10 Questions with Shane Briant

by Kimberly Lindbergs | May 4, 2009

Categories | Books, Actors, British Cinema, Hammer Horror, Interviews, Featured, Gay Interest

Shane Briant in Straight on Till Morning (1972)

The talented British’ born actor Shane Briant made his screen debut in the Hammer horror film Demons of the Mind. Since then he’s gone on to appear in over 60 films and television productions including Straight On Till Morning (1972), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), The Mackintosh Man (1973), Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974), The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981). Currently Briant is focusing his attention on writing and he has recently completed a psychological thriller called Worst Nightmares that will be released in the US on May 12th. I’ve admired his film work for many years so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to ask Shane Briant a few questions about his early movies and current writing projects. READ MORE

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Feroz Khan 1939-2009

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 27, 2009

Categories | News, Actors, Directors, Bollywood

Sad news this morning from India. Bollywood legend Feroz Khan has died at age 69 due to complications from cancer. Feroz Khan is beloved by Bollywood fans for his work as a director and actor who appeared in many of his own productions such as Apradh (1972), Dharmatma (1975), Qurbani (1979), Janbaaz (1986) and Yalgaar (1992). READ MORE

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10 Characters I Love

by Kimberly Lindbergs | April 10, 2009

Categories | Rants & Raves, Actors, Actresses, Terence Stamp, Klaus Kinski, Pierre Clementi, Delphine Seyrig

The task: Make a list of 10 of your favorite film characters. As much as I tend to dislike these blog memes, I couldn’t say no to The Agitation of the Mind, Coosa Creak Cinema and Bubblegum Aesthetics so I finally took the plunge and decided to participate. Like any self-respecting film enthusiast I have hundreds of favorite film characters, but here’s a short list of 10. I decided not to comment on my selections so I’ll leave it up to my readers to figure out the why’s and what for behind each of my choices.

1. Freddie Clegg as played by Terence Stamp
The Collector (William Wyler; 1965)

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Resurrecting Yusaku Matsuda

by Kimberly Lindbergs | March 27, 2009

Categories | Movie Reviews, Actors, Japanese Cinema, Crime, Featured

The many faces of Yusaku Matsuda (1950-1989)

Toru Murakawa’s Resurrection of the Golden Wolf (aka Yomigaeru kinrô; 1979) is a wildly uneven Japanese crime film that left me wishing it had been helmed by another director. The film’s script was adapted from a popular novel by Haruhiko Ooyabu and directors like Seijun Suzuki have had great success turning Ooyabu’s hard-boiled fiction into films, but Toru Murakawa doesn’t have Suzuki’s eye for detail or his pop art sensibility. Resurrection of the Golden Wolf runs much too long and the dramatic filler weighs down the action, but even with its flaws the movie still keeps your attention thanks to the star performance of Yusaku Matsuda (aka Yuusaku Matsuda).

In the film Matsuda plays a ruthless super criminal named Tetsuya Asakura in the grand tradition of Fantomas, Diabolik and Kriminal. During the day he pretends to be a mild-mannered accountant wearing Clark Kent style glasses and a bad wig, but once the sun goes down he leaves his suit and tie act behind and heads to a secret lair to plot his diabolical schemes. When the film opens Tetsuya has just committed his greatest heist yet, which nets him a cool 100 milllion yen. But he soon finds out that the bills are all marked and in turn, utterly useless. He decides to invest the bad bills into heroin in an effort to turn a profit, but this leads Tetsuya into the dark underbelly of the Japanese criminal underworld and things soon become more complicated than he had imagined. Sex, drugs, blackmail and murder are just a few of the film’s key ingredients, but unfortunately the movie never really comes together like it should have.

Some of the action scenes are impressive and creatively shot, but just when you think the film’s picking up steam it seems to stumble and lose its focus. This made watching Resurrection of the Golden Wolf an incredibly frustrating experience at times. I found myself wanting to yell at the screen more than once and I wondered out loud why the director had made certain choices that didn’t pay off like they could have if someone like Seijun Suzuki was behind the camera. The film also has a misogynistic streak that’s a little nasty and hard to stomach. There’s absolutely no interesting female characters in the entire film and the ones that do appear are terribly underwritten and lifeless. But in the final analysis my complaints about the movie stand in the long shadow of Yusaku Matsuda’s unforgettable performance as tough-guy Tetsuya Asakura and he’s the real reason to watch Resurrection of the Golden Wolf.

Yusaku Matsuda in Resurrection of the Golden Wolf (1979)

Yusaku Matsuda is a remarkably physical actor and his tall, lean, confident frame owns every scene he appears in. He doesn’t just say his lines, he growls and barks them at his costars. Even fellow actors like the great Sonny Chiba seem intimidated by Matsuda’s powerful presence. Much like his predecessor Joe Shishido, Matsuda is a lone wolf who doesn’t run with the rest of the pack. He inhabits the nasty character of Tetsuya Asakura so completely that you’ll find yourself wondering about the actor’s history. Is he just another talented thespian or does Matsuda have the kind of past that would make real criminals blush? In truth, he’s a bit of an enigma in real-life and on film. Much of Matsuda’s background is a mystery, but it’s believed that he was born in a Japanese brothel and grew up on the island of Honshu before finding himself on the streets of San Francisco. His youthful memories consisted of drunken fights and botched suicide attempts according to Mark Schilling who wrote a detailed biography about the actor for the Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (1997). Matsuda overcame his reckless adolescence and painful past when he returned to Japan and became involved in acting. While working in theater he learned to channel his inner rage and personal turmoil into his performances, which gave him an authenticity that is rarely seen in modern actors

Like many American filmgoers, I first encountered Yusaku Matsuda in Ridley Scott’s action-packed police drama Black Rain back in 1989. In the film Matsuda plays a ruthless Yakuza gangster by the name of Sato who struts through the film sporting dark sunglasses and a long black trench coat. Once you’ve seen the film you’ll never forget his wicked grin and maniacal laugh. He’s arguably the best thing in Ridley Scott’s film. Unfortunately for film audiences, Sato would be Yusaku Matsuda’s last role. The actor was diagnosed with cancer before shooting Black Rain began, but his desire to make a Hollywood film and star opposite popular American actor’s like Michael Douglas made him postpone possible treatment. Could doctors have kept Yusaku Matsuda alive for a few more years? We’ll never know. The disease killed the 40-year-old actor just a few months after Black Rain was released.

Even though Yusaku Matsuda’s career ended prematurely, he did leave us with a rich and fascinating legacy. His talented son Ryuhei Matsuda (Taboo, Cutie Honey, Izo, Rampo Noir, Big Bang Love Juvenile A, Nightmare Detective, Tokyo Serendipity, etc.) is one of the best actors working in Japan today. Like his father before him, Ryuhei Matsuda is also a very physical performer, but his personal approach to acting is completely different. His father is symbolically tied to the image of a lone wolf, but Ryuhei seems to have much more in common with an unwieldy reptile. Instead of a tough-as-nails facade, Ryuhei possess an almost feminine grace as well as incredible beauty that is both charming and disarming.

In Japan Yusaku Matsuda has become an iconic figure and the subject of countless books, film festivals, comics, music tributes and art exhibits, but this legendary actor remains virtually unknown in the US. This is mainly due to the fact that so few of the films and television shows he appeared in are available here and most have never been shown outside of Japan. Information about him at IMDB.com and Wikipedia is woefully sparse and inaccurate, but that might change in the future since the films that Yusaku Matsuda’s starred in are slowly finding their way onto DVD. Hopefully we can look forward to a time when Yusaku Matsuda’s work becomes accessible to a whole new generation of American film fans, historians and critics.

Resurrection of the Golden Wolf was released on DVD by Adness in 2005, but since then the DVD has unfortunately gone out of print. You can currently find new and used copies of the film selling for as low as $2 at Amazon.

Yusaku Matsuda Films Currently Available on DVD in the US:
- Resurrection of the Golden Wolf (Toru Murakawa; 1979)
- Kagero-za (Seijun Suzuki; 1981)
- The Family Game (Yoshimitsu Morita; 1983)
- Black Rain (Ridley Scott; 1989)

Recommended Links:
- Offical Site for Yusaku Matsuda
- Yusaku Matsuda Forever (Fan site)
- Offical Site for Ryuhei Matsuda (Yusaku Matsuda’s son)

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Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

by Kimberly Lindbergs | January 14, 2009

Categories | News, Actors, Spies & Secret Agents, Television

Patrick McGoohan, 1967

2009 is gotten off to a rough start. After the death of Bob Wilkins, I caught wind of the news that the talented British actor Patrick McGoohan has passed away at the age of 80. The incredible television series The Prisoner (1967-68) was McGoohan’s own creation and a follow-up to the previous television series he starred in, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent Man, 1964-67). Both shows are available on DVD and they’re well worth watching in their entirety, but The Prisoner is arguably the best television show ever created.

Besides acting, writing and directing for television, McGoohan also appeared in some terrific films. A couple of my favorite Patrick McGoohan performances can be found in All Night Long (1962) where he plays a cool as ice jazz musician in this original take on Shakespeare’s Othello and in Ice Station Zebra (1968) where McGoohan easily out shines the rest of the cast playing a role he perfected on television, a British spy. He was also memorable as Dr. Paul Ruth in Scanners (1981) and as the warden in Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

Style, class, brains, good looks and a wonderful voice that commanded your attention were just a few of the things that made McGoohan stand apart from many of his contemporaries. Unfortunately the qualities that McGoohan possessed seem to be in short supply these days so I’m sad to see him go.

“I am not a number! I am a free man!”
- Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner)

Patrick McGoohan was definitely not just a number. He was a great actor and I wish he had appeared in more films during his lifetime.

Some recommended links:
- David Hudson collects some links to various Patrick McGoohan obits and tributes at IFC Daily
- Tim Lucas on the final escape of The Prisoner.

Hopefully the rest of my January posts will be less dreary. I’ve been mourning my recently deceased cat and busy with work, so I haven’t had much time for blogging about movies lately. I am slowly compiling my Favorite DVDs of 2008 list that I hope to share before the month is over so keep an eye out for that.

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Time to party!

by Kimberly Lindbergs | November 4, 2008

Categories | News, Actors, Elliot Gould

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David Bowie is The Image (1967)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | October 27, 2008

Categories | Movie Reviews, Actors, Horror, British Cinema, Gay Interest

David Bowie in the ’60s

It’s impossible to put into words the impact that David Bowie’s music has had on me throughout the years, but there probably isn’t another living music artist who I admire more. I started listening to Bowie’s music when I was just 12 years old and one of my earliest concert memories is of seeing Bowie’s 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour at the Oakland Coliseum. Around the same time I also saw David Bowie star in Nicolas Roeg’s groundbreaking science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) when it played on a double bill with Performance. Over the years my admiration for Bowie’s acting abilities as well as his recording career has only grown.

David Bowie’s first acting role was in an eerie and surrealistic silent horror short called The Image (1967) directed by British filmmaker and writer Michael Armstrong. Armstrong’s directing credits include the Tigon horror anthology The Haunted House of Horror (1969) as well as the effective and memorable Mark of the Devil (1970), which tells the story of two 17th century witch hunters (Udo Kier and Herbert Lom) and was obviously inspired by the 1968 Tigon film The Witchfinder General. Armstrong is also responsible for writing the script for Pete Walker’s horror comedy House Of The Long Shadows and co-writing Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce with Dan O’Bannon. This list of Michael Armstrong’s credits may not seem all that impressive to your average film viewer, but it should spark the interest of some horror fans.

The Image was Michael Armstrong’s first film and along with David Bowie, it also stars the hard working actor Michael Byrne in one of his earliest roles. Byrne appeared in the excellent horror film Vampyres (1974) and had minor roles in many popular war based dramas and action films made during the seventies including Conduct Unbecoming (1975), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Telefon (1977). Today he’s probably mostly known for his appearences in popular modern films such as Braveheart (1995), Gangs of New York (2002) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

In The Image Michael Byrne plays a troubled artist haunted by a ghostly young man who appears to step right out of one of his paintings. David Bowie plays the mysterious apparition who is haunting the artist and his unusual good looks and other-worldly appearance are used to great effect here. Bowie was just 20-years-old when he made his acting debut, but he had studied with the avant-garde performance artist and actor Lindsay Kemp who included elements of Mime and Butoh into his teaching. Bowie obviously made use of the skills he developed studying under Kemp for his role in The Image and his wordless performance as an unrelenting spectre is undoubtedly the most memorable element of this short film. But The Image also contains an interesting minimalist soundtrack and some nice looking black and white photography from Ousama Rawi.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray probably influenced Michael Armstrong’s script and it’s possible that some might see a homoerotic undercurrent running through the film, which is interesting when you consider the rumors surrounding David Bowie ’s relationship with his openly gay acting teacher Lindsay Kemp. But director Michael Armstrong has only described The Image as “A study of the illusionary reality world within the schizophrenic mind of the artist at his point of creativity.”

The Image was shot in just three days and completed in 1967, but it didn’t have its official screen debut until 1969. Due to the violent content of the film it became one of the first shorts to receive an ‘X’ certificate from Britain’s notoriously restrictive film rating’s board. The Image seemed to disappear into obscurity after its limited release, but in recent years it has been rediscovered and restored. This brief 14 minute film is currently available on YouTube and makes for some great Halloween viewing.

If you’d like to learn more about the making of The Image I recommend visiting Michael Armstrong’s official website where you’ll find images from the film as well as the original script that you can download and read for free.

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