OUTRAGE (2010)

  Director and star 'Beat' Takesh Kitano took a little break from these types of films for a few years to make more artsy/weird stuff but then returned to what people know him best for with this Yakuza flick. Fairly typical stuff here with some extremely violent scenes including devious use of a dentist drill, a near decapitation involving a car and some rope and tons of gun-fu. Nothing unexpected but still an entertaining watch for folks into the mobster movie genre. 

 Might be the last Asian action movie Blu-ray I ever pick up at Big Lots since they just announced that they are going out of business.

FIRST LOVE (2019)

 You could call this one director Takashi Miike's version of TRUE ROMANCE where you take a couple and drop them into the middle of some mobsters fighting over drugs. Miike seems to have gone the David Cronenberg route where he starts out making really strange oddball cinema and then ends up making more straight forward gangster movies. Of course Miike has made way more fims then David so he's really ventured outside of any strict genre guidelines over the years. A bit overlong at almost 2 hours but it does manage to maintain a high energy level throughout. Heads roll, arms roll and lots of gun-fu commences.

 

ENTRAILS OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (1986)

 I had seen the first movie in this series, ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN, a while back and recall it being alright. This follow up, which is not really a sequel, ramps things up in the absurdity category. It all starts out like a Yakuza film(a very rape-filled Yakuza film!) before unexpectedly(unless you had seen the first movie) morphing into a monster movie. I guess you could technically call this a rape/revenge flick but it's certainly not your standard example of that subgenre. You get a melty, gooey creature that kinda reminded me of The Toxic Avenger but only if ol' Toxie had a giant monster penis that resembles the Alien baby from ALIEN. A good one for lovers of weirdo Japanese gore flicks if they can manage to make it through the first half. AKA GUTS OF A VIRGIN 2 and GUTS OF A BEAUTY

Our poor rape victim commits suicide(but luckily turns into a watermelon before hitting the ground):

JUNK (2000)

  This one mixes a Japanese yakuza film with a zombie movie, which sounds way better than what you actually get. It tries to mine ZOMBIE/DAWN OF THE DEAD and RESERVOIR DOGS territory but ends up being a lot closer to one of those crappy RESIDENT EVIL movies(which it actually predates by a couple of years) and your typical Tarantino rip-off. The fx work is decent enough for what is obviously a low-budget affair. I recall enjoying similar Japanese zombie flick BIO-ZOMBIE more but it's certainly in the same ballpark. 

          This DVD cover(with the German title) really plays up the RESIDENT EVIL similarities!:

and this British DVD tries to make an EVIL DEAD comparison:

NAKED BULLET (1969)

 Experimental/artsy Director Koji Wakamatsu takes the Japanese pinky violence film and mixes it up with a film-noir-ish gangster flick and comes up with an interesting genre-blending experience. While I coulda done with less artistic pretense and more straight forward sleazy violence, more typical in Japanese exploitation cinema at the time, this film offers up equals parts art-film style and low-brow spectacle which would probably appeal to fans of either. We switch from black & white to color intermittently, there's lots of Japanese nudity and you get the standard Yakuza antics. Like in most of these pink films women don't get treated very well but ultimately are shown to be stronger and smarter in most ways then their male oppressors which I think is an interesting commentary on Asian society in general.  A good watch that you have to at least appreciate for it's blending of cinematic forms if not for the bondage and perky nipples on display.

NAKED BULLET (Kôji Wakamatsu, 1969) from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.