Director : Takashi Miike
Cast : Kou Shibakashi, Shin’ichi Tsutumi, Kazue Fukiishi, Renji Ishibashi, Goro Kishitani and Anna Nagata.

Synopsis
People mysteriously start receiving voicemail messages from their future selves, in the form of the sound of them reacting to their
own violent deaths.

Review
by Edward Tang

I hate horror films (I just wanted to get that off my chest). Now, I was surprised that I was at least entertained by this film, which is more or less a ripoff of Ringu. But was that the point? I’ve read recently that Takashi Miike did this fact on purpose, he did it for the fact that every new horror artist makes something that basically rips off Ringu in some fashion. So why not? Takashi Miike, still the king of obscure and utterly hilarious flicks should purposely make a ripoff of this certain type of flick that has been literally beat into the ground.

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Director : Shugo Fujii
Cast :  Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro, Naoko Mori, Shugo Fujii and Hitoshi Suwabe

Synopsis
Chiyo, an old woman and her granddaughter, Yuki, are the sole survivors of a horrendous crime which wipes out an entire family. They find solace under the roof of far-removed relatives. The family’s son, confined to a wheelchair, has a terrible premonition when the two women arrive, which will be verified in the most horrifying way. Because, when the house is empty, the boy is made to suffer sadistic games at the women mercy, which become more and more violent making his life a living hell.

Review
by Edward Tang

Right off the bat, Living Hell catches your attention with it’s bizarre music and of course a girl eating a dog. Yeah eating a dog. I hate horror films because most of them lack creativity and they just play with a simple idea for the length of the film. Most of the time you are given one thing, and they try to play you on it for the entire film. Then all of a sudden, some sort of a surprise occurs, which drags us into the other parallel, either something is wrong with the main character, or something is revealed to change our perception of what is exactly going on. This film is exactly what I am talking about. “Living Hell” is bizarre in the fact that they actually tried to build a story! Rather than give us one detail and run for that the entire show, they build onto what we already know. This film isn’t full of that many violent scenes, and surely isn’t a heart pounder, but it gives you enough odd moments to throw eggs at. When the truth is revealed at the end of the film, to me, if felt like rehashed material from a prior film. Whether or not you like this sort of thing, Living Hell dishes out enough odd moments to annoy any person who has a regular IQ. Being compared to genre classics such as “The Evil Dead” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is a waste and only to grab hopeful Blockbuster renters.

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aka Blizzard From The Netherworld / Shurayuki Hime

Director: Fujita Toshiya
Cast: Kaji Meiko, Kurosawa Toshio, Masaaki Daimon

Synopsis
A woman gives birth to a baby girl while in prison. She tells her fellow inmates that her daughter must take revenge for an attack on herself and her husband by a gang of five which resulted in her husband’s death and her own unhappy life. The baby girl, Yuki, grows up and is trained in sword-fighting techniques . Her aim in life is single-minded - she must track down the four people who destroyed her mother’s life - and
gave her the only reason for her own: to kill.

Review
by Martin Cleary

Whatever you think of Tarantino’s recent Kill Bill, its success has meant that some of the little known (in the west at least) films that ‘inspired’ that film have had some dvd releases, and Lady Snowblood is among the best of them. The films plot is fairly simple – a woman gives birth in prison and dies. Before she passes away she tells the other locked-up women that her daughter has only one reason in life: revenge. We then find out what has happened to cause this situation – the woman’s husband was murdered and she was beaten and raped by a group of five. After managing to kill one of this gang herself, she was sent to prison. In the prison she whores herself out to any man available so that eventually ends up pregnant – with the aim that he child will revenge her dead husband and her own sad demise. The film follows this daughters training and eventual attempt to revenge her parents.Of course, it all gets a bit messy.

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Director : Daiji Hattori
Cast : Ryuji Harada, Mike Tanaka, Masaktsu Funaki, Yoko Kamon, and Aimi Nakamura.

Synopsis
Its about a lone swordsman from Yokai, a land of monsters that once co-existed alongside man. Raised on raw meat rations and with an affinity with the full moon as well as a blistering skill with the sword his Yokai persona is that of a werewolf. In his venture to seek out the best in mankind, he finds himself in a desolate village and in the middle of an age-old battle between good and evil. Geisha turn into giant carnivorous spiders, samurai change into werewolves and ghostly monsters and skeletons prey on humans, KIBAKICHI delivers all the grit of a spaghetti western with the violent grace of a samurai flick.

Review
by Edward Tang

Ah, not to long ago for this very website I reviewed a little film called Kibakichi. The film itself was full of monsters, spray-blood effects and entertaining action. Not a classic by any means and not really even a film that deserves to be remembered but it was fun. Now low and behold, a sequel was made and I was quite eager to check out the results. Well, not really eager because it is still a film about a bunch of stupid fucking monsters and has blood effects that are really quite hilarious if anything. But the film itself is so short and enjoyable that I didn’t really care. Yep, Kibakichi 2 is solid entertainment that has an easy story to follow and above average actions sequences that seem to take up the bulk of the 85 minute run time. There were a few things in general that I liked more than the original one that includes more action as compared to the first and the WOLF FIGHT, something that made me laugh that wasn’t suppose to be funny.

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Director : Tomo-O Haraguchi
Cast : Ryuji Harada, Miki Tanaka, Mubu Nakayama and Masara Ibu

Synopsis
A lone samurai walks the countryside. His name is Kibakichi and his mouth hides sharp fangs. When he reaches a desolate village he fins a geisha who turn into giant carnivorous spiders and man-eating demons disguised as humans. Their hunt for human flesh was in fact a contract with the town crime boss. What is the boss’s plan? When the secret is revealed, Kibakichi goes into a rage and his body starts to mutate. Limbs will fly and head will roll in a final showdown between good and evil.

Review
by Edward Tang

“Kibakichi” is an interesting film, because on paper it looks really stupid. A werewolf defends a town of monsters against humans. Don’t you think that would be the other way around? Never mind that question, let us get into the film. After watching “Samurai Resurrection” which came out the same year as this, I didn’t really have much faith in the Samurai-horror genre. But this film is much better, because I took it for what it was. The film had some very entertaining parts, some laughs and everything in between. I’m sure people will be turned off against the film, the effects aren’t that great, and the story lags forever. The story is a little stupid as well, you get the main idea, but some of the smaller facts are just lost.

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Director : Masayuki Ochiai
Cast : Koichi Sato, Masanobu Takashima, Mari Hoshino, Michiko Hada, Kaho Minami and Shiro Sano.

Synopsis
INFECTION takes place in a dark, isolated hospital, where one nurse’s mistake has led to dire consequences for a patient.

Review
by Edward Tang

I’m not a fan of Japanese horror flicks, mainly because they aren’t scary and seem like the same thing over and over. So for me to see this one, I probably either didn’t check to see if it was a “Japanese” horror film, or I just didn’t care that day. Milking the success from previous hits that have also been made into successful American flicks (Ringu and Ju-on), obviously anything that has those names tagged on it, will catch the eye of any fan of these movies. So I threw on “Infection”, which actually beat out “Alive” as having no point to exist. Being a horror film, it contained many of scenes where there would just be talking. Yes, talking. Then as the people became “infected”, they’d spit out green slime. Then we lead to the typically cliched ending, which really leaves no room for thought. But horror is not what I received from this piece of shit. It wasn’t a gory, it wasn’t filled with good visuals (in this film, there’s a swing moving around, ohhh), it relied on quick shots to make us JUMP, but all I did was vomit. (From anger)

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Director : Takashi Miike
Cast : Billy Drago, Youki Kudoh, Michie Ito, Toshie Negishi, Shimako Iwai.

Synopsis
An American journalist in 19th century Japan is hoping to find the love he left behind. His long search leads him to a dark island where the only sanctuary is a brothel. He ends up spending the night with an interesting woman where he learns that some things are better off left in the past.

Review
by Edward Tang

Miike is a crazy man, and he’s the only reason I even cared to turn to Showtime and view the goodness. But alas! Miike’s little flick called “Imprint” was originally withheld from Showtime for, get this, being too disturbing! Miike has made a career of being disturbing (and quite hilarious, touching, poetic…) and you could just go rent “Visitor Q” to see what I’m referring to. I really had to get my hands on this, because to one quote I read on the internet which called this the “most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.” A frantic search through the alleys of despair, I FINALLY viewed the spectacle of Miike’s goodness and I can say it delivered in the overall violent/weird images but really doesn’t break any new ground if we are going towards Takashi Miike’s awesome resume including such classics as Ichi the Killer, Fudoh or Dead or Alive.

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Director : Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast :  Hideo Sakaki, Ryo, Koyuki, Shun Sugata, Erika Oda, Tak Sakaguchi and Jun Kunimura

Synopsis
Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death for murdering the men who raped his girlfriend. However, he manages to survive his execution and is presented with an option: face another execution attempt or subject himself to their bizarre and dangerous experiments. He choses the latter and is put in a cell with a rapist and a woman who’s infected with a taint that transports from person to person during extreme anger. The taint is transferred to Tenshu and he must now deal with the military who has interrupted the experiment to obtain it.

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