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V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal - Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (14th May 2025). |
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The Film
 "In 1989, legendary Japanese studio Toei launched their V-Cinema line of direct-to-video genre features. V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal presents nine explosive titles representing some of the best the Japanese crime film has to offer." Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage: Okinawa cop Joe (Dr. Akagi's Masanori Sera), also known as "Joker", and his cocky partner Ahiru (Fudoh: The New Generation's Riki Takeuchi) have been hunting robber Bruce (The Monster Bus's Seiji Matano) whose most recent heist was five million dollars in church donations. They manage to corner Bruce and slap the cuffs on him but their victory is cut short by three masked gunmen who kill Ahiru and pump thirteen bullets into Joe who manages to survive. When he comes to in the hospital, his captain informs him that he is off the case which has been reassigned to straight-laced Hunt (Cinderella Ecstasy's Keishi Hunt). Joe hands in his badge and goes rogue, but Hunt is happy to share intel since Joe is after the guys who killed his partner while Hunt just wants Bruce and the whereabouts of the missing money. Joe, however, believes that the men are Bruce's current associates not his former ones the West Side Gang who get the drop on Joe hoping that he will lead them to Bruce. Joe reluctantly accepts the help of Lily (Door III's Minako Tanaka) who claims to be a nun searching for the missing money, but she has infiltrated the West Side Gang as a club dancer and her knowledge of Bruce seems particularly "intimate". The very first Toei V-Cinema title before the term would come to encompass all such straight-to-video films regardless of the studio, Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage runs just under an hour, moving form one action set-piece to another with what little exposition there is delivered whenever the actors stop to take a breath; and what there is is the bare minimum of straight-to-video action elements familiar to viewers the world over. Sera and Sato essay their cliché roles like kids playacting their favorite movie parts, affecting world-weariness, and even Tanaka too seems like she is playacting during her dance scene (although this is partially due to the mismatch between the Madonna song played on the set and the cheaper-to-license song used in the final mix according to the director in his interview). As Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka observes in the optional introduction to the film, that the film plays like a crystallization of elements from popular action films and was so popular with viewers is evidence that Japanese audiences were craving something different from the prevailing models of Japanese theatrical cinema at the time while American viewers might not see an attempt at aping Hollywood and Hong Kong action cinema models but something that looks very much like the kind of stuff we were getting from Pepin-Merhi on the lower end and globe-trotting tax break producers like Avi Lerner throughout the nineties.  Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet: Junko (Gozu's Shô Aikawa) is a low-level yakuza in the Yoshikawa gang, his only prestige being his position chauffeur to the boss (The Fall of Ako Castle's Tôru Minegishi) which includes the fringe benefits of joyriding in his limousine and making liberal use of the car phone to impress his hostess prostitute girlfriend Noriko (Door II: Tokyo Diary's Yukino Tobita). While one of Yoshikawa's suppliers Kaneda is being murdered and Yoshikawa and his gang are scrambling to find the killer – who they suspect was hired by rival Kazama (Kenji Takaoka) but have no proof to accuse him – Junko is scrambling to find out the whereabouts of his boss' stolen limousine and ends up meeting cute with runaway Yumeko (Robotrix's Chikako Aoyama) as the pair of them witness the murder and disposal of a man during an illegal weapon exchange. Junko is initially excited when Yoshikawa selects him, hulking Kikuchi (Tampopo's Rikiya Yasuoka), and coolly unfettered Kawamura (Yokohama BJ Blues' Tatsuo Yamada) to find the killer and the identity of his employer, arming them with hard-to-track WWII-era American handguns with six equally-untraceable bullets each and the promise of financial remuneration for any prison time they serve (provided they take full responsibility for their actions and leave his name out of it). In the ensuing days, his relationship with Yumeko becomes more serious and bizarre – she is turned on by firing his gun but also narcoleptic when she his horny – and both Kikuchi and ? find ways to take themselves out of the running leaving him as the potential patsy. Junko's uncle Mizuta (Branded to Kill's Jô Shishido), a former yakuza who hangs around the periphery, tries to warn him off in a roundabout way while organized crime cop Satake (Kagemusha's Kôji Shimizu) – who seems too comfortable in criminal company – seems to be waiting around to swoop in, and Yoshikawa's second-in-command (Audition's Ren Ôsugi) watching him to make sure he does not "zoom" (run away from his obligation). Although V-Cinema was motivated in part by Hong Kong action cinema of the eighties, Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet from Banmei Takahashi (Door) is decidedly not a "heroic bloodshed" film like Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage intended to be and is also a very atypical yakuza film. In his star-making role, Aikawa's yakuza poser is vaguely reminiscent of Richard Gere's comic book-consuming, rockabilly small-time hood in over his head in Jim McBride's Godard remake Breathless but he might actually be the most normal character in the film, or the least cynical. His girlfriend only seems to really like him when he starts trying to embody the yakuza image, his uncle indirectly tries to tell him that his boss and his associates are out-of-touch and that the most loyal are also the most naive – noting that the government is harder on crime now and that the likelihood of a two year sentence for a first-time offender Yoshikawa anticipates may be optimistic at best – and Yumeko also points out that he romanticizes the yakuza while not trying to stop him (instead setting up a household with a man who may be away for a long time). Although it seems as though Junko is being set up for failure, it ultimately is his decision as he walks into the sunset with one bullet left in the chamber in a music montage punctuated by the emotionally-telling images of himself taken in a photo booth moments before. The film feels less like a parody than an indie character study using the yakuza as a backdrop with the tonally scattershot spirit of Hong Kong cinema of the period and some of the American indie films dealing with criminal characters that were just too whimsical to qualify as neo-noir. Takahashi came from a pink film background so the creative freedoms of V-Cinema provided him with the opportunity to experiment and he would helm a sequel the following year which we have not seen but it apparently features much of the same cast and characters.  Stranger: After serving a prison sentence for embezzling money from her bank job for her boyfriend, Kiriko (Gate of Flesh's Yûko Natori) is estranged from her family and can only find a job as a taxi driver, preferring the night shifts of drunks and oddballs lest she run into anyone from her past. She has a reputation at work as unfriendly and passenger often comment on her "bad attitude" for refusing to engage with them. The only customer who stands out is a stranger with a scarred hand who she picks up in traffic and lets off in remote locations. One night he tries to attack her with a hammer. She flees her taxi only to find it later with her cash box still intact but her identification card slashed through. The police are fixated on the idea that the attack might be related to her conviction and possibly her ex-boyfriend or someone resentful of their relationship, her boss suggests she take a day shift, and new co-worker Kijima (Kentarô Shimizu), a former professional baseball player forced to give up his career due to an injury, goes from overly-solicitous to inappropriately intimate. Dogged by a beat-up Land Cruiser everywhere she goes and subjected to escalating attempts on her life, Kiriko decides that if she wants to change her life for the better, she needs to stop running away and confront her assailant head on. With a plot that could easily work for a fleshy pink film or a gory horror film, Stranger from Shunichi Nagasaki (Shikoku) opts instead for vague psychological terrain akin to Steven Spielberg's made-for-TV thriller Duel more so than the more-contemporary The Hitcher; indeed, even before Kijima makes the non-literal observation that the Land Cruiser and her attacker are a stand-in for her reluctance to confront her past, the subtlety of Nagasaki's direction and the introduction of some odd characters like the little boy passenger who is alternately sweet and possessive may cause the viewer to wonder how much of the story might be paranoid delusions even before Kiriko too wonders aloud if she is the only one who can see the Land Cruiser. Although Kirko is the only female employee at the taxi service and her assailant is male, the film's psychological division is not that of gender but of insider/outsider. Kiriko's solitary, independent manner is subject to criticism from her female colleagues as a bank employee and by various male authority figures when she does not capitulate to their dismissive suggestions, and it is her fellow co-workers who stand up for her when her boss tells her to take a holiday and leave everything to the police. Initially cold and distant to both flirtation and overtures of friendship, her refusal for help during the last act of the film seems to be less stubbornness and more an unwillingness to drag anyone else into danger. The film is not really a whodunit so the indirect reveal of the killer and his "motives" is of far less importance than Kiriko's emotional arc confronting complex emotions and contradictory impulses, and Natori is compelling in both her solitary scenes as well as her scenes with Shimizu's Kijima and her confrontation with her ex-boyfriend in which they are largely sounding boards (the latter scene where in owning her part in the crime, she takes away her ex-boyfriend's ability to hurt her even unintentionally).  Naoto Takenaka (Shall We Dance?) is Carlos, a third generation Japanese-Brazilian hiding out in Japan with his brother Antonio and gang after a deadly police raid back in Sao Paulo in which he killed eight cops on top of his overall body count of forty. Operating out of a Latin night club, he supplies firearms to local yakuza gangs. When Yano and Sugita of the Yamashita gang try to cheat him in a weapons deal, Carlos executes both men. Rather than bringing the yakuza to his doorstep, Carlos instead is paid for his weapons by Kaji of the Yamashita gang who introduces him to the gang's lieutenant Katayama (Doberman Cop's Ryûji Katagiri) who reveals that they suspect that the Hayakama gang of the murders and that his boss (Lone Wolf and Cub's Minoru Ôki) will name as his successor whoever brings him the head of Hayakama (Tidal Wave's Yûzô Hayakawa) so he hires Carlos to do the job before his rival Sato (The Street Fighter's Goichi Yamada) can do it. Unbeknownst to Katayama, Sato also has hired a hitman in ruthless white yakuza Chris (Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah's Chuck Wilson) who demonstrates his superiority not with target practice but by killing the other prospect. When Chris gets to Hayakama first, Katayama is incensed until Carlos suggests getting rid of Sato as supposed retaliation by the Hayakama gang and ascending to leadership by "avenging" Sato; however, when Katayma attempts to double cross Carlos, and the web of intrigue and in-fighting in the Yamashita clan unravels in a one man war with the yakuza. Based on the manga by Kazuhiro Kiuchi who ended up adapting the script and directing, Carlos is very much a V-Cinema approach to the yakuza film, hybridizing the familiar Japanese genre with American crime films of the period, specifically Brian De Palma's Scarface on a modest scale. The film exposes the seething anti-immigrant sentiments beneath the facade of polite Japanese society, contrasting the colorful, loud, lively world of Carlos and his gang with mobile camera and the yakuza's seeming embodiment of the traditional from the vestiges of samurai culture to static compositions and slow dollying back of tableaux arrangements in mock-Ozu setups that reveal off-kilter elements like Yamashita clipping his toenails during an otherwise formal meeting with the police or a scene of a kneeling Kaji spilling the beans to his boss after a seeming skirmish that leaves him bloodied only to casually reveal the poised boss holding a bloodied crystal bowl he has obviously been using to beat the information out of his subordinate. As ruthless and violent as Carlos is, one cannot help but root for him because of the way the yakuza talk about him and his gang "like crabs in my pubes" but the film adds a subplot involving a Japanese aunt and her seventeen-year-old daughter who refer to Carlos and Antonio under their Japanese names Shiro and Goro and are obviously around to be collateral casualties when Yamashita hires Chris to get rid of Carlos. While there is no shortage of gore in Japanese samurai films, the gun violence seems considerably amped up here over some of its contemporaries in the yakuza genre with an emphasis on the bloody aftermath over slow-motion squib hits and balletic dances of death. Although director Kiuchi is a manga artist, that aesthetic only shows in a couple canted angles and some primary color lighting with the director instead making effective use of long takes including some mobile camerawork and a couple uncomfortably sustained close-ups that pay off brutally. Kiuchi only helmed nine films but his "High School Bebop" manga has been adapted into a film series and an animated television series.  Burning Dog: Just finishing a ten year prison sentence for armed robbery, Shu (Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage's Seiji Matano) has participated in a new heist when one of his old buddies double crosses him, killing all of the other participants and leaving Shu for dead. Shu efficiently and brutally tracks his partner down and kills him, but now he is stuck with money he cannot spend (it was supposed to be laundered through his partner's contacts). Without any help from his own old contacts, Shu hides out at a seaside hotel where he runs into Takuji (The Guard from Underground's Takashi Naitô), one of his partners from the heist ten years before who has gone straight and picks up garbage on the nearby American army base who also reveals that Shu's old lover Mei (Zegen's Mami Kumagai), who was also involved in the heist, works in a shop nearby. Despite being married to a girl with a modest inheritance, Takuji is a womanizer and feels restless. He tells Shu that the army's captain Curtis (Julius Schuffer) is an alcoholic with no combat experience or chance of promotion who takes kickbacks. When they discover that Curtis has been smuggling cocaine into the country, Shu and Takuji – along with some local small-time pimps – decide to blackmail him into giving them access as cleaners to the army's vault through which passes millions of dollars of army payroll on the way to the Middle East. Shu is reluctant but Takuji holds over his head the prospect of getting a fake passport to put some distance between himself and the police – while also inferring that he could tip them off himself – and Mei has not spent a cent of her portion of the heist out of shared guilt with Shu over the death of one of their other partners. They assemble a team that includes a bank security manager, a truck driver who delivers food to the base, and Takuji's apprentice Koji who is sleeping with his wife – which Takuji may or may not know about – but even before the heist, Shu can see the mechanisms of various double crosses set into motion. Another V-Cinema production helmed by an experienced director – Yôichi Sai (Blood and Bones) served as assistant director on studio films for over a decade before his feature debut in 1983 – Burning Dog feels very much like a seasoned director utilizing the "just do it" aesthetic of V-Cinema to experiment and this heist film which focuses the bulk of its running time between three action set-pieces on a low key character study of marginalized people feels like the direct-to-video equivalent of a Poverty Row noir of the forties rather than something more contemporary to Hollywood or even the Hong Kong action cinema that inspired the movement. Matano gets by on his brooding charisma played opposite the manic Naitô and Kumagai who seems at once too fragile to be a femme fatale yet with a hint of resilience that pays off in the climax. As with most Japanese genre cinema of earlier decades, the casting of white actors whose only talent is being able to speak lines in English rings false with English-speaking viewers but Sai is able to get them to get across their casual disdain and disregard of the local population who they exploit – through contracted work and peddling drugs – and Naitô's character gets to voice some of this resentment in broken English, some of which seems to have been censored as one instance of Japanese subtitles for English dialogue has been blurred and a new subtitle printed over it (we have no idea if the spoken line itself was also redubbed or if altering the Japanese translation was sufficient). The atmosphere of the barren Okinawa setting is effectively realized with the cinematography of Akira Sako (Ping Pong) which is mostly nondescript apart from the flashbacks to the heist and the climax where the camera becomes more mobile, moving as swiftly as Matano once he starts to suspect something has gone wrong.  Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat: Dumped and left for dead in a cement-filled barrel – in a sequence that recalls both the 1989 murder of schoolgirl Junka Furata and the clawing hands imagery that opens Django, Kill... If You Live, Shoot! – a schoolgirl (Cult's Natsuki Okamoto) was rescued by yakuza Kaizu (The Inugami Family's Minori Terada) and taught to kill, becoming a formidable assassin whose strength lays in her anonymity (she is introduced disguised as a beggar woman who gets the drop on her target and his bodyguard). She is so in love with Kaizu that she lets him push her into taking a job offered by political hopeful Goda (Yakuza Graveyard's Kenji Imai) who reveals that when he was the warden he put the legendary Scorpion Nami Matsushima – who gouged one of his eyes out with a wooden spoon – in the underground prison dungeons where she has been for the past twenty years. Since the prison is moving, he fears a threat to his political career if it is discovered that he and successor warden Okizaki (Samurai Wolf's Shinzô Hotta) left a prisoner in solitary for two decades; as such, he wants ? to enter the prison as an inmate, make trouble to get herself thrown into solitary and assassinate the Scorpion. Upon entering the prison, she is put in a group cell with five girls lead by Shindo (Mineko Nishikawa) who is plotting an escape that includes rescuing Scorpion and taking her with them. Shindo is not so easily provoked so ? causes a brawl in the yard between the faction who worships Scorpion and those who disregard her as an old hag who will never see the light of day again. Gaining access to the dungeons, she manages to kill the woman (The Woman with Red Hair's Junko Miyashita) whose photograph Goda gave him only to then be pilloried by the warden, drugged by the guards, and beaten by the prisoners as the Scorpion's killer. Goda offers Kaizu monetary compensation to forget about ? who will be blamed for the murder of one of their prisoners and whose death from wasting away the warden plans to effect. ? swears that Kaizu will regret teaching her how to kill but her only hope of escape may be Shindo and her fellow escapees, and her only way out may be to become the Scorpion herself. Scripted by Toei veteran Fumio Kônami (Graveyard of Honor) – who penned the original Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, its sequels, and several of the more prestigious yakuza films for Toei – and directed by Toshiharu Ikeda who started out in direct-to-video A/V adult productions in the eighties and whose Evil Dead Trap became a cult hit stateside on the bootleg circuit before finally getting an official release in the DVD era, Female Prisoner: Death Threat seems as though it will take the franchise into a new direction in the V-Cinema arena after its theatrical run ended in the late seventies, making up for the lack of Meiko Kaji with a plot that examines how the attempt to subdue the Scoprion while keeping her legend alive to impose order on her fellow prisoners has transformed her into a symbol of resistance and rebellion, with ? herself embodying it from the start without realizing it as she challenges the attempts of a female prison guard (wrestler Dump Matsumoto)to intimidate her and having to realize that even the man who trained her to kill sees her as a disposable asset. The prison scenes are pitched hysterically so as not to be too grim or "unpleasant" for the exploitation viewer who more eagerly anticipates ?'s revenge rather than her suffering, and Okamoto is engaging both as steely assassin and "beautiful monster of vengeance" but Nikkatsu Roman Porno cinematographer Shôhei Andô's photography is only occasionally striking when it has something to work with in like the prison courtyard that looks like an opera set with angular stone walls and a spotlight that gives Okamoto's crucifixion a theatrical aspect – as much Passion Play as Salome's Last Dance – and the dungeons whose rock walls recall fleshy curves. The climax includes a hallucination involving a walled-up corpse that anticipates the well ending of Ringu. The sexual content is greatly-reduced – especially surprising considering the greater permissiveness in Japanese sexploitation in the decade between the theatrical films and this V-Cinema entry, including the director's earlier works – but it makes up for it in the explosion of the new Scorpion's rage (indeed, she has no proper name until the final line of dialogue).  The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses: A few years after his fiancee Reiko was used as a human shield in a gun battle that erupted in a restaurant between the Mitsuyushi and Kumasa families, police academy dropout Takanashi (Fighting Madam's Hideki Saijô) executes three of the Kumasa family officials and then riddles the Mituyushi offices with bullets, kicking off a war between the two families. Takanashi's academy friend Nakatsuka (Kiyoshi Nakajoe) has moved up to a high position in the government's security commission (Nakajoe is actually a member of parliament now) where he able to provide Takanashi with information about the family's movements while also influencing policy with the flippant remark that they should let the families massacre each other; however, Shinjuku organized crime task force transfer Uchino (The Twilight Samurai's Tetsurô Tanba) believes that there is a third party pulling the strings when bullets from the two shootings turn out to be identical. As Uchino hunts down a man and a motivation with little to go on apart from case reports on various skirmishes between the two families, Takanashi ends up with the reluctant assistance of bar hostess Rumi (Natsumi Nanase) who is on the run from both families after her attempt to sell one of the gangs information on the killings implicates her once Takanashi has blown them away. Meanwhile, factions within both families are taking advantage of the gang war to their own ends. One of six films that would mark the return of director Teruo Ishii after a more than a decade's absence, The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses has little in the way of the Ero guro nansensu sexual and sadistic excesses of his peak period Nikkatsu works like Orgies of Edo and Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight, but the down-and-dirty yakuza gang war film as much calls back to Ishii's crime films from his pre-Nikkatsu career at Toei as it does the "just do it" V-Cinema aesthetic for both newcomers and seasoned veterans for whom funding was becoming an increasing hindrance during the slump in production of the eighties. The story is rudimentary and the Catholic iconography seems more decorative in the style of John Woo's films like The Killer (minus all the doves), but the story surprises the viewer with its emotional engagement not so much in Takanashi's feelings of loss but in the way the flighty Rumi seems to stir something in the deadened "hitman" – Nanase provides the least nudity of the film's four female cast members but when she does, it is a scene of human warmth rather than eroticism – suggesting that although he is alone at the end, he can move on. Ishii eschews picturesque backdrops, attractive sets, and striking photography in favor of momentum, brutal violence, and a finale filled with gunfire and pyrotechnics that satisfies viscerally and emotionally. Ishii would direct a few more films with the advent of digital video, including attempts to return to his more bizarre heyday with Japanese Hell and Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf before his death in 2005.  Danger Point: The Road to Hell: Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet's Shô Aikawa and Jô Shishido are reunited as Ken and Joji, a pair of professional hit men whose latest job is taking out Sakai (G.I. Samurai's Jin'ya Satô) who has been in hiding working in a rock quarry under an assumed name. Although seasoned Joji out of the both of them knows that their motto is "Don't ask, don't tell" (pre-1993) but he is as curious about a photograph of a young woman clutched in the dead man's hand more so than the millions of dollars he offered them before impulsive Ken took him out. In spite of warnings from their regular contact (King Kong vs. Godzilla's Yû Fujiki) to drop it, Ken and Joji track down the woman Yumi (Ryusaku Fukami), a nurse who reveals that Sakai was a cop who treated her like a one night stand and threw her away, which Joji thinks is suspicious since Sakai kept her photograph, and more so when Ken is accosted at gunpoint by Hirata (Ryô Kinomoto) and Kurata who want to know what he wanted from Yumi. Joji gets the drop on both men and the hitmen discover that Sakai ran off with a two million dolllars the trio and bar owner Takama (Samurai Reincarnation's Hideo Murota) and his wife (Evil Dead Trap's Miyuki Ono) were supposed to buy to convert to Yen for a pair of American bank robbers. Since the two men were waiting for Sakai to contact Yumi, the hitmen realize that someone else was behind the hit on the cop and uncover a web of betrayals as they drag Yumi along on a mission to score some easy money. Director Yasuharu Hasebe returned to Toei in the eighties after spending the seventies at Nikkatsu directing some particularly rough examples of Roman Porno like Assault! Jack the Ripper and Raping! as well as returning to the crime and yakuza programmers with which he started his career. Danger Point: The Road to Hell feels rather routine in its story of hitmen and criminals all scrambling for stolen loot but what makes the film is the "cool" chemistry between Shishido and Aikawa. Once one of Nikkatsu's "Diamond Guys" Shishido is Lee Marvin to Aikawa's Clu Gulager, with Shishido's old timer effortlessly conveying his experience as well as the weight of unanswered questions about his victims while Aikawa plays a pleasure-loving sadist who gets as much joy out of rough sex as aiming his gun sight at random pedestrians on the street below or beating up someone who has pointed a gun at him; however, the two are just as good at switching between good cop and bad cop as well as adapting to each other's turns of mood with Joji roughing up Yumi when Ken's charm does not work or Joji staying Ken's gun hand when there is the potential to learn more about the missing millions. The ending is not the censor-imposed "crime doesn't pay" or "don't take the law into your own hands" moral resolution of a Hong Kong action film but a fitting film noir fate stemming from a running issue between the two men. Hasebe would direct a handful of other V-Cinema titles for Toei before returning to television before his death in 2009.  XX: Beautiful Hunter: Raised since childhood as an assassin by the Magnificat religious order, Shion (Sugar: Howling of an Angel's Makiko Kuno) kills without mercy or pleasure on the order of her blind "Father" Kano (Kagemusa's Kôji Shimizu). When she is photographed by freelancer Ito (Boiling Point's Johnny Ôkura) who has been tracking Kano with his journalist friend who believes the order is a front for criminal activities, Shion takes it upon herself to eliminate the threat; however, she is caught off-guard by seeing a photograph of herself in the act of killing and "disarmed" by Ito who while groveling and begging for his life accidentally performs cunnilingus on her. Her libido awakened, Shion starts seeing Ito in secret as he goes from trying to stay alive to being curious and concerned about her upbringing. When Kano confronts Shion and orders her to get rid of Ito, she must make a choice between love and survival. Based on the manga "Shion" by Mangetsu Hanamura, XX: Beautiful Hunter is the second in Toei's V-Cinema "XX" series of female assassin films inspired as much by as Hong Kong's "Girls with Guns" cycle but considerably sleazier than either. The story and is threadbare and the film exploits Kuno's "robotic" performance to largely bypass the dramatic and emotional elements of the story in favor of bloodshed, a few sex scenes – as well as Shion masturbating with a gun observed by hidden camera – culminating in an S&M water and electricity torture sequence conducted by the film's only other female character Mitsuko (Roman Porno regular Maiko Kazama). Although set in the real world, the film's locations are on the fringes of the city, the confines of Shion's monastic cell-like apartment, and deep in the countryside, and feels very much like an only slightly-softened Roman Porno work. Although the film has its standout moments, it is ultimately just a retread of familiar ideas with the Catholic elements feeling more critical here than in The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses. Roman Porno film director Masaru Konuma (Flower & Snake) was in good company in the XX franchise with the first film Beautiful Weapon having been helmed by Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu while two of the subsequent films were directed by Konuma's "disciple" Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat's Toshiharu Ikeda. 
Video
Aimed at the Japanese rental market, Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage had a VHS release from Toei but does not seem to have been exported widely, although this reviewer first saw parts of the film in clips on YouTube a few years ago so the VHS tape must have made the rounds in the gray market and their might have been a fan-subtitled version around. Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray is likely the first chance many outside of Japan have had to see the full film in English-friendly form as well as looking far better than it ever had on its intended video format. A first film from a first-time feature director with an extremely low budget well under half-a-million, the film is at least professionally shot but generally goes for flat lighting and overcast exteriors. Rough edges are more evident in the action choreography and editing than in the visuals or the audio.  Helmed by a more-experienced filmmaker and Toei's professional crew, Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet is a much slicker film than Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage, although the quick-and-dirty aesthetic shows in the night exteriors and some of the dusk and dawn location scenes where the blacks are a bit noisy. Detail holds up well in both close-ups and locked-down wide shots including the overhead shot during the climax where Junko walks across a concrete court and "plays dead" in sync with a gunshot in the song scoring the sequence.  Although helmed by a director of usually higher-budget, slicker productions, Stranger's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen's thickly-grainy appearance suits the "just do it" aesthetic of V-Cinema as well as the gritty, urban environs of the film with the color casts of various kinds of street lighting preserved in the grading, almost giving the film kind of deceptive color-coded journey into the unconscious in which much is actually quite literal. The overall look anticipates the director's take on J-Horror with Shikoku.  Carlos' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer is in keeping with the level of production of the other films with stronger detail and better exposure in close-ups and sequences shot in more controlled environments as well as exterior scenes shot in flatly overcast daylight while blacks are noisy. The gel lighting used in some sequences must have looked hot and smeary on VHS but are stable here.  Burning Dog's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer looks strongest during the Okinawa sequences which are bright and clear in contrast to some of the rundown locations. The flashbacks to the heist gone wrong seem to have been graded to preserve the green color cast of the florescent tube lighting of the setting as captured by tungsten-balanced film.  Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer boasts thick grain and can look drab in some of the night-for-night exteriors but run-and-gun daytime exteriors and sequences shot in more controlled conditions like the prison courtyard and sound stage interiors and dungeon sets boasts better detail while also revealing that the muted color scheme is deliberate. Some surreal optical shots look a tad coarser but we would be repeating ourselves to say that the presentation surely looks miles ahead of the film's prior exhibitions on VHS.  The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer is in keeping with the "aesthetic" of V-Cinema born of location shoot and the greater practicality of source lighting in some sequences where the the colors are the film are skewed towards oranges or green tinges. The night exteriors are thickly grainy with little shadow detail while the daylight exteriors look much cleaner, with a certain TV "flatness" as much organic to the shooting as it seems inspired by the look of some of the Hong Kong action films (an industry that had already adapted to lower budgets a decade or so ahead of Japan).  Danger Point: The Road to Hell's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray transfer looks fairly crisp and colorful owing to the predominately daylight exterior shooting and a few well-lit interiors. A handful of night scenes have a pronounced blue hue which may be stylistic since they are primarily flashbacks or the effect of largely practical lighting on the film stock just as a few night interiors during those flashbacks have a sick orange bias.  Like Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat, XX: Beautiful Hunter is a bit more visually adventurous with much fog, smoke, backlighing, deep blue night sequences, and pulsing red gels lensed in 16mm, which must have looked quite smeary on anything more than a generation away from the original tape master (there was an American DVD and streaming version but we have no idea if these were authorized or if they came from the earlier master since Toei themselves have a streaming service in Japan where some of these HD restorations might have debuted). Bright scenes fare best but the more moodily-lit interiors and the harshly-lit torture scene do indeed seem like their stylization is limited by the film stock and the intended analog video medium of its original release. 
Audio
Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage's post-dubbed Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track – which features some English loudspeaker dialogue early on which is subtitled onscreen in Japanese – is a spare mix for the most part only coming to life during the gunplay, explosions, and car scenes. Optional English subtitles are free of errors but the dialogue is so basic that anything approaching profundity sounds like attempts to ape better-written models. Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet's Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track. Apart from an early killing and a few gun shots, the effects track is rather sedate but the music track dominates in a few sequences including the "musical" ending. Stranger's Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track is dialogue-focused with rather straightforward atmospherics apart from some car action and pyrotechnics. Music is barely there but supportive in that respect. The English subtitles could have used some annotation in distinguishing between a couple characters' proper names and nicknames or diminutives. Carlos' Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track demonstrates a contrast between the faux-austere yakuza sequences in which raised voices and toenail clipping stand out and the busier sequences featuring Carlos' club and backroom in which voices and music are livelier. Burning Dog's Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track is also dialogue-focused. Outside of the opening shootout/car crashes, the flashbacks, and the climax, sound design is almost nil apart, giving the Okinawa setting a sense of desolation (the Tokyo sequences are not much more active suggesting the marginalized world in which the characters operate). The filmmakers showed no interest in the English dialogue, seeming to depend on the Japanese subtitles over delivery for lines that needed translation (and there is an instance of possible censorship in which a burnt-in subtitle is blurred over and new subtitles printed over them, although we do not know if this was done to the digital master or done at the time of release). Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat's Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track makes more use of exaggerated foley effects to surreal effect along with scoring and a theme song that turns the violent final showdown into a virtual music video. Optional English subtitles suggest that the main character was never given a proper name until the one she chooses for the final scene. The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses' LPCM 2.0 mono track boasts clean dialogue and foley effects while the overall sound design is dialed down with music doing much of the heavy lifting. The optional English subtitles are helpful in keeping all of the names straight (including the introduction of some prominent-seeming characters dead five minutes later). Danger Point: The Road to Hell's LPCM 2.0 mono track is dominated by dialogue with sound design rather minimal and very little in the way of scoring apart from some transitional passages and the "on the nose" final shot and end credits. Some passages of English spoken by American actors and Japanese actors are not subtitled in Japanese but a translation was probably not deemed necessary to get the point across. XX: Beautiful Hunter's LPCM 2.0 mono track is dominated by dialogue and music with the exception of some gunfire and the expected moans and shrieks. The scoring is largely background until the end credits tonal shift (anticipating Kadokawa's use of popular music over the end credits as tie-ins for their J-Horror films). For a film featuring a climactic battle between a blind man and a sighted woman in the dark, non-Japanese-speaking viewers are dependent upon the subtitles to learn just how Shion gets the drop on her opponent.
Extras
Extras for Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage start with an optional introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:47) who introduces every film in the set. This is a more general introduction to V-Cinema, highlighting the presence in the first disc's two films of Sato and Mantano in Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage and V-Cinema's first star Aikawa in Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet. "Loose Cannon" (18:24) is an interview with director Shundo Okawa (Nobody) who discusses the opportunity to make the film, the creative freedom, his frustration with the Toei crew because of his own DIY aesthetic, the film's bullet effects, and the sound design crediting himself with innovating gunfire sound design with the sound of emptying shells which he feels was the only thing Takeshi Kitano (Violent Cop) took from his film (while admitting that Kitano was otherwise disappointed with it). "Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage and the Dawn of V-Cinema" (13:09) is a video essay by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes who discusses the perspective of Japanese cinema in the late eighties as "dead" and theater-going at a low and initiatives to counter this, including the Toei's V-Cinema line (and later derivatives from other studios and independent labels) based on the research of Toei's Tatsu Yoshida on video rental consumer behavior including the practice of binge-watching the Battles Without Honor and Humanity by partially fast-forwarding, motivating him to want to produce films that viewers would not fast-forward through along with the lucrative economic decision of low-budget genre productions and the cheap production of rental tapes sold to video stories for roughly two thousand yen each to a market of sixteen-thousand video stores in Japan (see also Radiance Films' Blu-ray of The Eel for Mes discussing the changes in nineties Japanese theatrical cinema including productions partially-funded by various studios' V-cinema earnings). The Japanese trailer (1:54) is also included.  Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet's extras start with another introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:25) who discusses Aikawa's stardom, Takahashi's career, the surprise presence of Shishido in a V-Cinema film at the time, and suggests that the film's concept is an expansion to feature-length of a scene from Battles Without Honor and Humanity. "Zooming Out" (15:14) is an interview with writer/director Takahashi who reveals that while he likes films with heroic men as a viewer, he is more interested as a filmmaker in weak men and was actually surprised that Toei would agree to his concept for a yakuza film. The Japanese trailer (2:07) is also included.  Stranger's extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:32) in which he notes that the film is the only V-Cinema film from director Nagasaki and actress Natori, in the latter case describing her casting as atypical of the usual 18-25 year old V-Cinema actress who provided nudity. "Stranger than Fiction" (18:01) is a interview with writer/director Nagasaki who discusses his previous film with Natori and their interest in doing something else – he also reveals that he had formed an image of Natori based on her period historical and dramatic work until he saw her in the more contemporary Take It Easy – his inspiration in a taxi ride with a female driver and how isolating that must be, and how V-Cinema came at the right time for such a project and that the production was largely smooth apart from the car action.  Carlos's extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:00) who discusses Kiuchi's manga works, the casting of comedian Takenaka and TV personality Wilson, and the film's violence. In "From Manga to Movies" (20:17), writer/director Kiuchi reveals that he was interested in both film and manga as a child but the latter was easier to get into as a country boy thanks to various drawing contests. His first manga novel was a success and made into a film series, and he originally developed Carlos with the goal of producing it and ended up asking to direct when he feared losing creative control by hiring a more experienced director and was also surprised to get the cinematographer he wanted in Seizô Sengen (Legend of the Eight Samurai). He also discusses the concept and how it evolved, noting that other Asian immigrants who became yakuza were part of a "community" and he was more interested in outsiders who were criminals but yakuza and their outsider status. "An Extra Round in the Chamber" (17:40) is a video essay by critic and Japanese cinema expert Jonathan Clements who discusses Kiuchi's career, the practice of casting and scouting directors from outside the industry for crossover appel, offers a rundown of the somewhat complex plot of the film, makes observations about its stylistic establishment of contrasts between the ethnic and criminal classes as well as the cast including various supporting players who had prior credits in yakuza and crime films. He also reveals that while the freeze frame suggests Carlos is about to go down in a torrent of police gunfire, he actually would return eight years later in a 1999 sequel by Kiuchi after his character served a sentence of the same length.  Burning Dog's extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:05) who discusses the career of director Yôichi Sai who had a reputation for treating his cast and crew badly but whose films addressed the Japanese taboo subject of discrimination from the view of the outsider excluded and harassed from his perspective as a Korean immigrant and noting that Matano was half-Japanese, half-Italian as well as the presence of Naitô early on in his career. "Fire and Ice" (15:55) is a new video essay by critic and Japanese cinema expert Mark Schilling who discusses Sai's career and his friendship with actor Yûsaku Matsuda who he met while he was an assistant director and posits that the film was a tribute to the actor who died young shortly after his most international role in Ridley Scott's Black Rain, noting the resemblance of Matano to Matsuda and that Matano's own big break was as one of the replacements for Matsuda in the long-running Japanese TV detective show Taiyô ni hoero! (as well as noting that Kumagai was Matsuda's sister-in-law which may or may not have lead to her casting). The trailer (0:17) is also included.  Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat's extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (3:33) who notes the casting of "visual queen" Okamoto, a model who was unusually outspoken on television, the manner in which screenwriter Konami attempted to rebel from within the system in his films criticizing Japanese nationalism and authoritarianism, and the career of director Ikeda who was a disciple of Masaru Konuma who helmed XX: Beautiful Hunter (Ikeda would direct the followups XX: Beautiful Beast and XX: Beautiful Prey). "Toshiharu Ikeda's Beautiful Monster of Vengeance" (12:08) is a video essay by film historian Samm Deighan who discusses how the themes and recurring story elements of the series were already shared by Ikeda, offering us an overview of his earlier A/V films as well as discussing the ways in which the film is in some ways a sequel to the first two Meiko Kaji films while also reworking their stories and reimagining the series' universe at a time when there were actually quite a few V-Cinema imitators of the franchise including a couple more in the digital age. The disc also includes the trailer (2:09).  The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses' extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (3:39) who reveals that Ishii had made no films in twelve years before returning with V-Cinema and making six films of which this was the last. He also discusses the cast including star Saijo who has been the lead singer of a band whose successful song "Young Man" was a cover of "YMCA". "The Versatility of Teruo Ishii" (7:38) is a video essay by Japanese cinema expert Frankie Balboa who notes that the film seems atypical of the director's better-known fare like Blind Woman's Curse or The Joys of Torture, but a deeper delve into his less-exported filmography reveals his beginnings in crime films and the influences of French film with the likes of his Abashiri Prison saga and other tantalizing titles yet to be released over here. The disc also includes the film's trailer (2:03).  Danger Point: The Road to Hell's extras start with an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:03) who discusses the film in the context of director Hasebe's Nikkatsu Roman Porno films and his earlier crime films for the studio, as well as the reunion of Aikawa and Shishido from Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet. "The Road to V-Cinema" is a video essay by critic and Japanese cinema expert James Balmont (14:42) which offers a brief overview of the cycle – including a few American co-production entries American Yakuza with Viggo Mortensen and No Way Back with Russell Crowe – as well as the perception of V-Cinema as a proving ground for new filmmakers and actors in the context of Hasebe's and Shishido's filmography starting at Toei in the early sixties with films like Massacre Gun and Retaliation before forking off with Hasebe going to Nikkatsu with the Black Tight Killers influence by Seijun Suzuki who Hasebe had assisted and who had been fired by Nikkatsu after the failure of the Shishido vehicle Youth of the Beast, and Shishido moving to television.  XX: Beautiful Hunter is preceded by an introduction by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka (4:03) who discusses the film within the context of Konuma's earlier Roman Porno career consisting of forty-seven films during the seventeen-year cycle and bluntly assess' Kuno's acting ability and how it works to the film's advantage. "The Sacred and the Profane" (17:39) is an interview with screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi (Ringu) who notes that there were already yakuza assassin stories within the pink film genre and discusses adapting the source manga novel. He also recalls friction with director Konuma who, despite the surreal elements Takahashi noted in his work, always felt that he was directing "human dramas" and did not like Takahashi's abstract writing, going so far as to "rewrite" the screenplay to understand it. Takahashi points out Konuma's additions including the sequence between Shion and Kano that starts out as a struggle and turns into a waltz as the score quote the "Blue Danube". He also provides some background on the evolution of the sleazy side of V-Cinema from XX to the "Roman X" series that was only "hardcore" in so far as upping the sexual sadism. "They Brought Back the Sleaze" (19:01) is a video essay by critic and Japanese cinema expert Patrick Macias who provides yet another overview of V-Cinema, noting how Toei's studio facilities and experience with film and television production benefited the production of these low budget films on the budget of one to two episodes of a television series while also observing that Japan's particularly twist on the "Girls with Guns" films was the "bringing the sleaze back," the "anything goes" creative freedom, and the release schedule of two-to-three titles per month (along with those of other competing studios of various sizes). He also discusses XX: Beautiful Hunter noting that director Konuma's experiences in a Catholic orphanage no doubt colored his depiction of the Church in the film as well as Kuno's subsequent career and that of Konuma's assistant Hideo Nakata for whom screenwriter Takahashi was a frequent collaborator in the J-Horror genre. The disc also includes the film's trailer (1:18). 
Packaging
The limited edition set consists of five keep cases with reversible sleeves featuring newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon in a slipcase and a collector's booklet featuring new writing by Earl Jackson that looks at V-Cinema in the context of other Japanese "experiments" in distribution beyond the art house and mainstream and how viewing the films from the perspective of their producers as "program pictures" overlooks the creative work of their creators along with overviews of each film and its contributors in front of and behind the camera (although Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage bewilderingly describes the film as being set in the "'Little Tokyo' of an unspecified US city"), Daisuke Miyao discusses V-Cinema in the notion of the "speed" of Toei's various efforts throughout its history to catch up and compete with other studios and mediums, and Hayley Scanlon focuses on Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat in the context of the earlier film series and the spin-offs and rip-offs as well as the differing kinds of "anxiety" the film's protagonist is dealing with in the nineties.
Overall
Although the films that comprise V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal blend genres beyond the crime film, the set provides a broad overview of the work of both newcomers and seasoned veterans in the cycle while the subtitle whets appetites for discovering other genres of V-Cinema like the more overtly horrific (pre-J-Horror) and erotic works mentioned in the various special features.
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