Tag Archives: Japan

EVIL Lies in Ancestral Ties! “Dogra Magra” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dogra Magra” on Limited Edition Blu-ray! Purchase Here!

A young man wakes up in an asylum cell, unable to remember how he got there, his name, and doesn’t even recognize his face.  The asylum supervisor, Prof. Wakabayashi, has been overseeing his condition ever since the suicidal passing of former experimenting director, Dr. Masaki, nearly a month ago.  Disoriented, the young man is toured around the hospital grounds where Wakabayashi tells him the tragic tale of a 9th century man who kills his bride the day before their wedding day to capture the stages of her decomposition recorded onto a sacred scroll.  Distancing himself from the possibility of being murderous man, Wakabayashi informs him he is Kure Ichiro, the direct descendent of the groom and he enacted the very same events his ancestor committed long ago.  When the sudden reemergence of Dr. Masaki covertly corners Ichiro in his office, Masaki divulges his and Wakabayashi’s theories about Ichiro’s case but how the events came to fruition just may be plain and simple murder. 

Nature versus Nurture and the psychosis that ensues when discussing Pre-World War II context of Empirical Japan and their either inherent tendencies to repeat a violent past or to be triggered, poked, and prodded toward repeating history is the surmised and experimental plot of writer Yumeno Kyūsaku and his psychoanalytical novel “Dogura Magura.”  The title rearranged to “Dogra Mogra” is used for the film adaptation of Kyūsaku’s novel with the script written-and-directed by the avant-garde filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto (Japan’s “Demons” of 1971).  Matsumoto cowrites the script with Atsushi Yamatoya (“Story of David:  Hunting for Beautiful Girls”) written primarily from the distressed perspective of the protagonist Kure Ichiro only to switch hands when the experimenting Masaki enters the fold.  Shuji Shibata and Kazuo Shimizu inpendently produce the 1988 film under production companies Katsujindo Cinema and Toshykanky Kaihatsu AG.

Principal players of “Dogra Magra” boil down to a three-prong outfit centered around Kure Ichiro and his theorized amnesia.  Before being the lead voice actor in “Prince Mononoke,” a decade earlier Yôji Matsuda was waking up with an inexplicable unawareness of who he was or what he had done as Kure Ichiro.  Matsuda feigns forgetfulness with shock and surprise, that will too place audiences in situational darkness, with the young Ichiro arousing in a powerful moment of unfamiliarity.  A shaken, discombobulated Ichiro becomes the object of obsessional mark between two theoretical and experimental-competing psychoanalysts in Prof. Wakabayashi and Dr. Masaki, played respectively by a collectively calm and bearded Hideo Murota (“Rape and Death of a Housewife,” “Original Sin”) that emits a sense of academia and medical security and reason and a hyenic-laughing, bald and glasses-wearing Eri Misawa who is more maniacal and unconventional to the likes of a mad-scientist   Yet both men have motivation that stirs the enigmatic pot of Kure Ichiro’s plight, stemmed from the very same source that drives the brutal murder of his beautiful bride one day before their wedding that eerily follows the footsteps of his macabre ancestral history.  There’s an inarguable difference between Wakabayashi and Masaki’s approach handling the curious case of Kure Ichiro; Wakabayashi’s hides in the clandestine shadows that aims to subvert the thought dead Masaki’s work whereas Masaki, under his blunt-force mania, is straight forward, almost apathetically.  In either case, both psychoanalytical professionals are indifferent to the crux of human life by focusing solely on whether either one of their theories is correct in an odd game of deception and death.  “Dogra Magra” rounds out the cast with Kyôko Enami (“Curse, Death & Spirit”) and Eri Misawa.

An attribute for audiences to become lost in “Dogra Magra’s” ethereal can be contributed by Toshio Matsumoto’s accosting avant-garde disorientation that swallows Kure Ichiro past, present, and future, plays tricks on his mind and eyes, and that also fishes patiently for a conclusion that rarely seems apparent.  The experimental qualities of “Dogra Magra” seep out of the tap of dark comedy and amnestic thriller and into a basin of spreading horror and exploitation.  “Dogra Magra’s” surreal storytelling and interesting, visceral visuals often reminds us of an old-dark house film a decade prior with the Nobuhiko Obayashi film, “Hausu,” and while not based in satirical foreplay like “Hausu,” “Dogra Magra” begins to unravel more questions than answers with a fleeting sense that nothing is real, nothing is as it seems, and maybe perhaps were all stuck in Kure Ichiro’s herded and scrambled mind that may or may not be his inherent, innate doing after all and that changes the narrative entirely.  Themes of historical repetition, ancestral culpability, forgetting the past, and empirical brainwashing are churned intrinsically into “Dogra Magra’s” constitution as well as within Japanese legacy with a formidable and prophetical proposition for no hope on horizon through a chimerical lens of learning and growing into the truth.

Radiance Films continues to starkly highlight underscored and wayward films from around the globe and “Dogra Magra” is no exception with a beautifully curated Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 features the original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 filmed by cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki.  The Radiance print for the limited-edition Blu-ray is pulled from the original 35mm elements and transferred in Hi-Def by producer Shuji Shibata and supervised by Tatsuo Suzuki.  The stunning upgrade leaves nothing to the imagination with a starkly harsh color grading that appears rawer than air or bright, leaning into grayscale more with darker tones of a greenish-yellow to accentuate the morbid, maybe even grittier, side of this tale, but often has naturally flourishing landscapes, such as the beach cove and the asylum yard that provides a good stretch of depth when not filtered through a POV celluloid handheld.  What’s a real winner here are the textural details that emerge through a blanket of consistent, healthy stock grain with dust and dirt retained to an extreme minimum.  The Japanese LPCM Mono mix disperse a sure-designed composition between natural audio elements layered upon or spliced with the incongruous tunes of one going through a hallucinogenic and dissociative state.  Dr. Masaki’s maniacal laughter has a sharp authoritarian jest that makes it even more frighteningly surreal.  Dialogue withholds that same sharpness and clarity throughout channeled through a single output, harnessing all the action into a funnel but clearly distinct.  English subtitles are optionally available.  The static menu’s special features store an achieved commentary track from late director Toshio Matsumoto, a 2003 interview with the director, programmer and curator Julian Ross’s visual essay on the cinematography Dogra Magra Through the Eyes of Tatsuo Suzuki, a featurette Instructions on Ahodara Sutra on the subject of the chant used in the story, a still gallery of production sketches, and the trailer.  A 51-page, color book weighs the Blu-ray package with contents that include a director’s statement from 1988, exclusive essays and an interview by Hirofumi Sakamoto Late-Period Toshio Matsumoto and Dogra Magra, Jasper Sharp The Pen is Mightier than the Sword:  The Life of Atsushi Yamatoya, and Alexander Fee and Karin Yamamoto Memory traces:  Interview with Producer Shuji Shibata, and rounding out with transfer credits and release acknowledgements.  The reversible sleeve is housed in a clear Blu-ray Amaray with new illustration compositional art and the original, more traditionally composed, Ukiyo-e artwork on the reverse.  Encoded only for regions A and B, Radiance Films’ limited-edition release to 3000 copies has a runtime of 109 minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Dogra Magra” psychosomatic surrealism is mind games on methamphetamines and Radiance Films does the 1988 Japanese picture justice rekindling its worth to the world of cinema.

“Dogra Magra” on Limited Edition Blu-ray! Purchase Here!

Dump Buckets and Buckets of Water Back into this Dry EVIL Well. “Ring Shark” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

For the subscribers of her Youtube show, vlogging social media influence Kanamasa and her co-host search for a stone well rumored to be in a haunted forest surrounded by unfriendly villagers who aggressively ward off unwelcomed visitors.  Upon discovering the well, a shark-like creature emerges suddenly and bites Kanamasa, scaring them off.  A few days later, another pair of Youtube investigators of the Psychic Investigations Big Summer learn of Khana’s disappearance after her last video surfaces of what looks to be a shark fin and then a ghastly body surfaces from within her bathtub, attacking her bikini-garbed body.  Seeking the truth and eager to find Khana, the investigators conduct interviews with “shark” experts and attempt to visit the same well only to be shooed off by the villagers until, finally, they’re able to reach the same spot and experience the same sharp-teethed horror lurking within it.  Unknowingly, that same supernatural terror of the well had follow them home. 

Sharksploitation has admittedly gotten out of hand.  The beloved horror subgenre that began with Steven Spielberg and Bruce the mechanical monstrous shark who terrorized the beaches of Amity Island have since drowned in its own watery subcategory of the ocean’s maneater predators with microbudget ineptitude that takes the shark from its natural ecosystem and rehomes it in a miscellany of nonsense locations, such as on land, in the weather, and even circling in toilets.  Well, today is the day we’ve come across a movie been assimilated into that same fatuous collective with “Ring Shark,” aka “Well Shark,” aka “Ido Shark.”  The Japanese, found-footage comedy-horror is the first of a trio of incongruous shark films released between 2023 and 2024 by Taichiro Natsume with “Love Shark” and “Last Shark” to follow, connected by the Big Summer team of Psychic Investigators.  Natsume also wrote and produced the feature.

Unfamiliar with the Psychic Investigator Big Summer series, which there’s uncertainty if Big Summer is a Japanese comedic troupe, equivalent to the Broken Lizard of America, what “Ring Shark, or “Ido Shark” begins is a series of various haunted case probes by the Big Summer team, which in this film in particular include actors using modifications of or using their actual names as characters in the story, such as director Taichiro Natsume being the single male lead in the group under character name Daiichiro Natsume.  Daiichiro Natsume can be a bumbling, yet persistent fool when it comes to the mysterious case of Kana-san with his steady motif of exclaiming his love for big boobs and determination to resolve the mystery.  He’s joined by colleagues on-and-off screen in Momoka Asahi and Chihiro Nishikawa, the latter not to be confused with Chihiro Nishikawa of JVA.  While Nishikawa and Natsume continue the running gag conversating about big breasts, Momoka Asahi enters the picture much later as the third investigating team member when Natsume goes down with a well shark bite infection that haunts him from the inside out and puts him in the hospital.  From there, Nishikawa and Momoka take the reigns on investigation by not only tending to Natsume’s dwindling health but also interviewing internet paranormal sleuths Hiroshima Freddy, a Japanese horror influence in real life, as well as Black Story Kuro, who I imagine is another influencer but couldn’t confirm it.  Typically, the Japanese language has a ton of fluid inflections and tones that dictates situations and mood, but “Ring Shark” avoids much of the vocal ups-and-downs with a consistently level tone of flat and dry humor peppered with fear, arbitrary bickering, and a pinch of kawaii to sustain a semi-serious documentary style investigation.  Maya Mineo, Issei Kunisawa, Yacch Chara, Daiki Mizuno, Honey Trap, Umeki, and the wrestler known as The Shark fills out the cast.

“Ring Shark” is “Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”  The latter having the most prominent appearance as the at home media, that was once titled, or probably is likely titled in Japan, as “Ido Shark,” is marketed for U.S. consumption because every moviegoer is either well versed or knows of Hideo Nakata’s “The Ring” series and its heebie-jeebies Samara spirit.  Instead of a cursed tape that summons Samara out of the depths of her murdered resting spot, a well, to kill anyone after a week of viewing said tape, “Ring Shark” only real connective tissue to “The Ring” is that there is a well in the story and a murdered girl’s body was dumped inside.  That’s it.  From there, the structure is more to the tune of “Blair Witch Project” with a pseudo-found footage of one social media’s disappearance igniting the Psychic Investigator Big Summer team to check it out after the tape is brought to their attention form Kanasama’s co-host.  The docu-style incorporates dry wit of interviewing shark experts, creature academics, urban legend connoisseurs, and thorough analysts and researchers, as well as themselves as angry villagers and a supernatural hand puppet shark head subverts their stratospheric sublayer with soul-chumming results.  Yet, none of everything just said really clicks in a flimsy and slapdashedly put together microbudget story derived for effect for true and absurd exploitation of sharks gone wild. 

“Ring Shark” swims right into SRS Cinema’s well-house with a brand-new DVD from the microbudget cult film distributor.  Upscaled to 1080p, the MPEG2 encoded, single layer DVD5 presents the Big Summer production ion a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Though upscaled to 1080p, the cell phone footage renders stretched limitations under the light of low-budget constraints.  Night vision and poor lighting coupled with closeups-to-extreme closeups, and shaky camera work dematerializes story-important images.  Natural lit and stationary camera work provide cleaner visuals in what is mostly a deluge of exposition and regular camera angles without atmospheric makeup.  The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo provides lean composition with ample inherent surrounding ambience, picking up the natural wildlife chirping in the background, the vocal amplification of someone talking through a microphone, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant, etc. Dialogue isn’t impeded by the commercial phone camera recording that creates a rather good reproduction and diffusion of sound amongst the space.  Added audio effects, such as the shark’s growling or snarling, does feel unnaturally alienated from the rest of the audio but works to the film’s advantage despite the obvious hand puppetry.  English subtitles are burned in but do synch well and appear error free. There’s also what looks to be double English subtitles along with Japanese title cards or subtitles that are a part of the Youtube investigation and often coincide with the main English subtitles in a distracting, screen space absorbing real estate. The Japanese electro-rap graced static menu, which samples Lil Jon’s Yeeeah, contains no bonus feature selection; instead, the bonus content is right on the main menu with short film “Shark of the Dead” (8.26 minutes) and the “Ring Shark” trailer.  I love bad movie cover art and SRS Cinema’s “Ring Shark” is no exception with smokey-eyed, electrically charged, and monstrously toothy shark breaching from a little stone well underneath “The Ring”-font film title.  The disc is pressed with the same image and there are no inserts included.  The barely hour-long film, clocking in at 63-minutes, comes not rated and has a region free playback.

Last Rites: “Ring Shark” is a monumental prosaic mockumentary aimed to swell Sharksploitation into further ill-repute and disrepair with an unfunny and uninteresting undertaking of underwhelming pastiche.

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

Digging Up the EVIL Disentombs the Past! “Exhuma” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

A shaman and her assistant recruit a geomancer and a mortician to investigate the case of an American newborn boy’s distressing grave calling that has also haunted every patriarch member of the family for generations.  The large paying job sends them to remote forest where the unmarked grave of the boy’s great, great grandfather lies beneath the dirt.  For the geomancer, all signs point to not disturbing the grave but the father’s eagerness to cure his son’s troubles and the shaman’s persistence for a big payday goes against the wise geomancer’s better judgement.  All is seemingly well after exhuming and transferring the ancestral coffin to be cremated at a nearby hospital the next day until a greedy, hospital official pries open the sealed casket, releasing a long-awaited evil, and digging up out of the same burial ground another malevolent and mysterious ancient force that reaches far beyond the borders of Korea. 

Here as of late, ItsBlogginEvil.com’s last three reviews have taken readers on a genre-diverse tour of Asia, from Japan with Yu Nakamoto’s meta-slashers in “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man,” to Hong Kong with David Chung’s affrayed police actioner “Royal Warriors,” to conclude in South Korea with the supernatural horror in the realm of cultural superstitions of P’ungsu, or geomancy, in Jang Jae-hyun’s latest written-and-directed thriller “Exhuma.”  The 2024 film follows a string of religious related, supernatural themes Jae-hyun has put out in his prior two directed projects with “The Priests” and “Svaha:  The Sixth Finger,” and like “Ikenie Man,” “Harawata Man,” and “Royal Warriors,” a portion of Jae-hyun’s films are touched by Japanese culture.  “Exhuma” amounts to the same standard of crisscrossing the two cultures with dangerous results with “Exhuma” digging up a past better left alone.  Park Hyeong Jin and Kwon Ji Yong (“Ghost Mansion”) produce the spiritually turbulent story under Showbox Entertaiment and Pinetown Productions. 

“Exhuma” encircles four culturally inclined characters that entrench themselves into an unorthodox means of exhuming a disturbed essence for what is essentially an exorcism variant to alleviate living perturbation beyond the grave.  The superstition here revolves around the land temperament.  Geomancers find good sites to lay people to rest, ones that exert extrasensory, or grave call, troubles onto family members that place upon them a grief, anxious, and other mentally uneasy state, and it’s the “Exhuma’s” Geomancer who has story predominance, shared only with the young and beautiful shaman woman with tagalongs who resemble more of assistants than coequals.  In an age-old and cautionary tale of wisdom and inexperience, Choi Min-sik (“Oldboy”) and Kim Go-eun (“Monster”) play the respective roles of the reluctant and experienced Geomancer Kim Sang-deok and the naïve eager yet gifted shaman Lee Hwa-rim.  Receiving character voice over monologue introductions and becoming the ultimate deciding factors of this new job is worth the pay, they completely overshadow the Shaman apprentice (Lee Do-hyun,) and the mortician (Yoo Hae-jin) who works with the Geomancer.  Pivotal as these support characters are to the story, not only buffers for the evil that beleaguers them but also as latched on friends and family of the isolating weird and strange subculture to most but normalized in Korea, the shaman apprentice and mortician definitely take a back seat to the more prominent players to the point where they almost seem contributorily worthless to the task.  As a whole, the dynamic works because the shaman and geomancer alone would not be sufficient for diabolical misadventures of an exhumation gone wrong and supplement only when necessary to aid the fight against an ancient evil twice over.  The cast fills out with Hong Seo-jun, Jeon Jin-ki, Kim Jae-Cheol, and Lee Jong-goo.

The wafting back and forth between Korean and Japanese culture, the fraternization of beliefs and superstitions, tells “Exhuma” differently than most hilltop haunts and horrors.  Themes of a haunted past and inexplicable guilt riddle holes through family lineage, resulting rancorous ripples in the form of mental illness, and devised as a story vehicle device of supernatural subverting trauma from the sins of the father.  In America, Shamanism and Geomancy don’t exist, especially in the history, but for Korea and its people, the country is rich in transcendent ritual and mythology that shapes society, even in their cinematic culture as regularly do we see period films of feudal Korea.  History also dictates “Exhuma’s” need to be a representation of purging the long Japanese occupation of Korea for nearly three and half decades from 1910 to 1945.  The occupation was a disruption in Korean way of life with oppression and war machinations stitched into Korean’s fabric, hence the Korean plot of land being very spoiled with vileness in “Exhuma’s” tale of one historically troubled family’s course to remove that uneasiness that has plagued and followed them to America.  Yet, the past is rooted deep and Jang Jae-hyun’s understands the difficulty of eradicating a sullied ancestry by dichotomizing his darkly toned, folklore valued, and occult twisted story into two parts with sublayers as deep as the dirt surrounding the coffin, or rather, coffins with a formidable presence created and conjured by malicious Japanese Yōkai and represented in one of the most iconic Japanese figures as remnants of an Imperial Japan occupation.

Lying in wait underneath the high-definition terra firma is Well Go USA Entertainment’s “Exhuma” on an AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Accompanied by no information on the video vehicle, IMDB.com lists Jang Jae-hyun and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae shoot with an Arri Alexa Mini which offers the ease of use of multiple lenses, and that shows here with a vast stretch to encompass the Korean mountains into the frame as well as keeping tight on characters while keeping in focus the immediate surroundings. Details are sharp under a flinty tone of saturated grays and blacks with spot pops and glows of in-scene lighting and under the capacity’s umbrella, finer textural elements suffuse through the darkness and into the fold. Audio options include the original Korean language DTS-HD 5.1 and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1. Crystal clear dialogue runs through parallel with the visual counterpart and is well timed and potent, touching the side and back channels with the eerie callings of the grave and its inhabited spirits running rampant free while harnessing focus on the character on scene to create a ranging discarnate of deep, ominous sounds that stalk and haunt the principals. English translation paces well and appears to be translated grammatically and is error free. Well Go USA Entertainment releases are feature focused and this one too containing only a making of featurette in the bonus content along with the trailer. The interior of the traditional Blu-ray Amaray comes with a disc pressing of the four principal characters peering into a dug grave. The exterior has a two-tone, subsoil profile forming a face out of a grave with the four principals on the topsoil and the same image also graces the cardboard O-slip that has a pseudo-lenticular sheen. Authored to have a region A playback, “Exhuma” runs just over two hours long at 135 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The addition of learning authentic, practiced rituals benefits “Exhuma’s” folklore frights tenfold and with neat, grounded performances and a superb blend of visual and practical effects, this original, supernatural thriller raises the Korean movie industry up a notch on the global scale.

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

A Pact Plans EVIL Revenge on Crime Fighting Heroes! “Royal Warriors” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

Hong Kong police inspector boards a Hong Kong bound plane on return from her vacationing in Japan.  She meets Michael Wong, the plane’s air marshal, as well as her across the aisle seat mate, Japanese native, Yamamoto, a retired cop returning to Hong Kong to retrieve his wife and daughter and retreat back to Japan to start their new life.  Also on the plane, an escorted criminal being extradited to Japan for prosecution.  When a criminal accomplice takes the plane at gunpoint, Michele, Michael, and Yamamoto spring into action and thwart an aero catastrophe with the two terrorists dead.  After celebrating their success of saving many lives, the heroic trio begin to depart their separate ways when suddenly Yamamoto’s car explodes with his wife and daughter inside.  The assassination attempt puts a target on the backs of all three of them as two war veterans swear vengeance for their slain combat brothers from the airplane hijacking.

“Royal Warriors,” also known in other parts of the world as “In the Line of Duty,” “Ultra Force,” and “Police Assassin,” is the 1986 Hong Kong police action-thriller from “Web of Deception” director and “Once Upon a Time in China” director of photography, David Chung.  Stephen Chow’s regular screenwriter Kan-Cheung Tsang, who penned Chow’s “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Shaolin Soccer,” as well as “Magic Cop” and “Intruder,” reteams with Chung on their sophomore collaboration following the comedic-crime film “It’s a Drink!  It’s a Bomb!” starring the Hong Kong humorist John Sham, and a denotes a shared three-way perspective of protagonist principals while simultaneously providing sympathetic seedlings for the principal antagonists who though are coming wrongdoings and murdering up a storm of people, a wartime conflict bond between them holds them a higher level of honor between close brothers in arms.  Dickson Poon and D&B Films produce the explosive and hard hitting with prejudice venture with John Sham (Remember him from earlier?) and Yiu-Ying Chan, serving as associate producer.

Michelle Yeoh plays Michelle Yip, the level-headed chopsocky cop returning from some rest and relaxation only to wind up on a dish best served cold “Royral Warriors” for Yeoh, who then under the less recognizable moniker Michelle Khan, is the risk-it-all action film for the actress still in the earlier days of her what would be a prolific international career.  Her breakout hit “Yes, Madam,” saw both Yeoh and also then newcomer Cynthia Rothrock punch and kick into silverscreen success as unlikely onscreen partners to take down a crime syndicate.  In the Yeoh’s next film, she rides solo but only in the actress category, being a third of the good guys, yet holding her own as a strong female, lead between another prolific Asian cinema actor Michael Wong (“Tiger Cage III,” “Dream Killer”) playing essentially himself as Michael Wong (not a typo), the plane air marshal turned love sick puppy for Hong Kong’s tough cop Michelle Yip, and yet another prolific Asian actor whose career in Japanese films started well before Yeoh and Wong and has been rising internationally amongst the ranks of American cinema in Hiroyuki Sanada (“Sunshine,” “Mortal Kombat”) playing retired officer Yamamoto, a revenge-seeking justifier on those responsible for killing his family.  The level of how these three come together in a post-incident instantaneous bond borders an idealistic way of an extreme shared experience.  Yeoh and Sanada offer a cool, collective approach with degrees of vindictive separation with a layer of compassion thinly in between with Wong providing calculated lighthearted measures of chasing Yip with infatuated eyes to break any kind of monotonous, stagnant composure between the other two, yet they’re seemingly different lives, connected ever so vaguely by being around law enforcement one way or another, doesn’t seem to thwart an instant relationship immediately after the plan incident.  What’s also odd, especially with Yamaoto, is there is more background to the villains of the story than there is with him, providing rewarding elements for reason why the two men are hunting down Yeoh, Wong, and Yamamoto and seeking deadly revenge.  Ying Bai, Wait Lam, Hing-Yin Kam, and Michael Chan Wait-Man are the pact-making, behind-enemy-lines soldiers of some unknown war from long ago who neither one of them will turn their back on a combat brother in need.  Through a series of none linear flashbacks, a union of honor between them is made and while respectable and moral during war, that pact turns rotten overtime outside the context of global conflict, suggesting ever-so-lightly toward a combat shock issue between the four men that builds a bit of sympathy for them even though blowing up a mother and child and shooting to shreds a whole lot of nightclub patrons in their misguided revenge runs ice through their veins.  Peter Yamamoto wears his sleeve on his shoulder and there is this uncertainty with his character, and his wife too, that something is amiss, creating a tension that goes unfounded and sticks out.  “Royal Warriors” rounds out the cast with Kenneth Tsang, Siu-Ming Lau, Jing Chen, Reiko Niwa and Eddie Maher.

As part of the In the Line of Duy series, a strict criterion needs to be met:  Police Action, check.  Martial Arts, check.  A Level of High Intensity, check.  And a Female Heroine, check.  “Royal Warriors” meets and exceeds the bar with another bar, a no holds bar, of spectacular stunt work done by the Hong Kong standard way of action now, think later which looks phenomenal on camera and the resulting footage.  Hoi Mang’s martial arts choreography showcases a fast-striking combinations that cut traditional sparring with melee improvisation dependent on the surroundings, moving the action left-to-right, top-to-bottom by never staying in the same place and expanding the field of play with collateral damage of bystanders and family.  A couple of components are missed between that focused innocence and whiplash of violence.  For example, the playfully amorous affections between two of the characters are not poignantly shattered like precious stained glass when one is suddenly offed.  There are other examples of once a downspin cataclysm occurs, the aftershock of loss and change does not rear its ugly head.  “Royal Warriors” just pushes forth, continuing pursuit, in a rage of retribution and righteousness. 

88 Films releases “Royal Warriors” onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD50, presented in the film’s original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1.  If you own the “In the Line of Duty” four film boxset, the version in the boxset contains the same transfer as this standalone, standard version that stuns with a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm print.  When I say this restoration stuns, I mean it.  A clean-cut natural gain, color balanced saturation, and with all the detail trimmings laud 88 Films’ work, as such as with the rest of their higher definition catalogue in the older Asian film market.  Range of atmospherics challenge with a different lighting scheme and mise-en-scene cinematography, such as the pink and purple warmth of a nightclub glow or the brilliantly lit restaurant ferry boat.  Skin and texture tones cater to a slight darker pastel but is consistent through-and-through without appearing to unnatural.  The restoration does have a positive to a fault, revealing stunt equipment during the fast-paced fighting, such as the exterior stone ground turning bouncy with creases when Yeoh vault kicks one of the Japanese yakuza members to the ground.  The release comes with four, count’em four, audio tracks:  a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 mono theatrical mix, a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 alternate mix, an English dub DTS-HD 2.0, and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1.  Of course, I go with the theatrical mix to comply with the original fidelity as much as possible with any films using ADR for an immersive experience within the original, intended language.  the 2.0 mix keeps a midlevel management of the voluminous aspects to bombastic range but never muddles or mutes the tracks.  Dialogue comes out clear with a microscopic static lingering way deep in the sublayer but, again, has negligible effect on the mix.  Special features content includes an audio commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, missing airplane inserts which are spliced out shots of an inflight plane exterior, and the Cantonese and English trailers.  The standard edition comes pretty standard but does feature the new character compilation artwork of Sean Longmore on the front cover with the reversible sleeve featuring the original Hong Kong poster.  The disc is individually pressed with Michelle Yeoh doing what she does best in most of her films, kick butt.  There are no inserts or other tangible bonus content.  88 Films’ North American release comes with a region A encoded playback, not rated, and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: 88 Films’ “Royal Warriors” Blu-ray release captures Hong Kong cinema impeccably with monumental stunts, hard-boiled police work, and permeates with color, detail, and a cleanly, discernible audio mix. In the Line of Duty, “Royal Warriors” is the first, and foremost, cop crusading caper that began it all.

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

A Gang’s EVIL Ransom Elicits the Wrath of “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” reviewed! (Neon Eagle Video / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” is Number One on Our Must Have Lists!

When undercover officer Rei lets her overwhelming emotions kill a suspect on an assignment, her displeased colleagues lock her into a cell, unable to decide her fate with fear of public outcry of police brutality that would blemish the department and force leadership regsinations.  When a prime minister candidate’s daughter is kidnapped by a ruthless gang of rapists and murderers and brought to a cathouse for sale, the brothel madam believes the young woman is better exploited by issuing a large ransom for her safe return.  Unwilling to face public scandal, the politician and a rigid yet loyal investigator of the clandestine Zero Division rig up a covert plan to eliminate every person involved with the kidnapping by offering a murderous deal to Rei in exchange for her freedom.  Rei’s able to infiltrate the gang’s inner circle only to see the plan devolve into chaos and blood between the gang and corrupt authorities.   

Japan doesn’t make films like “Zero Woman:  Red Handcuffs” anymore!  The violent Toei company pinkusploitation production, released in 1974, played a major role in unifying the sexual appetites of Japan’s pink pornos with the rough-and-tumble violence of exploitation action films.  The rising of Nikkatsu Roman Pornos forced the hand of the Toei Company to expand their portfolio, creating such as combinational conquest over salivating grindhouse cinema patrons that the radical subgenre deserved a new sublet coinage labeled pinky violence.  Toei company man Yukio Noda, a staple yakuza filmmaker for the company, helms the visuals translated from a script penned by “Female Prisoner #701:  Scorpion” writers Fumio Kônami and Hirô Matsuda.  Loosely based off the manga written by Tooru Shinohara (who also penned the manga of “Female Prison Scorpion series”), “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” stitches its own blood soaked and sexually provocative clothing that would later continue “Zero Woman’s” adventures throughout the years with more films.

Cladded in a chic long red coat, black boats strapped up just below the knee, and wielding an extra-long connector chain pair of red handcuffs, Rei is the anti-heroine of our manga fantasies.  Miki Sugimoto works deep into that fantasy vision as Rei, Division Zero’s lady cop who will do anything and everything, clothed or undressed, to get the job done, even with extreme prejudice.  A frequent delinquent girl portrayer for Toei Company’s gritty bad girl gang pink pictures (try saying that five times fast), Sugimoto’s filmography include the “Girl Boss” series, “Terrifying Girls’ High School:  Women’s Violent Classroom, and “Criminal Woman:  Killing Melody,” and so Sugimoto already had established this foundational layer for Rei as a fortitude of badassery and now tacking on another layer of a moral high ground, justified only by seeing her word through to the end.  Rei is up against a gang of five – four street thugs led by the recent prison released Nagumo (Eiji Go,” The Executioner”) and one lesbian brothel madam (Yôko Mihara, “Sex & Fury”) – as she agrees to a back-against-the-wall deal and slyly subverts the gang by helping Nagumo during a faux ransom sting operation.  Along with Sugimoto’s stoicism, the Toei porn actress retains her promiscuous allure, one where she doesn’t have to do anything to be seductive but just be herself, working not only toward the favor of her character, who continuously is taken advantage of sexually without shame, but also keeping the integrity of the Toei élan for Japanese sleaze.  “Harakiri’s” Tetsurô “Tiger” Tanba resides to the general’s overlooking hill as the prime minister candidate who sends his battlefield colonel in Hideo Murota (“Rape and Death of a Housewife”) to be the Zero Woman’s handler.  Their scheme quickly devolves as their plan evolve when the operation goes slower than expected and the gang’s leader Nagumo begins feel the pressure of paranoia and starts to unhinge, especially around his ruffian acolytes played by Seiji Endô, Rokkô Toura, Iwao Dan, Kôji Fujiyama, and Ichirô Araki as Saburo the mysteriously quiet, aviator-waring knifeman who in himself is an interesting character.  Cast fills in with the Japanese speaking Westerner Ralph Jesser in a wild opening sequence that results in a gunshot to the groin!  

Like most pinky films, “Zero Woman:  Red Handcuff’s” incorporates an X-rated sexual violence but unlike most pinky films, the pinky violence subgenre omits the softer side of sensuality, creating more of a nihilistic viewpoint toward sex of taking what you want, when you want it, and aggressively at that.  Yukio Noda picture contains hostile lesbianism, gang rape, and pressurized perversions that take control thematically in pinky violence.  The corrosive context that has a guilty pleasure pull in most patriarchal dominated cultures and fleapit cinemagoers goes hand-in-hand with the over-the-top violence conjoined at the hip of cause-and-effect.  Usually, the narrative goes an ugly rape equals hard-fought revenge; in Noda’s film, the cause is the kidnapping, and subsequent deflowering of a power politician’s little girl leas to the Zero Woman effect of silencing with corporal punishment that circumvents the law.  Stylish like a spaghetti western and brutally violent, “Zero Woman:  Red Handcuffs” is a meanspirited, out-for-blood, femme fatale engendered on the verge of the pinkusploitation genesis.

Neon Eagle Video, a collaborative boutique label effort between Cauldron Films and Mondo Macabro’s Jared Auner, releases “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” onto a new Blu-ray, restored in 4K from the 35mm print. The transfer is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, onto a BD50 and shown in the widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1. A relatively clean 50-year-old print hardly displays any age wear, if any at all. Scarcely marred by blue vertical emulsion scratches in only a single scene, the print retains and is stored with care to diffuse the range of color and to effectuate as much detail as possible in textures and skin while without taking away from Noda’s underbelly surrealism. The lower contrast infuses a pulpy layer to create softer shadows, but contouring manages to stick an outline thanks to key Rembrandt lighting precision, akin to Hammer Horror with a splash of Kensington gore. The uncompressed Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono peaks with the best possible optical audio. While not much in the way of depth creation, there’s plenty of range in the Foley, even if it’s artificially abstract and illogical compared to shotgun microphone captured audio. The ADR synch is one of the best inlaid post-recordings with visuals that renders hardly any feedback or unnatural noises on the audio layer. English subtitles are burned into the only available Japanese language picture on the release. Special features include a feature length audio commentary by author and producer for Vinegar Syndrome Samm Deighan, Sex + Violence = Pink Violence TokyoScope author Patrick Macias analyzes “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs,” and an image gallery. Graphic designer Justin Coffee produces a new, rich-in-red, and taletelling composite illustration of what kind of film to expect on the front cover art of the clear Amaray Blu-ray. The reverse cover houses another illustration, one pulled from the feature’s original poster line. The BD is pressed with more Coffee fiery and red-laced artwork. This particular copy reviewed is not the limited edition set with accompanying slipcover and neither copy contains insert material. The region A playback release comes unrated and has a runtime of 88 minutes.

Last Rites: “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” is a fine introductory film into the world of Pinky Violence, a starting line for those perverse-thirsty for the unification of sex and violence in Japanese cinema. Neon Eagle Video delivers excellences with their restored print, second to none in its picture and audio quality that will provide a sterling experience.

“Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs” is Number One on Our Must Have Lists!