Every member of The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit is grand in her or his specific way, so for March (or for slow pokes like me, April) we decided to invite other members of that glorious organization to do a guest stint in our respective endeavours. So today, I'm proud to present to you Karl Brezdin of the wonderful Fist of B-List (the place for all your low budget martial arts needs). Take it away, Karl:
It’s been said many times that a hero is only as good as his or her villain. While cliché, this is proven and provable! The films that brought us Skywalker-Vader, Creed-Balboa, and Matrix-Bennett are all examples of how contrasting characteristics bring balance to the relationships between protagonists and antagonists. The characters headlining Kinji Fukasaku’s 1968 crime film Black Lizard may or may not have chairs at the same table as the aforementioned duos, but they are definitely in the same restaurant. In news that will surprise no one, the food and cocktail pairings are really good there.
Kurosawa regular Isao Kimura plays Detective Akechi, a stern but clever everyman drawn into a strange plot after he’s hired by a wealthy jeweler named Iwase (Junya Usami) to protect his daughter, Sanae, (Kikko Matsuoka) from being kidnapped. The paranoid father also expects that Akechi, Japan’s “number one detective,” will also identify and apprehend the person behind numerous threatening letters to Iwase about the impending kidnapping. He suspects that someone is trying to extort him out of the Star of Egypt, a spectacular jewel that enhances everything from strapless ball gowns to replica basketball jerseys.
The source of the letters is a vivacious nightclub owner named Ms. Midorikawa (Akihiro Miwa) who moonlights as a criminal mastermind known as Black Lizard. She “acquires” precious stones and dresses to the nines at all times. Obsessed with the impermanence of human beauty, she laments the effects of anxiety and “spiritual weakness” on outer appearance; this neurosis is manifested in her secret collection of taxidermied lovers and cohorts from years past. Shes inevitably crosses paths with Akechi, and what follows is the cinematic 1960s Japanese crime-mystery equivalent of a H.O.R.S.E. game between Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. (Virtually everyone else in the story is a prop or a pawn). Their perspectives on criminal behavior are near-perfect mirror images, the dialogue underpinning their one-upsmanship crackles, and their adversarial dynamic evolves into something romantic.
Based on a screenplay by literary icon Yukio Mishima (itself based on the novel by Edogawa Rampo), Black Lizard was an engaging cinematic departure for this reviewer when considering the wider body of Fukasaku’s work. While the film is categorized as a comedy on several prominent websites -- none bigger than IMDb -- I’m not sure that label adhesive really has any sticking power after a critical viewing. There’s a certain visual campiness between the gaudy vibe of the Black Lizard’s island lair and her garish naked-and-neon nightclub, for sure. However, I found that neither the characters nor the dialogue necessarily suggested farce. The Black Lizard’s obsessions are shallow and creepy, and her tactics are usually brutal.
To that point, Akihiro Miwa is an absolute powerhouse as the titular Black Lizard. A drag queen icon in his native Japan, Miwa brings both elegant beauty and criminal calculation to a very dynamic role. His costumes are fantastic -- at one point looking like a ruffle-shirted clone of Purple Rain-era Prince -- and his line delivery is wonderfully over-the-top. This might be grating for some, but I thought it worked well opposite Kimura’s delivery of Akechi’s lines, which were a bit more downbeat, and I daresay dull. There’s a lot of voice-over monologue in this film too, but it’s thankfully more contemplative than expository. At one point, Fukasaku weaves his main characters’ separate thoughts together to make a more cohesive whole. The symbiotic relationship between Akechi and the Black Lizard is well-illustrated in both the narrative elements and the technical ones.
Those watching this film for signs of Fukasaku’s directorial trademarks might be a bit disappointed. The handheld technique on display in his Yakuza Papers films is mostly absent here, save for a lone scene of first-person perspective as a camera bobs down a long and colorful nightclub corridor. Beyond a colorful car chase and Sanae falling victim to an ether rag on more than one occasion, there’s very little choreographed action, and even less on-screen violence. Though this film is largely character-driven, we’re still left with a visually engaging piece of work. Fukasaku uses full and smart compositions in his shots, and balances the darkness of this criminal underworld with bright colors quite well. His idea of a coroner’s office is a little curious -- Akechi goes fact-finding in a dissection room containing what appears to be a bubbling hot tub of dead bodies that goes unacknowledged -- but the locations are varied and materials are put to good use. As is the case with a lot of Sherlockian and James Bondish films, some of the hijinx and convenient circumstances require a willfull suspension of disbelief from the audience, but they were consistent with the wild overall tone of the film.
One can only hope that Black Lizard’s growing cult status will help propel it towards a proper DVD release, and I’m not alone in thinking it would benefit greatly from a high-definition remastering by a prestigious label.
-- Karl Brezdin
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