The best Fumio Watanabe’s action movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Fumio Watanabe’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Fumio Watanabe.
The Street Fighter
6.9/10
Terry is a tough mercenary and a master of martial arts. When an important business magnate dies, leaving billions to his daughter, the Mafia and Yakuza try to hire Terry to kidnap the daughter. When they refuse to meet his exorbitant price, then try to kill him to conceal their secret plans, he promptly offers his services to protect her. Much ultra-violent martial-arts fighting action, as expected, ensues. This also includes a subplot of a family's blood-feud with Terry over a disputed debt.
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
7.7/10
In this first film of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, adapted from the manga by Kazuo Koike, we are told the story of the Lone Wolf and Cub's origin. Ogami Itto, the official Shogunate executioner, has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
7.1/10
Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpion, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden. Granted a one day reprieve due to the visit of a dignitary, she takes advantage and attacks the warden again. This leads to more brutal punishment and humiliation. But the punishment gives her an oppurtunity to escape along with six other female prisoners. Their surreal flight from prison pits the convicts against the guards, the warden and each other.
Shogun's Ninja
6.1/10
In the middle of the 16th century, Hideyoshi, a power hungry warlord sets out to destroy the Momochi clan. He sends his war commander in search of the clan's hidden gold only to find that two daggers are the key to the hiding place of the treasured gold. Spanning decades, the quest for the missing daggers takes Shiranui through war and ancient tradition.
Bloodstained Clan Of Honor
6.9/10
It takes place in the sunset days of the yakuza in the 1970s. The postwar turmoil that created the black market and lubricated illegal business opportunities was giving way to Japan Inc. A young Bunta Sugawara takes over as the oyabun of a crime syndicate in Yokohama, where he is struggling to keep operations at the port there alive. As his syndicate is eroding quickly, a major heavy industries company offers his gang the chance to chase some vagrants out of a shantytown where they are squatting on land where a factory is to be built. The job would secure steady profits for Bunta's crime ring for years to come. However, Bunta and other members of his outfit grew up in the shanty, and they would be muscling their friends and neighbors. This sets the stage for an internal struggle that complicates the violent struggle with a rival mafia organization in Tokyo.
Killers on Parade
6.5/10
Mod-sixties visuals and black humor mark this wild New Wave masterpiece about a vengeful contractor who hires a series of young killers to target a woman muckraker. Trouble brews when an amateur marksman shows up his eclectic competition.
The Bad Boss
5.8/10
The first in what would become Toei's most successful, longest-running bosozoku film series. It lasted from 1968 till 1972 through sixteen films.
Wolves of the City: Checkmate
This is the sixth film in the series. There were seventeen Wolves of the City films between 1968 & 1974, in the main aimed at shock-value & “pinku” soft-core with sex, nudity, violence, gunplay, & a lot of mainly pointless foolishness when the biker gang coopts racist or nazi imagery, inventing a non-existent youth culture void of morality…
Outlaw Killers: Three Mad Dog Brothers
6.8/10
The great Bunta stars as a gangster who is sent to jail for the sake of his gang, but when he’s released he finds everything completely changed and his gang has swept him aside for being too violent. He tries to start a new life with his two ”brothers” but can’t seem to escape old affiliations
Modern Lady Gambler
6.7/10
Fujiko wanders aimlessly through the country, seeking vengence on the man she onced loved, who betrayed her, and destroying her family and her life. When she discovers that man had already died, she loses her will to live. But in a twist of fate, she meets Tatsumi, a raising star in the Horikawa Family. She quickly falls in love with him and his yakuza lifstyle. But when Tatsumi is chosen to but the next Boss of the family, his jealous sworn brother Morito kills him with the help of a mysterious man behind the scenes. Now Fujiko becomes a Bakuto, a wandering yakuza gambler, and once again, walks the bloody path of vengence...
The Great Chase
6/10
Shihomi Etsuko plays a race car driver who also lends out her services to the Japanese Secret Service. Although there really isn't much of a "chase" to be seen, Shihomi does pursue a cartel of drug runners and assorted Japanese yakuza types. While the story is pure 70's exploitation and gritty crime drama, the best reason to see it is for the Martial Arts Action of Etsuko Shihomi. The action is over-the-top and at times hilarious (i.e. Shihomi battling the lead criminal atop a moving gondola or Shihomi battling a whip-wielding Catholic Nun).
Sleepy Eyes of Death 11: In the Spider's Lair
6.6/10
The titular "tarantula" is a murderous woman who, along with the brother who is in love with her, kill without warrant because they are wealthy & above the law. Kyoshiro the homeless masterless wandering samurai has nothing to lose, & no scruples anyway, so can reproach even the powerful with ease. He is thus, for all that he has broad streaks of villainy all his own, a champion of the people by default.
Hoodlum Priest
6.4/10
The first film in the 2 part series about Ryuzen, a renegade martial-arts priest who, in addition to breaking all the commandments against sex and gambling, opens his own gambling den in direct defiance of the local yakuza boss. Exciting action and a twisty plot this movie breaks new barriers in Japanese cinema. Katsu Shintaro is superb in one of his better non-Zato Ichi roles as he fights off the advances of a love-lorn woman and risks his life to defeat the powerful gambling boss who has a stranglehold on the town.
The Cross of Vengeance
Film with Junko Miyazono.
The Bad Boss 3
6.6/10
A story of rivalry between two gambling clans.
Organized Violence II
7.2/10
The Tattooed Hitman
6.4/10
The most dangerous hired gun in Tokyo's underworld has managed to trigger a vicious gang war, and now, there's a contract on his life. Though nobody is more skilled in the arts of dealing death, can the tattooed hitman fend off the entire Japanese mafia as he searches for the man who wants him dead?
Young Boss, Fugitive
5.5/10
The Woman Gambler's Iron Rule
The woman gambler Ginko risks her life for her brother-in-law.
Gang Warfare
