The Hoodlum Priest (1967)

The first film in the 2 part series about Ryuzen, a renegade martial-arts priest who, in addition to breaking all the commandments against sex and gambling, opens his own gambling den in direct defiance of the local yakuza boss. Exciting action and a twisty plot this movie breaks new barriers in Japanese cinema. Katsu Shintaro is superb in one of his better non-Zato Ichi roles as he fights off the advances of a love-lorn woman and risks his life to defeat the powerful gambling boss who has a stranglehold on the town.
Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Shintarō Katsu, Mayumi Ogawa, Mikio Narita, Kayo Mikimoto, Naoko Kubo, Jun Tatara, Hōsei Komatsu, Ryūtarō Gomi, Yoshio Kaneuchi, Fumio Watanabe, Shōsaku Sugiyama, Ikkei Tamaki, Yukio Horikita, Akira Shiga, Jun Katsumura, Takeshi Yabuuchi, Sumao Ishihara, Jun Fujikawa, Hiroyoshi Nishioka, Eijirō Yamaoka, Gen Kuroki, Yûtarô Ban, Masayoshi Kikuno, Tadashi Iwata, Kenichi Kagami, Masako Tomura, Jun Ōsugi, Taizô Sengoku, Kazuko Taniguchi
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