"Actor: Masao"

• 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.

• Wild Zero | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ace becomes the local hero when a backstage riot erupts following a concert given by his heroes. Now he must take on the town invaded by aliens who bring the dead to life!

• Sanjuro | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (85.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sequel to Kurosawa's own 'Yojimbo' in which the crafty samurai helps a young man and his fellow clansmen save his uncle who has been framed and imprisoned by a corrupt superintendent...

• Pigs & Battleships / Stolen Desire | Blu Ray | (27/06/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With this his fifth film Shhei Imamura finally answered his true calling as Japanese cinema's most dedicated and brilliant chronicler of society's underbelly with the astonishing Pigs and Battleships [Buta to gunkan]. A riotous portrait of sub-Yakuza gangsters battling for control of the local pork business in a U.S. Navy-occupied coastal town (Yokosuka) Imamura conjures a chaotic world of petty thugs young love tough-headed women and underworld hypochondria with one of the most unforgettable climaxes ever to grace the screen. Featuring dynamic black-and-white 'Scope cinematography the director's typically sly sense of social commentary and a host of outstanding performances (including Jitsuko Yoshimura from Onibaba) Pigs and Battleships immediately became a cornerstone of the Japanese New Wave and remains perhaps Imamura's most sheerly entertaining work.

• 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

• 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.

• The Life Of Oharu | DVD | (26/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Mizoguchi reckoned The Life of Oharu was his masterpiece, and who are we to disagree? Certainly it's among his most perfectly structured films, in which anger at the treatment of women in Japanese society is balanced by the director's flawless sense of period, and by expert pacing and visual composition. The story is set in the 17th century, when Japan had settled into a rigidly hierarchical society. Kinuyo Tanaka, in perhaps the finest role of her career, plays Oharu, a highborn woman of the Imperial court. Disgraced when she falls in love with a man of a lower class (Toshiro Mifune, in his only film for Mizoguchi), she's made the mistress of a feudal lord. After bearing him a son she's cast out, and gradually sinks into prostitution and penury. The inevitability of Oharu's fate is tempered by her resilience of spirit--and by the compassion of Mizoguchi's gaze. Although the story is set in the past, he fully intends parallels with modern-day Japan; just after completing the film, he told an interviewer, "Comparing today with [earlier] periods, I don't find much difference: women have always been treated like slaves." The Life of Oharu was shown at the 1952 Venice Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion. It brought Mizoguchi a belated international fame just four years before his death, and initiated the run of late masterpieces that rounded off his career. --Philip Kemp

• 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...

• Orgazmo | DVD | (20/03/2000) from £12.78   |  Saving you £3.20 (32.69%)   |  RRP £12.99

  South Park co-creator Trey Parker goes straight for the gross-out humour in this live-action farce set in the adult-movie industry. Parker stars as an innocent Mormon kid who gets sucked into the world of pornographic film-making and becomes an international sensation as the stud superhero Orgazmo, all the while hiding his secret life from his milk-fed fiancée. It's practically a one-man show for Parker, who directs, writes, stars, and even performs the self-penned theme song as frontman for his rock band, and perhaps he should have spread the responsibilities a little. As an actor he's surprisingly appealing--his dazed grin and bleached white surfer-dude hair give him an engaging air of innocence. Paired with long-time crony Dian Bachar, the diminutive actor who plays his superhero sidekick Chodo Boy, they bring a Hardy Boys naiveté to the rude world of mobbed-up producers and jaded adult film stars. But the film is only fitfully funny, with vulgar jokes that are often more disgusting than humorous and clumsy comic timing sabotaging promising scenes. Only rarely does it reach the heights of his hilarious cut-out cartoon series South Park, but when he delivers he does so with the carefully cultivated tasteless excess his fans have come to know and love. Matt Stone co-stars as a clueless photographer while the real-life adult film star Ron Jeremy appears as a gross gangster henchman. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Sansho Dayu | Blu Ray | (23/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Based on an ancient legend, as recounted by celebrated author Mori Ogai (in his short story of the same name, written in 1915), and adapted by Mizoguchi, Sansho Dayu [Sansho the Steward, aka Sansho the Bailiff] is both distinctively Japanese and as deeply affecting as a Greek tragedy. Described in its opening title as one of the oldest and most tragic in Japan's history, Mizoguchi depicts an unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice - all conveyed with exquisite tone and purity of emotion. Set in Heian era (11th century) Japan, it follows an aristocratic woman, Tamaki (played by Tanaka Kinuyo, who also stars in Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari), and her two children, Zushio (Hanayagi Yoshiaki) and Anju (Kagawa Kyoko), who are separated by feudal tyranny from Tamaki's husband. When the children are kidnapped and sold into slavery to the eponymous Sansho (Shindo Eitaro), the lives of each of the family members follow very different paths - each course uniquely, and insufferably, tragic. Famed for its period reconstructions and powerful imagery, often through the director's trademark long takes, Sansho Dayu is one of the most critically revered of all of japanese cinema - a Venice Film Festival Silver Lion winner that often appears in lists of the greatest films ever made.

• Sonny Chiba Collection - Vol. 2 | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Three great films from the Japanese king of hardboiled ass-kicking Sonny Chiba! Timeslip (aka G.I. Samurai) (1979): A Japanese Army unit is mysteriously transported 400 years back in time to the warring states period of Japanese history and ends up facing an army of Samurai warriors... Golgo 13 (1973): Sonny Chiba stars as the underworld's no.1 hitman in this hardboiled action-packed adaptation of Japan's all-time bestselling manga... The Bullet Train (1975):

• 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)...

• Illusion Of Blood | DVD | (02/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From Shiro Toyoda director of the nightmarish Portrait Of Hell comes a chilling story of love betrayal and vengeance. Tatsuya Nakadai stars as the selfish samurai Iyemon who after the loss of his lord has been left impoverished. He become outraged that his father-in-law intends to sell his two daughter's into prostitution. It is not love but respectability that Iyemon desires...

• G.I. Samurai | DVD | (21/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A Japanese Army unit somehow warps itself 400 years back in time and ends up facing an army of Samurai warriors. Time to send in Sonny Chiba!

• Zombie | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Wild Zero: Ace becomes the local hero when a backstage riot erupts following a concert given by his heroes. Now he must take on the town invaded by aliens who bring the dead to life! Junk: In a top-secret military laboratory scientists are struggling to defeat man's oldest rival. Death. With the development of the revolutionary drug DNX the fight to restore life has been won. But there is no time for celebration as the hapless scientists discover that those who have been raised form the dead quickly acquire an insatiable hunger for raw human flesh!