Years
before achieving much notoriety and generating controversy with his still
infamous contributions to the mercifully short lived Nikkatsu Violent Pink film
series, he began working for Nikkatsu in 1958 where he found apprenticeship as
an assistant director to the great Nikkatsu iconoclast Seijun Suzuki. During his time under Suzuki’s wing, Hasebe
gradually came to learn the tricks of the trade and soon rose to the occasion
in 1966 with the funky kidnapping comedy thriller Black Tight Killers. For his
second effort in the director’s chair, Hasebe reteamed with Black Tight Killers screenwriter Ryûzô Nakanishi for this brutally violent yet painterly revenge
yakuza yarn Massacre Gun.
Released shortly after mentor Suzuki’s final
film for Nikkatsu Branded to Kill and
reuniting with that film’s leading man Jô Shishido, Massacre
Gun follows Kuroda (Shishido) who after being ordered to assassinate his
own girlfriend by his gang boss decides to rebel and go rogue. Entrusting the help of his hot-headed older
brother Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji from In the
Realm of the Senses) and reclaiming old yakuza territories, the film
quickly becomes a ruthless turf war of flying bullets, vicious stabbings and an
ever-increasing body count.
While
Hasebe’s mentor was in the midst of being excommunicated from Nikkatsu, the fledgling
director staking out his territory serves up an otherwise unpretentious and
straightforward tale of yakuza ultraviolence carried deftly by the charismatic
cool violence of Shishido. With his
trademark chipmunk cheeks and leading man good looks, Shishido could carry Massacre Gun all by himself though fans
of In the Realm of the Senses will no
doubt be delighted by the sight of a young Tatsuya Fuji playing a formidable
thug carrying out his younger brother’s orders.
Coming
off of his apprenticeship with Suzuki, Hasebe had the good fortune of bringing
Suzuki’s longtime cinematographer Kazue Nagatsuka on board who lenses the
yakuza yarn handsomely with graceful camera movement and elegant framing. Also aiding the moody proceedings is veteran
Nikkatsu composer Naozumi Yamamoto best known for Fighting Elegy and Branded to
Kill, lending a somber jazz score to the yakuza yarn. Combined with the film’s cinematography, the
overall feeling one gets from Massacre
Gun is one of doom and gloom, paving the way for a bleak yet unforgettable
finale of death and destruction.
Watching
Massacre Gun I was reminded of the
messy and nihilistic yakuza antics of Kinji Fukusaku’s Street Mobster where nothing good can come out of the central
character going rogue before descending into an out and out bloodbath. Stylistically the film’s couldn’t be more
different with Hasebe’s mannered visual style keeping everything in place
whereas Fukusaku’s handheld camerawork tends to make one feel like they’re on a
roller coaster.
Seen knowing full well
what Hasebe would unleash on unsuspecting viewers years later with his Nikkatsu
Violent Pink line and especially the infamous Assault! Jack the Ripper, it was curious to see how the assistant
director would transition into a fully-fledged filmmaker and where he found his
footing and voice within a film studio not interested in filmmakers with a
singular cinematic vision. If nothing
else, Massacre Gun provides for the
initiated early warning signs of the emergence of one of the most
transgressive, boundary pushing Japanese film directors of the 1970s.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki