Above, two great posters for Daiei Motion Picture Company’s Yôkai hyaku monogatari, aka 100 Monsters.  In the movie you get giants and faceless men and witches—i.e., things that are familiar to most cultures—but you also get some specifically Japanese weirdness like the rokurokubi, which can stretch its neck to extreme lengths (see below), and the karakasa oabake, which is a parasol that has come to life. Apparently, household items animating is a major part of Japanese folklore, and some of the objects that can haunt you include quilts, clocks, mirrors, gongs, sake jars, and sandals. That last one doesn’t surprise us, because we once had a roommate whose Crocs scared away any woman who saw them. Anyway, we gather this is more or less a kid’s movie, but to us it seems like one that would permanently warp anyone under the age of ten. For adults, it’s just amazing to watch so many people in rubber suits in one place at the same time. If you want to see the rokurokubi get all sassy with her sinuous neck, check here, and you can see the haunted parasol come to life here. Yôkai hyaku monogatari premiered in Japan today in 1968.

Above is a nice poster for Mekura no oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori, aka Crimson Bat: The Blind Swordswoman, starring Yôko Matsuyama, Chizuko Arai, and Jun Tatara. The first in a series of four Crimson Bat movies, this was in the same vein as the long running Zataochi series, and was a precursor to other movies featuring angry blind swordswomen like Black Cat’s Revenge, which we took a look at a few months back. Basically, in Japanese movies if you meet up with a sword-wielding blind woman—even one that looks as innocent as Yôko Matsuyama—either run screaming or make out your last will and testament on the spot. Plenty of reviews of this one online, so you don’t need our input. We'll just tell you that it has all the elements—betrayal, revenge, arterial bloodspray, all that good stuff. You can check out a fight scene here. Mekura no oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori premiered in Tokyo today in 1969.

When we saw this 7-inch gatefold over at Harakiri Chamber scanned and posted in two pieces we couldn’t resist Photoshopping it into one. It’s got Meiko Kaji, and if you’ve watched her movies you know it was her enemies who wound up in two pieces, not her. Anyway, Kaji is attired here for her role as Akemi Tachibana in Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Tattooed Swordswoman. We took a close look at that movie back in October. You get two Kaji songs here—the a-side “Jingi Komoriuta,” which was featured on the soundtracks of Kaidan nobori ryu as well as 1971’s Ginchô wataridori, and the b-side, which is entitled “Koi ni Inochi wo.” This 1970 pressing is very rare and costs the equivalent of $100, which is quite a sum to drop on two tunes. But if you’re curious you can listen to the first one here and the second one here.

Gotta love this. It looks like a Japanese Batman comic, but it’s really a school notebook made in the 1960s by the Seika Corporation. The inside is totally blank—perfect for designing all sorts of new bat devices, drawing x-rated caricatures of your arch-enemies, or perhaps even composing sonnets to your one true love: Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion, Catgirl’s gentle heart..? Or something like that. Back cover below.

Above is a January 1978 cover for Australia’s Adam, a magazine you know well by now if you frequent this site. The art here illustrates Terry P. Duval’s story “The Final Run,” in which a hapless truck driver picks up what he thinks is a damsel in distress, but who soon shows she’s a pure femme fatale. Adam began in 1946, and this is the magazine near the end—it folded, looks like, in May 1978. Inside this issue you get the usual literary, artistic and photographic treats, including five pages of Patti Clifton shots, plus skiing Nazis, and a profile of the notorious but misunderstood Tokyo Rose, who we wrote about last year. Readers also get to visit a Dakhma, aka Tower of Silence, a Zoroastrian structure where dead bodies—considered in the religion to be unclean—are left to be sun baked and picked apart by scavenging birds, thus preventing putrefaction which would pollute the earth. Mmm. Fun! The author visits a tower near Yazd, Iran, and must have gotten there just before the government shut all such structures down permanently. Today, the only towers still used for ritual exposure are in India. So put those on your travel itinerary. And lastly, on the rear page, you get Paul Hogan in another ad for Winfield cigarettes. Forty-seven scans appear below.

Above, an exceedingly rare Japanese poster of French actress Annie Belle, née Annie Brilland, promoting her role in the 1976 Italian erotic drama Laure. Belle made about thirty films, mostly in Italy, and today is a social worker. We have another poster of similar style we’ll try to get up later. 

Today, we’re sticking with a Japanese theme by sharing this amazing 1958 poster for… well, here we go again. The seller said the movie was called “Mermaids and Sea Robbers,” which makes some sense, because the movie is basically a swashbuckler about rival bands of pirates trying to get hold of a priceless treasure. But the poster actually says Mermaid Ascension. So take your pick. Moving on to the art, it’s impossible not to notice the weird visual juxtaposition that has Tatsuya Mihashi seemingly sticking his rifle right up Yuriko Tashiro’s rear end. We can understand the attraction, but that's just impolite. Luckily, there’s an alternate version below in which Tashiro’s crack is in not is mortal danger. You see? Gun control works.

Poster for Makoto Naitô’s actioner Furyo bancho totsugeki! Ichiban, aka Wolves of the City: First To Fight. It premiered in Japan today in 1971. See another poster in the Furyo Bancho series here.