Arrow Video
Blu-ray Release: September 24, 2024
Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Black & White
Audio: Japanese LPCM 1.0 Mono
Subtitles: English
Run Time: 83:56
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Misawa (Rentarō Mikuni) appears to lead a charmed life, the very model of Japan's post-war economic miracle. His position as the account manager of a prestigious advertising agency is enough to pay the mortgage on the spacious modern house he shares with his wife (Masumi Harukawa) and their son, kitted out with all the latest mod-cons. Then, one day, the fragility of his existence is revealed when two violent jail-breakers turn up on his doorstep seeking refuge and threatening to embroil Misawa in their criminal activities. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)
In the decade before he made the groundbreaking Battles without Honor and Humanity series (1973-74), which led him to be recognized as a yakuza (aka: jitsuroku) genre-redefining maverick, Kinji Fukasaku was a salaryman type workhorse director who was still developing his energetic, vérité-esque style. Between studio-dictated yakuza gigs, he made a slightly different kind of crime thriller in the 1966 hostage drama The Threat (Japanese: Odoshi). Despite the change in environment and focus on home invasion, the film bears the hallmarks of Fukasaku’s later work – gritty hyperrealism, brutal violence, macho morality, and the fine line between the lawless and the law-abiding. Style-wise, it’s a dynamic exercise in tension, especially in terms of its tight framing and borderline hallucinogenic editing, but is generally a more formalist exercise that sets the stage for the wild crash-zooms and dizzying handheld camerawork that typified the director’s later work.
The Threat has been compared to Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (Japanese: Tengoku to Jigoku, 1963), based on Ed McBain’s King's Ransom (pub: 1959), and the connections are clear. Both are widescreen, black & white kidnapping dramas set against the backdrop of class inequality in Japan, but the plots are quite different and there aren’t too many analogous characters between the films (actor Kō Nishimura does appear in both, however, as well as Kurosawa’s similarly themed The Bad Sleep Well [Japanese: Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru, 1960]). Toei’s accountants surely counted on audiences making the connection, at the very least.
The film that The Threat more resembles is Humphrey Bogart’s penultimate film, William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours (1955). The Desperate Hours was based on the novel (1954) and play (which debut earlier in 1955) by Joseph Hayes and was also officially adapted by Ludwig Cremer for German TV as Stunden der Angst (1964), for American TV by Ted Kotcheff under the original title (1967), for Indian audiences as Drohi (1970) by K. Bapaiah and 36 Ghante (1974) by Raj Tilak, and for worldwide release by Deer Hunter (1978) director Michael Cimino, also under its original title (1990).
The home invasion and hostage genres are long-running traditions, so I’m hesitant to assume that Hayes’ story was the basis of Fukasaku and Ichirô Miyagawa’s screenplay, but there are definite similarities between the central protagonists and villains and intriguing comparisons to be made between the idealized, isolated suburban home lives of Americans in the mid-’50s and the Japanese in the mid-’60s. There’s little possibility of American audiences misunderstanding the social and cultural themes, too, because Fukasaku makes such a point of showing us all of the modern, Westernized conveniences coveted by base criminals and middle class families alike. The intricacies of Japanese workforce culture may be over our heads, but there’s no mistaking the sheer weight of kitchen/home appliances and pop culture artifacts cluttering every interior shot.
Video
The Threat is a particularly rare film that is barely spoken about in English language books on Fukasaku and Japanese crime cinema. Needless to say, it has never been officially released on home video outside of Japan. This Blu-ray debut is presented in 2.35:1, 1080p and the transfer was supplied directly by Toei and matches similar discs from Arrow’s catalog. It’s not a full 4K, ‘bells & whistles’ remaster, but we’re also talking about a lower-budget, purposefully gritty black & white feature, so there’s only so much that can be done with the footage. That said, aside from occasionally noisy, inconsistent textures, small flecks of print damage, and fuzzy background details, this is, by and large, an authentic-looking transfer with rich blacks and enough clarity to bring out the fine detail in the darkest shots.
Audio
The Threat is presented in its original Japanese mono and uncompressed LPCM sound. The mix is simple and mostly dialogue-driven with emphasis on incidental effects over wider ambience. There’s a bit of hiss on aspirated consonants and minor distortions at high volume levels, but volume levels aren’t too muffled or condensed. Isao Tomita’s fantastically brassy, jazzy musical score is a highlight and one of the louder elements, but also sparingly used, so, when it hits, it really leaps out of the speakers.
Extras
Commentary with Tom Mes – The author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike (FAB Press, 2004) and co-author of The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Stone Bridge Press, 2004, with Jasper Sharp) explores the film’s production, Fukasaku’s method, the wider lives and careers of the cast & crew, the state of the Japanese film industry at the time, and socio-political themes.
Warning Warning Danger Danger (18:42, HD) – Mark Schilling, the critic and author of The Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films (Stone Bridge Press, 2003), discusses the similarities between The Threat and High and Low, the ‘60s salaryman mindset, departures from Fukasaku’s gangster films, and compares/contrasts between Fukasaku and other noir and yakuza specialists, like Teruo Ishii.
Theatrical trailer
The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray edition of this release and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images.
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