The Age of Assassins (殺人狂時代, Satsujinkyō jidai) is a 1967 Japanese film directed by Kihachi Okamoto.
Plot
A nerdy young college instructor named Shinji Kikyo returns home one day to find himself the target of a mad assassin. Surviving somewhat miraculously, he fends off other assassins and, with the help of the reporter Keiko Tsurumaki and the car mechanic Bill Otomo, eventually discovers that a "population control" association is really an assassination squad led by Shogo Mizorogi, who has been training patients in a mental asylum to become killers. Along the way, it starts to appear that Shinji may not be the mild-mannered academic he seemed at first, but a well-trained secret agent.
The Age of Assassins was released in Japan on February 4, 1967.[1] The film was released in the United States by Toho International with an international title of Epoch of Murder Madness in 1967.[2]
Reception
The critic Chris Desjardins has written that "Age of Assassins is another sharp-edged lampoon that works just as well as an action film, and compares favorably with such other brilliant, tongue-in-cheek mod sixties masterpieces as Elio Petri's The Tenth Victim and Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill."[3]
