"Actor: Mariko Ogawa"

• Pleasures Of The Flesh | DVD | (08/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Katsuo Nakamura stars as a man blackmailed by a thief who makes him hold on to some stolen loot while the thief serves a jail sentence. Nakamura is led into temptation by all that money sitting around so he decides to spend it on wild partying and sex before killing himself to avoid retribution.

• 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

• Yakuza Box Set | DVD | (17/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Three tough thrillers from the acclaimed director of 'Battle Royale'. Graveyard Of Honour: Rikio Ishikawa is a brutal street thug who is drawn into the powerful Kawada gang in 1946 Tokyo. His insubordination and rebelliousness encourage him to start his own Yakuza family but he decides the easiest way would be to challenge his own Godfather whom he brutally attacks. This disrespect to his boss brings the ultimate form of disgrace upon himself and his 'family'. For his own