"Actor: Noriko Sengoku"

• Drunken Angel | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Post-war Japan anatomised in the combative relationship between an alcoholic doctor (Takeshi Shimura) and his patient (Toshiro Mifune) a wounded young gangster. This is the film that was considered to be Kurosawa's breakthrough movie illuminating themes that would go on to dominate his succeeding work. 'Drunken Angel' also marked his first - of many - collaborations with Toshiro Mifune here playing the tubercular Yakuza hoodlum.

• Blind Beast | Blu Ray | (23/08/2021) from £17.25   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan's foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpillar). An artist's model, Aki (Mako Midori), is abducted, and awakens in a dark warehouse studio whose walls are decorated with outsized women's body parts eyes, lips, legs and breasts and dominated by two recumbent giant statues of male and female nudes. Her kidnapper introduces himself as Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor whom she had witnessed previously at an exhibition in which she featured intently caressing a statue of her naked torso. Michio announces his intention of using her to sculpt the perfect female form. At first defiant, she eventually succumbs to his intense fixation on her body and finds herself drawn into his sightless world, in which touch is everything. Blind Beast is a masterpiece of erotic horror that explores the all-encompassing and overwhelming relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits, with maestro director Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi) conjuring up a hallucinogenic dreamworld in which sensual and creative urges combine with a feverish intensity. Special Features: High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio Optional English subtitles Brand new audio commentary by Asian cinema scholar Earl Jackson Newly filmed introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns Blind Beast: Masumura the Supersensualist, a brand new visual essay by Japanese literature and visual studies scholar Seth Jacobowitz Original Trailer Image Gallery Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Virginie Sélavy.

• Blind Beast | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £8.75   |  Saving you £11.24 (128.46%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A blind sculptor kidnaps an artist's model and imprisons her in his warehouse studio - a shadowland of perverse monuments to the female form. Here a deranged passion play of sensual and sexual obsession is acted out in a world where sight is replaced by touch... An intense exploration of perversion art and sado-masochism this incredible visually inventive tale of sex and madness power to a climax prefiguring Oshima's In The Realm Of The Sense (also known by its Japanese title

• Stray Dog | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £11.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (66.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog is a masterful mix of film noir and police thriller set on the sweltering mean streets of Occupied Tokyo. When rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his pistol stolen from his pocket while on a bus his frantic attempts to track down the thief lead him to an illegal weapons market in the Tokyo underworld. But the gun has already passed from the pickpocket to a young gangster and Murakami's gun is identified as the weapon in the shooting of a woman

• Scandal | DVD | (14/11/2005) from £5.54   |  Saving you £14.45 (72.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On holiday in the snow-covered mountains young painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) has a chance meeting with the popular singer Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi). After giving her a ride back to the hotel where they are both staying Ichiro is photographed with Miyako by paparazzi. A magazine creates an expos of their 'secret romance' based around this photograph and the brooding Ichiro ignites a bitter and dirty libel case in order to restore their honour... Akira Kurosawa's

• I Live In Fear | DVD | (28/03/2005) from £11.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (66.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a wealthy foundry owner and bullying patriarch decides to move his entire family from Tokyo to Brazil to escape the nuclear holocaust which he fears is imminent his family tries to have him declared mentally incompetent... Made at the height of the Cold War when the superpowers were engaged in series of nuclear tests this blazing attack on complacency was one of the director's most deeply-felt but least commercially successful films. Nonetheless it deserves to be more widely

• Blind Beast (Special Edition) | Blu Ray | (24/08/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Classic Kurosawa | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Throne of Blood (1957): Kurosawa's film career began in 1936 at the Photo Chemical Laboratories in Tokyo. His directorial debut in 1943 Judo Saga bore evidence of his economy of expression and marked his humanist approach. His Rashomon won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 and this led to the 'discovery' of his other works and those of his mentors and peers notably Ozu and Mizoguchi. Kurosawa's transposition of Shakespeare's Ma