Movie Title Hall of Fame: The Sublime, the Weird and the Ridiculous

There are certain movie titles that make you pause and consider the mystery, allure or absurdity of their meaning. They can promise so much and deliver so little like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) or She Gods of Tiger Reef (1958). Or they can overdeliver on their promise to an astonished but grateful audience as in Russ Meyer’s infamous Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). They can also mislead and confound you with wording so vague or fanciful that you have no earthly idea what it’s about as in Lord Love a Duck (1966), The Day the Fish Came Out (1967), or All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), which inspired the name of the Brit pop trio that had a hit with “She Drives Me Crazy.” Then there are those completely frank and unambiguous titles that reveal the pure essence of the film in a no-nonsense manner – Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) and I Was a Male War Bride (1940). Or titles that are so much fun to say that you simply love saying them out loud just to hear the sound of them rolling off your tongue like Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966) or Puddin’ Head (1941).

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The Japanese Sinbad

Most moviegoers know Toshiro Mifune from his long and fruitful association with director Akira Kurosawa, most prominently Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, and a handful of major works from other directors in the Japanese cinema such as Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu (1952) and Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy. But beyond his many period samurai roles and his more contemporary dramas and noirs (Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well), Mifune was much more than an international art house darling and award winning actor. He was a popular star and a product of the Japanese studio system just as Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy were creations of the Hollywood studio system. Like those two screen icons, Mifune also had his share of genre programmers and lowbrow general audience entertainments but The Lost World of Sinbad aka Samurai Pirate aka (1963) is one of his more enjoyable and eccentric efforts.   Continue reading