Welp, it's November and we're still in the middle of a pandemic. It's looking more and more likely that lockdowns are on the way for the winter. So I'm reluctantly bringing back Grinding the Stream. As per usual, I'm including as many movies as I can per each category as I scour Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, HBO Max, Fandor, Shudder, Tubi, Midnight Pulp (a "+" will be included wherever subscription fees apply), VUDU’s free selections, The Roku Channel, Popcorn Flix, Crackle, Dark Matter TV, Night Flight, Peacock (a "+" will be included wherever subscription fees apply), Shout Factory TV (though most of their titles can also be watched via Amazon Prime).
Again, 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. I've also included links to my own reviews of some of these films.
Kinji Fukasaku Movies
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, Tubi, and Midnight Pulp +
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
Message from Space (1978) – Amazon Prime
Virus (1980) – Midnight Pulp, Popcorn Flix, and Tubi
Fall Guy (1982) – Criterion Channel
Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983) – Amazon Prime and Tubi
Battle Royale (2000) – Tubi
Seijun Suzuki Movies
The Boy Who Came Back (1958) – Amazon Prime
Voice Without a Shadow (1958) – Amazon Prime
Smashing the 0-Line (1960) – Amazon Prime
The Madness of Youth (1960) – Criterion Channel
Take Aim at the Police Van (1960) – Criterion Channel
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
Born Under Crossed Stars (1965) – Midnight Pulp and Tubi
Story of a Prostitute (1965) – Criterion Channel
Fighting Elegy (1966) – Criterion Channel
Tokyo Drifter (1966) – Criterion Channel
Branded to Kill (1967) – Criterion Channel
Kagero-za (1981) – Amazon Prime
Yumeji (1991) – Amazon Prime
Takashi Miike Movies
Shinjuku Triad Society (1995) – Amazon Prime, Midnight Pulp, and Tubi
Rainy Dog (1997) – Amazon Prime, Midnight Pulp, and Tubi
Ley Lines (1999) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Audition (1999) – Shudder and Tubi
Dead or Alive Series: Dead or Alive (1999), Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000), Dead or Alive: Final (2002) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp +
Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) – Amazon Prime, Midnight Pulp, and Tubi
Ichi the Killer (2001) – Shudder
Graveyard of Honor (2002) – Midnight Pulp
One Missed Call (2003) – Midnight Pulp and Tubi
Gozu (2003) – Midnight Pulp and Tubi
Three… Extremes (anthology co-directed with Fruit Chan and Park Chan-wook, 2004) – Amazon Prime
Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) – Peacock, VUDU Free, and Tubi
Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2007) – Fandor
Thirteen Assassins (2010) – HULU and Tubi
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011) – Amazon Prime, VUDU Free, and Tubi
Over Your Dead Body (2014) – Tubi
Yakuza Apocalypse (2015) – VUDU Free
Terra Formars (2016) – Tubi
Blade of the Immortal (2017) – HULU
Meiko Kaji Movies
Retaliation (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1968) – Amazon Prime
Outlaw: Gangster VIP 2 (Keiichi Ozawa, 1968) – Amazon Prime
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1970) – 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 (missing the first movie), Shudder, Midnight Pulp, and Tubi (missing Jailhouse 41)
Lady Snowblood Series: Lady Snowblood (1973) and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974, both directed by Toshiya Fujita) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
(She also appears in Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima)
Shinya Tsukamoto Movies
Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989) – Shudder
Tetsuo the Bullet Man (2009) – HULU
Kiyoshi Kurosawa Movies
The Guard from the Underground (1992) – Fandor
Cure (1997) – Criterion Channel
Pulse (2001) – Tubi
Doppelganger (2003) – Tubi
Loft (2005) – Midnight Pulp
Creepy (2016) – Amazon Prime and Tubi
Before We Vanish (2017) – HULU
Samurai Franchises
Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice (Kenji Misumi, 1972), The Snare (Yasuzō Masumura, 1973), and Who’s Got the Gold (Yoshio Inoue, 1974) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi, 1972), Baby Cart on the River Styx (Kenji Misumi, 1972), Baby Cart to Hades (Kenji Misumi, 1972), Baby Cary in Peril (Buichi Saito, 1972), Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (Kenji Misumi, 1973), White Heaven in Hell (Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1974) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max (the re-edited American release, Shogun Assassin, is also available via Criterion Channel)
All 25 original Zatoichi movies are on Criterion Channel exclusively.
Bloodthirsty Trilogy
The Vampire Doll (Michio Yamamoto, 1970) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Lake of Dracula (Michio Yamamoto, 1971) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Evil of Dracula (Michio Yamamoto, 1974) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Japanese Horror, Ghost Stories, Other Weirdo Genre Stuff
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 and HBO Max
Tokaido Yotsuya kaidan (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1959) – Criterion Channel
Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960) – Criterion Channel
Matango (Ishirō Honda, 1963) – Amazon Prime and Tubi
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Onibaba (Kaneto Shindō, 1964) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
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
Wolf Guy (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1975) – Midnight Pulp
Hausu (aka: House; Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 1977) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Evil Dead Trap (Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988) – Midnight Pulp
Battle Girl: Living Dead In Tokyo Bay (Kazuo Komizu, 1991) – Midnight Pulp
Rubber's Lover (Shozin Fukui, 1996) – Midnight Pulp +
Versus (Ryûhei Kitamura, 2000) – Fandor
Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (Naoyuki Tomomatsu, 2001) – Midnight Pulp
Karaoke Terror (Tetsuo Shinohara, 2003) – Midnight Pulp
Marebito (Takashi Shimizu, 2004) – Midnight Pulp and VUDU Free
Rampo Noir (Akio Jissoji, Suguru Takeuchi, Hisayasu Satô, and Atsushi Kaneko, 2005) – Midnight Pulp
The World Sinks Except Japan (Minoru Kawasaki, 2006) – Midnight Pulp
One Cut of the Dead (Shinichiro Ueda, 2017) – Shudder
Other Crime/Yakuza Movies
Rusty Knife (Toshio Masuda, 1958) – Criterion Channel
Red Pier (Toshio Masuda, 1958) – Amazon Prime
The Rambling Guitarist (Buichi Saito, 1959) – Amazon Prime
The Sun’s Burial (Nagisa Oshima, 1960) – Criterion Channel
Danger Pays (Kô Nakahira, 1962) – Amazon Prime, Midnight Pulp, and Tubi
Black Lizard (Umetsugu Inoue, 1962) – Criterion Channel
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
Violence at Noon (Nagisa Oshima, 1966) – Criterion Channel
Massacre Gun (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1967) – Amazon Prime and Midnight Pulp
Golden Eyes (Jun Fukuda, 1968) – Criterion Channel
Vengeance is Mine (Shohei Imamura, 1979) – Criterion Channel and Fandor
Onimasa: A Japanese Godfather (Hideo Gosha, 1982) – Midnight Pulp
Godzilla Movies
Godzilla (Japanese: Gojira; Ishirō Honda, 1954) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Mothra vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1964) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1964) – Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, and HBO Max
Invasion of the Astro-Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1965) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (Jun Fukuda, 1966) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Son of Godzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1967) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Destroy All Monsters (Ishirō Honda, 1968) – Criterion Channel, HBO Max, and Tubi
All Monsters Attack (Ishirō Honda, 1969) – Criterion Channel
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Yoshimitsu Banno, 1971) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Godzilla vs. Gigan (Jun Fukuda, 1972) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Godzilla vs. Megalon (Jun Fukuda, 1973) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1974) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Terror of Mechagodzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1975) – Criterion Channel, and HBO Max
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Shusuke Kaneko, 2001) – Crackle
Godzilla Final Wars (Ryûhei Kitamura, 2004) – Crackle
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Michael Dougherty, 2019) – HBO Max
Other Kaiju Movies
Rodan (Ishirō Honda, 1956) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Mothra (Ishirō Honda, 1961 – Crackle
The Original Gamera Series: Gammera the Invincible (American re-edit; Noriaki Yuasa & Sandy Howard, 1965), Gamera vs. Barugon (Shigeo Tanaka, 1966), Gamera vs. Gyaos (Noriaki Yuasa, 1967), Gamera vs. Viras (Noriaki Yuasa, 1968), Gamera vs. Guiron (Noriaki Yuasa, 1969), Gamera vs. Jiger (Noriaki Yuasa, 1970), and Gamera vs. Zigra (Noriaki Yuasa, 1971) – Tubi (these are public domain, so their on YouTube as well)
War of the Gargantuas (Ishirō Honda, 1966) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
The X from Outer Space (Kazui Nihonmatsu, 1967) – Criterion Channel and HBO Max
Space Amoeba (Ishirō Honda, 1970) – Amazon Prime
Gamera: Super Monster (Noriaki Yuasa, 1980) – Tubi and Shout Factory TV
(You didn’t hear it from me, but the Daimajin series might be on YouTube for free...)