Based on a story by Fujiwara Shinji, Doi Michiyoshi’s black comedy about a prison break gone wrong was unlike anything else Shintoho was making at the time.
Released just before the studio’s collapse, The Horizon Glitters is a brilliant one-off that doesn’t fit in the usual genre boxes, made with a freedom and energy that verge on the anarchic. In it are echoes of the Hollywood movies that influenced Doi’s generation of Japanese directors, including John Huston’s Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948), Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958) and even the goofy road movies of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
But how to classify Jerry Fujio’s character, a motor-mouthed proto-punk who respects no authority, inside the walls or out? No James-Dean-like sensitivo, he fights as easily as breathes. No Marlon-Brando-like moody loner, he is a full-of-himself ball of fire - and doesn’t care who knows it.
The film begins with brief sketches of how five convicts ended up in the same cell: Ota a.k.a. “Capone” (Tatara Jun), Matsuda a.k.a. “Professor” (Amachi Shigeru), Tsuchiya a.k.a. “Bartender” (Oki Ryuji), Ohira a.k.a. “Irokichi” (Otsuji Saburo) and a drug smuggling sailor known only as “Sea Monster” (Harumi Yuzo).
With the surly Capone as boss, this quintet maintains a rough harmony - until a new prisoner (Fujio) is tossed, swaggering, into their midst. Called “Mite” - short for “Dynamite” - he lives up to his name, treating his cellies with a blithe disrespect that soon brings on an explosion of anger.
Untamed by the beatings that follow, ‘Mite seems headed for an early exit to the infirmary, taking several of his opponents with him, when he casually announces that he knows the whereabouts of a large cache of diamonds.
Once they determine that he is not lying, his cellies suddenly want be his pal - a development that ‘Mite regards as his natural due. But how to acquire this fortune before their sentences are up?
Escape , of course. After clearing the prison walls and stealing some civilian clothes, they make their way to the home of the recently released “Sea Monster.” Their host, however, tries to kill the bumbling Irokichi and thus increase his share of the loot, but instead he is the one who is eliminated. How many more will meet his fate before they reach the diamonds?
To ask this question is almost to answer it, but Doi spices the journey with incidents and antics that are a mix of the slapstick and surreal, from a blistering drum solo by Mite, performed on a random assortment of objects before a transfixed crowd, to a nightmarish trek across a slag heap of a mountain. What lies at the journey’s end? The glitter draws our heroes on - but the horizon keeps receding.
Mark Schilling