Tômei-ningen: okase! was known in English by two titles—Lusty Transparent Man, which sounds pretty innocuous, and Invisible Man: Rape!, which sounds horrible. We’re really more interested in sharing the poster, but with regard to the film what you get here is a Nikkatsu roman porno production about a college student who invents an invisibility elixir. At that point he clumsily pervs his way like a dirty Jerry Lewis from one voyeuristic entanglement to the next, bumbling his way inside the lady parts of the female leads. How do you shoot love scenes with an invisible man? You have the women writhe around by themselves. They’re all taken by surprise, but all end up enjoying themselves. There’s some doubt whether they even realize their partner is a man, rather than a horny ghost or a figment of their own imaginations, but in any case these encounters aim for laughs, not eroticism. The question is whether you think they’re funny. We didn’t. Tômei-ningen: okase! premiered in Japan today in 1978.
1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago
Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.