A Random Movie: Silk Hat Boss (1970)
Who needs context?
I have access to a preposterously large number of movies. I’ve decided to take a random number generator, pick a movie, watch it, and write about it. Today’s film: Silk Hat Boss (1970).
In spite of the film being one of the most popular in 2024, and breaking a billion dollars in revenue, there are inevitably people who haven’t seen Deadpool and Wolverine. In the interests of not spoiling anything, I’m going to be relatively vague about a lot of stuff, especially since this is not actually about Deadpool or Wolverine, but an entirely different film.
I watched Deadpool and Wolverine with a couple friends, and when one big reveal happened, one of those friends let out a gleeful sound, while I found myself absolutely confused. Why was this, of all things, something that got a reaction? What was it even a reference to? It was a deep cut, I was expecting references to Marvel movies you could watch, but I didn’t think we would get a cut so deep that it references a movie that didn’t exist. It’s not the first time that happened - last year’s The Flash had a deep cut reference to Nic Cage Superman - but I realized that this was made so firmly for Marvel superfans that you even needed behind the scenes information to get the most out of it.
I didn’t love Deadpool and Wolverine. I also didn’t even like Spider Man: No Way Home, another film that relies heavily on a viewer’s love of the franchise - even the parts that had especially negative reactions. While watching both, I found myself wondering what it would be like if you weren’t immersed in nerd culture, if you didn’t actually understand the myriad of references, and you didn’t live in a world where all of the above actually made sense.
I found out what that would be like, and that’s by watching Silk Hat Boss.
I knew nothing of Silk Hat Boss before I watched it. I didn’t know it was a spinoff of the Red Peony Gambler series, which features the adventures of a woman who does some Yakuza stuff - I haven’t watched it, all I know is Sumiko Fuji plays the main character, and she shows up here too. I didn’t know that Boss Kumatoma (Tomisaburyo Wakayama) was a character in that series. In spite of being a fan of that era of Japanese cinema, this series was a definite blind spot. I definitely know nothing about the Russo-Japanese war, which is an integral plot point. I don’t know if this series is based on anything - Kumatoma’s comedy freckles suggests a manga adaptation, though I don’t know if it actually is.
Yes, I could research all of that, and it would provide a ton of context for the film and give me a much better idea of what I actually watched. If I did, the movie would inevitably be a lot better. But I didn’t know any of that before going into the movie, and that was a valuable experience. Because now I know what going into a Marvel movie blind would be like.
I went into No Way Home having watched the rest of the Spider Man films relatively recently. I didn’t go into Deadpool and Wolverine doing nearly as much preparation, but I’ve been immersed in North American pop culture, so even at the most basic level I understand what was happening. I didn’t like the overly self-referential nature of either of those movies, but I got them, I understood (most of) those references, I was at least aware of the world and the context in which they exist.
Silk Hat Boss? I didn’t have the slightest clue.
For the first third of the movie, I was completely baffled. What was I watching? Who were these people? Why were they doing what they were doing? It felt like I should know most of what’s going on, and I didn’t, so it was disorienting. I felt completely unmoored, adrift in a sea of things that might have been references, or maybe they were just the weird rhythms of the movie.
I was never completely grounded in what was going on, but I started to at least figure out something. I learned that Wakayama was a charismatic screen presence and this is likely the reason why the movie exists - putting him in the lead was justified because he’s just someone who should lead a movie. He’s charming, he can wring pathos even out of a potentially gross scene where he unintentionally hires a 14 year old sex worker - the scene is still very dicey, but he keeps it from going too far down the road it could have.
Some of the jokes started to work - dick jokes are in abundance, and are the universal language of comedy. The story started to gel - even though it was clearly still referential. There were plenty of moments where I was still somewhat lost as to what was happening. Oryu - the Red Peony herself - shows up in a way that I’m sure got the true fans excited, even though I did go “who is she, exactly?” until I looked it up. It wasn’t as impenetrable, I was lost in the world but at least I could still enjoy myself.
And then Kumatoma gets a cannon.
The action scene that ends the movie is absolutely fantastic, a long and involved sword fight involving multiple characters. There’s a side-scrolling long take so good that I went back and watched it again. I wonder if Quentin Tarantino and Park Chan-Wook saw it. Hell, Sean Levy, the director of Deadpool and Wolverine, does something similar. Was this the source of that trope? But beyond that one shot, the action sequence is top tier. It manages to wring emotion from the chaos, feeling from the violence, and completely justifies actually watching the movie. It’s also the only moment that requires no knowledge of anything else - it exists within the movie, with characters you’ve now spent an hour getting to know, and only relies on the information you already have. It’s a great action sequence, and more importantly, it’s an action sequence that doesn’t require research. Even if I was completely lost before that, I was able to figure out where I was.
I have now had the experience I’ve wondered about, what it’s like to watch a movie that was made for a culture and a fanbase that you’re not part of. The movie was inevitably worse because of it. But the good parts were still good, you couldn’t hold back well done action and you still have to respect a great performance. It’s not the ideal experience, but I’m now a lot more curious about the Red Peony Gambler series, and I want to learn more about what was referenced.
This experience doesn’t make me like Deadpool and Wolverine, or Spider Man: No Way Home more. If anything, the experience of being completely unmoored in a world makes me like them less - being confused for a substantial amount of time while watching an action-comedy is missing the point of light entertainment. But maybe those movies, like this one, inspire people to get into things that they might not have been interested in otherwise. Maybe exposure to jokes and references make someone interested in other things. I know that, outside of Deadpool and Wolverine, some kids - well they were probably in their early 20s - talked about how they wanted to watch the Wesley Snipes Blade movies. More people watching the blood rave scene is undoubtedly a good thing. Maybe making stuff that’s so referential isn’t so bad?
But it’s definitely not for me.