The Ballad of Narayama came late in the career of director Shôhei Imamura who claimed that a viewing of Kurosawa’s Rashomon inspired him to imagine that a new freedom of expression was possible in post-war Japan. Starting as an assistant to Yasujirō Ozu, he soon was dissatisfied, as he wanted to show a different take on how he saw Japan.

He left Shochiku for a better salary at Nikkatsu and became the assistant director to Yuzo Kawashima, who was known for his tragic satire. From his first film as a director, Nusumareta Yokujō (Stolen Desire), he courted controversy, unafraid to show the lower caste of Japan and frank sexuality.

Imamura saw himself as more of a cultural anthropologist than a filmmaker and was all about being an iconoclast, even starting his own studio and pushing for projects that would fail, having to make small films for most of the late 70’s and early 80’s due to Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubō (Profound Desires of the Gods), a deeply personal film that took a year and a half to make and wasn’t seen as a success at the time.

By the 1980’s, Imamura was able to mount larger-scale movies, including this one, a remake of Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 The Ballad of Narayama.

A key member of the Japanese New Wave, Imamura is one of the few directors to keep making films through the 21st century and the only director from Japan to win two Palme d’Or awards (for this movie and The Eel).

My grandmother died last month. I’m not telling you that out of a need for sympathy, but to tell you where my head was while watching this movie. It’s about ubasute, which is translated as abandoning an old woman, which was the ancient Japanese practice of carrying an infirm or elderly relative to a mountain or other desolate place and leaving them to die.

You may think that this is a barbaric practice. But in our world of modern medicine that keeps people alive well beyond the time that they should be deceased, I wonder sometimes that we keep people with us for so long that it becomes torture. I don’t have the answers but I’ve tried to keep an open mind as I watched this movie, sometimes overflowing with emotion.

In a small Japanese village in the 19th century, Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto, who Imamura cast in two other of his movies, The Pornographers and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge; she won the Japanese Best Actress from Nihon Academy for her performance in this film, as well as a kiss from Orson Welles) realize that at the age of 69, she is but months from having to go up the mountain to die. She’s of sound mind and body, but doesn’t want to be like the old men who fight every step of the way, screaming that they want to stay alive.

Over the next year, we see her life, whether it’s the negative of young people referring to her as an old witch or the positive, where we see her fix the problems of the village, help her son Tatsuheito (Ken Ogata) to find a wife and set things right before stoically going on to her death in the snow.

As we see the lives of the villagers, we also see nature intrude, whether that’s through the birds in the trees or the snake that is always near, even in moments of incredible joy.

How strongly did Sakamoto believe in this role? She extracted four of her teeth just to play the scene where Orin smashes out all of her teeth to convince her family that she must die.

Beyond Sakamoto’s awards, this movie also won best film at the Japanese Academy Awards numerous best actor awards for Ogata, who played Sakamoto’s son, a best supporting actress award for Mitsuko Baisho, best sound and an excellence in cinematography award.

This is a film of juxtaposition, of the lowest and most base of humanity in contrast with ones that will sacrifice everything. Moments of sheer beauty stand hand in hand with scenes of violence and pain. It’s a heartbreaking film yet one that reaffirmed my belief in life, in the cyclical nature of death and rebirth. And it is by no means an easy watch.

You can find The Ballad of Narayama on the new Survivor Ballads: Three Films By Shohei Imamura set from Arrow Films. This is a must-buy, as each film demands to be part of any film lover’s collection. You can get yours from MVD.

Barry Prima was one of the biggest stars of Indonesian cinema, appearing in several  Jaka Sembung movies which were adaptions of a comic book, including Jaka Sembung (The Warrior), Si Buta Lawan Jaka Sembung (The Warrior Against Blind Swordsman), Bajing Ireng Dan Jaka Sembung (Jaka Sembung vs. the Ninja), Jaka Sembung Dan Bergola Ijo (Jaka Sembung and Bergola Ijo) and Jaka Sembung Dan Dewi Samudra (Jaka Sembung and the Ocean Goddess).

Also known as The Devil’s Sword, this is based on another comic and has a sequel as well, which is called Mandala Dari Sungai Ular (Mandala from the Snake River).

Once upon a time, as they say, an old man found a meteorite and forged it into a sword. Then he hid it until the time was right for its use. That time seems like right now, because the Crocodile Queen is kidnapping all the men of the village and turning them into her sex slaves, while still allowing them to steal women of their own.

Our hero floats around on a rock and has laser beams that can come out of his hands.

Our villainess is the only person in this whole country willing to admit that she gets horny.

Our monsters are goopy, gory and awesome.

And the sets? You’ll want to live within them.

For some reason, my week of sword and sorcery has had plenty of crocodile-themed enemies in it. I hope the universe isn’t trying to tell me something.

You can watch this on YouTube.

D.C. Cab was one of the first videos I ever rented from Prime Time Video as a kid and it’s got a great cast, which is probably what got me to grab it. Beyond Mr. T., you have Max Gail from Barney Miller as the owner of the cab company, Adam Baldwin as the son of his best friend who comes to help, Charlie Barnett (who actually won the SNL job over Eddie Murphy but was too nervous to come back for a follow-up; he sadly died of AIDS at the age of 41), Marsha Warfield from Night Court, a pre-Politically Incorrect Bill Maher, Gary Busey (speaking of politically incorrect, little to none of his dialogue could be in a movie made today), DeWayne Jessie (who literally became his Otis Day character and toured with that name), Paul Rodriguez, Whitman Mayo (Grady from Sanford and Son), the Barbarian Brothers (making this one of two Barbarian Brothers movies that Kino Lorber releases this month), Bob Zmuda,  Bloodsport director Newt Arnold, Jill Schoelen (the crush of all teen crushes), Timothy Carey as a maniac who calls himself the Angel of Death and Irene Cara as herself.

It’s directed by Joel Schumacher, who either does movies that are remembered for the right reasons like The Lost Boys or movies that are remembered for the wrong reasons like Batman and Robin.

This is the ultimate hijinks ensue movie, as each character gets a moment and a little story of their own. It’s not a great movie, but it’s certainly a fun one, which sometimes is even better. The story is as simple as the boys of D.C. Cab against the city government and the Emerald Cab Company. Seriously, that’s pretty much as deep as it gets, but these are the kind of movies that you find yourself watching every time they come on cable, right? Do they still come on cable?

I’m happy to have this movie in my collection. It’s a great reminder of the time when you could find something like this movie on the rental shelves.

You can get this from Kino Lorber, who has just released it on blu ray.

Woah boy, this movie.

As a child, Olivia (Suzanna Love, a DuPont heiress, which doesn’t explain why she’s in this movie, and the wife of the director, which does) watched as her mother was murdered by an American army john who was way too into S&M.

Fifteen years later, she’s trapped in a loveless marriage and the ghost of her mother guides her life, but not in any positive way. She tells Olivia to hit the streets and take a man home, then commands her to kill him by bludgeoning him with a vase.

While getting rid of the body, Olivia meets an American engineer named Mike (Robert Walker Jr., Hex) who is in England to help dismantle the London Bridge and bring it to Arizona (a plot point of the Hasselhoff vs. Jack the Ripper film Terror At London Bridge). Finding true passion, Olivia finally finds happiness, until her husband finds out and assaults her. He also shows up on the bridge and confronts the couple and ends up thrown off, presumably to his death.

Four years later, Mike is back in Arizona and obviously didn’t get charged with manslaughter. That’s when he meets Jenny, a tourism director who looks exactly like Olivia, except for her hair color and accent. Ah, if only this would all be easy for Mike, but the mistakes of the past — and the ghost of Olivia’s mother — are not so easily forgotten.

Released as Prozzie, Double Jeopardy and the very roughie sounding A Taste of Sin, this was written, produced and directed by Ulli Lommel, who may have started his career working with Warhol, Fassbinder and the New German Cinema, but is probably best known for his movie The Boogeyman.

This was co-written by John P. Marsh, who took a student film he made about a woman being fascinated by the oldest profession and added it to Lommel and Love’s idea to have the moved London Bridge play a role in the story.

This movie was completely unlike what I was expecting. It’s somewhere between giallo and slasher and totally in the middle of strangeness.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

When will the kids learn? When an old man in a town warns you of great evil, perhaps he knows what he’s talking about. When your college professor does the same thing, perhaps you should listen to him as well. But no, these kids just meander along and unleash the spirit of Black Claw and then all die one after the other.

Well, I guess we wouldn’t have a month of slashers if these kids knew what they were doing.

This Fred Olen Ray written and directed film isn’t bad. It’s a different location for a slasher, the Native American mythos are intriguing and hey — that’s Superman as the professor! No, really, that’s Kirk Alyn, the original movie serial Kal-El, as Professor Machen*, who works alongside Forest J. Ackerman, who plays Professor Trentwood. And oh yes — Dr. Sharon Reynolds is Carroll Borland, whose look as Luna, the daughter of Bela Lugosi’s Mark of the Vampire inspired plenty of undead femme fatales.

I don’t know of too many other movies that have a lion-headed ghost, much less a moment where the image of an old man inside a bowl of soup causes someone to slice their own throat, but there you go. Scalps is there for you, answering the call of a movie you never knew you wanted but now you will always feel like you need.

*Aldo Ray and Robert Quarry were also up for this role. I mean, those are great picks too.

You can watch this on YouTube.