To commemorate turning in my dissertation today, I will tweet out a countdown list of:

THE 13 BEST SUZUKI SEIJUN FILMS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST

They’re ranked by how much I want to see them. #SeijunSuzuki

To be a bit clearer, the non-existent films in this list are his unfilmed projects. Some have full published screenplays; others just have extended outlines or were referred to in interviews. Most were written with members of Guryū Hachirō, his collaborators on BRANDED TO KILL.

13.) BALLAD DEDICATED TO MOTHER (mid-70s): A film based on the hit song by Kaientai, with a screenplay by Ōshima collaborator Sasaki Mamoru and Tōei stalwart Naitō Makoto. The screenplay was reworked and later turned into DAUGHTER OF TIME, directed by Naitō. It's got its moments.

12.) UNTITLED "THE WINNER" REMAKE (1966): A ballet dancer (Yoshinaga Sayuri) and boxer (Watari Tetsuya) with the same shady manager fall in love to the dismay of the manager, who has designs on Yoshinaga. From the sound of it, the climax was to be bloodier than the original.

11.) BITTER HONEY (post-2005): An adaptation of Murō Saisei's novel about an aging novelist who gets a new lover, but is haunted by the ghost of his first wife. The novel was later adapted by Sōgo Ishii, though I don't think it was related to Suzuki's screenplay.

10. WOLF OF HELL(71): Tragic romance from a novel by Itō Keiichi about a Japanese man (Takahashi Hideki) and Chinese woman (Asaoka Ruriko) who fall in love before the Manchuria Incident. When they meet again, he's in the Japanese military and she's a spy for China's 8th Rte Army.

9.) STAR WOMAN(77): An adaptation of an Izumi Kyōka ghost story about a group of students who see a strange woman floating in the stars one night on the road. Suzuki later adapted the author's work for KAGERO-ZA. Yamatoya Atsushi wrote the script, and considered directing himself

8.) ASSASSINATION COUNTING SONG (1968): A "wandering-gambler" film with a protagonist who sings a new verse of a song every time he assassinates someone new. This was the last project Suzuki was working on with Guryū Hachirō before Nikkatsu fired him. They wanted to make a series

7.) BRANDED TO KILL SEQUEL (1967): Noda ( #JoeShishido) is a contract killer, hoping to be ranked by the mysterious "guild." A woman asks him to kill her husband, a ranked killer and he agrees, but discovers an uncanny resemblance between his own methods and this other killer.

The film was to end with a showdown between Noda and a computer, apparently. I wonder if the LUPIN III episode LUPIN VS. COMPUTER (from the time when Suzuki was supervising director of the show) is related in some way.

6.) FIGHTING ELEGY SEQUEL (1968): Kiroku moves from the fight group circles of the earlier film to right wing groups in Tokyo and the Japanese military. Kiroku is commanded to lose his virginity in a brothel, which has unexpected consequences for his devotion to the military.

5.) TAHRIR AL-SUEZ (76): A Japanese tourist visiting Egypt becomes infatuated with a dancer named Rosa when the Yom Kippur War breaks out. He joins the PLO to impress her. She mistakes him for a different Japanese PLO member who is known as a hero who goes by a pseudonym.

Presumably the screenwriters were partly thinking of Adachi Masao when they wrote that one. Yamatoya Atsushi and Tanaka Yōzō both worked for Wakamatsu Kōji's production company at one point, so they would have known him well.

4.) FORGING THE SWORDS(1969): An adaptation of the Lu Xun's version from OLD TALES RETOLD. The original story is about an evil King who orders a swordsmith to make a powerful sword, but the swordsmith refuses to hand over the finished product for fear of how the King will use it.

The King kills the swordsmith and, many years later, his son seeks revenge. Lu Xun's version is an irreverent adaptation with a talking mouse and a fight with disembodied heads, all of which would have been in this film. They wanted to cast #KenTakakura and film in Afghanistan.

3.) THE TYPHOON'S FESTERING MADNESS(2001): An Asakusa Opera style musical about the escapades Guillotine Society members trying to assassinate government officials in the Taishō Era. Asakusa Opera was popular in the Taishō Era, and combined vaudeville, musical theater, and opera.

2.) HALL OF DREAMS (YUMEDONO)(1972): A romantic fantasy set in the Asuka period. A vagabond named Jirō ( #YoshioHarada) goes to the capital in search of the most beautiful woman in the world, and gets mixed up in the succession struggle between Prince Yamashiro and Soga no iruka.

It becomes very convoluted with dream sequences and magic, and culminates in Jirō's journey to a hidden room in the newly-constructed YUMEDONO that transforms when he enters it, through magic or illusion. Nakatami no kamatari and Prince Shōtoku's ghost are also major characters.

And number one...

RED LION OF THE GHOST TOWN: A spaghetti-western horror film starring #AkiraKobayashi , #JoeShishido , Ikehata Shinnosuke (AKA Peter, from Matsumoto's FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES), and Misako Watanabe. A group of criminals on the run find themselves in a ghost town in rural Japan.

After sundown, strange things start to happen. The "abandoned" town is occupied by a cult, and their leader intends to use them as human sacrifices in a demonic ritual. The script was inspired by Sergio Leone's A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS and Oe Kenzaburō's THE YOUNG MAN'S STIGMA.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this list of movies you'll never get to see. My defense is later this month, and it's open to the public if you want to try to talk my committee out of giving me a degree!