Author: Rob Gowers
Regarded by many as Japan’s answer to Brigitte Bardot — both for her glamorousness and vaguely European looks (she wasn’t actually mixed-race) — Mari Atsumi became one of Japanese cinema’s most prominent sex symbols of the early 1970s. As the daughter of Daiei actors Susumu Atsumi and Reiko Wakamiya, she too joined the studio
First published in May 1949, Wacky Magazine was devised as a more lighthearted spinoff to the popular kasutori magazine Mysterious Magazine. Whilst Mysterious Magazine focused on fairly explicit topics, Wacky Magazine took a more surreal approach to content though still maintained the same air of casual eroticism. Each issue of Wacky Magazine begins with a short illustrated
Despite other studios seeing success with their own manga adaptations, Toei had always been hesitant when taking such a leap. That all changed in 1972 with Toru Shinohara’s Female Prisoner Scorpion. With its action and grit honed by one of the upcoming masters of action manga, complemented by director Shunya Ito‘s own political and avant-garde
Pinku softcore porn films were big business for Japanese studios throughout the 1970s; so lucrative were these films, that when Nikkatsu was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1971, they were able to save themselves by focusing almost their entire output on the soon-to-be highly successful Roman Porno line. It wasn’t just big studios such
Back in the 1970s, the names of Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto were on everyone’s lips. Hailed as the “queens of porno”, they not only became exploitation cinema royalty but burst through into mainstream pop culture. If you bought any random issue of Heibon Punch, Weekly Playboy, or one of the countless other men’s magazines
When Toei’s pinky violence line first appeared in 1970 it was an unstoppable force, and throughout the early 70s, it showed little signs of slowing down. 1973 in particular was a bumper year for pinky violence, with an excessive offering consisting of – two Girl Boss films, three Terrifying Girls’ High School films, two Female
With that title, that font, and that poster, I don’t think there’s any doubt of where this film was going to go. Yes, it is indeed a tongue-in-cheek slasher based in the 1980s, just as you probably expected. It’s the 2020s so for whatever reason that means the 80s is now the hottest property for some
Still receiving new adaptations to this very day, it is safe to say that Monkey Punch’s seminal manga Lupin III is one of the most enduring properties in the world of manga and animé. Originally beginning serialisation in 1967 in Weekly Manga Action, Lupin III’s success was almost immediate and was instrumental in making Weekly
Nowadays manga adaptations are commonplace, and often fairly inevitable – however, this wasn’t always the case. Prior to the 1970s, adaptations of manga were a rare sight, especially live-action ones. In 1969, predated by just two other live-action adult manga adaptations (Ko Kojima’s Sennin Buraku & Teruo Tanaka’s Crimson Bat), Daiei would take a step
In a career that spanned four decades, prolific novelist Shinji Fujiwara explored a wide range of genres in his work, though is most famed for his 1950s suspense stories. The widespread popularity of his work quickly lent itself to the medium of film, and he would eventually be dubbed “film’s favourite novelist” due to the