Are you self isolating? Are you thinking about broadening your cinematic horizons? Perhaps you’d like to learn about a specific genre? I’m here to help. Staying in the East, this time we’re talking about Japanese cult movie titles available to stream RIGHT NOW.
Netflix and Hulu’s selection is weak, but Amazon Prime is pretty good, as are various free streaming services available via Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast, et cetera. I compared a bunch and, for the sake of simplicity, I found the best in terms of content and video quality to be Tubi, Midnight Pulp (a "+" will be included wherever subscription fees apply), VUDU’s free selections, The Roku Channel, Shout Factory TV (though most of their titles can also be watched via Amazon Prime), Popcorn Flix, Dark Matter TV (again, a "+" will be included wherever subscription fees apply). And, of course, this is Criterion Channel’s time to shine. Shudder doesn’t do too badly, either, thanks to its chunky Takashi Miike and Kinji Fukasaku selection. In fact, I’m not covering samurai movies, because Criterion Channel has a heck of a monopoly in that regard and I’m pretty sure every single one available is great (including the complete, cult-friendly Lone Wolf and Cub and Zatoichi series). Additionally, I’m not including Akira Kurosawa movies. If you have access to Kurosawa movies you haven’t seen yet, just watch them.
Be warned – all of the free apps have ad breaks (I know, it sucks) and the video quality is inconsistent from app to app. Sometimes it's genuine HD, other times, it's sub-VHS. Apologies if I’ve suggested something with particularly grim A/V quality and be aware that the availability is based on the research I did on March 23rd, 2020. Given the nature of streaming media, I imagine very few of these titles will be available in perpetuity. I've included links to my own reviews of some of these films and be aware that, despite my classifications below, complete director filmographies are not currently available free/subscription streaming.
Kinji Fukasaku Movies
Black Lizard (1968) – Criterion Channel
Battles Without Honor and Humanity/Yakuza Papers Series: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973), Hiroshima Death Match (aka: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima, 1973), Proxy War (1973), Police Tactics (1974), Final Episode (1974) – Amazon Prime and Shudder
New Battles Without Honor and Humanity Series: New Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1974), Head of the Boss (1975), Last Days of the Boss (1976) – Amazon Prime
Cops vs. Thugs (1975) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp +
Doberman Cop (1977) – Amazon Prime
Battle Royale (2000) – VUDU Free and Tubi
Seijun Suzuki Movies
Voice Without a Shadow (1958) – Amazon Prime
Smashing the 0-Line (1960) – Amazon Prime
Tokyo Knights (1961) – Amazon Prime
The Man with a Shotgun (1961) – Amazon Prime
Teenage Yakuza (1962) – Amazon Prime
Youth of the Beast (1963) – Criterion Channel
Gate of Flesh (1964) – Criterion Channel
Story of a Prostitute (1965) – Criterion Channel
Fighting Elegy (1966) – Criterion Channel
Tokyo Drifter (1966) – Criterion Channel
Branded to Kill (1967) – Criterion Channel
Takashi Miike Movies
Rainy Dog (1997) – Amazon Prime, Shudder, and Midnight Pulp
Audition (1999) – Shudder
Dead or Alive Series: Dead or Alive (1999), Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000), Dead or Alive: Final (2002) – Amazon Prime, Shudder, and Midnight Pulp +
Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) – Amazon Prime
Ichi the Killer (2001) – Shudder
Graveyard of Honor (2002) – Midnight Pulp
Gozu (2003) – Amazon Prime and Popcorn Flix
Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) – Amazon Prime, VUDU Free, Tubi
Thirteen Assassins (2010) – Shudder
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011) – Amazon Prime and VUDU Free
Yakuza Apocalypse (2015) – VUDU Free
Blade of the Immortal (2017) – HULU
Meiko Kaji Movies
Retaliation (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1968) – Amazon Prime
Stray Cat Rock Series: Alleycat Rock: Female Boss (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970), Wild Jumbo (Toshiya Fujita, 1970), Sex Hunter (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970), Machine Animal (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970), and Beat ’71/Crazy Rider ‘71 (Toshiya Fujita, 1971) – Amazon Prime
Blind Woman’s Curse (Teruo Ishii, 1970) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Female Prisoner Scorpion Series: #701: Scorpion (Shunya Ito, 1972), Jailhouse 41 (Shunya Ito, 1972), Beast Stable (Shunya Ito, 1973), Grudge Song (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1973) – Amazon Prime and Shudder
Lady Snowblood Series: Lady Snowblood (1973) and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974, both directed by Toshiya Fujita) – Criterion Channel
(She also appears in Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima)
Bloodthirsty Trilogy
The Vampire Doll (Michio Yamamoto, 1970) – Amazon Prime
Lake of Dracula (Michio Yamamoto, 1971) – Amazon Prime
Evil of Dracula (Michio Yamamoto, 1974) – Amazon Prime
Tetsuo Series
Tetsuo the Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989) – Shudder
Tetsuo the Bullet Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2009) – HULU
Japanese Horror/Ghost Stories
This is a quite large and quite broad category, so take this as recommended movies that I assume haven’t been as widely seen as, say Ringu (1998) or Ju-on (2002).
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953) – Criterion Channel
Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1959) – Criterion Channel
Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960) – Criterion Channel
Matango (Ishirō Honda, 1963) – Amazon Prime
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) – Criterion Channel
Onibaba (Kaneto Shindō, 1964) – Criterion Channel
The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966) – Criterion Channel
Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindō, 1968) – Criterion Channel
The Living Skeleton (Hiroshi Matsuno, 1968) – Criterion Channel
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Hajime Sato, 1968) – Criterion Channel
Horrors of Malformed Men (Teruo Ishii, 1969) – Amazon Prime
Wolf Guy (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1975) – Shudder and Midnight Pulp
Hausu (aka: House; Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 1977) – Criterion Channel
Organ (Kei Fujiwara, 1996) – Midnight Pulp +
One Cut of the Dead (Shinichiro Ueda, 2017) – Shudder
Other Crime/Yakuza Classics
Cruel Gun Story (Takumi Furukawa, 1964) – Criterion Channel
Iron Finger (Jun Fukuda, 1965) – Criterion Channel
A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967) – Criterion Channel
Golden Eyes (Jun Fukuda, 1968) – Criterion Channel
Rusty Knife (Toshio Masuda) – Criterion Channel
The Sun’s Burial (Nagisa Oshima, 1960) – Criterion Channel
Vengeance is Mine (Shohei Imamura, 1979) – Criterion Channel
Violence at Noon (Nagisa Oshima, 1966) – Criterion Channel
Massacre Gun (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1967) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Godzilla, Showa Era
Godzilla (Japanese: Gojira; Ishirō Honda, 1954) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955) – Criterion Channel
King Kong vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1962) – Criterion Channel
Mothra vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1964) – Criterion Channel
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1964) – Criterion Channel
Invasion of the Astro-Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1965) – Criterion Channel
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (Jun Fukuda, 1966) – Criterion Channel
Son of Godzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1967) – Criterion Channel
Destroy All Monsters (Ishirō Honda, 1968) – Criterion Channel
All Monsters Attack (Ishirō Honda, 1969) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Yoshimitsu Banno, 1971) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla vs. Gigan (Jun Fukuda, 1972) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla vs. Megalon (Jun Fukuda, 1973) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1974) – Criterion Channel
Terror of Mechagodzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1975) – Criterion Channel
Other Kaiju Movies
Rodan (Ishirō Honda, 1956) – Criterion Channel
War of the Gargantuas (Ishirō Honda, 1966) – Criterion Channel
The X from Outer Space (Kazui Nihonmatsu, 1967) – Criterion Channel
Space Amoeba (Ishirō Honda, 1970) – Amazon Prime
(You didn’t hear it from me, but Mothra and the Gamera and Daimajin series might be on YouTube for free...)