GAMBLERS AND RACKETEERS (1964)

The Kikuya Group, run by Boss Kijima (Chiezō Kataoka), controls a large share of the street vendor business in Asakusa but is beginning to feel the squeeze, both from a rival yakuza gang trying to muscle in on their turf as well as a supermarket that's due to be constructed in the neighborhood. Kijima's older son Ryutaro (Koji Tsuruta) has been disowned for killing another Kikuya member in a drunken rage and is now eking out a living as a bodyguard while staying on good terms with his immature younger brother Katsuo (Hiroki Matsukata) and school chum Mizuno (Minoru Oki), now Kikuya's second-in-command. Tetsurō Tamba plays another childhood pal, an understanding cop trying to keep Ryutaro and Katsuo out of jail. Director Shigehiro Ozawa is dismissed as "mediocre" in Paul Schrader's 1974 Film Comment article "Yakuza-Eiga: A Primer" but he was a better than average studio craftsman, as adept at handling the humor and pathos as he was at staging dynamic action sequences. This feels a lot more confined to studio sets than the other films of his I've seen, most likely a budgetary decision but one that also works thematically given the constricted lives of its characters. Tsuruta is excellent, particularly in the scene in which he reveals the true reasons for his banishment to Matsukata. When this opened in Honolulu in March 1965 the title was CRIME STREET, TOKYO.

THE GREAT DUEL (1964)

The story could've used more character development and clan politics at the outset -- the first reel seems rushed -- but otherwise this is a solid chambara from the reliable Kôsaku Yamashita. Hideji (Hashizô Ôkawa) of the Katsuba clan leaves town after killing a rival yakuza boss and returns three years later to find the Katsuba's territory and lucrative silk market targeted for takeover by former partner Boss Kamezo (Tatsuo Endô) of the Akaiwa clan, and that both clans are being manipulated by Boss Joshu-ya (Nobuo Kaneko), who has hired a rōnin (Tetsurô Tamba) to help escalate the tensions. The original title is ODEIRI and it opened in Honolulu as QUARREL in September '64. Also known as GIANT RUMBLE, the version reviewed here is called THE GREAT DUEL, a title I've also seen attached to Eiichi Kudô's A GREAT KILLING from the same year.