Gorō Tanada — Playwright (21)
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Heavenly Dragon (1960) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
天竜母恋い笠
director: Eiichi Kudō actor: Hibari Misora / Tomisaburō Wakayama …
other title: 天竜母恋い笠
From the opening theme song to the grand finale, you know that you have found something special as this exciting movie stars the great Misora Hibari in one of her most memorable performances as she plays Shintaro and Oharu, a brother and sister, the children of a lumber dealer who had been murdered by the evil boss Kumagoro who plots to take over Shintaro's family business with the help of a corrupt deputy who has fooled the family into believing that he is on their side.
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Gambling Den Desire (1970) [Movie] IMDb WikiData TMDB
鉄火場慕情
director: Keiichi Ozawa actor: Chieko Matsubara / Takahiro Tamura …
other title: 鉄火場慕情
In a small town on the Kasumigaura coast in the early Showa period, the Masukawa clan from Tokyo is trying to take away the interests of the local Isetoku family. Setsuko, the adopted daughter of the Isetoku family, falls in love with Seijiro, a travelling raven she meets on a whim. However, Koide, a businessman connected to the Masukawa clan, wants Setsuko to become his mistress... Setsuko puts aside her love and her regrets and bets on the greatest female challenge of her life!
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Ditch (1954) [Movie] IMDb WikiData TMDB
どぶ
director: Kaneto Shindō actor: Nobuko Otowa / Jūkichi Uno …
other title: La zanja / どぶ …
Postwar Tokyo. Pin and Toku live in the squatter area of Kappanuma. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru, a slightly demented woman who has run away from a geisha house.
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Hazardous Graduation (1970) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
女子学園　ヤバイ卒業
director: Yukihiro Sawada actor: Junko Natsu / Jiro Okazaki …
other title: Girls' Junior High School 2: Trouble at Graduation / 女子学園　ヤバイ卒業
Sex games by students at a junior high school are exposed by the principal and teachers, but the tables are turned in favor of the students.
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Tale of Army Brutality (1963) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
陸軍残虐物語
director: Junya Satō actor: Rentaro Mikuni / Katsuo Nakamura …
other title: 陸軍残虐物語
Director Jun'ya Satô's debut film focuses on the inhuman training of recruits, the brutal drill system that reigned in the Japanese army during World War II, where in the first two years of training, ordinary people were turned into inhuman killers. For his first film, the director was awarded the Blue Ribbon Awards in the Debutant of the Year nomination.
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Raised in a Palace (1964) [Movie] WikiData IMDb TMDB
廓育ち
director: Junya Satō actor: Yoshiko Mita / Katsuo Nakamura …
other title: 廓育ち
Set in the pleasure district of Kyoto, Tamiko (Yoshiko Mita, in her first lead role) is a young girl attending high school by day and training as a geisha at night She sees her future as an entertainer, not a prostitute, & she expects a happy marriage with a medical student, Yasuke (Katsuo Nakamura), a sweet fellow she deeply loves. but things started to getting worse for Tamiko and she's forced to become the mistress of the disgusting Tsukada (Seiji Miyaguchi).
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Hirado Pirates (1955) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
天保六道銭 平戸の海賊
director: Kiyoshi Saeki actor: Ryutaro Otomo / Ryūnosuke Tsukigata …
other title: 天保六道銭 平戸の海賊
In the 9th year of the Tempo era, after a long sea voyage, Moritaya Seizo returned to Hirado, who earned huge amounts of gold by piracy. Along the way, he picked up Ichinojo Kaneko, a Ronin who survived the disaster at sea. Seizo and Orin, the daughter of merchant Yohei, are in love with each other and want to get married. However, Kashiwakura Gaiki, the samurai of the domain, wants to kill Seizo for the sake of his son Shozaburo, who is in love with Arin, and Kurando Matsuura, the owner of the castle, wants to seize all the gold for himself...
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Henchmen (1968) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
代貸
director: Kiyoshi Saeki actor: Tatsuo Umemiya / Tomisaburō Wakayama …
other title: 代貸
The three henchmen join forces to challenge the brutal gang that is trying to control the city of Izu in Shizuoka during the early Showa period. Representatives of three different yakuza gangs - Tatsuo Umemiya, Tomisaburo Wakayama and Koji Tsuruta celebrate male friendship and male chivalry in action.
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A Gambler's Certain Death (1969) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
必殺博奕打ち
director: Kiyoshi Saeki actor: Koji Tsuruta / Isamu Nagato …
other title: 必殺博奕打ち
Part 7 in the Gambling Den series. This time Koji Tsuruta is a gambler who feels sympathetic towards a woman whose naive husband is driven to a debt trap by a rotten gambling den owner (Tatsuo Endo) and his dishonest card dealer (Isamu Nagato). The plot is standard stuff and features too much talk, but there's also a decent balance between melodrama and lyricism in the form and storytelling. Tsuruta was a perfect fit for these kind of roles, with the stoic and emotional sides nicely mixed in his screen persona.
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Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza (1968) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
人生劇場 飛車角と吉良常
director: Tomu Uchida actor: Koji Tsuruta / Tomisaburō Wakayama …
other title: 人生劇場 飛車角と吉良常
With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.
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Blood-Red Water in the Channel (1961) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
海峡、血に染めて
director: Seijun Suzuki actor: Kōji Wada / Ryōji Hayama …
other title: 海峡、血に染めて
Nikkatsu finally responds to Suzuki's growing discontentment by giving him a bigger budget and a better script. This episodic collection of "real coast guard action stories" was the perfect vehicle for Koji Wada. Whatever negative press he had received for Tokyo Knights was quickly forgotten. He became the new "teen star." And Suzuki: "the director to watch."