a.k.a. Kurosen Chitai / Black Line Zone
company: Shintoho Studios
year: 1960
runtime: 80′
country: Japan
director: Teruo Ishii
cast: Shigeru Amachi, Utako Mitsuya,
Yoko Mihara, Toshio Hosokawa
not on home video in the USA
order this film from Amazon.co.jp
Anyone who knows anything at all about the history of cinema’s seedy underbelly should find the name Teruo Ishii instantly recognizable. He’s a legend among the pantheon of Japanese cult film directors [rightfully dubbed the "King of Cult" in his native country] and most famous for the ero-guro [erotic-grotesque] pictures he produced for Toei studios throughout the 60′s and 70′s. Those who know him only for that work may find his humble beginnings, directing low budget genre fare [most famously 6 entries in the Space Giants series, better known as the Starman chronicles here in the States] for Shintoho Studios, as something of a surprise.
In 1958, in the midst of making spandex-laden Tokusatsus and crowd pleasing romances, Ishii found himself directing crime pictures as well. The most notable of these, by far, belong in the director’s five part chitai [or line] series – which kicked off with SECRET WHITE LINE [SHIROSEN HIMITSU CHITAI] in September of that year. That film, concerned with an underground prostitution ring, was successful enough that Shintoho allowed the series to continue – the thematic sequel BLACK LINE [KUROSEN CHITAI] saw release in January of 1960.
BLACK LINE starts with a bang, with footage of a frightened young woman running through the streets of neon-lit night-time Shinjuku playing under the opening credits as a brassy jazz cue ratchets up the thrill factor. Once the credits are dispensed with we find out who’s chasing her – a reporter nicknamed Scoop [Amatsu, who more famously starred in Nobuo Nakagawa's JIGOKU later that same year] who’s on the trail of an underground prostitution ring known as the ‘Black Line’. A fortune teller on the street points him in the direction of the woman he’s after – and her pimp. While he [and the pimp] wait in a hotel room for the young woman to arrive, someone slips Scoop a rufi that knocks him down for the count.
He awakens the next morning to find himself sleeping beside the young woman from the night before. The only problem is that she’s dead, with Scoop’s tie tightened around her throat. He doesn’t stick around, and wipes down his surroundings on exit, but a planted whiskey glass and a set of fingerprints is all the authorities need to make Scoop their prime suspect. Determined to find those behind the set-up before the police find him and finding welcome aid in the form of a reporter buddy [who believes in his innocence], Scoop goes on a hunt for the truth that will take him from the lowest depths of the Tokyo night life to the top ranks of the ‘Black Line’ operation.
The story for BLACK LINE, co-written by Ishii with Ichiro Miyagawa, is a motley assortment of hardboiled crime fiction tropes – a man wrongly accused and caught in a wide ranging conspiracy against him, an evil organization dabbling in drugs and prostitution that’s behind it, and the requisite strip clubs, darkened city streets, and flashing neon lights. It’s nothing that’s not been seen in crime films before, but the film never lingers on any one point long enough for it to feel stale – BLACK LINE clocks in at a brisk 80 minutes, with very little slackening of the pace between the explosive opening credits and closing fade.
Ishii’s transposition of western film noir sensibilities onto his own familiar surroundings seems effortless, and he uses them well to showcase the seedier sides of post-occupation Japan. Unlike some others at the time [Kiji Fukasaku notably], Ishii’s exploration of these underground elements was focused squarely on the potential for entertainment – and it succeeds wonderfully. The director was working under tremendous monetary and temporal constraint – the color chitai entry YELLOW LINE would be in the can and in theaters just three and a half months later, with Ishii finding the time to direct GIRLS WITHOUT RETURN TICKETS in between. He more than makes up for any lack of time or budget through his high-energy direction and fanciful cinematography [see the second image], proving that talent and prolificity are not always mutually exclusive.
BLACK LINE benefits considerably from a stable of Shintoho contract players, chief among them the charismatic Shigeru Amachi – who would play a less sympathetic lead in the darker YELLOW LINE and return for the official end of the series [doomed by Shintoho's bankruptcy] in 1961′s FIRE LINE. The jazzy score by Michiaki Watanabe [JIGOKU, 100 MONSTERS, ALONG WITH GHOSTS] is fantastic as well, with his hard-hitting opening theme setting the tone for the rest of the picture quite nicely.
There is an official release of BLACK LINE on region 2 disc from Geneon in Japan, available as part of a box set of all five chitai series films or individually [SECRET WHITE LINE is currently only available as part of the boxed set]. The anamorphic and progressive scope transfer looks quite good considering the age of the elements – audio is a fine monophonic Japanese track and, unfortunately, doesn’t come with any subtitling options. With Criterion releasing a Nikkatsu Noir set on their Eclipse label, surely it’s not too much to ask for some enterprising distributor to pick up BLACK LINE and its companion pieces for the US market.
This is one of the very best of Teruo Ishii’s early films, and one of the two real high points in the chitai series. Later entries would shift in style from the dark [YELLOW LINE] to the comedic [1961's SEXY LINE], but it’s BLACK LINE that gets the mix just right – and it’s an exemplary piece of pulp entertainment because of it. Difficult to track down outside of Japan but well worth the effort involved, this one gets an easy recommendation from this bona fide Ishii fan. See it.
