Black Line
Directed by Teruo Ishii
Plot
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.
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Cast
Shigeru Amachi
Koji Machida
Utako Mitsuya
Misako
Yōko Mihara
Maya
Toshio Hosokawa
Goro Torii
Reiko Seto
Reiko Onuma
Kyôko Yashiro
Chiaki
Junko Uozumi
Kaneko Sano
Hiroshi Ayukawa
Hotel manager
Yuji Munakata
Joe
Jun Ōtomo
Yukichi Tachibana
Masaru Kodaka
Photo seller
Ryuji Moriyama
Taizo
Hiroshi Asami
Kayoko (gay boy)
Miho Jo
Hotel maid Tokiko
Kuniko Yamamura
Kayo