Growing up in the late 1980s, movie theaters were my sanctuary, and movie-rental stores were my church. My favorite rental store was called “Mega Movies.” It was a local independent place that had bought out an old Burger King, completely gutted it, and then lined every square inch of it with movies. They had a huge selection, far more movies than any other place in town. Like a lot of large video stores at the time, they had more shelf space than top-of-the-line movies. Along the outside walls were the “new releases.” I use scare quotes because that outside wall held a lot of space for movies so it took a long while for movies to get moved to the regular section. Me and my friends used to joke about how some of those “new releases” had been out for more than a year.
Buy V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal Blu-ray Review: Violence and Sex Galore!Regular releases were grouped loosely into genres and filled the hundreds of shelves neatly lined up throughout the rest of the store. Because they had so much shelf space and there were only so many mainstream movies that were out on VHS at the time, the rest of the space was filled with what became known as “straight-to-video releases.” Low-budget production companies recognized that many a rental store had shelves to fill so they made cheap genre fare designed to titillate. It didn’t matter if the stories were dumb, the acting terrible, and the production values less than stellar, as long as you had a good amount of violence and sex, us video store mavens would rent those movies.
In Japan, these straight-to-video releases were called “V-Cinema.” In 1989, Toei Studios got into the V-Cinema game releasing tons of these films straight to the burgeoning video-store market. Arrow Video has now compiled nine of the “best” of them for this wonderful boxed set. From this example, V-Cinema seems exactly like the sort of stuff I was renting as a teenager.
Unsurprisingly, these films are filled with loads of violence, gratuitous sex, and casual nudity. There is plenty of gunplay, knife play, fist play, car chases, explosions, rape, murder, and naked breasts galore. More than a few of them involve the Yakuza. But there is also romance and comedy. These aren’t the greatest films Japan has to offer, but they are mostly entertaining and enjoyable distractions.
Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage
Released on March 10, 1989, Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage was Toei’s very first V-Cinema release. It became a huge hit and set the template for hundreds of similar films to come. It was an intentional move on the part of producer Tatsu Yoshida who reportedly went into an early video store and saw young men renting multiple movies at once. When he asked how they could watch so many movies at a time, they replied that they fast-forwarded through the boring parts. Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage was his attempt to make a movie with no boring parts.
With a runtime of just 60 minutes, the bare minimum of exposition, and a whole lot of action, the film is definitely not boring. Masanori Sera stars as a cop who teams up with a mini-skirt-wearing nun to try and capture the guy who killed his partner. It rarely stops to take a breath, Instead, it loads itself with gunfight after car chase after gunfight. It is literally all killer, no thriller. The plot is fairly pointless and cookie-cutter but it is hard to take fault with it when it does exactly what you want this kind of film to do.
Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet
Junko (Sho Aikawa) is a low-level Yakuza who spends much of his time driving the boss around and running errands. When a high-ranking Yakuza is assassinated, Junko and several others are tasked with retaliation. But the others quickly find ways of getting out of their duties (one shoots himself in the belly while riding a roller coaster, and the other takes a whole lot of drugs) so the task of revenge falls solely on Junko’s shoulders.
He must choose whether or not to kill the enemy, or run away with his narcoleptic girlfriend, or follow his eccentric uncle’s advice (played by the always impressive Jo Shishido) and get out of the life altogether. The film mixes comedy (and a little satire – almost everyone tries to shirk, or zoom, their duties out of laziness or fear) with its action sequences. It is a mostly enjoyable, if forgettable ride.
Stranger
This V-Cinema riff on Spielberg’s Duel finds a lonely cab driver Kiriko (Yuko Natori) being stalked by a stranger in a Land Cruiser. She begins the film as a vivacious bank teller with primped hair and stylish outfits. Her boyfriend convinces her to embezzle some money. She gets caught and becomes a cab driver when released from prison. There she is, all dull clothes and duller hair. She wants nothing to do with anybody, especially the boys at the cab stand who constantly hit on her.
For no discernible reason, the Land Cruiser begins following her around. At first, it just follows. Then things escalate – the driver smashes her windshield with a hammer and then rams her car. The film takes its time building the tension. Unlike the first two films, this one lets us get to know the protagonist. It is more artful in its approach. Well, artful while still being a tight 90-minute thriller.
Carlos
Carlos (Naoto Takenaka) is a Brazilian-Japanese gangster who has fled his homeland and hopes to take over some criminal enterprises in Japan. He plays two different Yakuza gangs against each other like Yoshiro Mifune in Yojimbo. He’ll make a deal to work with one of them and then go behind their back letting the other side know their plans.
It is stylish and terrifically violent and bloody. Naoto Takenaka is terrific as Carlos, playing him as a scheming, heartless bastard.
Burning Dog
This heist film is underwhelming. A gang of thieves plots to rob a U.S. Military base in Okinawa. It has all the requisite planning and the bringing together of disparate characters, many of whom don’t get along, you expect from a heist film. There is an inside man, the boss, and the cowboy. Plot-wise, it does nothing new and the direction is rather dull. It prefers dialogue over action and the dialogue isn’t very good.
It does have one of my favorite reviews on Letterboxd in which the non-Japanese-speaking viewer apparently watched it without English subtitles and complained that the plot was confusing.
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat
A sort of sequel to the famed Female Prisoner Scorpion films starring Meiko Kaji from the 1970s (which was previously released in a lovely boxed set from Arrow Video, you can read my review). This one is set 20 years after the original film and finds the prison warden hiring a trained assassin to infiltrate the prison and murder Female Prisoner Scorpion (sadly, not played by Kaji) who has been held in the dungeon for years and years. It seems the prison is being upgraded and the warden is afraid when news gets out he has so mistreated Scorpion, the public will be outraged.
The plot takes a lot of dumb twists and turns, the action is poorly staged, and if you come in expecting your typical women-in-prison-sadomasochism, you’ll be sadly let down. This was clearly a cash grab trying to make a little money off the Female Prisoner Scorpion name alone without any real thought what a sequel this far removed from the originals might look like.
The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses
The great Teruo Ishii directs this tale of a former cop taking revenge on the Yakuza boss who used his girlfriend as a human shield during a shootout between rival gangs. He’s an excellent sniper so we’re treated to some cool scenes of him nailing his enemies from a distance while the survivors scramble to figure out what’s going on. The plot is mostly standard stuff but Ishii gives it some nice touches. The police interrogate a man while he’s having surgery and there is an amusing sex scene where the woman is more interested in taking control of the television remote than enjoying the pleasures her man is trying to give her. The final battle includes an exciting shoot-out complete with a house in miniature exploding.
This is V-Cinema at its finest with lots of style, loads of blood-soaked violence, and more nudity than Friday night Cinemax used to show.
Danger Point: The Road to Hell
Two hitmen (Jo Shishido and Show Aikawa) overhear their latest victim utter some cryptic words just before they kill him. They spend the rest of the movie trying to solve the mystery. This leads them down some dark and violent roads. It plays out more like a detective story than the more exploitative dramas played out in most of these films. They interview lots of people and follow leads. It isn’t either actors’ finest moment but it is a lot of fun watching them play off each other.
XX: Beautiful Hunter
The nastiest film in the bunch. Shion (Makiko Kuno) is a deadly, sexy assassin who was trained as a little girl by a priest to kill, kill, kill. But when she’s tasked to kill the man she loves (and she learns to love him after he accidentally gives her oral sex), she finds herself on the run from the murdering section of the Catholic Church. Highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view) include rape with an electrified dildo, a torturous S&M club, blasts from multiple water hoses, and lots of bloody death.
It is a wild, if not wholly successful ride. Which makes it a rather fitting end to this series of V-Cinema Essentials. I was not familiar with any of these films, or really any V-Cinema films before watching these nine movies. Having now sat through them, I can definitely say they are not all that different from American straight-to-video releases from this time period. These films are chock full of violence and sex. They tend to be light on plot or over-arching themes. At their best, they are stylish and entertaining. At their worst they are nasty, misogynistic, and worst of all, dull.
Arrow Video has given all nine films new HD upgrades. Considering the original low-budget, shot-on-video sources, none of them look amazing, but they weren’t distractingly bad either. They each come with newly translated English subtitles, and informative and surprisingly long intros by film critic Masaki Tanioka. Additional extras includes interviews with various people involved in each film’s shooting, video essays, and trailers. The packaging comes with new art, nine postcards, and three essays about the films from Earl Jackson, Daisuke Miyao, and Hayley Scanlon.
Looking at the very limited number of logs any of these films have received on Letterboxd, I’m gonna say the vast majority of potential buyers of this set do not love these films and probably haven’t even seen them. This reviewer can definitely say that it is worth a blind buy. If you are a fan of straight-to-video, low-budget cinema filled with gratuitous sex, loads of violence, and not a whole lot else, then this set is for you. Its also a wonderful look into the little known V-Cinema category of Japanese film history. I’ll definitely be seeking out more films of this ilk, and hope Arrow Video will give us another set of them.
