Usually when I review a boxset of films, I’ll refer to it as a Home Version of a Film Festival. When it comes to V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal, watching these nine films at home on your TV is the proper way to have a festival. Back in the late ’80s, Japanese cinema culture was in a serious decline, but movies were still a popular entertainment. The VCR had become the most important part of a home entertainment system since the introduction of the gaming console. Families in Japan would rather rent a movie than drag the entire family down to the cinema. Instead of Toei studio coming up with a snazzy ad campaign to lure people back to the cinemas, they followed the crowd. Why not create new movies specifically for the video market? In Toei’s case, they copyrighted the term “V-Cinema” to make it sound a bit more sophisticated than the “Stright to Video” tag that got used in America. The films of this period were noted for lower budgets, creating new stars and amping up the sex and violence. They wanted to people at home to keep renting the films or even buy the VHS tape. The films reflected the riskier tone of Yakuza movies that came in the ’70s that the studios had backed off making. V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal features 9 movies that were made for the smaller screen of an old TV tube, but play bigger than 24 inches of a Sony Trinitron can hold.
Crime Hunter – Bullets of Rage (1989 – 59 minutes) is the first V-Cinema movie released by Toei. The big difference between this film and a normal action film is the hour-long running time. Writer-director Shundo Okawa packs every minute of screen time so you get the same amount of rush as a two-hour Hollywood flick. Police detective Joe “Joker” (Masanori Sera) and his partner are on the trail of Bruce (Burning Dog‘s Seiji Matano), who has just stolen a fortune from a church. Things get bloody fast. Joker has to team up with a nun (Minako Tanaka) to do the Lord’s work and catch Bruce.
Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes The Bullet (1990 – 86 minutes) brings the Yakuza action to the small screen. Junko (The Eel‘s Sho Aikawa) is a foot soldier in a crime family. He’s having to subsidize his illegal income with cash from his girlfriend. His Uncle (Branded to Kill‘s Jo (Joe) Shishido) isn’t too excited about Junko’s future. When a war breaks out with a rival family, Junko thinks he’s got an easy role in a revenge plot, but very quickly he must step up or have to admit that he’s not really cutout to be a gangster.
Stranger (1991 – 90 minutes) starts out with Kiriko (Yuko Natori) being coaxed by her boyfriend to pull some shady stuff at her bank. He needs the money, but swears he’ll pay her back shortly. Except before she can deliver another cash installment; she gets busted and sent to prison. She can only land a job being an overnight cab driver when she’s served her time. It’s rather rough being a woman behind the wheel as strangers pile into the back of her taxi. Things go beyond the usual when she’s stalked by someone in an SUV. Is her next fare going to be her last? The film gives us plenty of suspects who could want Kiriko including a rather stalk-ish new guy at the company, her recently sprung ex-lover and just all the creeps who need a ride at 3 a.m. Director Shunichi Nagasaki amps up the tension and collisions on a shoestring budget.
Carlos (1991 – 92 minutes) features Carlos (Naoto Takenaka), a Brazilian that’s part Japanese and swimming against the Yakuza Underworld. He’s hiding from Brazilian authorities in Japan and running a bar. Things go bad in his new country as two Yakuza members hit him up for protection money. He has had it with their ways and pays them in lead. Carlos and his men dump the bodies. Instead of more gangsters coming for his scalp, rival families suspect each other. Nobody thinks this outsider can set off a mob war. Naoto Takenaka is stunning as he sets fire to everything on the screen. A great little mobster film like so many in this boxset.
Burning Dog (1991 – 104 minutes) has a group of gangsters stashing their loot inside boxes that were used for VHS tapes. Things are going well until one of them gets greedy and shoots up his former co-crooks. Surviving the attack is Seiji Matano who chases after him. He heads to Okinawa to recover only to bump into a few old partners in crime. Even though their previous robbery went bad, they team up for a daring heist on the U.S. Military base. Can they really pull off this gig? Matano is so cool and criminal on the screen. I don’t get how Burning Dog hasn’t been remade by Hollywood.
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat (1991 – 91 minutes) is a new installment of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series from the ’70s except without star Meiko Kaji. Naoko Amihama is a hired killer smuggled into a deadly woman’s prison with the assignment to locate and kill a certain prisoner. She’s paid to take revenge for what the inmate known as The Scorpion did to a man’s eye. It’s not an easy mission to locate Scorpion who is not near the other ladies of the prison yard. You get plenty of the key elements expected out of a women behind bars flick.
The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Rose (1991 – 85 minutes) is the legendary director Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men & Orgies of Edo) entry into V-Cinema. A man’s fiancé dies when she is trapped in a Yakuza shoot out. This leads him to arming up and going after mobsters around the city. This is a regular Batman story has he administers vigilante justice around the city at night. Eventually the Yakuza wants to reunite him with the love of his life. Teruo Ishii brings plenty of excitement to the revenge flick.
Dangerpoint: The Road To Hell (1991 – 110 minutes) reunites Jo (Joe) Shishido and Sho Aikawa from Neo Chinpira. Instead of playing relatives, the two are hitmen who prefer to work together. While they’re supposed to ask no questions. They have a serious question when a victim brings up something that his contract killers get curious about seeing if it’s true. It’s a play on Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers except not a rip-off. Jo and Sho work great off each other as their business partnership seems to be coming to an end.
XX: Beautiful Hunter (1994 – 90 minutes) introduces us to a sweet young girl who is training to be a nun at a Convent. But her job isn’t just to pray. She’s being trained how to be a cold-blooded killer with a gun. You thought a nun with a ruler was deadly. Shion (Makiko Kuno) grows up to be the church’s top killer. Her faith gets tested hard when she’s assigned to take out a man that she falls in love with. The Church isn’t happy when she gives up her vow of chastity and ignores the contract. XX: Beautiful Hunter crosses the Nunsploitation with the hitman flick to create a twisted and kinky genre bending epic. A perfect way to end you first journey into the joys of V-Cinema.
V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal is a great retrospective of how Toei figured out how to keep entertaining people who didn’t want to deal with going to the movie theater. The films can be a little bit more edgy because you don’t have to worry about some people in the audience being uncomfortable with the violence and carnality in a crowded room of strangers. Many of the films here are made to be watched at home in private. While the budgets of the movies are lower, they outrageous action is jacked up. Two of the films feature armed nuns as characters. The nine films in the boxset are part of the cream of the V-Cinema era. This is perfect for fans of Japanese action films. The best part is how right it feels to sit back on the sofa and watch V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal as the filmmaker’s intended.
The Video is 1.33:1 full frame for all the movies. Remember that these films were shot to be seen on an old timey TV set. It’s hard to tell if the films were shot on Super 16, 16mm or video. The 1080p transfers look good. The Audio is LPCM 1.0 Mono for Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage and LPCM 2.0 Stereo for the other eight movies. They’ve cleaned the tracks up so they sound better than what came out of your tiny Sony Trinitron speaker. All the films are subtitled in English.
Nine postcard-sized artcards are suitable for framing.
Illustrated collector’s booklet features essays by Earl Jackson, Daisuke Miyao, and Hayley Scanlon
Newly filmed introductions to all the films by Japanese film critic Masaki Tanioka gives plenty of background on the productions and the
Loose Cannon (18:24) has Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage director Shundo Okawa talk about making the first of the V-Cinema movies for Toei. He had been a screenwriter and made a 16mm film that featured gunplay. This led to Toei being interested in him.
Zooming Out (15:14) sits down with Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet writer-director Banmei Takahashi. He sees the film as his imprint in a new stye or genre. He was able to approach something new. Japanese movies of the time seemed rather dead with their budgets slashed and less about the director’s ideas.
Crime Hunter and the Dawn of V-Cinema (13:09) is a video essay on Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes. There’s an ad for a VCR that’s the size of a steamer trunk. There is talk about how the first big videostore in Japan. There were studios that tried to put out movies in theaters and videotape on the same day. The OVA animation found success in the marketplace. Toei decided to make direct to video movies after the success of Battles Without Honor and Humanity on VHS and Beta (maybe laserdisc). There were over 16,000 videostores in Japan when Crime Hunter was released so selling Beta and VHS tapes was a good business.
Stranger than Fiction (18:01) is an interview with Stranger writer-director Shunichi Nagasaki about how he got into making a V-Cinema production. He wanted to make a film about a female cab diver. V-Cinema allowed the studio executive to say, if you want to do it, do it.
From Manga to Movies (20:17) catches up with Carlos writer-director Kazuhiro Kiuchi about his adaptation. He enjoyed manga and movie so this all came together when his first manga got picked up to be a film. He got in with the filmmakers. He wanted to make a V-Cinema since they were happening. The key was to keep the budget low so instead of hiring a name director, he asked if he could do it. The producer was cool with it.
An Extra Round in the Chamber (17:40) is a video essay on Carlos by critic and Japanese cinema expert Jonathan Clements. He gets into the dynamics of how Carlos and his small crew get two Yakuza families into a war.
Fire and Ice (15:55) is a video essay on Burning Dog by critic and Japanese cinema expert Mark Schilling. He points out the film’s budget was around $400K which was about half of what it cost to make a theatrical release. He points up the studio started with one a month, but quickly put out 2 to 3 a month. He talks about the relationship between Seiji Matano and the icon Seiji Matano (Yokohama BJ Blues).
Toshiharu Ikeda’s Beautiful Monster of Vengeance (12:08) has film historian Samm Deighan dig into how the director of Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat was known for horror and erotic. He was part of a movie series that went under Angel Guts. Samm also explains this latest installment in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series.
Original trailers for Crime Hunter (1:54), Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes The Bullet (2:07), Burning Dog (0:17), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat (2:09), The Hitman (2:03) and XX: Beautiful Hunter (1:18).
The Versatility of Teruo Ishii (7:38) is a video essay on director Teruo Ishii by Japanese cinema expert Frankie Balboa. He talks about how it’s only been recent that people in the West have seen Ishii was involved in lots of genres including his prison series. We also learn the director was heavily influenced by French films and avoided American movies.
The Road to V-Cinema (14:42) is a video essay on Danger Point: The Road to Hell by critic and Japanese cinema expert James Balmont. He talks about Jo Shishido’s life and career rebirth in V-Cinema after being a movie start in the ’60s.
The Sacred and the Profane (17:39) allows screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi to talk about his approach to the film as a screenwriter. XX was a series of films made by the studio. He gets into adapting the novel about the nun that’s trained from childhood to be an assassin.
They Brought Back the Sleaze (19:01) is a video essay on XX: Beautiful Hunter by critic and Japanese cinema expert Patrick Macias. He takes us back to the late ’60s in Japan and how television changed up cinema. Toei got more into sex and violence. Another studio got kinky. When the VCR showed up in the ’80s, what would the studios do? Make video movies that were sleazy.
Arrow Video presents V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal. Directed by Toshimichi Okawa, Banmei Takahashi, Kazuhiro Kiuchi, Teruo Ishii and Masaru Konuma. Starring Riki Takeuchi, Seiji Matano, Masanori Sera, Minako Tanaka, Chikako Aoyama, Ren Osugi, Rikaya Yasuoka, Sho Aikawa, Shiori Sakura, Joji Abe, James Fujiki, Masumi Harukawa, Yûzô Hayakawa, Minoru Ôki, Hideki Saijô, Kiyoshi Nakajoe, Natsumi Nanase, Tetsurô Tanba, Kimiko Yo, Makiko Kuno, Johnny Ôkura, Katsuo Tokashi, Kôji Shimizu & Maiko Kazama. Boxset Contents: 9 Feature Films on 5 Blu-ray Discs. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: April 29, 2025.
