Raizo Ichikawa as the red-haired Samurai Kyoshiro Nemuri, the Son of the Black Mass.
Balladeer’s Blog begins its examination of various Samurai films from Japan. In keeping with my blog’s overall theme I won’t be covering the uber-popular Samurai flicks like Yojimbo, The Seven Magnificent Samurai or the Musashi Miyamoto Trilogy. Regular readers who are familiar with my contempt for organized religion will not be at all surprised that I’ll be starting out with the Son of the Black Mass series of films starring Raizo Ichikawa, often called “the James Dean of Japan.”
In addition to the twelve Ichikawa movies I will also cover the two entries in the series made after Raizo’s untimely death from cancer. After that, to be a fully comprehensive look, I will also examine the original novels as well as the three Son of the Black Mass movies made in the 1950’s, even though they did not have the cinematic impact of the films starring Raizo Ichikawa.
The odd title of the movie series comes from the fact that the title character, former Samurai turned Ronin Kyoshiro Nemuri, is the child of a Japanese woman and the crazed Portugese missionary who raped her. The insane missionary was dabbling in Satanism and Nemuri was conceived during a Black Mass ritual, hence the series title. The deadly swordsman inherited his hated father’s red hair and when a heavy rain washed out the black dye Nemuri was disguising it with, his exposure as a half-breed led to his shunning and his fallen status. Continue reading
RAFFLES (1975-1977) – A. J. Raffles, the master thief and star Cricket player was created by E.W. Hornung – the brother-in- law of Arthur Conan Doyle. As all Raffles fans know, A.J. and his bumbling assistant Bunny Manders were intended as a tongue in cheek criminal answer to Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 
Raffles was portrayed by a long line of suave, debonair actors, from John Barrymore in Silent Movies on up through David Niven and others in Talkies. In my opinion, this 1970s British television series served up the best rendition of the iconic character. 
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog finds it hilarious the way that 
JOE BIDEN STILL HAS KIDS IN CAGES – Okay, for this one, I won’t bother since we all know that anti-Trump fascists only pretended to care about kids in cages just so they could attack Trump. The repulsive hypocrites are/ were fine with Biden and Obama having kids in cages. They’re also fine with Gitmo, which they pretended to hate when Obama promised to close it down over ten years ago. (PSSST. It’s STILL open.) 
If I ever formed a rock band of my own I would, needless to say, base the name on something from Bad Movie Lore. Something like Renegade Belgian Cardinals – based on a line of dialogue from the Serial-Killer Priest flick The Confessional. 
THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS 
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog notes that de facto Third Party President Donald Trump has been nominated once again for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his peace efforts around the world and for being the first American president in several decades to not launch any new wars during his term. (link below) 
DASH DIXON 
Powers: Dash Dixon, the Man of Might, possessed the strength of fifty men, could leap incredible distances, was invulnerable to harm and could live forever. (Originally he had the strength of just three men but that was changed to fifty. You know comic books.)
BLACK ANGEL 
For Balladeer’s Blog’s review of the very first episode of this 1971-1973 series about London by Gaslight detectives from both the Victorian and Edwardian Ages you can simply click 
Episode: THE MOABITE CIPHER (March 26th 1973) 
It’s no secret that Techno-Fascists like Jack Dorsey and his ilk have been waging war on freedom of expression. Big Tech has shown that it is all about corporate fascism. They really are publishers, not just providers of platforms, and deserve no Section 230 protections and should have their would-be monopoly on communication broken up. 
Poland has introduced a new Freedom Act against Big Tech censorship
Balladeer's Blog 