Biography

My friend, writer Yoshiki Hayashi, once told me that he and his friends called Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition And Torture director, Teruo Ishii’s home the “spy action house”. Once inside, you get the reference -- the furniture and interior design blend in a hybrid art deco/Aubrey Beardsley elegance with the austere functionality of an obsessive filmmaker. Although in his mid seventies, Ishii is frequently clad in sunglasses, mod black turtleneck and black pants and with a black mop-top of hair.

There is the mischievous vibe of the practical joker about him, in keeping with his reputation of a bad boy who hates being told what to do by studio executives. Miraculously, Ishii enjoyed a thriving career at the major Japanese studios, sidestepping interference, at least from 1957 through 1979.

He was also largely responsible for converting mild-mannered, heroic heartthrob, Ken Takakura, from a journeyman actor into a huge box office attraction in the mid-1960s, something he achieved directing the first ten Abashiri Prison films with Takakura, entertaining potboilers fusing two-fisted action and romance with the swordplay trappings of the yakuza movie boom.

Ishii got his start as a cameraman, and it’s rumored his first experiences behind a lens were courtesy of the Japanese air force filming bombing raids over Manchuria during WWII. Ishii’s initial cinematic endeavors at struggling Shintoho studios, the Super Giant serial (released straight-to-television in America as the four Starman movies) are his most famous in the United States and aimed primarily for children. But there were already hints of a macabre visual lunacy rearing its head in these superhero-from-space sagas.

Mitsugu Okura, a carnival huckster showman called-in to reanimate Shintoho’s sluggish box office, oversaw almost all of the studio’s late 1950s pictures and seemed tailor-made for distilling Ishii’s eccentric worldview, a sensibility molded by everything from offbeat manga to the erotic/grotesque Japanese mystery scribe, Edogawa Rampo.

Ishii’s most influential movies at Shintoho – at least in so far as having impact on later yakuza pictures -- were his contributions to the Line films and the Queen Bee series. In particular, the Queen Bee movies are trailblazing forerunners of the female action/crime yarns that later proliferated at most Japanese studios in the late sixties and seventies.

1961 saw Ishii leave the going-under Shintoho for Toei, where his first effort there, The Flower, The Storm And The Gang, mixed swinging rat pack coolness with gangster and caper motifs. It proved successful enough to give birth to the Gang series. Although not enamored of the genre, Ishii directed one of Toei’s first ninkyo yakuza pictures, too, the superior Koji Tsuruta-starring Tale Of Showa Era Chivalry in 1963, a theme he would update a decade later with Modern Chivalry.

He also made The Rogues in 1964, a film shot on location in Macao that John Woo has acknowledged as being, along with Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, highly influential in the evolution of Woo’s The Killer. However, Abashiri Prison in 1965 was the turning point in not only Ishii’s but Ken Takakura’s career, catapulting them both into the front ranks of motion picture success stories.

Delighted with the box office returns, Toei convinced Ishii to direct nine more Abashiri films in the following two years. All featured Takakura as an ex-con drifter who couldn’t keep from falling into doomed love or crossing the path of unscrupulous yakuza. But Ishii had had enough by 1967 and turned the reins over to other directors who continued the series for another eight films.

Impatient to go in a completely different direction, Ishii and Toei producers got together on the idea for a series of in-period, bloody-viscera-strewn epics detailing horrible “criminal” punishments throughout Japanese history. Four out of the six films were constructed as anthologies. The first, The Shogun And 3,000 Women, was somewhat anemic compared to what followed, and gave scant evidence of the aesthetically exquisite cinema of cruelty Ishii had up his sleeve.

The shocking and dreamlike Joys Of Torture came second, establishing the framing device of a humane doctor of the samurai class (Teruo Yoshida), recalling three horror stories of sadistic oppression by people in power. More erotic/grotesque madness followed with Ishii’s Orgies of Edo, Hell’s Tattooers (aka Inferno Of Torture), Love And Crime and Yakuza Punishment-Lynch Law. All display Ishii’s captivatingly gruesome showmanship, earmarked by remarkable performances and production design, and sometimes gorily convincing effects.

In 1969, the intoxicating head of creative steam Ishii was building, blew its stack. The result, Horror Of Malformed Men, an astonishing adaptation of several tales by Edogawa Rampo, was an unqualified masterpiece,. Unfortunately, because of it’s depiction of scientifically-altered mutations ala Island Of Dr. Moreau, it enjoys a politically incorrect reputation in Japan even today and has never been available on video. It is an exhilarating, mesmerizing horror film that compares well to such other macabre Japanese masterworks as Nobuo Nakagawa’s Hell (Jigoku, 1960).

Throughout the 1970s, Ishii whipped up premium genre films, starting the decade with the cheerfully grotesque, occasionally humorous female yakuza picture, Blind Woman’s Curse, starring Meiko Kaji. Two more simultaneously beautiful and scandalous female ninkyo yakuza pictures followed, The Red Silk Gambler with the late Eiko Nakamura based on a book by the notorious Onriku Dan, and Female Yakuza Tale – Inquisition And Torture, the latter the second of a gonzo pair with Reiko Ike.

In 1973, Ishii directed the movie adaptation of manga, Bohachi Bushido, a samurai/pinky violence hybrid originally penned by Lone Wolf And Cub creator, Kazuo Koike. 1975 and 1976 also saw him create three of the very diverting delinquent Detonation! series: Violent Tribe, Violent Games and Season Of Violence.

Due to the downturn of Japanese movie production, Ishii worked mostly in television in the eighties, finally directing straight-to-video The Hit Man, a yakuza picture in 1991. Ishii at last returned to the big screen in 1993 with an independently-produced adaptation from his favorite manga writer, Yoshiharu Tsuge. Master Of Gensan-Kan Inn is an alternately funny and creepy little masterwork balancing dark humor, dreamlike images, erotica and a spooky loneliness that sticks with you long after you’ve finished watching.

Two more Tsuge adaptations followed, Villain Field and the bizarrely humorous Screwed. Ishii closed out the nineties with an ultra-low budget remake of Hell, and in 2001, Ishii ventured into digital video production with Blind Beast Vs. Killer Dwarf, another adaptation of Edogawa Rampo tales, this time starring nineties enfant terrible filmmaker, Shinya Tsukamoto, as well as Ishii veteran, Tetsuro Tanba.

In 2005 Teruo Ishii was diagnosed with lung cancer, but kept his condition secret even from his closest friends. On Friday, August 12th he died at the age of 81, mere days after checking himself into a Tokyo hospital. The news of his passing brought praise from the most respected members of the Japanese (and global) film community, as many observed that his spirit would live on forever in his films.

©2006 - Chris D.

Selected Filmography:

Super Giant (SUPA JAIANTSU aka KOTETSU NO KYOJIN, 1957)
Return Of Super Giant (ZOKU SUPA JAIANTSU aka ZOKU KOTETSU NO KYOJIN, 1957)
Super Giant - Invaders From Space (SUPA JAIANTSU - KAISEIJIN NO MAJO, 1957)
Super Giant – The Earth In Danger (SUPA JAIANTSU –CHIKYU METSUBO SUNZEN, 1957)
Nude Actress Muder Case – Five Criminals (NIKUTAI JOYU GOROSHI – GONIN HANZAISHA, 1957)
Super Giant – Spaceship Of Human Destruction (SUPA JAIANTSU – JINKO EISEI TO JINRUI HAMETSU, 1957)
Super Giant – Destruction Of The Space Fleet (SUPA JAIANTSU – UCHUTEI TO JINKO EISEI GEKI TOTSU, 1957)
Secret White Line Zone (SHIROSEN HIMITSU CHITAI aka CALL GIRL TERRITORY, 1958)
Queen Bee's Anger (JO BACHI NO IKARI, 1958)
Pink Battlefield (SENJO NO NADESHI, 1959)
Black Line Zone (KUROSEN CHITAI aka INVISIBLE BLACK HAND, 1960)
Girls Without Return Tickets (JOTAI UZUMAKI-TO aka THE ISLAND’S WHIRLPOOL OF WOMEN’S BODIES, 1960)
Yellow Line Zone (IERO RAIN aka OSEN CHITAI aka TIGER TRACK ZONE, 1960)
Queen Bee and the School for Dragons (JO BACHI TO DAIGAKU NO RYU, 1960)
Sexy Zone (SEKKUSHI – RAIN aka SEKKUSHI CHITAI aka GIRLS OF THE SECRET CLUB, 1961)
The Flower, the Storm and the Gang (HANA TO ARASHI TO GYANGU, 1961)
Love and the Sun and the Gang (KOI TO TAIYO TO GYANGU, 1962)
Gang vs. Gang (GYANGU TAI GYANGU, 1962)
Underworld Boss – Eleven Gangsters (ANKOKU GAI NO KAOYAKU – JUICHININ NO GYANGU, 1963)
Gang vs. G-Men – Break-In of the Company Safe (GYANGU TAI G-MEN – SHUDAN KINKO YABURI, 1963)
Kill The Boss (BOSU O TOSE aka BOSS’S RUIN, 1963)
Tale of Showa Era Chilvery (SHOWA KYOKAKUDEN, 1963)
Tokyo Gang vs. Hong Kong Gang (TOKYO GYANGU TAI HONG KONG GYANGU, 1964)
The Rogues (NARAZU MONO aka THE RASCALS, 1964)
Gold Warehouse Break-In (GOKINZO YABURI aka ROBBING THE SHOGUN’S GOLD, 1964)
Tattooed Sudden Attack (IREZUMI TOTSU GEKI aka SHOCK TROOP OF OUTLAWS, 1964)
The Boss (KAOYAKU, 1965)
Abashiri Prison (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI aka THE MAN FROM ABASHIRI JAIL aka ABASHIRI NATIVE GROUND, 1965)
Return From Abashiri Prision (ZOKU ABASHIRI BANGAICHI, 1965)
Abashiri Prison – Saga of Homesickness (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – BOKYO HEN, 1965)
Abashiri Prison – Northern Seacost Story (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – HOKKAI HEN, 1965)
Japan's Zero Zone – Nightwatch (NIHON ZERO CHITAI – YORU O NERAE, 1966)
Abashiri Prison – Duel in the Wilderness (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI –KOYA NO TAIKETSU aka BULLET AND THE HORSE, 1966)
Abashiri Prison – Duel in the South (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI - NANGOKU NO TAIKETSU, 1966)
Abashiri Prison – Duel in the Snow Country (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – DAISETSUGEN NO TAIKETSU, 1966)
Abashiri Prison – at Thirty Below (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – KETTO REIKA JANJU DO, 1967)
Abashiri Prison – Challenging the Wicked (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – AKU E NO CHOSEN, 1967)
Abashiri Prison – Duel in the Blizzard (ABASHIRI BANGAICHI – FUBUKI NO TOSO aka SNOWSTORM COMBAT, 1967)
Shogun and 3,000 Woman (TOKUGAWA ONNA KEIZU aka TOKUGAWA WOMEN’S PEDIGREE, 1968)
Joys of Torture (TOKUGAWA ONNA KEIBATSUSHI aka TOKUGAWA WOMEN’S PUNISHMENT, 1968)
Orgies of Edo (ZANKOKU-IJO-GYAKUTAI – GENROKU ONNA KEIZU aka CRUEL AND STRANGE OPPRESSION – GENROKU ERA WOMEN’S PEDIGREE, 1969)
Rising Dragon's Iron Flesh (NOBORI RYU TEKKA HADA aka THE FRIENDLY KILLER, 1969)
Hell's Tattooers (TOKUGAWA IREZUMI SHI – SEME JIGOKU aka TOKUGAWA TATTOO STORY – HELL TORTURE aka INFERNO OF TORTURE, 1969)
Yakuza Punishment – Lynch Law! (YAKUZA KEIBATSUSHI – RINCHI!, 1969)
Love and Crime (MEIJI-TAISHO-SHOWA – RYOKI ONNA HANZAISHI aka MEIJI, TAISHO AND SHOWA ERAS – SEARCH FOR BIZARRE FEMALE CRIMES, 1969)
Horror of Malformed Men (EDOGAWA RANPO TAIZEN – KYOFU KIKEI NINGEN, 1969)
Blind Woman's Curse (KAIDAN NOBORI RYU aka RISING DRAGON GHOST STORY aka TATTOOED Swordsman aka HAUNTED LIFE OF A DRAGON-TATTOOED LASS, 1970)
The Red Silk Gambler (HICHIRIMEN BAKUTO aka TIGER LILY, 1972)
Bohachi Bushido (PORUNO JIDAI GEKI – BOHACHI BUSHIDO aka PORNO HISTORICAL STORY – BOHACHI BUSHIDO, 1973)
Female Yakuza Tale – Inquisition and Torture (YASAGURE ANEGO DEN – SOKATSU RINCHI aka, STORY OF A WILD ELDER SISTER – WIDESPREAD LYNCH LAW 1973)
Modern Chibalry (GENDAI NINKYOSHI, 1973)
The Executioner (CHOKU GEKI! JIGOKU KEN aka DIRECT HIT! - HELL FIST, 1973)
The Executioner 2 (CHOKU GEKI JIGOKU KEN – DAI GYAKUTEN aka DIRECT HIT! HELL FIST – THE BIG TURNABOUT, 1973)
The Big Escape (DAI DATSUGOKU, 1975)
Detonation! Violent Tribe (BAKUHATSU! BOSO ZOKU, 1975)
Detonation! Violent Games (BAKUHATSU! BOSO YUGI, 1976)
Season of Violence (BOSO NO KISESU, 1976)
Master of Gensen-Kan Inn (GENSAN-KAN SHUJIN, 1993)
Villian Field (BURAI HEIYA aka VAGABOND PLAIN, 1995)
Screwed (NEJI-SHIKI, aka WIND-UP TYPE 1998)
Hell (JIGOKU, 1999)
Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf (MOJU TAI ISSUN BOSHI, 2001