Actor Kojiro Hongo, a popular leading man at Daiei Studios in the 1960s, died Feb. 14 of heart failure, one day shy of his 75th birthday.
MSTies will remember Hongo as hero Keisuke Hirata in the movie in episode 304- GAMERA VS. BARUGON and construction foreman Shiro Tsusumi in the movie in episode 308- GAMERA VS. GAOS. The actor most commonly associated with the original Gamera series, he also appeared in “Gamera vs. Viras” and “Gamera, the Guardian of the Universe”.
Making his film debut in 1959 with “Jirocho Fuji”, his other films, many with supernatural or fantasy elements, include “Buddha,” “The Whale God,” “Wrath of Daimajin” and “100 Monsters: Along with Ghosts”.
Thanks to our pal Jay for the heads up.
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First, I just saw “Gamera vs. Barugon” this past weekend. One of the better movies in the series.
RIP Kojiro Hongo. You helped make the Gamera movies the greatest of all giant flying turtle movies.
I think I’ve actually seen Wrath of the Daimajin (Great Demon, btw), but I can’t remember for certain. I’ll have to look it up, along with those others.
Darn. Very familiar face. RIP. (imdb.com is still listing him as alive…)
Mill Creek has a terrific blu ray trilogy set of Daimajin similar to their blu ray set of 90s Gamera. I’ve only watched the first film but it looked and sounded terrific. Not sure which film Wrath is. It has the original, plus “return of” and “strikes again”. ?? (just looked it up on imdb.com, it’s aka Return of Daimajin.. cool! )
I watched the first Yokai film Spook Warfare. Less enthused about it :(
Coincidence that I saw both these films for the first time just weeks ago. Daimajin, which I got for Christmas, inspired me to look for others so I got all 4 Yokai films. I also picked up the 2 volumes of Starman from Something Weird and the Darksky set with Prince of Space/Invasion of the Neptune men after watching those Mst3k episodes. I highly recommend all of that to fans of these films. Get em before they go oop!
RIP
Is he the first MSTory folk we lost? (This year, I mean)
#3: Return of DaiMajin is also known as Wrath of Daimajin.
R.I.P Hongo-San. You will be missed. Thank you for helping to make the fantasy worlds of the movies you stared in feel so real.
I am a big fan of Daiei’s 1960’s fantasy films, and “Return of Daimajin” and “Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts” are two of the best. He was great in them, and those roles made him my favorite Daiei player. I recommend those movies to anyone.
By the way, how cool would it be if Cinematic Titanic decided to put together one last film before closing up shop… Gamera vs Viras! Something to think about… :)
I was planning to rewatch the Gamera dvd set again and just watch the first film, Gamera. I will look forward to see Kojiro perform in the other films and honor his memory with a very polite bow. Another :star: in the constellation MST3K … RIP