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"Movies-wise, Mike Hammer – the hard-boiled private dick antihero created by master pulpist Mickey Spillane – was most memorably rendered by Ralph Meeker in Robert Aldrich’s atomic-anxiety noir classic KISS ME DEADLY. There was also I, THE JURY two years prior (starring Biff Elliot) and the ill-advised Armand Assante remake three decades later. But less famous is Japanese auteur Kaizô Hayashi’s surrogate “Maiku Hama”, hardheaded as ever but occasionally lacking one in the chamber – running his office out of an ancient movie palace, where clients have to buy a ticket (no exceptions!) to get in. This March, Spectacle is pleased to present three unsung classics of Japanese neo-noir: this is MAIKU HAMA, #1 PRIVATE EYE, embodied immortally by the rubber-faced Masatoshi Nagase (most famous for his starring turn in Jim Jarmusch’s MYSTERY TRAIN), who would reprise the character in a made-for-TV followup decades later." —Spectacle