BLOW THE NIGHT! Let's Spend the Night Together

About

BLOW THE NIGHT! Let's Spend the Night Together (1983)

COUNTRY: Japan DIRECTOR: Chūsei Sone Sonechuusei LANGUAGE: Japanese SUBTITLES: None ASPECT RATIO: TV 1.35:1 DURATION: 109 min

Blow the Night! Let's Spend the Night Together is an extremely rare (in fact, almost totally unknown outside of Japan) 1983 Japanese Docu-drama, shot on 16mm film (hence the films grainy appearance), starring actual Yanki gang members as many of the main characters.

According to Japanese I have spoken to who grew up in the period portrayed in the film, Blow the Night, though somewhat dramatized provides an incredibily accurate, realistic, raw, gritty and no-holds-barred look at the life of members of Japanese street gangs of the late 70s and early 80s.

As a gaijin (literally "outside person" meaning "foreigner" or "non-Japanese person") one can not help but draw comparisons to the British movies "Scrubbers" and "Scum".... possibly, even the TV series "Grange Hill" in its earliest incarnation.

As previously stated, many of the main characters are portrayed by actual Yanki gang members, and despite their total inexperience in front of a camera, or perhaps because of it, they come across as very natural and 'real' on screen... after all, for the majority of the movie they are really playing themselves.

The basic story is split into two parts... It begins with fifteen-year-old troublemaker Namie Takada moving from the suburbs of Tokyo to a regional city in rural Japan and coming up against the local Yanki gang at her new school.

After some initial suspicion from both sides, she finds her niche - and her shaved eyebrows, long Sukeban skirt, red permed hair and general bad ass attitude win her acceptance with the local contingent of young Bosozoku bikers, and she spends her days doing what Yanki did in the early 80s... being bored, arguing with her parents, skipping class to go "tripping on Ampang" (sniffing glue) and telling her teachers to "Kutabare" ('F### off')!

This is contrasted with the latter half of the film which takes place over a 24 hour period, as things quickly escalate from general name calling, teenage boredom and rebellion in the classroom into an out-an-out riot where the students proceed to beat six colours of crap out of their teachers and the Police attempt to lockdown the school.

Given limited theatrical release in Japan in 1983, then released on VHS in 1984, it has never been re-released in any format and has fallen into the Public Doman....

This is a very interesting movie indeed, and it is a crying shame that it has not previously made its way to the West, but there's still hope. I am sure it would not be too hard to find a fluent Japanese and English speaker to subtitle this movie! If anyone does... PLEASE let me know!

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Language

Japanese

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed