"Actor: Sei Hiraizumi"

• Violent Cop | DVD | (27/12/2001) from £9.94   |  Saving you £0.05 (0.50%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Violent Cop ("Sono otoko kyobo ni tsuki") is the first film directed by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, the Japanese star who began as a stand-up comedian on television. It's a Dirty Harry-type tale of a cop whose overly muscular methods are disapproved of by his superiors. When his partner is killed by the local Mr Big, Azuma (Kitano) goes into action, along with a new sidekick he initiates into the ways of the world. Dismissed from the force, Azuma carries on his one-man campaign, despite his sister's being forcibly drugged and raped by the gang. The violence is graphic, but what's most engaging about the film is Kitano's acting. He's an unlikely hero with his bow-legged walk and the face of a punch-drunk boxer, but his low-key style, a counterpart to the explosive violence, is always cool and it's easy to see why he's such a cult figure.--Ed Buscombe

• The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch | Blu Ray | (20/09/2021) from £9.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  What do you get when Noriaki Yuasa, director of Daiei Studios' much-beloved Gamera series, makes a monochrome film adaptation of the works of horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom)? The answer is 1968's The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch, a fantastically phantasmagorical slice of twisted tokusatsu terror ostensibly made for children that will irreparably traumatise any child that sees it! A young girl named Sayuri is reunited with her estranged family after years in an orphanage but trouble lurks within the walls of the large family home. Her mother is an amnesiac after a car accident six months earlier, her sullen sister is confined to the attic and a young housemaid dies inexplicably of a heart attack just before Sayuri arrives is it all connected to her father's work studying venomous snakes? And is the fanged, serpentine figure that haunts Sayuri's dreams the same one spying on her through holes in the wall? Making its worldwide Blu-ray debut and its home video premiere outside Japan, this rarely-screened, nightmarishly disorienting creepshow not only displays a seldom-seen side of kaiju auteur Yuasa, but its skilful blending of Umezu's comics (published in English-language markets as Reptilia) arguably anticipates many of the trends seen in J-horror decades later. Special Features: High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation Original uncompressed mono audio Optional English subtitles Brand new commentary by film historian David Kalat This Charming Woman, a newly filmed interview with manga and folklore scholar Zack Davisson Theatrical trailer Image gallery Reversible sleeve featuring new and original artwork by Mike Lee-Graham FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors' booklet featuring new writing by Raffael Coronelli

• Death Note: L Change The World | DVD | (31/08/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The film takes place before and after the two Death Note films and shows Death Note fans the more human side of the legendary detective L not seen in previous entries. The story begins as L takes on the Kira case in which countless criminals are mysteriously dying of sudden heart attacks. L leaves his headquarters in Los Angeles and travels to Japan for he believes with a 97% certainty that the killer is in Japan and he also predicts that he may have to risk his life to solve the case. In Japan L teams up with another young genius named Light Yagami who is in fact Kira himself and discovers the existence of the Death Note a notebook belonging to a god of death; whoever s name is written in the notebook dies. L solves the case and brings justice back to the world but loses his partner Watari and only has 23 days left to live. In the short span of time he has left as L continues to solve unsolved cases from around the world he receives a gift left behind by Watari a young boy with an SD card. L discovers that this boy is the sole survivor of a mysterious epidemic that hit a small village in Thailand and suspects that this epidemic is not a natural occurrence but something man-made and evil. Around the same time L meets Maki a young girl looking for Watari for help. Her father a scientist at the Infectious Disease Center of Asia had given her the key to solving this case before he died. With Maki and the boy L goes up against a bio-terrorist group responsible for creating a deadly virus ten times more fatal than Ebola and as L tries to formulate an antidote with a scientist he must also save the lives of the two children who have no one else to turn to.

• Shinjuku Triad Society | DVD | (26/05/2003) from £9.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (50.05%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The first of three films linked by theme rather than by character or story which form Takashi Miike's acclaimed Triad Society trilogy (followed by 'Rainy Dog' and 'Ley Lines') 'Shinjuku Triad Society' charts the bloody gangland battle for control over Tokyo's seedy Sinjuku district. When the Dragon's Claw gang from Taiwan attempts a take-over of the dope extortion and gay prostitution rackets run by the ruling Japanese Yakuza a lone cop predicts carnage. In a crusade against t

• Evil Dead Trap 2 | DVD | (26/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sequel to the chilling original 'Evil Dead Trap' in which lowly cinema projectionist Aki has a grisly secret life away from the silver screen...