Koji Wakamatsu, one of the few directors who never made a star-studded, audience-pleasing piece of commercial shit, has died. He was struck by a taxi cab and never fully recovered from his injuries.
He was 76 and made 100 movies.
I've written extensively on Mr. Wakamatsu on this blog, so I won't regurgitate the familiar.
An utterly unique filmmaker, he kowtowed to no motherless fuck and bravely railed against authority and authority figures, always presenting sex, politics, and violence -- and sometimes a combination of all three -- as intrinsic to life and our primal drives.
Every Wakamatsu film was a scream of outrage, of protest, at the way governments, figures of authority, and media strive to pervert and destroy our basic natures.
Unlike 99% of all human beings, Wakamatsu gave a shit by not giving a fuck what people thought of him.
His work was a pure expression of his soul.
I admired and related to him so much.
RIP, Koji.
A major bone from cinema's skeleton has been removed, and with that, so has a big, bloody chunk of hope.
Fuck it! Can't believe you're gone, Koji.
* * *
My favorites of his:
Go Go Second Time Virgin, Naked Bullet, The
Man Who Assaulted 13 People, Violent Virgin
United Red Army,
Caterpillar, Running in Madness Dying in Love, High Noon Rape
Violence
Without A Cause, Dark Story of a Japanese Rapist,
The Embryo Hunts in
Secret, Sex Jack, Torture Chronicles: 100 Years
Ecstasy of the Angels
