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Toba no Mesu Neko: Sha Kiba no Shobu
Murder Unincorporated
Girl Cat Gamblers: Abandoned Fangs of Triumph
Japan 1965
produced by Nikkatsu
directed by Haruyasu Noguchi
starring Jo Shishido, Kon Ohmura, Toru Yuri, Shunji Sayama, Juro Sasa, Kanbi Fujiyama, Yoko Yamamoto, Minoru Shiraki, Bontaro Taira, Kiyoshi Hitomi, E.H. Eric, Itoshi Yumeji, Koishi Kimi, Kaku Takashina, Eiji Go, Hiroshi Hijikata, Tonpei Hidari, Katsuwo Umino, Yaeko Wakamizu, Saburo Hiromatsu, Seicho Matsumoto, Hiroshi Kono, Keisuke Yukioka, Hiroshi Cho, Kazuo Kinugasa, Toshinosuke Nagao, Daizaburo Hirata, Yumiko Nogawa, Keisuke Noro
story by Kobako Hanato, screenplay by Kobako Hanato, Akira Saiga
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Joe of Spades, a killer who leaves torn apart spades playing cards on
his victims, is killing the bosses of the Five Rays Club - a
criminal organisation having the city divided between them by vices rather
than territories - one by one, always announcing his murders. So the
bosses hire the ten best killers of an assassin-for-hire organisation to
get rid of Joe ... but the problem is that nobody knows who Joe might be
or what he looks like, other than that he has a mole on his right foot.
The assassins themselves are a pretty wild bunch, many of them having
become hitmen after being cast out of their real jobs but having adapted
aspects of these in their killer personas, like a baseball freak who has a
gun built into his baseball bat, a chef who brings plenty of knives
anywere, a Heinrich Heine fanatic with a bullet-spitting poetry tome, a
wannabe James Bond with all kinds of trick weapons ... and then there's
also a little kid who claims to be the grandson of Al Capone. And then
there's also Konmatsu, who's saving up every Yen he can get to one day
open a pharmacy - but since collecting the usual way isn't fast enough for
him, he tries to charge everybody for everything ... and for some reason,
he finds the perfect victim in simpleton Jiro (Jo Shishido), who's even
willing to pay Konmatsu to become his apprentice. Of course, for the
audience it's clear early on that he's actually Joe of Spades, but neither
Konmatsu nor his colleagues can see this, instead go to incredible length
to look for their prey - which soon enough attracts the attention of the
boss from the neighbouring village, who feels threatened (even if the
assassins are really not after him) and hires hitmen of his own,
pretty much as eccentric as the ones he tries to get rid of. So while the
bosses of the Five Rays Club keep on dying at the hands of Joe of Spades,
chaos ensues on the streets, and soon enough everyone is at everyone
else's throat ... Taken from a purely logical point of view,
the plot of Murder Unincorporated makes little sense, is
over-convoluted, and lacks in narrative depth ... and that's all
completely besides the point, because above and beyond everything else, Murder
Unincorporated is just a mad whack comedy, really driving the game of
absurd murder weapons to the hilt (and even dwarving a thematically
similar film like Desperado from 30 years later with its close to
surreal gun creations) and peppering the relatively high body count with
totally irreverent comedy setpieces. All that said, Murder
Unincorporated is by no means a classic, it's just a sillly (if
welcomely) over-the-top comedy with jokes that might be a bit on the
hit-or-miss side at times - but that said, it's also really hard to not
get a few really good laugh out of this, provided your sense of humour's a
bit on the macabre side ...
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