The Creature Called Man (1970)

Wolves, Pigs & Men

Sabu and his pals hold a pauper's funeral for Sabu's mother. His brother Jiro arrives home, fresh out of jail, and Sabu pointedly states that Jiro is not invited. Jiro meanwhile is planning a big job - steal 40 million in cash and drugs, and he invites Sabu and gang to act as decoys, for 50,000 each. The sting is a success, but the double-crossing starts almost immediately. Sabu discovers how little of the take they were promised and hides the stash. Jiro and his slimy partner pressure the kids to fess up. Meanwhile, their respectable elder brother Ichiro is being leaned on by the town's big boss, whose money it was.

The Bad Sleep Well

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their corporate headquarters, but an aspect of the design reminds the party of the hushed-up death of Nishi's father. It is then that Nishi unleashes his plan to avenge his father's death.

Endless Desire

Set in post-war Japan, a group of five, four men and one woman, gathers in the basement of a butcher shop to dig up a cache of morphine buried during the war. A grimly humorous tale of twisted relationships as one by one each of the group is eliminated.

A Colt Is My Passport

A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy.

High and Low

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake.

Tokyo Drifter

After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.

I Am Waiting

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.

Rusty Knife

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a city council member. Evidence about the case leads the D.A. to Tachibana, struggling to go straight after involvement with the mob and a prison sentence for killing the man responsible for the rape and suicide of his fiancée. One of Tachibana's friends is Keiko, the daughter of the dead councilman and the ward of another powerful official. How do these stories connect?

Cruel Gun Story

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's sister, Rie, to a wheelchair. They want Togawa to hijack an armored truck loaded with 120 million yen; their leverage is to promise him money for surgery for Rie. Togawa consents and plans the heist with three others. The plan is solid, but it doesn't go smoothly. Togawa must improvise, there are traitors somewhere, and double-crosses mount. Can Togawa escape with enough money to help his sister and ensure a passage out of Japan?

Cash Calls Hell

Before leaving prison, Oida uncomfortably enters into an agreement with his cell mate: in exchange for a half-share of 30,000,000 yen, he is to assassinate three strangers given to him on a list. However, upon meeting his first potential victim, Oida has second thoughts. Yet, even as he tries to back out, the body count starts climbing. Oida must now try to alert the people on his list of their impending danger, and find out why they are being targeted in the first place.

The Threat

Two escaped criminals who kidnapped a baby break into the house of Misawa, a man who works in an advertising agency and lives quietly with his family. They will force him to collect the child's ransom for them.

The Warped Ones

A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and immediately embarks on a rampage of untethered anger, most of it directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.

Stolen Pleasure

Based on the original novel by Tokuda Shusei, adapted by frequent Masumura scribe Kaneto Shindo, this downbeat melodrama features a battle of women for the affections and commitment of the same man, a handsome car salesman. Masuko is the number one hostess at a cabaret, living with her lover, ... but finds out that he has a wife. When Masuko’s niece arrives the competition further ratchets up.

Red Pier

Shortly after arriving in Kobe, "Jiro the Lefty", a killer with a natural talent, witnesses a man die in a crane accident which turns out to be a cover-up for a murder. Jiro soon finds himself on the run, tailed by a determined cop.

Good-for-Nothing

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father. The woman senses good in him and tries to lead him on the right path.

Intimidation

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. The marvelously moody Intimidation is an elegantly stripped-down and carefully paced crime drama.

Ten Dark Women

Kaze is a philandering TV producer. His wife and nine of his mistresses conspire to kill him. However each woman would rather keep him alive, as long as she was the only woman in his life.

The False Student

A youth drama set in a Japanese university which is home to a group of active, leftist students.

The Beast Shall Die

A promising post-graduate literature student is transformed into a psychotic killer following the suicide of his father and a sleazy affair by his mother with a younger man.

The Shadow Within

When a married man begins an affair with a woman from his past, he comes to suspect her young son intends to murder him.

The Challenge

Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a suspenseful thriller while offering a critique of political corruption, hypocrisy, and journalistic cowardice in postwar Japan.

Internal Sleuth

When 150 guns are stolen from Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective criminal tries to find out the truth.

The Desperate

A noir drama depicting the downfall of a veteran detective who hates evil and falls into its depths. Ace detective Sugai pursues Chiyo, the mistress of a man who was arrested for extortion, and takes advantage of her weakness. However, as his colleague Tokumochi and others regard him with suspicion, he is tormented by remorse.

Greed in Broad Daylight

After a successful robbery the culprits, from very different backgrounds, at once turn on each other.

Badge of the Night

A noir action whodunit with Kobayashi his usual jaunty self as the smart aleck private eye whose missing person search soon becomes a murder case. Nightclub-managing, drug-dealing gangster Uchida is the prime suspect in the case until he commits suicide. Kobayashi then discovers evidence that points to the doctor sibling of an innocent girl. The climax in a rural snowy locale is suspenseful and well-staged.

Yuganda tsuki

Plot unavailable

The Lost Alibi

Suspense drama about a married salaryman whose affair with one of his co-workers is compromised when, returning from a clandestine meeting with his lover, he runs into a neighbor who is later accused of murder. Questioned by police about the neighbor, and blackmailed by his lover's neighbor, the salaryman's lies lead him on a path to destruction.

Take Aim at the Police Van

A sniper kills two prisoners in a police van, and the driver sets out to find the killer.

Pale Flower

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

The Man Without a Map

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.

The Perfect Game

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even more serious crime.

The Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot

In 1991, Wanda Holloway was arrested for trying to hire a hit man to kill her daughter Shanna's cheerleading rival so that Shanna could get a place on the team. Now, Shanna reveals the truth behind what happened for the first time.

Black Line

Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.

Yellow Line

The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese women. A hired assassin is betrayed by his organization, and kidnaps a woman who happens to be the girlfriend of a newspaper reporter.

Sexy Line

It tells the story of a couple who fall into a trap set up by a sinister organization. One of them is a guy who is framed for the murder of his lover. The other is a woman pick-pocket who is entrapped by the organization's schemes involving their crimes. Fate places them together, and they start to investigate the prostitution ring run by the organization...

A Killer's Key

Raizô Ichikawa reprises his role as the restaurant-cook-turned-contract-killer in this sequel to Kazuo Mori's stylish 1967 thriller A Certain Killer.

Seijun Suzuki: kabuki & yakuzas

Film director and screenwriter Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017), who in the sixties was the great innovator of Japanese cinema; and his collaborator, art director and screenwriter Takeo Kimura (1918-2010), recall how they made their great masterpieces about the Yakuza underworld for the Nikkatsu film company.

Bloody Border

What do you get when you mix two hit-men brothers, their cocky protege, a couple of injured illegal immigrants, border patrol agents and a few colorful townsfolk in the small border town of Bisbee, AZ whose water supply has been contaminated with MDPV otherwise known as 'bath salts'? A wild night of chases, gun fights, zombies, heated arguments touching on the controversial issue, AZ's SB1070, oh and a lot more zombies as this colorful group of individuals tries to escape the night on the Bloody Border.

Get 'em All

Gang of robbers quarrel about the loot, but when one of them gets killed, his younger brother seeks them out to ice them one by one.

OSARU-CHAN

When two brothers steal a valuable heirloom from an elderly Japanese woman, they unknowingly awaken her demigod son, Osaru, who does not take kindly to thieves.

Anime Supremacy!

Hitomi Saito has been climbing the ranks for years and is set to direct an anime series for the first time, while brilliant director Chiharu Oji is about to make his big comeback after nearly a decade.

Huhtikuu on kuukausista julmin

Plot unavailable

Alien Warfare

A team of Navy Seals investigates a mysterious science outpost only to have to combat a squad of powerful alien soldiers.

A mano disarmata

Plot unavailable

Badur Hogar

Juan meets Luciana at the worst point of his life. They build their relationship in atypical way: They spend the summer inside Badur Hogar elaborating together a series of lies that, unexpectedly, will lead them to face their truths.

Practice

Trine refuses to fly. When the 18-year-old environmental activist and trumpet talent only has a few days to travel 1500 km from Lofoten to Oslo in order to reach a crucial audition at the Opera House, she is forced to hitchhike, despite great time pressure. Suddenly, her passion for music and environmental idealism is set against each other. Å ØVE (TO PRACTICE) is a film that explores resistance in passion, a deeply intimate encounter with music and the practice of listening to oneself.

No More Bets

A depressed programmer and a model decide to seek gold as a seemingly good job opportunity, but they inadvertently become involved in a well-planned Internet scam.

Damaged Care

Anesthesist Doug Peeno hopes to pay for the legal costs of his custody battle with the proceeds of his current wife Linda's new job, as medical officer in a greedy medical insurance company. Confronted with the medically unacceptable consequences of denied treatments, she rebels and finds even payments she approved were nevertheless withheld.

The Master Spearman

This subversive period film features a hotheaded young samurai, Kurodo, who threatens to commit harakiri in response to the humiliation meted out to his family by the Shogun. The film critiques the inhumanity of feudal obligations, and Uchida’s direction slyly satirizes the contemporary cinematic audience, whose taste for onscreen bloodshed is mirrored in a crowd gathering to watch the protagonist’s planned suicide. The Master Spearman is imbued with Uchida’s characteristic blend of dark humor and stylized action, and Ryutaro Otomo gives an admirable performance in the lead.

Forêt Debussy

Deep in the barren mountains, a mother and a daughter live an isolated quiet life. The Daughter looks lean and fragile. She seems unreactive toward her surroundings, confining herself in her own wretched world. The Mother is like a guardian angel who always protects her and takes care of everything. Before living in seclusion, The Daughter was a pianist who lost her husband and son. The Mother decided to take her away and hid her in the mountains where no one could ever find them, believing it is the only possible way for her daughter to survive, Nevertheless, they have to face nothing but themselves ever since, as well as to confront the endless forest…

After You're Gone

Aleksey Temnikov is a renowned ballet dancer and an acknowledged genius whose career was abruptly cut short after sustaining an injury in the 1990s. Twenty years later, Aleksey discovers that his condition is degenerative and that he will soon lose the ability to walk. Aleksey sets out to choreograph a ballet he envisaged long before but never staged for fear of failure. “What will I leave behind after I am gone?” is a question Aleksey feels he must contend with. However, returning to the world of ballet will not be easy for a man who has made so many enemies over the course of his life.

Mass

Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.

Quiet Bliss

Salento in southern Italy. A small family-run textile factory is forced to close and three generations of women must now struggle to keep the wolf from the door. In order to settle their debts their home is sold. Now that her brother has emigrated, it falls to energetic Adele to find a way out of their crisis.

Babylon 5: The Road Home

Travel across the galaxy with John Sheridan as he unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Along the way he reunites with some familiar faces, while discovering cosmic new revelations about the history, purpose, and meaning of the Universe.

Parviz

Parviz has as its increasingly horrifying anti-hero the 50-year-old hulk of a passive-aggressive bachelor son (theater director/activist Haftvan), whose free ride in life screeches to a halt when his miserly widowed father forms a plan to remarry.

Yanco

The engaging and sentimental tale begins when the little boy (Ricardo Ancona) starts manifesting a greater and greater talent at music and at the same time, a supersensitivity to sounds. His overly astute hearing drives him into the woods and away from the cacophony of the town's hustle and bustle. Once in the woods, he meets a kindly old hermit who teaches him how to play the violin he made. After the old man dies, the violin ends up at a pawn shop, and each night the boy sneaks in to play it in secret. It is this haunting, nightly music that sets the town on edge -- people think an evil spirit is on the loose.

Yumeno Kyusaku's Girl Hell

In a religious school for girls the pure love between two students is torn apart by social and moral corruption.

The Ghost Hill

The film opens with a duel on a beach between two master swordsman. An elderly master looks on as the two battle. He stops the duel and proclaims one swordsman the winner and awards him the coveted Purple Light Sword making him the new Sword King. He returns home to show his sickly teacher the treasure but they are attacked by the weird minions of evil King Gold who wants to combine the power of the sword with his developing Fire Ball power. The Sword King loses the sword, his master is killed and is forced to join forces with his opponent from the duel to retrieve it. Along the way they are joined by the daughter of the Blind Master and later the Beggar Army.

Mathilukal

Mathilukal ('Walls') is a free adaptation of the novelette of the same name, written by the celebrated Malayalam writer, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer. Autobiographical in character, it is set against the background of India’s freedom struggle in the ’40s when he was serving a term of imprisonment in the Trivandrum Central Jail. When the film opens, we see Basheer in a police lock-up, quite at home in the company of a few petty criminals. He has been languishing there for more than a year now without a trial.

Mandrake the Magician

Mandrake and his team attempt to prevent "The Wasp" from stealing and using a new Radium invention.

River of Fundament

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

The Inn on the River

A serial killer named The Shark is terrorizing London by killing his victims with a speargun and then, dressed in a scruba-diver's wetsuit, using the city's sewer tunnels to make his getaway.

The Jayhawkers!

Before the U.S. Civil War rebel leader Luke Darcy sees himself as leader of a new independent Republic of Kansas but the military governor sends an ex-raider to capture Darcy.

Der Eiserne Gustav

Plot unavailable

Underdog

A lab accident gives a beagle named Shoeshine some serious superpowers -- a secret that the dog eventually shares with the young boy who becomes his owner and friend.

Teenage Wolfpack

The drama of a youthful triangle among gang leader Freddy, his brother Jan, and bad girl Cissy, in one of the first considerations of juvenile delinquency in post-war West Germany.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II

The U.N.G.C.C. (United Nations Godzilla Countermeasure Center) recovers the remains of Mecha-King Ghidorah and construct Mechagodzilla as a countermeasure against Godzilla. Meanwhile, a giant egg is discovered along with a new monster called Rodan. The egg is soon found to be none other than an infant Godzillasaurus.

Lars and the Real Girl

Extremely shy Lars finds it impossible to make friends or socialize. His brother and sister-in-law worry about him, so when he announces that he has a girlfriend he met on the Internet, they are overjoyed. But Lars' new lady is a life-size plastic woman. On the advice of a doctor, his family and the rest of the community go along with his delusion.

Avenger of the Seven Seas

It's 1790 and British Naval Commander Redway is driven by greed for money and will stop at nothing to get it. His second in command, David Robinson, questions his allegiance when Redway kills his father and takes his brother prisoner. In order to save his brother and avenge his father's death David must join forces with a band of pirates, led by Captain Bernard, hunt down and kill Redway.

Death in Venice

Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.