In the late 1960s and early 1970s Toho Studios began toying with some of its genre offerings by slipping some social or political references into the narratives while adding additional cinematic influences. A prime example of this is the 1970 Japanese film Jaga Wa Hashitta (English title: The Creature Called Man), an offbeat actioner about rival hit men with obvious references to the James Bond spy series as well as American crime thrillers.
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A paranoid conspiracy thriller delivered in a droll tongue-in-cheek style with generous helpings of black comedy and anti-establishment satire doesn’t really fit neatly into any genre and Kihachi Okamoto’s The Age of Assassins (1967 aka Epoch of Murder Madness; Japanese title: Satsujin Kyojidai) was generally dismissed by critics and avoided by audiences when it was first released in the late sixties. Like many of Okamoto’s films, it didn’t receive theatrical distribution outside of its own country and that’s a shame because the film has the essential goods to become a bona fide cult classic on the order of Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill (1967) or Kinji Fukasaku’s Black Lizard (1968). The Age of Assassins arrived at the tail end of the secret agent craze but it is not really a James Bond parody. Think of it instead as a crazy quilt journey through an off-kilter, pop culture universe where no one is who they appear to be. Continue reading
Cinema Sojourns 