We have our latest Asian Cinema releases from two distributors; Arrow Video and a new label called Toy Robot Video who are pretty much related to Arrow but doing their own branding and packaging styles. I pre-ordered their September releases together in one haul.
We'll start off with the Arrow Video releases first. The highlight of this haul is
A Better Tomorrow Trilogy on 4K Ultra HD which is the latest instalment to the Golden Princess package deal. The films included in this collection are John Woo's 1986 film
A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色) & 1988 film
A Better Tomorrow II (英雄本色2) as well as Tsui Hark's 1989 film
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (英雄本色3: 夕阳之歌).
These films star Chow Yun-Fat
(Hard Boiled), Ti Lung
(Drunken Master II), Leslie Cheung
(Happy Together), Emily Chu Bo-Yee
(Rouge), Waise Lee Chi-Hung
(Bullet in the Head), Dean Shek Tin
(Drunken Master), Guan Shan
(Police Story 2), Kenneth Tsang
(The Killer), Anita Mui Yim-Fong
(Rouge), and Tony Leung Ka-fai
(Three... Extremes).
Arrow Video's limited edition includes all three films in three separate cases housed inside a rigid box with an o-card slipcase alongside a double-sided poster and a booklet. The artwork was done by Tony Stella who sadly passed away earlier this year. Worth noting that while Arrow have been revising the translations for their Golden Princess releases, only the first film in this collection received this treatment as the second & third films are re-using the Shout! Factory translations.
Next we have the
Wicked Priest Collection on Blu-ray, a collection of five films produced by Toei. These include Kiyoshi Saeki's 1968 film
Wicked Priest (極悪坊主), Takashi Harada's 1968 film
Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (極悪坊主 人斬り数え唄), 1969 film
Wicked Priest 3: A Killer’s Pilgrimage (極悪坊主 念仏人斬り旅) & 1970 film
Wicked Priest 4: The Killer Priest Comes Back (極悪坊主 念仏三段斬り), and Buichi Saitō's 1971 film
Wicked Priest 5: Breaking The Commandments (極悪坊主 飲む打つ買う).
These films star Tomisaburō Wakayama
(Lone Wolf and Cub film series), Bunta Sugawara
(Battles Without Honor and Humanity film series), Kenjirō Ishiyama
(High and Low), Hōsei Komatsu
(Lady Snowblood), Masumi Tachibana
(Shogun's Joy of Torture), Asao Koike
(Horrors of Malformed Men), Eitarō Ozawa
(Ugetsu), Minoru Ōki
(Horrors of Malformed Men), Hiroko Sakuramachi
(The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost), Ichirō Nakatani
(Harakiri), Yuki Jōno
(Red Peony Gambler: Gambler’s Obligation), Tatsuo Endō
(Daimajin), Takashi Shimura
(Seven Samurai) and Tōru Abe
(The Human Condition).
Arrow Video's limited edition includes all five films across three Blu-ray discs with an o-card slipcase and a booklet.
Now we have Toy Robot Video's releases. They're different to Arrow Video because there's no booklet with these releases (they could be added for future ones) which adds more ease in case you miss a slipcase later down the line. What they have done is add an extra o-card mini-sleeve on top of the slipcase but doesn't cover all of the BBFC logos which is bizarre (and somewhat defeats the purpose of the sleeve). They've been releasing new titles since September and so far it's been an interesting range especially for Asian films because there's also Korean films which is very uncommon in the UK so I'm looking forward to those.
For now we have the first two Japanese releases. Kōsei Saitō's 1982 film
Ninja Wars (伊賀忍法帖) starring Hiroyuki Sanada
(Ringu), Jun Miho
(Fatal Frame), Yuki Kazamatsuri
(Sailor Suit and Machine Gun), Sonny Chiba
(The Street Fighter) and Noriko Watanabe
(His Motorbike, Her Island), and Norifumi Suzuki's 1981 film
Roaring Fire (吼えろ鉄拳) also starring Hiroyuki Sanda and Sonny Chiba as well as Etsuko Shihomi
(The Bullet Train), Mikio Narita
(Graveyard of Honor), and Toshiaki Minami
(Delinquent Girl Boss film series).