Fearful Phone Calls

Operation: Mystery, episode 4
Information
Airdate	October 6, 1968
Directed by	Akio Jissoji
Written by	Mamoru Sasaki
Special Effects Directed by	Toru Matoba
Continuity
Previous	White Face
Next	The Grim Reaper's Lullaby
Continuity

Fearful Phone Calls is the fourth episode of Operation: Mystery.

Synopsis

One night, a call came to the Takiguchi household. Reiko answered the phone for her father, but in an instant, her father's body burst into flames, turning into a charred corpse! Later, another spontaneous human combustion incident occurs right before Reiko's eyes. Maki confines Reiko to an anechoic chamber for intense interrogation.

Unable to bear it, Misawa takes Reiko outside, but at that moment, Maki's intuition leads to a decisive conclusion!

Cast

• Shiro Maki : Shin Kishida
• Kyosuke Misawa : Homare Suguro
• Tadashi Matoya : Yasumi Hara
• Hiroshi Nomura : Seiji Matsuyama
• Saori Ogawa : Reiko Kobashi
• Taizo Machida : Akiji Kobayashi

Guest Actors

• Reiko Takiguchi : Hiroko Sakurai
• Telephone Company Official : Kikuo Kaneuchi
• Okajima : Eiji Muto
• Old Lady at the Tobacco Shop : Sue Mitobe
• Ogawa : Shunichi Minato
• Mizuno : Hiroya Morita
• Apartment Complex Caretaker : Tetsuo Mizoi
• Reiko's Father : Shigeo Nakahara

Home Media

• Operation: Mystery Volume 1 features episodes 1-5.
• Operation: Mystery Blu-ray BOX features all episodes except 24.

2003 release

2012 release

Blu-ray BOX

Trivia

• According to Akio Jissoji’s remarks in My Television Chronicle, after the production of Operation: Mystery began, he silently vowed never to repeat the mistakes he made during the latter half of Ultraseven. He was determined to stay true to his own vision this time.
  • When this episode aired, Jissoji even went into the TV station’s film-to-video transfer room to check the reproduction of dark tones during the broadcast.
• The long take at the beginning of this episode wasn’t originally planned to be shot as a continuous sequence. According to art director Noriyoshi Ikeya, the scene wasn’t initially designed with a single-shot approach in mind. Since Ikeya lacked sufficient storyboard knowledge at the time, he was more concerned about how to handle potential restrictions on camera angles. As a result, he designed the set to be flexible and shootable from any angle.
  • For the opening scene, the wall’s lighting fixtures were rented from Takatsu Sousyoku, while the Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting in the background was a photo enlargement. Ikeya, a big fan of Bruegel’s work, incorporated it into the set. The decision to shoot the scene in a continuous take came from Jissoji’s inspiration when he saw the fully constructed set and had a sudden creative idea to film it this way.
  • On the day of the shoot, cinematographer Yuzo Inagaki handled the ground-level shots, while Ikeya filmed from above using an overhead perspective. According to Masao Nakabori, assistant director Kiyohiko Miyasaka was also working above the set, but after the exhaustive preparations, he accidentally fell asleep during filming and even dropped the clapperboard onto the set below.

• The outdoor scenes in this episode were filmed at the Seijo Telephone Exchange and the anechoic chamber of Nippon Columbia.
• The script for this episode originally had the working title "The Men Who Spoke with the Grim Reaper" , and it went through several revisions, resulting in three main versions: the TBS draft, the Tsuburaya draft, and the final shooting script.
  • In the TBS draft, some character settings were notably different. For instance, Maki aggressively questioned Reiko, while Misawa tried to protect her, highlighting a strong conflict between the two. Reiko was unaware of her father’s past, making her motivations more ambiguous. Additionally, there were five comrades in the story, and Okajima climbed a high-voltage tower in the ending.
  • In the Tsuburaya draft, the story was streamlined, with significant changes made. The number of comrades was reduced to four, Reiko learned about her father’s past and acted accordingly, and Okajima no longer climbed the tower but instead escaped on a motorboat.
  • In the final shooting script, the story was further trimmed and adjusted. While Maki and Misawa’s conflict remained in the script, it was ultimately omitted from the finished episode. For example, the sequence where Reiko escapes from the hospital was removed, and Okajima’s ending was changed from riding a motorboat to driving off in a car.
• According to a 2018 interview with Hiroko Sakurai, Toshihiro Iijima, Yuzo Inagaki, Kiyoshi Suzuki, Minoru Nakano, and Kazuya Konaka, they shared their memories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the filming of this episode:
  • Iijima recalled that due to Jissoji’s highly unconventional directing style, TBS’s sales department openly stated that they would no longer market Jissoji’s works, as they often angered sponsors. “If this were any regular company, he would have been fired long ago,” Iijima noted. However, TBS’s film division became his stronghold, allowing him to continue directing Ultraman and Operation: Mystery.
  • Konaka mentioned the first SRI investigation scene in the episode, where the framing changes frequently. He asked if it had been shot handheld by Inagaki. To this, Sakurai laughed and replied, "Jissoji never plans out shooting details in advance." Inagaki added, "It depended on the situation. Sometimes he was extremely particular about framing, while other times he completely left it up to us. Initially, this scene was designed to have 30 cuts, but it became unworkable, so we decided early that morning to turn it into a single long take."

• • Sakurai believed this change might have been a joint idea from Jissoji and Shin Kishida. She also mentioned that Kishida was very decisive, even going as far as lifting Seiji Matsuyama directly during the actual shoot.
  • Sakurai mentioned Jissoji’s specific instructions for her character Reiko’s lines: "He didn’t want me to deliver the lines clearly; he wanted me to speak as if I were whispering." Additionally, Sakurai recalled that her character was frequently made to lose consciousness in the scenes. "He would always smile and say, ‘This part requires you to faint,’ which caused me quite a bit of trouble."
  • Sakurai also shared an experience after filming: After shooting the scene where she fainted on the ground, she noticed that there was a temple nearby called "Jissoji." Since the ground was covered in gravel, she was very reluctant to collapse in such a place, and this memory left a deep impression on her.