The usual suspects, as far as Japanese movies go, will often involve mentioning certain films directed by Akira Kurosawa (especially Ran, Seven Samur
The usual suspects, as far as Japanese movies go, will often involve mentioning certain films directed by Akira Kurosawa (especially Ran, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and High and Low), just about all films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and then various giant monster flicks, too, especially the Godzilla ones. Miyazaki might not have underrated movies in the established sense (sure, he’s got some that don’t get as much love as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle), while Kurosawa has some overlooked films, and there are certain Godzilla movies that deserve more love…
…But still, even those lesser-known titles directly connected to one of those previously mentioned names are too well-known, for present purposes. The following are truly some of the most underrated Japanese movies ever made, and a good many of them live in genuine obscurity. If you want to dig out some hidden gems, so to speak, then it’s well worth tracking down and watching the following films. And sure, if you’ve heard of them before, and don’t consider them properly hidden or underrated, then congratulations. You know your Japanese cinema and stuff.
10
‘Outlaw: Gangster VIP’ (1968)
Outlaw: Gangster VIP is probably the most well-known movie within this particular ranking, so it’s going here first, and does still deserve to be here because “most well-known” doesn’t necessarily mean well-known. It’s a definitive yakuza movie, and one of the best crime movies of its era, being about a man who’s entangled with the yakuza, then tries to break free of that lifestyle, but finds that’s much easier said than done.
He’s wronged and pulled back into a life of violence, and everything keeps feeling continually nihilistic and intense. Outlaw: Gangster VIP is surprisingly raw and honestly pretty violent for a film of its age, potentially paving the way for the Battles Without Honor and Humanity movies in the 1970s… though they’re a bit more sprawling, and intentionally don’t feel quite as personal as Outlaw: Gangster VIP is. They’re more about the overall yakuza, while this film’s about one guy who just so happens to be (yet doesn’t want to remain) with the yakuza, if that makes sense.
9
‘ESPY’ (1974)
It would be wrong and also needlessly provocative to suggest that ESPY stomps all over the James Bond series overall, but there might well be some movies in that long-running series that are inferior, as spy movies. Well, okay, this is a very different sort of spy movie, with more of a sci-fi spin to things, too, but it’s challenging not to think about that massive spy-related series when you’re talking about other spy movies from the 1970s, since James Bond was particularly gigantic at the time.
To stick to ESPY, though, the plot of this one involves a series of planned assassinations around the world that need to be stopped, and a pair of spies with extraordinary powers who might well be the only ones who can take on such a task. That might sound a little strange, but ESPY is honestly really strange, and while that synopsis is technically true, there is so much more to this movie that’s challenging to properly put into words. If you want something offbeat and more than a little different, it’s best to track it down for yourself, and pretty much just submit (or surrender?) to it.
8
‘Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story’ (1993)
In 1993, dinosaur-wise, there was Jurassic Park. It’s challenging to look past Jurassic Park, and just about anything ever remotely comparable was ultimately going to be overshadowed by Jurassic Park. It’s a bit inevitable, but there were other dinosaur movies released that year, including We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, and also Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story… which is confusing, with the names. But the latter is relevant here (the former was an animated movie, which is the easiest way to tell them apart).
The comparison to Jurassic Park is convenient, given it came out in 1993, but Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story has a bit more in common, narratively and emotionally, with another Spielberg-directed classic: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. It’s a movie about a newborn girl befriending a baby Tyrannosaurus rex. That’s about it. It’s also really cute and honestly endearing, being much better than your average kids’ movie (and, for what it’s worth, it was a popular movie in Japan when it came out, but feels relatively hidden nowadays, at least outside Japan).
7
‘Prophecies of Nostradamus’ (1974)
It’s challenging to put into words how gonzo and all over the place Prophecies of Nostradamus is, and then even harder to try to explain how it actually works, despite being a total mess. Essentially, it’s a bombastic movie about the end of the world, with the titular prophecies of Nostradamus coming true, and the world being hit by one catastrophic thing after another.
Prophecies of Nostradamus feels like several disaster movies smashed into one, and with a vigorous helping of sci-fi, fantastical, and horror concepts to go along with the action/thriller/drama stuff.
Calling it a disaster movie wouldn’t be entirely right, since Prophecies of Nostradamus feels like several disaster movies smashed into one, and with a vigorous helping of sci-fi, fantastical, and horror concepts to go along with the action/thriller/drama stuff. It’s a lot, and maybe even too much, but it really is worth seeing for the sheer reason that there’s very little like it, and you will get a novel experience out of it, even if you consider yourself highly well-read about the whole disaster genre.
6
‘Crab Goalkeeper’ (2006)
Crab Goalkeeper is a wonderfully absurd comedy that might not be for everyone, but since there’s a chance it could be for you, you should watch it. It’s a sports movie about soccer/football (whatever you want to call it), and the main character is indeed a crab. No points for guessing what position he wants to play. But yeah, it’s an underdog sports movie, playing certain conventions straight, with everything being absurd because there’s a crab thrown in there.
It is bizarre, it is one-note, and it is oddly magical. Crab Goalkeeper feels thrown together and very budget-friendly, but that adds to its charm. Compared to some of the other movies here, it is a bit more understandable why this lives in relative obscurity, and has been more or less forgotten in the 20 years since it came out, but still, it really does feel like it deserves some kind of proper cult following.
5
‘Dragon Princess’ (1976)
A movie about the ever-reliable theme of revenge, Dragon Princess is one of many great martial arts movies from Japan, but it came out at a time when so many were being made, which might account for it being a little hidden. Narratively, it also doesn’t do much to stand out from the pack, since the premise here involves a man being wronged, and then he trains his daughter in karate so she can get revenge for him.
It stars Etsuko Shihomi, who was in a good many movies with Sonny Chiba (who is quite well-known, even outside Japan, mostly thanks to his role in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and the third Fast and Furious movie), and Dragon Princess might well have been their best collaboration. It’s immaculate, straightforward, no-nonsense, and more than capable of delivering when it comes to giving viewers a generous amount of hand-to-hand fight scenes.
4
‘G.I. Samurai’ (1979)
Speaking of Sonny Chiba, he also stars in G.I. Samurai, which has a fantastically high-concept premise that it wholeheartedly commits to, and ultimately makes work. It’s a time travel movie that involves soldiers from the 20th century going back to samurai times, and finding themselves having to fight battles of a very different kind, back during what was known as Japan’s Sengoku period, or “Warring States period,” which spanned much of the 15th and 16th centuries.
There are modern-day soldiers (“G.I.s”) and samurai. They collide. They fight. That’s your movie. That’s G.I. Samurai. To its credit, it manages to stay entertaining and unpredictable for a runtime that nears 2.5 hours, containing a great deal of action and overall feeling like a genuine blockbuster… albeit one that’s willing to get a little weirder and more over-the-top than your average non-Japanese blockbuster. It’s not perfect, but it would be strange if it were. It’s exactly what it needs to be, for a movie called “G.I. Samurai,” and that ends up being well and truly enough.
3
‘Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp’ (1969)
Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp is the first movie in a series that ran for 50 movies. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. The Tora-san films revolve around a man named Tora who’s basically an eternal bachelor. Most of the movies show him falling in love with a novel woman, but then something goes wrong (sometimes it’s his fault, and sometimes it’s more just bad luck), and then he’s single again by the time the movie finishes.
He cycles through this, time and again, with variety provided by the fact that he usually goes to a novel place in Japan every film, and then his wandering lifestyle is contrasted with the life his family lives back in Shibamata (in Tokyo). They grow up and change, while Tora kind of stays the same, and there’s both humor and tragedy to that. Then he begins to change and slowly mature, as the series goes along. It’s like a long-running TV show, but they’re movies, and they’re also a great deal more beautifully filmed. It’s so challenging to recommend 50 movies to someone, or anyone, but really, Tora-san is just unlike anything else. It’s really moving and pure, and you do feel like you know these people by the end of it. Seeing Japan and all the culture is attractive. These movies are calming, amusing, and depressed, sometimes all at once. I am breaking the fourth wall here and saying, once and for all, that if I can convince a single person to devote, like, 80 to 90 hours of their lives to the entire Tora-san series, I will die elated. Failing to find people, I will convince my dog. He may agree to watch the adventures of Tora, the eternal bachelor, with me.
2
‘The Beast Shall Die’ (1959)
This might be best described as a psychological thriller/drama film, or maybe a crime movie, though not really a crime/gangster movie the way Outlaw: Gangster VIP was. The Beast Shall Die is an even more intense and cynical film, and you don’t really get an antihero or anything here, since the main character is just ruthless and honestly pretty scary. Things fall apart in his family life, and then he eventually turns to violence.
The Beast Shall Die is about a newborn student who seems to have things worked out, but he snaps, and then he becomes a murderer. It all happens in a way that does feel eerily believable, and honestly, much of what’s unpacked here still feels like it has some relevance today. That might come down to anything regarding newborn people and violence being tragically relevant, or it’s a sign that The Beast Shall Die was really ahead of its time. It’s like a proto-doomer film, and with a few tweaks on the technical side of things, you could make it look, pretty easily, like it came from a later decade in the 20th century, since it feels more in line with those later decades tonally and thematically.
1
‘The Battle of Okinawa’ (1971)
The Battle of Okinawa might well be one of the heaviest and most intense World War II movies ever made, with no punches being pulled in the way it depicts the titular battle. It’s a film that goes for nearly 2.5 hours, and even if you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, for whatever reason, you’re still going to feel an immense amount of dread and despair throughout the entire thing.
It’s an anti-war movie for sure, depicting the last stand on Okinawa as a desperate, doomed, and tragic affair, with so much death and destruction. The Battle of Okinawa is miserable, and challenging to recommend in that sense, as a result, but it is an amazingly powerful film that manages to strike a nerve, even if you’ve seen plenty of anti-war films about the Second World War. You’ve not really seen it all until you’ve seen this one, even if you’ve made it through heavy-hitters like Grave of the Fireflies and Come and See.
Outlaw: Gangster VIP
- Release Date
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January 13, 1968
- Runtime
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94 minutes
- Director
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Toshio Masuda
- Writers
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Reiji Kubota, Kaneo Ikegami, Goro Fujita
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Tetsuya Watari
Goro Fujikawa
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Chieko Matsubara
Yukiko Hashimoto
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Mitsuo Hamada
Takeo Tsujikawa
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Tamio Kawachi
Isamu Tsujikawa
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