July 3
Cruel Jaws - (US, CA) – 1995
This time it’s even more personal than last time!
Mid-90s sharksploitation that’s cooler than a dozen Sharknados, Cruel Jaws is directed by Bruno Mattei (Shocking Dark) and contains enough “borrowed” footage from Jaws (as well as Jaws 2, Deep Blood and ARROW favourite Enzo Castellari's The Last Shark) that Peter Benchley gets a writing credit. This shameless and amazing Italian “remake” of Jaws sees a tiger shark bred by the Navy as a killing machine wreaking havoc on the sleepy tourist town of Hampton Bay and also features a very familiar piece of music, but not the one you're thinking of…
July 6
Female Yakuza Tale - (GB, IE) - 1973
Pulpy and bathed in lurid violence of the highest order, Female Yakuza Tale is the unbridled sequel to Sex and Fury staring Reiko Ike and directed by none other than the king of ero-guro, Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men).
Deadly swordfighter Ocho is back and this time around gets captured by devious yakuza who use Chinese women as drug mules. With her back against the wall, Ocho must use her sharp wits and blade to fight her way out.
Unparallelled levels of sleaze and violence combine in a haze of psychedelia with this fiendish feast Japanese exploitation, representing the high watermark of 1970s Toei yakuza madness.
Sex and Fury - (GB, IE) - 1973
Following their genre-defining "female delinquent" classic Girl Boss Guerrilla, director Norifumi Suzuki and action star Reiko Ike would join forces once again for the pulpy and lurid Sex & Fury.
Deadly swordswoman Ocho Inoshika (Ike) is looking for the men who killed her father and finds herself infiltrating a sordid den of sexually deviant yakuza, involving a British secret agent (Christina Lindberg, Thriller: A Cruel Picture) and a twisted international scheme that could alter the fate of Japan.
Unparallelled levels of sleaze and violence combine in a haze of psychedelia with this fiendish feast of Japanese exploitation, representing the high watermark of 1970s Toei yakuza madness.
July 17
The Trap - (GB, IE) - 1996
When a hooded stranger appears in private eye Maiku Hama's office with the cryptic challenge "I want you to look for me," Hama is drawn into a string of bizarre serial murders that have Yokohama's police baffled and the city terrified.
July 24
Stairway to the Distant Past - (GB, IE) - 1995
Broke, with his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Maiku Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld.
A Night in Nude - (GB, IE) - 1993
Jiro is a Tokyo man who offers a stand-in service where he'll do "anything". A woman claiming to be from Fukuoka wants to be shown around Tokyo and see the sights. What Jiro doesn't know is that this woman isn't who she says she is. She's on the run from her Yakuza boyfriend, and Jiro is going to be unwittingly entwined in the situation.
July 27 .
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai - (US, CA) - 2011
While maestro Takashi Miike is best known outside of his native Japan for his provocative horror and action films, he’s turned his unique filmmaking style to many different genres throughout his extensive career. Among those, his 2011 Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai stands out as one of the most compelling samurai films of the 21st century.
When destitute samurai Tsugumo Hanshiro (Ichikawa Danjuro XIII, Blade of the Immortal) requests to use castle Iyi’s courtyard to commit ritual suicide, the Iyi clan’s senior retainer Saito (Koji Yakusho, Cure) thinks he’s merely bluffing to appeal to their pity and be granted charity. Saito tries to dissuade Hanshiro by telling him how he compelled another samurai who came to them with such a request to follow through with seppuku despite his clear desperation. But Hanshiro is all too familiar with that event, and reveals his true reason for visiting the Iyi domain, issuing a challenge to their integrity that will lay bare their lack of honour.
A hauntingly visceral update of the same tale that inspired Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 classic, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai is an intelligent deconstruction of the samurai myth that fully evidences Miike’s distinctive cinematic voice.
