Etsuko Shihomi
Also Known As: 志穂美 悦子, Etsuko Nagabuchi, 長渕 悦子, Etsuko Shiomi, 塩見 悦子, Sue Shiomi, ジャパンアクションクラブ
Biography: Etsuko Shihomi (also known as Sue Shihomi) is a former Japanese actress and martial artist best known for her roles in 1970s action films. Born in 1955, she was a protégé of Sonny Chiba and a key member of the Japan Action Club. Shihomi gained fame as the lead in the "Sister Street Fighter" film series, showcasing her impressive martial arts skills. She also appeared in other notable films such as "The Street Fighter" (1974) and "The Executioner" (1974). Shihomi retired from acting in the 1980s, leaving behind a legacy as one of Japan’s pioneering female action stars.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Okayama, Japan
Adult: No
Popularity:
Known For:
Fall Guy
Overview: Ginshiro, threatened by poor repute and upcoming star Tachibana, forces his friend Yasu to marry Konatsu, Ginshiro's pregnant mistress; Yasu becomes a stuntman to make ends meet.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1982-10-09
Popularity:
Roaring Fire
Overview: On his death bed the man who raised Joji reveals that he is not his real father and that Joji’s real parents died tragically in a plane crash. Shortly thereafter Joji goes to Japan is search of his sister and his twin brother Toru. Joji’s quickly finds his sister Chihiro who is now blind and lives with their uncle. Joji one evening accidently over hears his uncle who has ties to the criminal underworld discussing his various illegal operations. Joji ‘s eavesdropping is discovered by his uncle who offers him a chance to join the organization. Joji promptly turns his uncle’s offer down which immediately puts his life in danger.
Genres: Action Crime Drama Comedy
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1981-08-08
Popularity:
Sister Street Fighter
Overview: Li Mansei is a martial-arts champion turned undercover agent. When he is captured by a drug lord, his sister Li Koryu turns to his former martial-arts school, including the powerful Sonny Kawasaka, for help in the inevitable battle royale.
Genres: Action Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1974-08-31
Popularity:
The Great Chase
Overview: Shihomi Etsuko plays a race car driver who also lends out her services to the Japanese Secret Service. Although there really isn't much of a "chase" to be seen, Shihomi does pursue a cartel of drug runners and assorted Japanese yakuza types. While the story is pure 70's exploitation and gritty crime drama, the best reason to see it is for the Martial Arts Action of Etsuko Shihomi. The action is over-the-top and at times hilarious (i.e. Shihomi battling the lead criminal atop a moving gondola or Shihomi battling a whip-wielding Catholic Nun).
Genres: Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-04-26
Popularity:
Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon
Overview: Duke Togo (codename: Golgo 13) is a ruthless assassin who's accepted a tricky assignment from an American drug syndicate. His mission is to "rub out" Hong Kong's underworld kingpin. His main obstacle is the relentless Detective 'Smitty' Smith, determined to stop Togo no matter the cost. The result is an explosive adventure through the seamy, violent streets of Hong Kong.
Genres: Action Adventure Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1977-09-15
Popularity:
Ninja Gangsters 2: The Lullaby of Hell
Overview: The second in Norio Nanjo’s “Secret” series. The former secret phantom Sanzo (Hiroki Matsukata) and Yume no Gosuke (Ashiya Gannosuke), who escaped after clashing with their superiors, travel to the castle town of Kurume in Kyushu.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1982-02-05
Popularity:
Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread
Overview: Koryu heads to Yokohama in search of a woman named Birei, kidnapped by diamond smugglers who move their hot rocks by surgically implanting them into the nubile buttocks of Chinese prostitutes. Koryu's older sister, working as a jewelry designer, is secretly, if unhappily, involved with the gangsters.
Genres: Action Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1974-12-07
Popularity:
Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist
Overview: Kiku Nakakawa, the only daughter of an old kimono shop owner in Kyoto, is enthusiastic about karate. To help her friend Michi avenge her brother, she sneaks into a movie studio in Kyoto where a drug dealing syndicate is based.
Genres: Action Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1976-05-29
Popularity:
The Executioner II: Karate Inferno
Overview: When a priceless jewel owned by rich heiress Sabine is stolen, along with her daughter, Professional thief and hired killer Ryuichi Koga and his gang are hired to retrieve both. At a ransom exchange, the team save the girl but lose the money and the jewel. When Sabine decides to deal directly with the thieves and obtains the jewel on her own by paying the ransom, Koga, having been stiffed of his fee by Sabine, steals the jewel. Little does he know, it’s a fake. Now, Koga and the team must break into a high security bank to steal the real jewel.
Genres: Action Comedy Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1974-12-28
Popularity:
I Are You, You Am Me
Overview: 9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1982-04-17
Popularity:
13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats
Overview: Maki is the leader of a female gang who fights for justice, but she ends up being framed and sent to a sadistic woman's prison. Will Maki be able to escape and take revenge?
Genres: Action Crime Drama
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-03-08
Popularity:
The Moon Mask Rider
Overview: The Moon Mask Rider is a tokusatsu movie produced by Purumie International/Herald Enterprises and distributed by Nippon Herald Pictures, was released theatrically on March 14, 1981. Considered Japan's answer to the American box-office fiasco, The Legend of the Lone Ranger (released the same year), this updated version of the Moonlight Mask legend bombed at the Japanese box-office. Daisuke Kuwahara (who, like Klinton Spilsbury , disappeared from doing films) plays George Owara (Moon Mask Rider's new alter-ego), and the rest of the cast made up of veteran action starlets: Sue Shihomi, Daijiro Harada and Takayuki Godai.
Genres: Action Adventure
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1981-03-14
Popularity:
Dragon Princess
Overview: A karate master played by Sonny Chiba is attacked and left crippled and blinded in one eye. He trains his daughter (Etsuko Shihomi) with the intention of her avenging not only himself but a murdered friend.
Genres: Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1976-01-31
Popularity:
The Street Fighter's Last Revenge
Overview: Terry Sugury is hired to recover one of two tapes containing a formula for making heroin for a price of 200 dollars a pound. But he gets double crossed. So he wants the tape back.
Genres: Action Crime Drama Thriller
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1974-11-22
Popularity:
Shogun's Ninja
Overview: In the middle of the 16th century, Hideyoshi, a power hungry warlord sets out to destroy the Momochi clan. He sends his war commander in search of the clan's hidden gold only to find that two daggers are the key to the hiding place of the treasured gold. Spanning decades, the quest for the missing daggers takes Shiranui through war and ancient tradition.
Genres: Action Adventure
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1980-11-15
Popularity:
Legend of the Eight Samurai
Overview: The evil Hikita clan rises from the dead to fulfill a curse on the Satomi clan by restoring the face of their warlord by using the skin of Princess Shizu. In the process of trying to capture her, the clan murders her entire family, but Princess Shizu escapes their clutches. She enlists the aid of eight samurai warriors, possessors of powerful magic crystal, led by Dosetsu (Sonny Chiba!) to help rescue the remaining members of her court and revenge her family. Along the way, they must fight undead warriors, evil spirits, poisonous beauties and a giant centipede.
Genres: Fantasy Adventure Drama Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1983-12-10
Popularity:
Kabamaru the Ninja Boy
Overview: Kabamaru is a young boy raised and trained by his grandfather as a ninja. After the sudden death of his grandfather, he starts living with Mai, his grandfather’s mistress, who is a school director. He is asked to help out on struggles against other schools, as he is master of the ninja mystical arts. As time passes he will make lots of friends as well as enemies, and fall in love with Mai.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1983-08-06
Popularity:
The Second Is a Christian
Overview: The story of beautiful Christian nun, Kyoko who is the object of affection for two very different men - one the happy-go-lucky yakuza gangster, Haruhiko who is the next-in-line to takeover the ragtag "Tenryu Gumi" gang and the other bumbling police detective Kumashiro. The Tenryu Gumi is a collection of misfits and other troublemakers but are relatively peaceful due to their Christian beliefs. Their bitter rivals are the more traditional "Kuroiwa Gumi", a much more sadistic and violent group led by godfather Kuroiwa.
Genres: Comedy Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1985-09-14
Popularity:
Tora-san's Bluebird Fantasy
Overview: During his travels, Tora-san comes across a traditional theater he used to visit, and discovers that one of his old friends has died. Tora-san and his family help the friend's daughter, who becomes romantically involved with an aspiring artist.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1986-12-20
Popularity:
Atami Murder Case
Overview: Chief Detective KIMURA Denbei, fondly referred to as Smoky Denbei, is a legendary figure at the Metropolitan Police Department. Transferred to Denbei's Criminal Investigation Division 1, Detective KUMADA Tomekichi arrives from the Toyama Prefectural Police. KUMADA is disconcerted by Denbei's position that murderers nowadays do not need a plausible motive, but gradually adapts to Denbei's unusual methods of investigation.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1986-06-07
Popularity:
The Return of Sister Street Fighter
Overview: When Koryu's childhood friend Shurei is abducted by gangsters, the desperate young woman recruits a female martial artist and a tough-as-nails stranger to join her for a dangerous rescue mission.
Genres: Action Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-09-30
Popularity:
Shogun's Samurai
Overview: Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.
Genres: Action Drama Adventure
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1978-01-21
Popularity:
The Bullet Train
Overview: A Japanese bullet train is threatened with a bomb that will explode automatically if the train slows below 80 km/h, unless a ransom is paid. Police race to find the bombers so the train crew can learn how to defuse the bomb.
Genres: Action Crime Drama Thriller
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-07-05
Popularity:
Kotaro, An Audacious Karate Boy
Overview: Lewd, long-haired karate kid Kotaro Shindo spends his days causing amok at the prestigious Tsurugamine Academy, until the Disciplinary Committee decides enough is enough, and puts a bounty on his luscious locks. Meanwhile other sinister forces are working in the shadows to put Kotaro to use for their own ends.
Genres: Comedy Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1984-08-04
Popularity:
The Street Fighter
Overview: Takuma Tsurugi takes on the government, the police, the mafia and an international ring of kidnappers who aim to dispossess a beautiful young heiress of her millions.
Genres: Action Crime Thriller
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1974-02-02
Popularity:
Festival Champ
Overview: Hiroki Matsukata is a fish market worker and a fanatical Japanese festival rascal. He also falls in love with a stripper while delivering his colleague's love letter to her but forgetting to mention it's from another man.
Genres: Comedy Crime Romance
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1976-05-29
Popularity:
The Killing Machine
Overview: Mr. Soh, a righteous man with a cold stare and fists of steel, returns to a lawless post-war Japan in 1946. He protects the weak, defends the poor and knocks some good sense into friends and enemies alike. Rapists and gangsters get the worst of it, as Mr. Soh builds up his school on the island of Shikoku.
Genres: Drama Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1976-02-01
Popularity:
The Decisive Power of Aikido
Overview: It is about the life of Ueshiba - the founder of aikido. We can see how he decided to develop aikido and how he did it. We can see why he developed aikido and where he has learned martial arts.
Genres: History Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-11-22
Popularity:
The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi
Overview: Obayashi's take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.
Genres: Comedy Mystery
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1979-07-14
Popularity:
Shanghai Rhapsody
Overview: Set in the 1930s in the international city of Shanghai, the film follows the extravagant life and times of a group of jazz musicians, living from one advance paycheck to the next, as the country teeters over the brink into the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Genres: Comedy Drama History Music
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1984-10-06
Popularity:
Black Jack: The Visitor in the Eye
Overview: Komori Chiaki is a budding tennis student. However, one day while training, her coach hits a ball into her eye on accident. At the hospital, the news that she will never regain the sight in her eye leaves her heartbroken. As a last resort, she undergoes a costly surgery from the mysterious doctor known as Black Jack, where after a successful operation, a mysterious figure starts to emerge in her vision, and only she can see it.
Genres: Science Fiction Mystery
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1977-11-26
Popularity:
Soul of Chiba
Overview: This mid-1970s martial arts classic stars Sonny Chiba as Mu Yun Tek, a young man trained in the Thai fighting style since childhood to one day avenge his parents' death. When a fellow student kills their teacher, Mu Yun's thirst for vengeance grows. The brutal action never stops as Mu Yun teams up with an Interpol agent (Tadashi Yamashita) to find the culprit, who insists that their former master was a drug dealer who had to be destroyed.
Genres: Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1977-02-11
Popularity:
Karate Killer
Overview: Kiba is back again, but this time he has fallen from grace and sent to prison for all the violent acts he has committed. Once he's out, he begins working as a bodyguard in a club that is crawling with gangsters.
Genres: Crime Action
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1973-10-13
Popularity:
Karate Bullfighter
Overview: Sonny Chiba plays Kyokushin Karate founder Masutatsu Oyama, who unexpectedly arrives at a karate tournament in rags, but wins the tournament. After turning down the chance to fight at future tournaments he returns to his simple village life. He reluctantly returns to karate for a final showdown against the students of a rival school.
Genres: Action Drama
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1975-08-09
Popularity:
Cabaret
Overview: A young jazz musician's desire to advance in his career runs afoul of organized crime in this thriller from Haruki Kadokawa. After a saxophonist starts playing at a particular nightspot, a thug from the Yakuza adopts him as a special friend for no greater reason than he plays one of his favorite songs well. As the dangerous life of the gangster intertwines with that of the musician, it brings harm to the musician's girlfriend, who is raped. This changes the young saxophonist's attitude about his patron, but his Yakuza "friend" is still too embroiled in his own problems to worry about anything else.
Genres: Drama Crime Music
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1986-04-26
Popularity:
Message from Space
Overview: The peaceful planet of Jillucia has been nearly wiped out by the Gavanas, whose leader takes orders from his mother rather than the Emperor. King Kaiba sends out eight Liabe holy seeds, each to be received by a chosen one to defend the Gavanas. Each recipient, ranging from hardened General Garuda to Gavana Prince Hans to young Terrans Meia, Kido, and Aaron all have different reactions to being chosen.
Genres: Action Adventure Science Fiction
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1978-04-29
Popularity:
Karate Warriors
Overview: Sakata protects a little boy while coping with rival gangs.
Genres: Drama Action Crime
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1976-04-10
Popularity:
The Audition
Overview: Four girls and their manager aiming for stardom!
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1984-11-17
Popularity:
The Bodyguard
Overview: Karate master and anti-drug vigilante Chiba returns to his home in Japan, where he holds a press conference announcing his intention to wipe out the nation's drug industry. He also offers his services as a bodyguard to anyone who is willing to come forward and provide information about the drug lords' activities. He is soon approached by a mysterious woman claiming to have important information and asking for Chiba's protection. She seems to be legitimate, but is she really what she appears to be?
Genres: Action Thriller
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1973-06-30
Popularity:
Murderous Love
Overview: A 300 year old witch agrees to assassinate a dead-sick businessman and his ignorant sexy wife upon the former’s own request – the kills are to take place in separate locations at the same time. The granny then exits the same way she entered his office, with rope via 20th floor window! And it gets even better when you realize the granny is played by Sonny Chiba. Chiba soon takes his own handsome form and retreats to plan the hits with his karate killer sister...
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1973-09-28
Popularity: