Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.
Shigeru Amachi | Koji Machida |
Utako Mitsuya | Misako |
Yōko Mihara | Maya |
Toshio Hosokawa | Goro Torii |
Reiko Seto | Reiko Onuma |
Kyôko Yashiro | Chiaki |
Junko Uozumi | Kaneko Sano |
Hiroshi Ayukawa | Hotel manager |
Yuji Munakata | Joe |
Jun Ōtomo | Yukichi Tachibana |
Masaru Kodaka | Photo seller |
Ryuji Moriyama | Taizo |