Apr 10
Tokyo Drifter was released in Japan on 10 April 1966.
After directing films for nearly a decade, Seijun Suzuki had increasingly developed a personal, "difficult" style that displeased the studio, and was issued a warning after 1965's Tattooed Life and told to "play it straight." Suzuki's budget was cut, thinking this might force him to be more constrained. Instead, Suzuki pushed the art direction and cinematography, creating a "jaw-dropping, eye-popping fantasia" (from the Criterion Collection release), a "flabbergasting assemblage of tough-guy kitsch, poetry, and self-mockery."
Tokyo Drifter was not released in the US until the Criterion DVD in 2009.
