"Actor: Isao"

• GATE OF HELL | DVD | (03/12/2012) from £22.93   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  One of the key works of the early 1950s wave of Japanese films to first reach foreign markets, director Kinugasa's sumptuous period drama astonished audiences with its dramatic force and spectacular colour cinematography.During feudal unrest in the 12th century, samurai warrior Morit (Kazuo Hasegawa) manages to thwart a palace rebellion and save the life of the empress, using loyal subject Lady Kesa (Machiko Ky) as a decoy. When Morit is offered anything he should desire as reward, he requests Kesa's hand in marriage. Informed that she is already married to a fellow samurai (Isao Yamagata), he refuses to withdraw his request, setting in motion a tragic chain of events.Three decades after the director's iconic A Page of Madness, Kinugasa's striking tale of feudal intrigue, political machinations, and erotic obsession won the Grand Prix at Cannes, two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Costume Design, and has since been named by Martin Scorsese as one of the ten greatest colour achievements in world cinema. Gate of Hell's blazing palette is proudly presented afresh by The Masters of Cinema Series in a magnificent new restoration.

• Warm Water Under A Red Bridge | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £10.87   |  Saving you £10.88 (119.43%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Based on the novel by Henmi Yo this is the story of Yosuke who finds himself down on his luck after he loses his job and is separated from his wife. He is told that a priceless item is to be found at a house on the Noto Peninsula and travels there to retrieve it. On his arrival at the house he is welcomed by a young lady called Saeko who has a very strange secret....

• Female Prisoner No. 701 - Scorpion | DVD | (20/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Shunya Ito makes his directorial debut in this highly entertaining and stunning revenge and action thriller film that inspired Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion is an amphetamine-fuelled descent into the humid cells of a women's lock-up. High-pulse nymphomania bone-shattering violence and a gruesomely gynaecological approach to torture rear their collective heads in the work yard in the cafeteria and in the showers. Stunning Japanese cult icon Meiko (Lady Snowblood) Kaji delivers a blistering performance of breathtaking intensity in one of the most stylish and sophisticated exploitation movies of all time. Get ready for a ferocious cult classic - visually beautiful brutal controversial entertainment straight from the wild side of Japanese cinema.

• Branded To Kill | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (46.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Generally agreed upon to be Suzuki's finest work the film charts the progress of 'Number 3 Killer' Hanado an ice-cool Japanese hitman who get more than he bargained for when he agrees to make a hit for a beautiful girl. On the run and in danger from all sides Hanado must ultimately face the 'No.1 Killer'... A surreal and stunning fusion of '60's pop-aesthetic yakuza thriller raucous sex perverse desires staggering violence and delirious nightmare Branded To Kill is a unique thriller and a towering work of Art. Nikkatsu the studio that financed the film found the film was so intense and incomprehensible that Suzuki was immediately fired! Today it is regarded as his masterpiece.

• Virus (1980) | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £9.30   |  Saving you £-5.31 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The entire world is a graveyard.....863 people were not so lucky - they survived..... A military-engineered virus released during a plane crash kills the entire human population. The only survivors are scientists in Antarctica who desperately try to find a cure and save what is left of the planet from further destruction.

• Virus | DVD | (26/03/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The time it could be tomorrow. A secret substances smuggled out of a classified military installation in East Germany. The plane crashes into an alpine peak whilst attempting to carry the package to Switzerland its contents MM-88 a deadly bacteriological warfare weapon is splattered into a unsuspecting world U.S. President (Glenn Ford) and top Senator Barkley (Robert Vaughn) struggle to stop the panic started by the epidemic of Virus which rapidly starts to wipe out the world's population. As the earth slowly dies chief of Staff Garld (Henry Silva) arms the total American nuclear arsenal to fight the Enemy Virus. 855 men and eight women protected by the numbing cold of an Antarctic research station attempt to prevent a nuclear holocaust triggered by the dead hand of a crazed military chief. The time is rapidly running out... there are only two minutes left...

• The Land of Hope | DVD | (26/08/2013) from £7.00   |  Saving you £7.99 (114.14%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Prolific Japanese director Sion Sono (Love Exposure, Himizu) departs from his usual style for this movingly restrained drama of a rural family's struggle to survive in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and the resulting nuclear crisis.

• Gate Of Flesh | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Set in Tokyo just after the war 'Gate of Flesh' is the story of a group of prostitutes who live and work in a derelict building. Now recognised as a classic of Japanese cinema the film is a shocking sometimes brutal yet always compelling experience.

• Branded To Kill | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out-of-shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number Three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired gun who loves his work, but when he misses a target after a mere butterfly sets his carefully balanced aim astray, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, leaving them splayed in death contortions that could qualify for an Olympic event, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. Because Suzuki pushed his yakuza parodies and cinematic surrealism too far, his studio, Nikkatsu, finally called in their own metaphoric hit and fired the director with such force that he was effectively blackballed from the industry for a decade. It took about that long for audiences to embrace his audacious genre bending--Suzuki's pop-art sensibilities were just a bit ahead of their time. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Der Große Krieg der Planeten - Uncut Kinofassung | Blu Ray | (08/12/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Samurai Rebellion | DVD | (20/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sasahara (Mifune) has spent his life as a retainer in the service of his lord. Yet when his lord seizes his daughter-in-law for his own gratification Sasahara is brought into conflict not only with his master but also his oldest friend Asano (Nakadai)...

• Fighting Elegy | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £10.59   |  Saving you £9.40 (88.76%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Okayama in the mid 1930s Kiroku (Takahashi) attends high school and boards with a Catholic family whose daughter Michiko captures his heart. He must however hide his ardor and other aspects of his emerging sexuality focusing his energy on a gang he joins breaking school rules and getting into scuffles. He comes under the influence of a young tough nicknamed Terrapin and together they lead fights against rival gangs. Gradually Kiroku and Terrapin align themselves with the right-wing Kita Ikki and Kiroku becomes a stand-in for the attitudes of Japanese youth who embraced the imperialism leading to World War II... Screenplay adapted from Takashi Suzuki's novel by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba Kuroneko).

• Babycart - White Heaven In Hell | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The climactic chapter in the Lone Wolf series. Ogami Itto (Wakayama Tomisaburo) the Lone Wolf and his Cub Diagoro face a new peril when the Yagyu clan leader Retsudo employs his blood thirsty daughter to destroy them once and for all. If she fails in her task Retsudo will unleash the supernatural might of the Yagyu army against which even the Lone Wolf cannot stand...

• Tokyo Drifter | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Tokyo Drifter director Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond cartoon as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The near-incomprehensible plot is negligible: hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari), a cool killer in dark shades who whistles his own theme song, discovers his own mob has betrayed his code of ethics and hits the road like a questing warrior, with not one but two mobs hot on his trail. In a world of shifting loyalties Tetsu is the last honourable man, a character who might have stepped out of a Jean-Pierre Melville film and into the delirious, colour-soaked landscape of this Vincent Minnelli musical-turned-gangster war zone. The twisting narrative takes Tetsu from deliriously gaudy nightclubs, where killers hide behind every pillar, to the beautiful snowy plains of northern Japan and back again, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Suzuki opens the widescreen production in stark, high-contrast black and white with isolated eruptions of colour which finally explode in a screen glowing with oversaturated hues, like a comic book come to life. His extreme stylisation, jarring narrative leaps and wild plot devices combine to create pulp fiction on acid, equal parts gangster parody and post-modern deconstruction. Mere description cannot capture the visceral effect of Suzuki's surreal cinematic fireworks. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Godzilla gegen Mechagodzilla | Blu Ray | (31/10/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Never Give Up | DVD | (20/06/2005) from £8.08   |  Saving you £-2.09 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Following a mass murder in rural Japan ex-special forces soldier Ajisawa (Ken Takakura) adopts the sole survivor of the massacre an amnesiac young girl. Intending to put the past behind them the pair instead find themselves in conflict with the corrupt and powerful leaders of a small town. As the girl's memories begin to emerge Ajisawa must call upon all of his killer instincts to ensure their survival...

• Village Of Doom | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  As the storm cloud of war gathers over Japan the desperately patriotic Tsugio waits for his call up to duty. But in the close-knit community of his hometown of Higureya the women have grown desperate for the company of men. When Tsugio stumbles upon one adulterous union he too is quickly seduced. But this newfound experience quickly sours when Tsugio is diagnosed with tuberculosis and ostracised by the village. With everyone turned against him Tsugio takes to the streets ful

• 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

• Babycart to Hades | DVD | (03/11/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  For the first time in the UK Babycart To Hades has been created from a new print supplied by Toho with the digitisation and cleansing process carried out by Technicolor. 'Child and expertise for rent' reads the sign on the babycart that traverses the land called Hell. The child is Daigoro the Cub and the expertise is in the art of slaughter as practised by Ogami Itto the Lone Wolf. In a rare moment of compassion Lone Wolf rescues a girl who has killed a pimp in self defence. By his code he is forced to endure being tortured to within an inch of his life. Lone Wolf takes to the road again where his expertise is very much in demand so much so that a would-be employer has already placed a contract on him and the slayer with the babycart proceeds down the bloodstained path to Hades...

• Der Große Krieg der Planeten - Uncut Kinofassung | DVD | (08/12/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A