lunacy. Plus, exploding heads are inherently cool (unless it’s your own head exploding).

Closed Circuit aka Circuito chiuso (1978): This Italian TV movie by Giuliano Montaldo does overstay its welcome a little, so that its turn from the locked room murder mystery to the outright fantastical doesn’t hit quite as hard as it could in a more concentrated form, but there’s much to recommend it: a clear love for the cinema experience of the time grounded in an ability to actually show the way cinemas at this time and place worked procedurally, a cast that has fun with the range of characters (all with secrets that have nothing to do with the case, of course) on offer, and the joy of seeing that most mock-rational of genres (as much as I have grown to enjoy golden age style murder mysteries, their ideas about logic and reason are utter nonsense) break down into the realm of the kind of fantasy that admits it is one.

The Kingdom of Jirocho aka Jirocho sangokushi (1963): This is the first film in the second cycle of films Masahiro Makino made about yakuza boss Shimizu Jirocho (Koji Tsuruta) – a real historical figure that had turned into something of a folk hero, and the embodiment of that most ridiculous of ideas, the good yakuza, honourably helping solve problems wherever he goes. This is really all set-up, showing the first meetings between Jirocho and the core members of his clan, but it does its business in such a light-handed and fun way, I hardly missed the presence of an actual plot.

Makino, apparently well-known for being a quick worker, clearly isn’t a sloppy one. Rather, there’s a lot of camera and character movement here, so much so, you’re never surprised when the protagonists break into song, as they regularly (though not quite regularly enough to call this a musical) do. There’s a joyous quality to the whole thing, unexpected from a film that finds a director repeating a greatest hit.

For fans of 60s/70s Toei ninkyo eiga – as I certainly am – there’s the additional joy of encountering a lot of the usual character and side actors, as well as a very very young Junk Fuji as a flirtatious bar maid (and alas not the female lead).