Seijun Suzuki Filmography

Pistol Opera

Crew: Director

Actors: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Kan Hanae, Masatoshi Nagase, Mikijiro Hira

Synopsis: Japanese cult director Seijun Suzuki's combination sequel to and remake of his 1967 gangster film classic Branded To Kill stars Makiko Esumi as Miyuki Minazuki, AKA "the Stray Cat," a beautiful female assassin. She is number three in the hierarchy of killers in her criminal organization at the Read More

Koufuku No Kane

Actors: Susumu Terajima, Naomi Nishida, Seijun Suzuki, Ryoko Shinohara, Toru Masuoka

Synopsis: From the Japanese cult-flick director known simply as Sabu, Koufuku No Kane (The Blessing Bell) follows Igarashi (Susumu Terajima) through the last 24 hours before the factory he works for closes down, leaving him unemployed. After a job hunt brings him no results, Igarishi ponders his fate at the Read More

Cold Fever

Actors: Masatoshi Nagase, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Gisli Halldorsson, Laura Leigh Hughes

Synopsis: All poor Atsushi Hirata really wants is to leave the cold Japanese winter and take a week's vacation in warm Hawaii. Unfortunately, he ends up forced to honor tradition and travel to even more frigid Iceland to pay tribute to his late parents who died there seven years before. This internationally Read More

Yumeji

Crew: Director

Actors: Kenji Sawara, Tomoko Mariya, Yoshio Harada

Synopsis: The final film in his acclaimed Taisho trilogy, maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki directs his bizarre, hallucinatory tale about the tortured inner world of famed 1920s painter Yumeji Takehisa. The film opens with Takehisa (played by former rock star Kenji Sawada) at a garden party, entranced by a Read More

Lupin the 3rd: The Golden Legend of Babylon

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This animated Japanese film features the continuing adventures of Lupin, the thief and adventurer who was the hero of the classic animation The Castle of Cagliostro. Released in 1985, the influence of Raiders of the Lost Ark is apparent, as the story places Lupin III on the trail of a vast gold Read More

Capone's Floods of Tears

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Acclaimed director Seijun Suzuki's first film for Shochuku Studios is a disappointing comedy of interest to completists only. Ken Hagiwara stars as a Japanese naniwa-bushi singer who travels to the United States with his wife, dreaming of fame and fortune. What might have played as an interesting Read More

Kagero-za

Crew: Director

Actors: Yusaku Matsuda, Mariko Kaga

Synopsis: The inner workings of the human psyche are featured in this study of relationships between different leading characters. The action weaves around playwright Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda) -- who is sleeping with Shinako (Michio Okusu), a married woman -- and his other "lover," Ine (Eriko Kasuda), a Read More

Zigeunerweisen

Crew: Director

Actors: Yoshio Harada, Naoko Otani, Toshiya Fujita, Michiyo Okusa

Synopsis: This is an enigmatic and challenging film in many ways. It is set in the 1930s and colored with nuances of the strange and sinister, one component of the Nazis' "world view" at that time. Japan's connections to Germany during this period leading up to World War II are brought forward in the German Read More

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness

Crew: Director

Branded to Kill

Crew: Director

Actors: Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Koji Nanbara, Mari Annu

Synopsis: A delirious fever dream of a film, Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill takes the familiar elements of "B"-movie crime drama and transforms them into something outrageously bizarre and unexpectedly poetic. The film's story centers on Hanada, a.k.a. "No. 3 Killer," the third-best hit man in Japanese Read More

The Fighting Elegy

Crew: Director

Actors: Hideki Takahashi, Junko Asano

Synopsis: In this sharp satire from acclaimed Japanese director Seijun Suzuki, Hideki Takahashi plays Kiroku, a middle-school student who finds himself troubled by an obsessive lust for the virginal Michiko (Junko Asano), the daughter of the family with whom he boards. But Kiroku soon discovers the perfect Read More

Kawachi Carmen

Crew: Director

Actors: Yumiko Nogawa

Synopsis: An interesting variant on Bizet's Carmen from acclaimed director Seijun Suzuki, this experimental film tells of young Karumen (Yumiko Nogawa), who leaves home after being gang-raped by thugs from school. She goes to Osaka, where men fall at her feet when she becomes a nightclub singer. The film is Read More

Tokyo Drifter

Crew: Director

Actors: Tetsuya Watari, Tamio Kawachi, Hideaki Nitani

Synopsis: Tokyo Drifter stands with Branded to Kill as one of the best-known and most acclaimed films of Seijun Suzuki, one of Japan's most talented maverick directors. A colorful riot of an action drama, Tokyo Drifter, like many of Suzuki's films, transforms a standard gangster film plot into a vehicle for Read More

Warui Hoshi no Shita Demo

Crew: Director

Tattooed Life

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In Japan, the gangsters wear tattoos. A lot of tattoos. In fact, without their clothes, it almost looks as if they are wearing a particularly tight-fitting, gaudy ensemble. When two brothers who want to quit the gangster life go to work in a mine, they are harassed by the other miners Read More

Story of a Prostitute

Crew: Director

Actors: Tamio Kawachi

Synopsis: Seijun Suzuki directed this hard-hitting account of a woman who volunteers to serve as a "comfort woman" (prostitute to the Japanese army) at the Manchurian front in 1937. Harumi (Yukimo Nogawa) is desperate to get out of Japan to escape the memory of a doomed romance. She offers to serve the Army Read More

Hana to Doto

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Seijun Suzuki directed this great-looking adventure set in early 1900s Tokyo. Akira Kobayashi stars as a coal-miner who leads a rebellion against a nasty tyrant. Tamio Kawaji stands out in a flamboyantly villainous turn in a cast including Chieko Matsubara and Osamu Takizawa. The impressive set Read More

Oretachi No Chi Ga Yurusanai

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Famed Japanese director Seijun Suzuki made this stylish low-budget gangster film about two brothers (Akira Kobayashi, Hideki Takahashi) who take on the Yakuza, seeking revenge for a murdered girl. It's a rather good-looking film, thanks to the visual effects by Suzuki's frequent collaborator Itsuo Read More

Gate of Flesh

Crew: Director

Actors: Jo Shishido, Satoko Kasai, Yumiko Nogawa

Synopsis: Gate of Flesh is one of the earliest examples of the sado-masochistic soft-core sex films called pinku eiga that would grow by the 1970s into one of Japan's largest, and domestically most popular, genres. Seijun Suzuki directed this gritty, stridently anti-American account of prostitution, set in Read More

Kanto Wanderer

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Japanese auteur Seijin Suzuki directs yakuza icon Akira Kobayashi in this typically stylish tale of a feared bodyguard caught in the middle of a deadly battle between two powerful crime bosses. Katsuta (Kobayashi) works for Izu, and when overly-ambitious rival boss Yoshida makes a desperate power Read More

Youth of the Beast

Crew: Director

Actors: Jo Shishido

Synopsis: Youth of the Beast marked a turning point in director Seijun Suzuki's career. No longer content to just crank out production-line gangster films, here Suzuki starts to assert his own voice. The plot is fairly typical for the genre: chipmunk-cheeked Jo Shishido stars as ex-cop Jo Mizuno, who Read More

Akutaro

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Another of Seijun Suzuki's early works in which it is hard to see any promise (he directed 27 films before Kanto Mushuki made his name), this standard juvenile-crime movie is nonetheless important historically. It was the director's first collaboration with Itsuo Kimura, the art director whose Read More

Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell, Bastards!

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Japanese director Seijun Suzuki solidified his growing cult following with this offbeat adaptation of Haruhiko Ooyabu's crime novel. Jo Shishido stars as Det. Tajima, a smug investigator who nabs a pair of criminal gangs with flamboyant aplomb while the police remain baffled. Suzuki treats the Read More

Ore Ni Kaketa Yatsura

Crew: Director

High Teen Yazuka

Crew: Director

Muteppo Taisho

Crew: Director

Kaikyo, Chi ni Somete

Crew: Director

Synopsis: After years of fairly mediocre films for Nikkatsu, director Seijun Suzuki finally had a hit with this entertaining story of various cases handled by the Japanese Coast Guard. Koji Wada became the object of much love-struck giggling by teenage girls across the country, rebounding from his flop Read More

Hyakuman Doru o Tatakidase

Crew: Director

Toge O Wataru Wakai Kaze

Crew: Director

Sandanju No Otoko

Crew: Director

Tokyo Kishitai

Crew: Director

Sono Gososha o Nerae

Crew: Director

Mikko Zero Line

Crew: Director

Kemono No Nemuri

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This grim early crime film from future-great Seijun Suzuki is a matter-of-fact tale about an aging office-worker who gets duped into taking part in a drug-running operation. Distraught, the old man kills the Yakuza kingpin, burns down his offices, and commits suicide. It's not a very pleasant Read More

Kutabare Gurentai

Crew: Director

Subete Ga Kurutteru

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Fashion model Yoshiko Yatsu and Tamio Kawaji star in this grim drama about a pair of alienated teenagers falling into a life of crime and sadomasochistic games. Director Seijun Suzuki's film is similar to A Bout de Souffle in style, but takes its dissolute characters the traditional one step Read More

Suppadaka No Nenrei

Crew: Director

Ankoku no Ryoken

Crew: Director

Rabu Retaa

Crew: Director

Kagenaki Koe

Crew: Director

Aoi Chibusa

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Singer Akira Kobayashi stars as an alienated teenager named Yoshi in this disappointing juvenile-delinquent film from acclaimed director Seijun Suzuki. Yoshi falls in love with his social worker, leading to the expected complications. Sachiko Hidari and Hideaki Nitani co-star in this rather dated Read More

Underworld Beauty

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Seijun Suzuki changed his name from "Seitaro Suzuki" with this lurid crime film, one of over two dozen he directed before moving into the big leagues with Kanto Mushuki (1963). Mari Shiraki (Rajo To Kenju) stars as a gangster's girlfriend who is pushed into joining his diamond-smuggling operation. Read More

Fumihazushita Haru

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Seijun Suzuki's sequel to 1958's Aoi Chibusa is more of the same, as reformed juvenile delinquent Yoshi (pop star Akira Kobayashi) tries to adjust to polite society. Mihoko Inagaki co-stars, and Suzuki's growing malaise at low budgets and unreasonable mandates from his bosses at Nikkatsu Studios Read More

Hachijikan No Kyofu

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This standard Japanese melodrama was heavily re-edited after director Seijun Suzuki (under his real name, Seitaro Suzuki) turned it into a comedy rather than the intended crime-thriller. The plot concerns a passenger train which is stalled when a typhoon wrecks the tracks. The commuters are Read More

Rajo to Kenju

Crew: Director

Ukigusa no Yado

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Japanese pop singer Hachiro Kasuga co-stars in this film version of her hit record of the same title. Hideaki Nitani plays the young aspiring gangster who is sent to jail for a murder he did not commit. He then gets out and goes after the Yakuza kingpin who framed him. Kasuga appears as a customs Read More

Hozuna Wa Uta-U: Umi No Junjo

Crew: Director

Akuma No Machi

Crew: Director

Minato No Kanpai: Shori o Wagate Ni

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The directorial debut of prolific filmmaker Seijun Suzuki (using his real name, Seitaro Suzuki), this low-budget youth picture stood above most of its ilk. The film belongs to a loosely-related subgenre known as the Kayo-eiga, which have in common only that they were each based on hit pop records Read More