Betrayal Tomorrow

In addition to discovering new talents, V-Cinema is notable for revitalising the careers of a number of B-movie directors from the 1960s and 70s. Especially during its early years, before becoming stigmatised, Toei in particular gave opportunities to its veteran directors to continue making features.

Kudo Eiichi was a former samurai action specialist at Toei’s Kyoto studio who made some of the finest films of the 1960s, including Thirteen Assassins (1963, remade by Miike Takashi in 2010) and The Great Killing (1964). The early 80s saw him move into hard-boiled action with Yokohama BJ Blues, a vehicle for that decade’s superstar Matsuda Yusaku (of Family Game and Black Rain fame) and Beast Detective, which played in competition at the Berlinale in 1983.

Betrayal Tomorrow sees Kudo pay overt homage to his 80s action films, returning to the streets of Yokohama, and many of the same locations, with this tale of a corrupt detective who runs a side business as a debt collector for a large corporation, threatening debtors with arrest if they don’t pay up. When the corporation is revealed to be in serious trouble with the yakuza, he must investigate to save his skin. Hagiwara Kenichi (from Kurosawa Akira’s Kagemusha) is every inch the bad lieutenant, abusing his badge and sending his hostess girlfriend to do his dirty work.

– Tom Mes

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