"Actor: Yoshio Harada"

• A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness | Blu Ray | (28/04/2025) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The editor of a sports magazine grooms fashion model Reiko to become a pro golfer, while retaining exclusive rights to her likeness. Reiko's popularity soars after she wins her first tournament and she becomes a media sensation, but when she and her manager (Yoshio Harada, Zigeunerweisen) cause a hit-and-run accident, the victim begins to blackmail Reiko, intruding further and further into her personal life. This was Seijun Suzuki's comeback film after being blacklisted by the film industry for ten years. Though adapted from a popular manga, the bold visuals and absurdist plot twists are vintage Suzuki.

• Seijun Suzuki's The Taisho Trilogy | Blu Ray | (20/04/2020) from £21.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  HAUNTING, HYPNOTIC, FLAMBOYANT, EROTIC, BIZARRE SUZUKI! After over a decade in the wilderness following his firing from Nikkatsu for Branded to Kill (1967), maverick director Seijun Suzuki returned with a vengeance with his critically-praised tryptic of cryptic supernatural dramas set during the liberal enlightenment of Japan's Taisho Era (1912-26). In the multiple Japanese Academy Award-winning Zigeunerweisen (1980), two intellectuals and former colleagues from military academy involve their wives in a series of dangerous sexual games. In Kageroza (1981), a playwright is drawn like a moth to a flame to a mysterious beauty who might be a ghost, while Yumeji (1991) imagines the real-life painter-poet Takehisa Yumeji's encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past. Rarely seen outside of Japan, the films in the Taisho Trilogy are considered Suzuki's masterpieces in his homeland. Presenting a dramatic turn from more his familiar tales of cops, gangsters and unruly youth, these surrealistic psychological puzzles drip with a lush exoticism, distinctively capturing the pandemonium of a bygone age of decadence and excess, when Western ideas, fashions, technologies and art fused into everyday aspect of Japanese life. SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) transfers of all three films Original uncompressed stereo audio Optional English subtitles New introductions to each film by critic Tony Rayns Making-of featurette Vintage interview with Seijun Suzuki Tony Rayns on the Taisho Trilogy, a new appreciation of Suzuki's trilogy Trailers Reversible sleeve featuring two artwork choices

• The Hunted (1995) | DVD | (05/10/2009) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-2.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  An American businessman in Japan meets a beautiful young woman and goes to bed with her; his life turns upside down when a Ninja suddenly enters and kills her. The powerful Ninja and his Ninja cohorts set out to silence the businessman the only witness to the murder but he finds support from a samurai who protects him as an excuse to settle a centuries-old score.

• Lady Snowblood 2 - Love Song Of Vengeance | DVD | (02/02/2003) from £14.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (33.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Love Song of Vengeance, Shurayuki-hime--a.k.a. Lady Snowblood, "Yuki" for short (played by Meiko Kaji)--continues her advertures in the female samurai saga that inspired Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. In Lady Snowblood, Yuki avenged her family by slaying the four criminals that killed her father, raped her mother, and predestined her to the life of a justice-seeking assassin. Love Song of Vengeance picks up where Lady Snowblood let off, not so much as a sequel like Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, but a continuation of the lone assassin's adventures (similar to Zaitochi). Sentenced to death for her crimes of murder, Yuki is given pardon by Kikui, a secret government police agent. In return for her freedom, Kikui wants Yuki to assassinate anarchist Ransui and obtain a secret document he is hiding. While carrying out her orders, Yuki discovers the document in question is actually a letter incriminating agent Kikui. Always one to be on the side of justice, Lady Snowblood switches sides, joining anarchist Rasui to face off, expose, and destroy the crooked agent. The blood may not flow like geysers and there may be a lot less samurai action than in the first installment. However, Love Song of Vengeance is well-paced, nicely shot, and a well thought-out continuation of the heroine's adventures. Sadly, they ended with this installment. --Rob Bracco

• The Hunted | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• Shogun's Samurai | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With Shogun Samurai, veteran Japanese director Fukasaku Kinji demonstrated that he could do more than the gritty social realist cop-and-gangster films for which he remains most famous. A deliberately stately historical drama, with a slightly ponderous narrator introducing some of its most powerful scenes, Shogun Samurai shows the succession crisis that followed the death of the second Tokugawa Shogun in the early 17th-century. The Imperial court fans the flames in an attempt to restore the Emperor's power; a young dancer tries to preserve the young prince she loves; a warrior clan take steps to return to their homeland; and the fencing master Yagyu will expend honour and lives, including those of his own children, to ensure that his school is patronised by the new Shogun. The film alternates powerful scenes of intrigue and stagy monomaniac rants by Yagyu with finely choreographed scenes of battle and duel; it has a powerful and tragic sense of the fragile sadness of things and the futility of all ambitions; Sonny Chiba is unusually impressive as Yagyu's most honourable son, the one-eyed Jubel. On the DVD: Shogun Samurai on disc has minimal additional features: a short prose profile of Fukasaku Kinji and some promotional clips. Picture is anamorphic 16:9. --Roz Kaveney

• Roningai | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On the outskirts of old Tokyo stands an eatery which is a hangout for prostitutes. When the prostitutes are murdered one by one and a squad of samurais arrive in the area at the same time denouncing the whores as vermin who deserve death it is up to the local ronin to put an end to the injustice...

• Kill Bill Style - The Second Collection | DVD | (31/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Includes Babycart In The Land Of Demons Zatoichi's Pilgrimage and Lady Snowblood - Love Song Of Vengeance. Babycart In The Land Of Demons Hired to ensure that the succession of the clan passes to the legitimate heir the son of Lord Kuroda Lone Wolf becomes enmeshed in a web of intrigue that leads in turn to the Yagyu. Before he can break free he must turn against the very men who hired him the loyal retainers of the Kuroda clan... Zatoichi's Pilgrimage A girl is assaulted on the highway and Zatoichi is embarassed to find himself acting as midwife to a dying woman. Entrusted with the baby he embarks on a mission to the village of Dashu to deliver the baby to the father Satoro. When there he is waylaid and cheated by Seji a young stooge of the local gang whose ageing father is Dashu's law enforcement officer. To add to his miseries he is dogged by a boy who delights in stoning him and running away. Dashu's loan shark gamblers are on the point of seizing Satoro's sister Oyae to become a sex slave in forfeit for an unpaid debt and with the arrival of Satoro the town begins to heat up. In the process of resolving Oyae's financial difficulties Zatoichi reveals himself as master of a wide range of martial skills as well as finding time to teach certain hoodlums the intricacies of nude dancing. Lady Snowblood 2 - Love Song Of Vengeance Lady Snowblood (Shurayukihime) is caught by the authorities and sentenced to death for her crimes of bloodthirsty vengeance on the behalf of her long deceased mother. However on her way to certain death at the end of a hangman's rope she is rescued by officers of the secret police who offer her freedom if she agrees a deadly and perilous mission to assassinate a band of revolutionaries...

• Onibi - The Fire Within | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Kunihiro (Harada) is glad to be back in the outside world after a stretch in prison. He's even more glad to see his old friend Tanigawa (Aikawa) who is more than keen to welcome him back into the yakuza fold. However tired of the gangster life Kunihiro wants to go straight but finds that many obstacles not least Tanigawa stand in his way...