Arrow Video: Wicked Priest Collection (1968 - 1971) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Tomisaburo Wakayama was one of the great Japanese character actors who initially started out in kabuki theater before studying judo before becoming a black belt in the sport.  Dispensing with theater acting altogether and becoming a judo instructor before Toho brought him on as a martial arts performer for their movies.  In addition to judo, the actor taught himself many other martial arts including kenpo, iaido, kendo and bojutsu before achieving fame with the Lone Wolf and Cub film series, the Bounty Hunter trilogy and alongside both franchises Arrow Video’s new quintet of films the Wicked Priest collection.  Offering a comical and impish alternative to both of the aforementioned series and made between 1968 and 1972 overlapping some of the entries in the other franchises, Arrow Video presents all five films in a new limited-edition 3-disc Blu-ray collection in the United States for the first time newly restored by Toei Films in Toeiscope 2.35:1 widescreen with plentiful extras.
 
In the first film from 1968 simply titled Wicked Priest from The Sand City in Manchuria director Kiyoshi Saeki, we encounter Shinkai (Wakayama), a Buddhist monk who like Father Urbain Grandier from Ken Russell’s The Devils operates by the cloth a bit differently from the rest.  Enjoying drinking, gambling and womanizing while righting wrongs with his fists and sharp eye-gouging claws, a fighting technique repeated throughout the series as a trademark.  Here, he’s on ice for fighting thugs but decides to immerse himself back into the firing line when he learns of priests consorting with the yakuza.  One of the first things viewers pick up on with Shinkai is his love for women.  Sure he’s a lusty lascivious womanizer but anytime someone from the opposite sex is manhandled and abused, he goes into vengeful male protector mode while proudly displaying his preexisting yakuza tattoos.  We also see him squaring off with a fighting monk he blinds in the first film named Ryotatsu (Bunta Sugawara from Battles Without Honor and Humanity) and this newly blinded fighter becomes a Zatoichi-like master of the martial arts who comes back to haunt our antihero Shinkai over the next four movies.
 
Films 2 (in his directorial debut) through 4 all ended up being directed by Takashi Harada of Bohachi Bushido: The Villain and all of the films save for part 3 were shot by Nagaki Yamagishi (Toshio Masuda of Tora! Tora! Tora! handled the third).  With that out of the way, the second installment Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder finds Shinkai running against local mobsters who turn to none other than his arch nemesis Ryotatsu for help.  Despite being blinded, his acute sense of hearing catapults him into being a mythic, almost superhuman fighter who comes very close to offing the Wicked Priest for good.  Shinkai still makes room for his usual womanizing and going into alpha male protector mode against adversaries while doing away with yakuza right and left.  What sets this one apart from the pack is for a short time he picks up and watches after a little kid whose father’s yakuza ties estranges the boy from his grandfather, echoing the Lone Wolf and Cub series where yes he’s still after sex and alcohol but his heart and soul goes out to ensuring this child is looked after.
 
The third installment Wicked Priest 3: A Killer’s Pilgrimage picks up where the second left off with our boozing womanizing priest joining forces against a coastal village that is repelling attacks from pirate revolutionaries.  With many sequences staged on a beachfront, it offers a scenic alternative setting to the first two movies while still leaving room for his sexcapades and tussling once again with the blinded Ryotatsu.  As with the other films, simply having Shinkai around winds up being a positive communal influence as characters who aren’t sure about their love lives come together when met with the possibility of being bedded by the nefarious wicked priest.  It becomes an intense battle with gunfire on beachfronts with, at one point, Ryotatsu and Shinkai fighting alongside each other taking out adversaries before resuming their movie-after-movie entanglements.

 
Part four Wicked Priest 4: The Killer Priest Comes Back shifts gears and shakes things up a bit by having Shinkai return to his snowbound hometown for his mother’s funeral when he discovers his childhood best friend has fallen to the path of the yakuza and that he must rally up what remains of his bereaved community to begin fighting back.  To make matters worse, a petty squabble involving an explosive going off winds up blinding our hero Shinkai and soon is forced to retrain himself in a martial arts style similar to that of his arch enemy Ryotatsu, using his sense of sound rather than sight to outmaneuver his opponents all the while still trying to redirect the course of his estranged and troubled friend’s life.  The move of taking away Shinkai’s sight (for a while) is bold and disarming, a bit like watching Django’s hands being broken and having to learn to fire a gun again.  Here, the series could’ve gone in a darkly bravely new direction, but upon switching directors with Diamonds of the Andes director Buichi Saito taking over the reins, unfortunately they just hit the reset button on the next entry giving Shinkai his sight back.

 
Which brings us to the fifth and final film (and perhaps weakest) entry in the series with Wicked Priest 5: Blood on the Commandments which starts off a bit weak with the usual back-and-forth womanizing, boozing and fighting including some battles with the opposite sex.  In the beginning we find Shinkai doing just fine with his sight fully returned and hiding out in villages doing his usual gambling and sexing.  What makes this one stand out is the proliferation of the Taisho period with many overtly Western influences in fashion and culture gradually taking over the Japan our antihero Shinkai used to know.  Amid more battles with yakuza and adversaries intent on abusing the villagers and kidnapping women for trafficking, Shinkai once more encounters the blinded Ryotatsu and as with the other films, their final battle is interrupted by calls for help with the ever understanding and cognizant Ryotatsu putting their fight on hold until he can sort out God’s sinners.  Here, at long last, Ryotatsu and Shinkai fully commence on their final fight dragged out across five movies and the results are interpretive and satisfying where we’re not quite sure what or if anything comes next but feel like we’ve seen the proper conclusion to this quintet of films.

 
All five films are shot and scored economically with the first two pictures being produced and released within the same year, boasting arresting scope cinematography, colorful set pieces and tons of action fighting choreography by the impishly beloved Tomisaburo Wakayama who makes our Wicked Priest plainly a bad guy who winds up doing a little bit of good in the world in each film.  Wakayama’s personality is playful and charming and even when he’s plainly womanizing the female characters seem happy with their encounters with him and amid the bawdy raunchy comedy, if he sees or hears one instance of a woman being slapped or assaulted in any form, he goes on the warpath.  The first film he’s seen womanizing but later in the film he comes to the aid of a brothel of prostitutes and you can sense the seriousness and conviction in his eyes and tone when he goes to the mat for them.  It represents a striking dichotomy again not unlike the aforementioned Grandier who himself was a womanizing sinner who somehow achieves sainthood when standing up against the government intent on destroying his city. 

 
The extras in the Arrow Blu-ray set are fabulous and kind of delicious with special attention to the film’s soundtracks and original opening songs sung by Tomisaburo Wakayama in an ornate video essay by legendary Japanese electronic composer Isao Tomita (I have some of his music on vinyl) alongside James Balmont.  To have an industry giant as large as Tomita on the extras all by itself is a cause for celebration.  Then there’s a video essay by Jonathan Clements on what the Wicked Priest’s antics represent in the context of the Taisho period, one which was later excellently covered by Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy.  There’s an interview with James Mudge on the film’s place in the pantheon of 1960s Japanese cinema, an interview with Patrick Macias and Matt Alt on the legacy of Tomisaburo Wakayama as well as another from the same two on Buddhism in pop culture in film. 

 
A fabulous and delightfully entertaining and fun collection of Taisho-era corrupted Buddhist-driven martial-arts and a star power vehicle for Tomisaburo Wakayama, Arrow Video’s Wicked Priest collection is another forward step for the boutique label and a gift that keeps on giving for worldly cinephiles and Asian cinema fans.  The case itself comes with reversible sleeve art and a collector’s booklet featuring new essay writings on the films.  For those unfamiliar or uninitiated, this series of offbeat films involving ostensibly a bad guy trying to do good while evading his own demons that keep catching up to him are highly enjoyable Taisho-era martial arts yarns with Wakayama in the midst of hitting his creative stride.  Anyone interested in Japanese period martial arts escapist vehicles will be tickled pink by this breezy and often playful release of films.

--Andrew Kotwicki