Samurai so suave
Ricardo Montalbanish
Not so Mount Fuji
-Amonymous
Ricardo Montalbanish
Not so Mount Fuji
-Amonymous
Yes, the very first samurai on Hawaii Five-Oh was Ricardo Montalban. Pretty much every mention I've seen of this episode dwells on the ethnic mismatch. But it's acting, fakery to begin with, and maybe this experience helped Ricardo in his masterful performance as a Space-Mongol years later. Any ethnicity can take on a poorly written part, but only Montalban is a master with the boquilla.
He plays Tokura, a mob boss whose past has come back to haunt him, in the form of 'bushido' bent on killing him. Turns out he was a mini-sub commander who landed on Moloka'i and sat out the war in safety. Actually, this is completely plausible. But then he somehow becomes a criminal kingpin samurai and nobody notices until 1968, when the assassins arrive to punish this cowardly enemy of honor.
He wields a mean boquilla, tries to be inscrutable, and steals the show from Lord. But in the end, Steve-o outwits Tokura, tricking him into confession and surrender by hiring a couple of Japanese extras to pretend to be killer bushido. The episode isn't that great, but of course it isn't that great, it's TV, it's Five-O. But to see Ichiban Montalban, this is where you gotta look.
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Deluxe edition special features which come with having a Trek nerd for a sister: If you're referring to space-Khan above, in fact his first performance in that role came in ST the original series, a year before the 5-0 appearance. "Wrath" the film was a revisitation, because that episode ("Space Seed" if you're curious) had such an impact and the character was so popular.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, in the original ep, he did lack the spectacular Jareth the Goblin King hairdo (but then, even that came post-Wrath, so even Bowie was a copycat to the greatness of the 'ban).
In the original Trek Khan episode, RM was forced to wear a unitard jumper so restricting, his nuts put in for (and received) danger pay. These were the days when a Hollywood man's balls had their own union and RM's were card-carrying members (no pun) of Testiculars Local 711.
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