The Creature Called Man/Jaguar Got Away (1970)

[Terasawa]

Wild, Hollywood-type action film with Yuzo Kayama as a police marksman protecting the exiled president of a war-torn South East Asian nation ("Southnesia", probably an ideological enemy of Rolisica, possibly tied to Saradia). Unusual for a Toho film of this vintage, a lot of the dialogue is in English: Kayama's competition, an assassin, is played by Jiro Tamiya, who speaks it really well, and Nobuo Nakamura speaks rather good English in one scene. There's one foreign actress (Nancy Sommers) in a key role. It's not a particularly good performance but it's adequate for a Japanese film. On the subject of the performers, Kayama is really bland in the lead.

The music is also very western. It reminded me of Nelson Riddle's TV music for Batman and Emergency.



At times it feels like an expensive, Japanese Eurospy movie, and I think along those lines it has much more in common with the Eon 007 films than Toho's Ironfinger or International Secret Police series. I wanted to like it more but it just didn't do it for me. At least it has its style going for it. It's been fansubbed and it's out there for those few who might be interested.

[KaijusHunter]

It's been fansubbed ? I'm really interested.

From what I could gather, this is the 3rd installment in a tetralogy of films with Kayama playing a contract killer. The other films are Sun Above, Death Below (1968), Bullet Wound (1969) and Rosy Target (1972). Have those been fansubbed too ? They're all available on DVD except the last one.

[Terasawa]

It's been fansubbed ? I'm really interested.

From what I could gather, this is the 3rd installment in a tetralogy of films with Kayama playing a contract killer. The other films are Sun Above, Death Below (1968), Bullet Wound (1969) and Rosy Target (1972). Have those been fansubbed too ? They're all available on DVD except the last one.

It might be something of a spiritual successor to those but here he's a cop who's asked to resigned so that he can preemptively take out assassins, instead of waiting for them to attack first. (A convoluted way of giving him a "licence to kill".)

I haven't seen any of the others available in the usual places, at least not with subtitles.