The Blind Wolf in Interrogation: An Interview with Kurando Mitsutake

It's been a while since Macabresque was updated, but we return with a killer interview with Kurando Mitsutake, writer, director, actor of Samurai Avenger: Blind Wolf, whom our devoted (!) readers would remember from Macabresque diaries of Fantastic Planet. Kurando, who recently moved to Japan from L.A. to continue his film career there, has kindly taken the time in his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us.

How did you start your film career? Could you tell us about the films you have been involved in?

After film school, my first job in the film industry was to assistant produce DVD extras for New Line Cinema. I worked with one producer on behind the scene documentaries and audio commentaries for many films including Rush Hour, Lost in Space, and Blade.

Then I worked for a Japanese TV production company in Los Angeles as a production manager during which time I made a directorial debut with a Japanese TV program called @TV.

After a few years I was able to make my first feature film called Monsters Don't Get to Cry.

Around that same time, I worked as a visual effect assistant for The Grudge 2 and was the Assistant Director for the film’s reshoot sequence in Chicago.

I was also the director's assistant on 20^th Century Fox's Shutter as well.

You also took part in several projects as an actor, including the popular TV series, Heroes and Ugly Betty according to IMDB. Could you tell us about your acting career? How do you find time to act in other projects while you also work on your own films?

My acting career started as an accident. After I finished my first feature, my friends and I made a short film called Samurai Avenger: Lone Wolf Blood. We did this short film to raise money for the feature version which evolved into Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf.

Since we had no budget for the short, I cast myself as a side character. When the short was done, one of my friends who is a working professional actor told me he wanted to introduce me to his agent. From there one thing led to another and I signed with that agent and got very, very lucky with my run as an actor in Hollywood.

But when I launched “Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf”, I had to stop taking auditions because I had to dedicate all of myself to the picture.

How did Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf come about? What were your inspirations? Could you also tell us a bit about the production process? How did you decide to write, direct and star in the film?

I always wanted to do a samurai movie, especially with a good kick ass revenge storyline. So the concept for LONE WOLF – THE SAMURAI AVENGER was with me for almost a decade.

I love classic samurai chambara films but they are so expensive to do them right. Costumes, wigs, props, and locations... So I decided to create a parallel world - Wild West meets Samurai East. In this world, I could tell a classic tale of revenge which I always wanted to tell but with a small budget, it was “everything is possible”.

In the low budget independent film making world, one must wear as many hats as possible. This is the reason why I ended up doing so much for this movie.
 The decision for me to play the lead character was purely an economical one too. It is very difficult to secure an actor who can commit to a long feature film shoot with a very small budget. So I thought since I'm there on the set everyday anyway, why not play the main character. Also the fact I had a very lucky career as an actor helped my decision.

Were you influenced by the revival of/homage to old exploitation films popularized by Quentin Tarantino?

I have always been a huge fan of those genre pictures from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I am happy to see the revival, but was already influenced by those films.

Do you think Samurai Avenger is an homage to exploitation/martial arts/spaghetti western films or does it parody them?

I guess it's both. But more homage with all my love and respect to those films, especially spaghetti western and Japanese chambara films.

Would it be safe to say there were some references to Jodorowsky’s El Topo aside from all the other exploitation film references? Is there a surreal/underground cinema influence in the film?

I love Mr. Jodorowsky's work but I'm a bigger fan of Santa Sangre than El Topo, if I had to choose.

Many people have seen influences from El Topo in Samurai Avenger, but it wasn't intentionally done. Samurai Avenger was influenced by such filmmakers like Kenji Musumi and Sergio Corrbucci.

How has the film been received? What is it like to make an exploitation film in an age mostly driven by political correctness?

Samurai Avenger has been received really well by the genre film fans from all over the world. I guess because mainstream films have gone very politically correct, there is a huge demand for edgier more exploitative films.

Samurai Avenger was screened at 9 film festivals in 5 countries in 2009. We received best picture awards from Fantastic Planet film festival in Sydney Australia and Indie Fest USA in Anaheim California. So far, we have secured distribution in several countries with many more hopefully to come.

Can you tell us about your future projects? It looks like there might be a sequel to Samurai Avenger…

My next picture might be a "Mondo" style fake documentary on Japan. Another homage to the exploitation genre film.

Another picture that's in the works is a hard boiled gun action movie. After a sword fighting movie like Samurai Avenger, I really want to do a gun fight movie.

I am hoping to do a sequel to Samurai Avenger too. We have to see how well it does commercially in the world first. If it does well, I'm sure we can raise money for the sequel.

Any advice to aspiring filmmakers?

The life of both a commercial or independent filmmaker isn't an easy one. So I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But if you must make a movie, do a feature not a short film. If you plan well and execute the plan well, you might get lucky and the film might be distributed. That won't happen for short films.

Any last words?

Please find and watch Samurai Avenger. If you enjoyed it, recommend it to your friends. With the strong word of mouth, it might ultimately lead us to make the sequel. Thank you!

PS: To find out more about Samurai Avenger and Kurando's work, visit http://www.kurandomitsutake.com/

Fantastic Planet Sydney Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival, Diary #3

On November 5 Thursday (when we all remember, remembered!), I went to see two sessions of the fantastic Fantastic Planet film festival. The first of these was the Shorts Program # 4: Future attacks, and the other one was the “sushi western” Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf, directed by Kurando Mitsutake.

The shorts program included seven films, all of which were, I think, quite good, but some more so than the others. The first film of the session, Burden (http://www.burdenthemovie.com/) (Michael David Lynch, 2009 – 10 minutes), was one of the most visually stunning films in the festival (and won the best visual effects award in the festival). The film tells the story of a ‘watcher’ with super powers called Calik, who decides to take action when the earth is invaded by aliens. Michael David Lynch (that’s a killer name for the film industry, I reckon) was there to present his film and answer some questions at the end. We’ve learnt that this was a student project and it cost around 50.000 USD to make and that he’s hoping to turn it into a feature length film.

Burden was followed by Spaceman on Earth (Shant Hamassian, 2009), which was a live action/animation parody of 50s sci fi films, and particularly their main characters. Next, we watched Marooned? (Ryan Nagata, 2009), which had a similar approach to 1950s sci fi, as it was shot in b&w and featured two space traveler characters in marooned (?) on a planet with savage inhabitants, it had a twist which turned into a terrorizing tale of amnesia, murder, and geekery!

After the first three films, which were all from the US, we watched the 26 minute long short from Taiwan: Intoxicant by John Hsu (2008). The film re-imagines the internet forum setting as an actual room where the real life people put notices in a board where their actions are controlled by moderators, then turns this into a setting for a tale of mystery, in which the forum is under threat of an attack by a hacker. Intoxicant won the best short film award, and probably deserved it, too!

The Un-gone (Simon Bovey, 2006) hailed from the UK and was set in a future when molecular transportation is possible. However, there is a dark secret behind this form of transportation, which Julian Salinger, the protagonist, finds out to his utter displeasure. The Un-gone was followed by the Australian short Oxygen (David Norris, 2008) was a dystopia, in which the world’s oxygen supplies are in shortage, and people live in airtight houses, in which air is supplied by the government. Xavier, a maintenance worker, is free to get out of his house with a special suit and fix people’s oxygen supply machines. Gradually, he finds out about a terrible plot to keep the society under control. I thought it was really well-made and the costume and set design was really successful. (It can be watched in its entirety on imdb)

The last film of the session was The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5 (Chema García Ibarra, 2008) was short little film from Spain, about a disabled young man, and his fixed belief in an imminent attack by

Robots from Nebula-5, for which he tries to warn his parents, to no avail.

After the shorts session, I went on to see Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf (Kurando Mitsutake, 2009), which I have been looking forward to after reading the blurb in the festival program – “imagine a Kill Bill on steroids!”. The film has a basic storyline, in which a nameless Japanese man, sets out to kill the man, Nathan Flesher, who has blinded him and killed his wife (after raping her) and his daughter. While Nathan Flesher is in prison, the nameless man (Kurando Mitsutake) learns the ways of the samurai and becomes a swordsmaster despite his blindness. On his way to kill flesher upon his release from prison, he learns that he’ll have to encounter seven deadly assasins and kill them. In his quest, he meets an American swordsman who calls himself the Drifter and who decides to help the “Blind Wolf’s” cause. So they start killing the assasins one by one, till they reach Nathan Flesher.

The writer/director/star Kurando Mitsutake defines the film as a sushi western, drawing its influences from the martial arts and spaghetti western films as well as 70s exploitation films. He cited films/series like Lone Wolf and Cub and Django among the films that inspired him to make this films during the Q&A. It’s easy to compare his films to Quentin Tarantino’s homage films like Kill Bill and Death Proof, as with the martial arts/western mixture in the formula and with the ‘restored grindhouse film’ aesthetic he is going for. However, Mitsutake made a short film called Samurai Avenger Lone Wolf Blood – Episode 24 as early as 2004, which formed the basis of the Blind Wolf and he claims he had thought about the “restored look” prior to the release of Grindhouse, and was worried upon hearing that Tarantino was making a film like the one he had in mind. Setting the questions of originality aside, Samurai Avenger provides a good 90 minutes of fun for the exploitation film aficionado, with its over the top violence (including a scene which involves a c section with a samurai sword!), litres of gushing/spraying blood, zombies, witches, and flashback explanations of several martial arts sword techniques, cheesy acting and one-liners etc. Although Mitsutake didn’t mention it among his influences, I thought the film also had an El Topo vibe going on with the Blind Wolf’s costume, the desert setting, and the general surreal mood.

It was surprising to find out that the budget was “way way way below half a million USD” (Mitsutake didn’t disclose the actual budget) as the special effects looked really good, but Mitsutake informed us that there were quite a number of volunteers and interns involved, so that kind of explains it. The film won the best film award and best special effects awards, quite deservingly. I got to have a chat to Kurando Mitsutake and had my picture taken with him too!

The diary will be concluded with the closing night of the festival. Coming soon!