Chikara Hashimoto

Can a sinful man change and find peace? It's unlikely in gang-plagued Japan. Jokichi of Mikogami, a drifter (and hired sword), goes straight after protecting a woman in distress: they marry, have a son, and Jokichi pursues his father's craft. After three years, the gangs he embarrassed when he saved his wife find the family and leave Jokichi in grief, vowing revenge. To parry his terrible swift sword, rival gangs join forces, hiring a prostitute to pose as a woman needing help and breaking the code of honor to double cross the drifter. He finds unlikely allies: a thief who aids him for fun and a one-eyed swordsman who may be Jokichi's equal in skill and honor.

6.7/10

One murky night, Soetsu, a blind acupuncturist and money lender, calls on Shinzaemon Fukami, a Hatamoto samurai, to collect some money. But Fukami is too busy having an affair with a maid and curtly tells Soetsu to ask Sawano, his wife, for the money. As they have no money, Sawano interprets her husband's words as telling her to give herself to Soetsu in lieu of payment. However, Fukami catches them in the act and kills them both. Snatching up Soetsu's money bag with 30 ryo in it, he then asks two ruffians, to sink the bodies in a marsh. From what follows, it seems as if the spirits of Soetsu and Sawano are still hovering on earth in anguish and anger. For soon afterwards, Fukami is found dead by his own hand and Osono, Soetsu's younger daughter, suddenly disappears from home.

7.6/10

Takeshi Ijuin leaves for Chicago to be a cameraman, and a few years later returns to Japan. But he only learned the technique of homicide in Chicago. When he visits the graveyard with his father to pray at his mother's tomb, his father is shot by someone. Now he thirsts for revenge.

A beautiful hostess of a small restaurant moonlights as a well-trained assassin tasked with taking the life of a wealthy businessman...

A young man leaves his widowed mother on her improverished farm and makes his career in the Japanese navy.

6.7/10

When a Babylonian vampire comes to old Japan, an army of Japanese demons and ghosts gather and battle him.

6.3/10

As alien invaders plot to conquer the Earth, two Boy Scouts steal a mini-submarine and discover Gamera in their midst. Transported to the alien's spaceship, the Scouts are menaced by the evil inhabitants, including Viras, a squid-like monster that grows to colossal size to battle Gamera.

4.6/10

Horror film directed by Koji Shima.

4.6/10

A former soldier, reduced to working at a restaurant post-war, becomes a contract killer for the yakuza gangs he's in contact with.

6.6/10

Third film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin.

The tyrannical Lord Danjo Mikoshiba covets the rich, fertile lands surrounding Lake Yakumo. During a memorial ceremony for the late Chigusa lord, Mikoshiba launches an attack, overthrowing the honorable Lord Juro. Just when all seems lost, Daimajin rises from Lake Yakumo to settle a score of his own.

6.4/10

A giant stone statue comes to life to protect the residents of a small town against the depradations of an evil warlord.

6.7/10

One of many adaptations of "Onna no isshō", this time by Yasuzo Masumura as a starring vehicle for famed actress Machiko Kyo.

Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession.

7.5/10