East is East

Today's birthday gal took my febrile brain in the direction of all things vampy, while earlier this week, dear Bill revealed that he, like me, has spent some time in the Land of the Rising Sun.  Well, to me, shady ladies and Japan add up to only one thing:  1968's Black Lizard, one of the greatest psychedelic transvestitite musical thrillers starring Yukio Mishima ever made.

Here we see the leading lady, as it were, of Black Lizard, Mr. Akihiro Maruyama, albeit in a different kind of drag.  Dating to 1962, this clip clearly captures a very specific - and deeply unsettling - moment in Japanese culture, one in which Beatnikiana meets The Mikado in a dark alley on the way to a Robert Wilson opera.  While I first traveled there 25 or more years later, it's pretty much exactly how I felt the entre time I was in Japan - certainly a much more accurate depiction, at least to me, of that particular form of anomie than that snoozefest Lost in Translation.

I really find this number very odd.  How would you describe it?

Tokyo Travestie

A recent post over at Stirred Straight Up brought to light of day the career of 60s novelty singing act the Kim Sisters. They are visions of Oriental Glamour - and they play the marimba. What more could one ask?

Well, what their demented lounge act called to my mind was something even rich and stranger, and with nothing except the highest of Space Age Bachelor Music style to link it to the Kims: I'm thinking of one of the maddest films I've ever seen - certainly the very strangest to include a globally renowned author as a half-naked waxwork.

The film is 1968's Black Lizard, a Japanese confection that combines Bond-style capers, Japanese mysticism, and, most memorably, the ladylike stylings of Mr. Akihiro Maruyama as the title character, a femme fatale nightclub hostess and international underworld criminal mastermind (two naturally complementary careers, no?).

It was written by Yukio Mishima, who is also the aforementioned waxwork, one of the Lizard's love-victims. The whole thing is really indescribable.

It had a brief U.S. re-release in the early 90s and basically disappeared thereafter, never having seen a (legal) DVD release.

Which seems a shame; it is very nearly a perfect film, at least in the select genre of the transvestite Asian jewel-thief/psychokiller thriller musical.