Film: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985)

A wild, jubilant, Japanese synth pop musical that plays like a live action anime crossed with A Hard Day’s Night meets The Young Ones by way of Buckaroo Banzai x The Phantom of the Paradise + The Rocky Horror Picture Show – it’s safe to say that there’s no other film quite like THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS! A cult hit in Japan, this rediscovered, brilliantly bonkers oddity has finally made its way West – and The Philosophical Research Society is excited to beam it into your brains!

In 1985, Macoto Tezka (son of the great manga artist and Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka) met musician and TV personality Haruo Chicada who had made a soundtrack to a movie which didn’t actually exist. At the time Macoto was just 22 years old, a film-student with many short experimental films under his belt, but bore the weight of the Tezuka name (he had dropped the “U” in an effort to forge his own path) and had yet to make his feature debut. With Chicada as producer, Tezka set out to adapt this “fake soundtrack” into a real-life motion picture: THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS!

The story follows a shady music mogul (Kyoko Togaway), who brings together two musical rivals, spiky punk rocker Kan (Kan Takagi) and narcissistic new wave crooner Shingo (Shingo Kubota) to form the Stardust Brothers—a silver-jumpsuited, synth-pop sensation who rocket to superstardom. What follows might be your standard music industry saga (the joy of success, the temptations of stardom, love and jealousy, a fall from grace, the triumphant return)…if it didn’t play as though it was made by MTV-era extraterrestrials who filled each frame with one WTF moment after another!

With direct inspiration from Phantom of the Paradise and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tezka assembled a cast of some of Japan’s most famous musicians of the time, including such greats as Kiyohiko Ozaki, ISSAY, Sunplaza Nakano and Hiroshi Takano, alongside many famous names in Manga such as Monkey Punch (Lupin the 3rd), Shinji Nagashima (Night on the Galactic Railroad), Yosuke Takahashi (Mugen Shinshi) and even many upcoming film directors of the time such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata) and Daihachi Yoshida (The Kirishima Thing).

Delightfully campy, manically over the top, and brimming with catchy musical numbers, goofy slapstick comedy, wild costumes, fanciful sets, kinetic cinematography, psychedelic animation, fantastic special effects (including creepy monster makeup and stop motion creatures), and nods to everything from Grease to “Thriller” to the French New Wave – this is a cuckoo banana-pants wild ride that will keep you guessing where the heck it’s going next and is an absolute blast to watch with a crowd!

Join us as we strap in for THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS – with an eye-popping restoration of Tezka’s director’s cut!

Special thanks to Bret Berg of The American Genre Film Archive

Tickets: $15 (In Person Only)

Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.