Outlaw Gangster VIP 2

Next up in the Outlaw Gangster VIP series was Outlaw Gangster VIP 2 (1968) directed by Keiichi Ozawa starring Tetsuya Watari as Goro "the Assassin." This a competent follow up, in which we see Goro go north to Hirosaki with his girl Yukiko (Chieko Matsubara) and his sempai's girl Yumeko (Kayo Matsuo). However, the manual labor jobs Goro does are not enough to support the household with a sick woman-Yumeko. He is recruited to help out and old friend with his yakuza crew in Yokohoma. The film starts out in the open snowy expanses of Northern Japan and has a much more open feeling overall with greater use of location shooting rather than the studio bound atmosphere of the first film. Ozawa follows Masuda’s lead but angles for a few expressive sequences of his own such as filming a flamenco dance sequence (starring a young Meiko Kaji acting under her original name) with a potential stand off and later in the film by showing a high school girl volleyball game cut with the final fight to the death which was going on in the waterway below the volleyball court.