Black Line

Overview

Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.

Director: Teruo Ishii

Cast

Shigeru Amachi

Koji Machida

Utako Mitsuya

Misako

Yōko Mihara

Maya

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Toshio Hosokawa

Goro Torii

👤

Reiko Seto

Reiko Onuma

👤

Kyôko Yashiro

Chiaki

Junko Uozumi

Kaneko Sano

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Hiroshi Ayukawa

Hotel manager

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Yuji Munakata

Joe

Jun Ōtomo

Yukichi Tachibana