Based on the success of Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth, Shochiku studios asked Shinoda to make his own "very gutsy film," according to Audie Bock (Japanese Film Directors); "immediately, he set about finding an anti-Shochiku kind of scenario." He invited the young poet Shuji Terayama to write his first script, and drew the little known avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu away from his tubercular bed, to create a revolutionary film collaboration. Starring Shinichiro Mikami and Shima Iwashita, the story is of a "little Hitler" type of youthful political fanatic during the anti-U.S.-Japan Security Treaty demon- strations. Shinoda and Terayama agreed that "for the Japanese, there was no such thing as revolution, only terrorism" (Bock)--this, from two very different artists who would go on to become the Japanese cinema's most provocative stylists. (Terayama, poet, playwright and director, best known here for Pastoral Hide and Seek, died in 1985.) We are sorry that the color has faded to pink in our print of Dry Lake.