In Miike’d Up, I will be attempting to watch the entirety of Takashi Miike’s filmography in chronological order, or at least as much of it as is feasibly possible.
Reviewed on Letterboxd 7/29/22
Miike’d Up: An [Incomplete] Prologue
Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder (1991)
I recently began reading Tom Mes’s Agitator, a book about Takashi Miike’s work as a filmmaker from the beginning of his career up until 2002. While I haven’t seen as many of his films as I’d like to have, Miike is without a doubt one of my favorite filmmakers, and when I found out about Mes’s book (I’m a big reader and studied film in college, so written analysis is right up my alley) I knew that I had to pick it up. Luckily, I was able to find a copy for relatively cheap, and around this time I realized the opportunity that the book presented me: I always had a vague notion of checking out all of Miike’s 100+ films, but with Mes’s book I now had something that could help me stick to this idea and perhaps even make it a bit more enjoyable. I came up with an idea for a series of posts for my blog entitled Miike’d Up, and as I worked my way through the prolific director’s filmography I’d write up a short post for each to collect my thoughts and plot my progress along the way.
This is all a longwinded way to say that Miike’d Up begins today with “An [Incomplete] Prologue,” as I’ve taken my first steps on this long, winding, and no doubt strange road with Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder. While this wasn’t the first Miike film released during his time spent working in V-cinema, Japan’s direct-to-video industry popular in the mid-80s and early 90s (that distinction would go to Eyecatch Junction, released a whole two months earlier than Lady Hunter and consequently the next stop on my Miike’d Up trip), it was the first in which he held the proverbial filmmaking reigns.
Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder is nothing special. It’s typical direct-to-video fare about a former elite solider tasked with saving/protecting a child from the grips of an insidious villain who wants to overthrow the boy’s father, a king of some made-up land, with a love interest thrown in for good measure. There are a few neat filmmaking choices, and some that even anticipate more striking techniques seen in Miike’s later work, but all these really do is scratch the surface; on the whole, they’re static and hamfisted, resembling a student film more than anything else. Its story is pretty lacking as well, but unfortunately the only way for me to watch this film was from a Youtube link with much of its subtitled dialogue just straight up missing; as a result, much of the exposition was quite literally lost in translation, and while I won’t fault the film too much for the deficiencies of whatever halfway good samaritan decided to subtitle at least some of it, from what I could gather it wasn’t like it was going to be winning any awards for its writing anytime soon. Mes’s book thankfully fills in most of what’s missing, but even so it’s tough describe the story as anything but formulaic and uninspired. Add some exploitation aspects that exist simply due to the fact that it’s a direct-to-video production and it’s hard not to cross your arms and roll your eyes at it. To sum things up, everything in the film serves its action, and the action itself isn’t particularly that good to begin with. The ending was interesting, as was the film’s credit sequence (if you know me, you know I’m a sucker for a good credit sequence), but that’s about all that I’ll give it.
There wasn’t anything particularly offensive about Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder, and it was more a case of it just not being that compelling to begin with. A rote film churned out to satisfy market demand, with the upside being that it introduced us to one of the most exciting filmmakers of the past few decades. I’m excited to continue checking out Miike’s V-cinema career before making my way to his theatrical releases, and while not all of the former are available with English subtitles, until I learn Japanese or something I’ll just have to grin and bear it. While I can’t say I enjoyed this film too much, I’m glad that I watched it; here’s to many more Miike films, and I’ll hope you’ll join me on my journey.
⭐️⭐️ out of 5
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