The Wicked Priest I & 2

                           
Wicked Priest I
Director: Kiyoshi Saeki
Year: 1968
Rating: 7.0


A few years back I was able to watch the 3rd, 4th and 5th film of this series - The Wicked Priest or Gokuaku Bozu. I had never been able to find the first two until recently. As best as I can tell there are only these five in the series but the star Tomisaburô Wakayama was in so many films during the 1960s and 70's and a number of other series that it gets confusing, He is even in a series titled The Hoodlum Priest. Not to be mixed up with the Wicked Priest! I very much enjoyed the three films in the series I saw and seeing how it came about - the origin story - partly completes the circle. In those films Shinkai (Wakayama) is a wandering Buddhist priest who indulges in vices but corrects injustices when he comes across them. Which is often. This is how that came to be.




In the beginning of the film Shinkai is a priest associated with a temple and sect. One day he intercedes on behalf of a man being accosted by a group of thugs. Another priest Ryotatsu played by Bunta Sugawara with dark blackened eyes was also there and began the fight. But it is Shinkai who is taken to task while Ryotatsu gloats. Ryotatsu is to become a recurring character in the series and always trying to do Shinkai harm. The other monks have it in for Shinkai and send him off to another temple. Five years later. And Shinkai has his head between the legs of a woman and is pouring plum wine on her belly button to be quickly followed up with his tongue. Whether he was always susceptible to vices or whether it was his transfer is hard to say but he now happily imbibes in them - women, drink and gambling. He has become the Wicked Priest! To one man who mistreats women and accuses Shinkai of doing the same - he replies you hurt them, I pleasure them.





Set in the 1920s, the film is dotted with a number of small dramas that circle around Shinkai - a runaway girl that the Yakuza want to drag into prostitution, a young man who helps them because he wants to raise money to free a prostitute that he loves, an Abbot who discovers the woman he loved 25 years ago and with his son, other prostitutes finding shelter in Shinkai's temple. But the Yakuza along with some really corrupt priests have their hands in everything dirty and keep trying to kill Shinkai who sticks up for the downtrodden. Finally of course, we get the long lonely walk with the theme song playing (sung by Wakayama) as he goes for the final showdown with only a stick and his deadly hands. Deadly blood splattering hands. And then only Ryotatsu waits for him. Very good film - has a decent amount of action, bits of comedy but a large dose of pathos that works.




Wicked Priest II - Ballad of Murder
Director: Takashi Harada
Year: 1968
Rating: 8.0


This is the second film in the Wicked Priest series with Tomisaburô Wakayama. After the conclusion of the first film, Shinkai is now a wandering Priest belonging to no temple or sect. A Ronin priest of sorts. His vices are still very much in place as he chases after women like a dog in heat, gambles and drinks. He seemingly does very little work for Buddha unless you consider killing evil men and sending them on to their way to their next life as good work. He has also acquired a sword since the first film where he mainly just used a stick. The sword has a lot of work ahead of it. And a scar now runs down from his forehead to his left eye. The film isn't really very focused as Shinkai goes from woman to woman and from one injustice to another - but it is really done well and has a conclusion that is a doozy. "You are all Yakuza. You know you have sinned. I will kill all of you".




There is a fair amount of cock fighting as well as cock boasting. It begins with two young pretty women out in the fields laughing and one suddenly says - look an out of season mushroom - and they go for a closer look and it is Shinkai urinating in the bushes and they go off screaming to his laughing. Later with a woman he just met and is drinking sake with he claims "that my thing is finer than that of Dokyo, a famed Nara period monk". Would you like to see it he asks the woman. And then someone tries to kill him so that didn't play out as he expected. Then he seduces a virgin nun and she chases after him for the rest of the film. To marry him. No wonder he always has to leave town at the end of every film.






When he is taking care of business in the bushes he sees a group of Yakuza trying to kill a single man and his 3 year old son. Without any questions, he kills them all. The man then pleads with the monk to take his boy to stay with his grandfather while he takes care of some personal business. Of course, the soft-hearted Shinkai agrees. Good practice for future films. When he gets to the grandfather who runs a dojo the grandfather refuses the boy because his father has been disowned. So Shinkai is stuck with him.




The big business in the town is cock fighting matches and the Goda family of cretins want to run it. An old friend of Shinkai's shows up - Ryutatsu played by Bunta Sugawara. Shinkai thought he had left Ryutatsu dead with his eyes torn out in their duel in the previous film. Not so dead it seems but blind for sure but even more deadly. He still wants to kill Shinkai. I am surprised they never matched him up with Zatoichi. But this time he shows a very honorable side after besting the Monk - as the screen turns a cool shade of green -which will bring him back in the future. I totally enjoyed this mix of action, goofy comedy and perversion. The look he gets on his face when he is peeping is priceless. Directed by Takashi Harada who was to direct two more films in the series and interestingly a film about Ryutatsu played by Bunta in which Tomisaburô Wakayama plays a different character - titled Hitokiri Kannon-uta.