"Director: Yasuzo Masumura"

• Irezumi | Blu Ray | (21/06/2021) from £8.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Drawn from the pen of one of Japan's foremost writers of the 20th century, Junichiro Tanizaki (A Fool's Love, The Makioka Sisters), Irezumi is a stylish tale of lust, betrayal and revenge directed by Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast). Masumura's muse Ayako Wakao (The Blue Sky Maiden, Red Angel) stars as Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, who is tempted by her lover, Shinsuke, a lowly employee of her father's, to elope. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality transforms under its influence. Available for the first time outside of Japan in a new 4K restoration, Irezumi sports some of Japanese cinema's most respected talent of its day both in front of and behind the camera. The bewitching cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu) captures the sensual atmosphere of the period setting, while the script by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba, Kuroneko) lends a modern twist to this feverish meditation on obsession and the act of creation. Special Features High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation from a new 4K scan Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio Optional English subtitles Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema scholar David Desser Newly filmed introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns Out of the Darkness, a brand new visual essay by Asian cinema scholar Daisuke Miyao Original Trailer Image Gallery Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors' booklet featuring new writing by Thomas Lamarre and Daisuke Miyao

• Black Test Car + The Black Report | Blu Ray | (24/08/2020) from £8.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Japanese maverick director Yasuzo Masumura (Blind Beast) helms a bitingly satirical espionage thriller set in the heart of the Japanese auto industry in his 1962 landmark Black Test Car, which launched a series of similarly themed Black films. In a bitter, take-no-prisoners corporate war between the Tiger Motorcar Company and their competitors, the Yamato Company, undercover spies have infiltrated both sides. As Tiger prepares to launch its newest Pioneer car and a prototype bursts into flames, Toru (Hideo Takamatsu, The Last Emperor) heads a secretive task force to root out Yamato's spy, and find out what they can about the competitor's familiar-looking new model. Making its worldwide Blu-ray debut, Black Test Car is paired here with the English-language video premiere of its follow-up The Black Report, also directed by Masumura. SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation of Black Test Car and The Black Report Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio on both films Optional newly translated English subtitles on both films Newly recorded critical appreciation by Jonathan Rosenbaum Theatrical trailers for both films Image galleries for both films Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet with new writing on the films by Mark Downing Roberts

• Hanzo The Razor (3 DVD Special Edition Box Set) (UNCUT) | DVD | (06/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Love samurai films? Wish they were... dirtier? Welcome to Hanzo the Razor'sderanged world of crazy swordplay and sexploitation set to a 1970s funk soundtrack. Uncut for the first time ever in the UK this cult 1970s Japanese pinku trilogy was seemingly influenced by Dirty Harry and Shaft but there's no doubt who has the 'longer arm of the law'! Shintaro Katsu (best known as the blind swordsman in the original Zatoichi) stars as Hanzo - a rebellious yet obsessively moral samurai police officer who slashes his way through the backbone of crime uncovers corruption at higher levels and tortures relentlessly using his own unique techniques. Shocking audiences even today the hardest man in Edo regularly unleashes his special weapon in the form of his oversized penis which he uses to 'interrogate' female suspects into pleasured compliance. Despite the knuckle-biting graphic violence there is an underlying social commentary testifying to the noble honour of the samurai and emphasising Hanzo's status as the people's champion. In Sword of Justice Hanzo overturns his own gutless superiors; in The Snare he breaks into a temple used by local magistrates for the sadistic torture of young girls. In Who's Got the Gold? the shogunate treasury is being looted by its own officials. From the creator of the Lone Wolf and Cub series (used as the basis for Shogun Assassin and a direct influence on Tarantino's Kill Bill) the Hanzo the Razor trilogy is presented here for the first time in the UK complete and uncut.

• 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

• Red Angel | Blu Ray | (17/01/2022) from £9.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Directed by Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast), Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse. When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan's war with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction. Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura's harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with Ayako Wakao (A Wife Confesses, Irezumi) and features startling monochrome scope cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi (Fires on the Plain, An Actor's Revenge). Special Features High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio Optional English subtitles Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema scholar David Desser Newly filmed introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns Not All Angels Have Wings, a new visual essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum Original Trailer Image Gallery Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Irene González-López

• Red Angel | DVD | (24/07/2006) from £9.98   |  Saving you £10.01 (50.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of Japan's most notorious and internationally criminally under-exposed films. Shocking beautiful and moving in equal measure this is one of Masumura's very finest achievements. Set against the Sino-Japanese war in 1939 a young angelic military nurse is raped by her patients and sent to the front line for daring to register a complaint. Posted to a rag-tag demoralised unit she falls in love with an impotent morphine-addicted surgeon. Together the pair seek solace in each othe

• Manji | DVD | (23/04/2007) from £19.75   |  Saving you £0.24 (1.22%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Practically unclassifiable Manji moves from lesbian love to adultery to multiple sexual relationships tangled in webs of deceit blackmail and maybe even murder. Sonoko (Kyoko Kishida Woman of the Dunes) having grown bored with her pampered life as the wife of an impotent lawyer enrolls in art class where she scandalizes the school with her lusty paintings of fellow art student Mitsuko (Ayako Wakao Red Angel). A torrid affair erupts between Sonoko and Mitsuko fuelling jealousy among their male lovers. Soon their lives are entrenched in desire deception blackmail blood oaths and suicide pacts in this controversial and visually stunning film from director Yasuzo Masumura. A dazzling tale of love lust and the extremes of desire this controversial and groundbreaking drama boasts a screenplay by Onibaba/Kureneko director Kaneto Shindo. Another twisted masterpiece from the director of Blind Beast and Red Angel Manji is as shocking today as when it was first shown in Japan in the mid-1960s.

• Irezumi | DVD | (23/07/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a young girl is seduced and has a spider tattooed on her back; she herself becomes a predatory monster taking revenge on every man who has shared her bed.

• Kisses | DVD | (23/07/2007) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-5.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Masmura's debut feature with its stripped down narrative and handheld camerawork sent a shock wave through Japanese cinema in much the same manner as Godard in Europe. With its liberated camera and even more liberated protagonists this is the film which caused Oshima to say of Masumura ""a powerful irresistible force has arrived in Japanese Cinema."" A young boy and girl meet while visiting their respective fathers in prison. The young lovers soon embrace both each other and their mu