Taking a cue from Hollywood’s popular genre pictures of the 1950s and '60s, Japan’s Nikkatsu studio spent the era generating grim, stylish action movies filled with sly prison stoolies and machine-gun-toting mobsters. This retrospective gathers some of the studio’s most prominent successes, including 1957’s I AM WAITING, starring Yujiro Ishihara (CRAZED FRUIT), and the 1967 yakuza noir-drama A COLT IS MY PASSPORT.

DVD Features:

5-Disc Set
Region [unknown]
Box Set
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono - Japanese
Disc 1: I AM WAITING
Disc 2: RUSTY KNIFE
Disc 3: TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN
Disc 4: CRUEL GUN STORY
Disc 5: A COLT IS MY PASSPORT

Distributor Notes: From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, wild, idiosyncratic crime movies were the brutal and boisterous business of Nikkatsu, the oldest film studion in Japan. In an effort to attract youthful audiences growing increasingly accustomed to American and French big-screen imports, Nikkatsu began producing action potboilers (mukokuseki akushun, or "borderless action") modeled on the western, comedy, gangster, and teen-rebel genres. This bruised and bloody collection represents a standout cross section of the nimble nasties Nikkatsu had to offer, from such prominent, stylistically daring directors as Seijun Suzuki, Toshio Masuda, and Takashi Nomura. I AM WAITING: In Koreyoshi Kurahara's directorial debut, rebel matinee idol Yujiro Ishihara (fresh off the sensational Crazed Fruit) stars a restaurant manager and former boxer who saves a beautiful, suicidal club hostess (Mie Kitahara) trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer. Featuring expressionist lighting and bold camera work, this was one of Nikkatsu's early successes. RUSTY KNIFE: Rusty Knife was the first smash for director Toshio Masuda, who would go on to become one of Japanese cinema's major hit makers. In the film, Yujiro Ishihara and fellow top Nikkatsu star Akira Kobayashi play former hoodlums trying to leave behind a life of crime, but their past comes back to haunt them when the authorities seek them out as murder witnesses. TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN: At the beginning of Seijun Suzuki's taut and twisty whodunit, a prison truck is attacked and a convict inside is murdered. The penitentiary warden on duty, Daijiro (Michitaro Mizushima) is accused of negligence and suspended, only to take it upon himself to track down the killers. CRUEL GUN STORY: Fresh out of the slammer, Togawa (Branded to Kill's Joe Shishido) has no chance to go straight because he is immediately coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing the heist of an armoured car carrying racetrack receipts. After gathering together a ragtag bunch to carry out the robbery, Togawa learns that all is not what it seems in Takumi Furukawa's thriller. Cue the double (and triple) crosses! A COLT IS MY PASSPORT: One of Japanese cinema's supreme emulations of American noir, Takashi Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport is a down-and-dirty but gorgeously photographed yakuza film starring Joe Shishido as a hard-boiled hit man caught between rival gangs. Featuring an incredible, spaghetti-western-style soundtrack and brimming with formal experimentation, this is Nikkatsu at its finest.

Ishihara Yujiro: Japanese Actor, SHADOW HUNTERS
Mie Kitahara: 
Akira Kobayashi: Japanese "Matinee Idol and Singing Star"
Michitaro Mizushima: Actor
Jo Shishido: Japanese actor, THE WORST TIME.../FLOWER AND SNAKE II

Koreyoshi Kurahara: Director/"Hiroshima"
Toshio Masuda: Director/"Tora! Tora!"
Seijun Suzuki: Japanese director, BRANDED TO KILL/PRINCESS RACCOON
Takumi Furukawa: Director
Takashi Nomura: Director