Junko (Sho Aikawa), a young yakuza in the service of Yoshikawa (Toru Minegishi), just wants to look cool. Then he meets Yumeko (Chikako Aoyama), a runaway sex machine slash narcoleptic who loves guns and stealing cars. They meet when she steals Yoshikawa’s car and soon moves in with him.

Yet duty soon calls. When a member of his crime family is killed by a high-ranking member of the Kazama Family, he’s called on to get revenge. Can he handle it? Well, he always dreamed of being a gangster. Actually being one is an entirely different thing.

This was such a success that Neo Chinpira 2: Zoom Goes the Bullet came out a year later. Director Banmei Takahashi also made Door, and writer Takuya Nishioka wrote Mermaid Legend. They bring to you a world where young people who grew up idolizing cool-looking gangsters in Yakuza films suddenly discover that they have to fill unfillable shoes and do impossible things. A winner.

Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet is just one of the movies in the Arrow Video V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal set. The set includes a newly filmed introduction by Japanese film critic Masak Tanioka, an interview with writer-director Banmei Takahashi and a trailer. You can get this from MVD.

A Nikkatsu Roman Porno and Directors Company collaboration between director Toshiharu Ikeda (Mermaid Legend) and writer Takashi Ishii (Evil Dead Trap), Scent of a Spell starts with Tetsuro Esaka (Johnny Okura) walking home from the bar as rain falls. He glances at the bridge just in time, as Akiko Takimura (Mari Amachi) jumps into the water, hoping to escape her life. He saves her and soon discovers the abusive situation that she’s in. But this movie takes cues from film noir, so perhaps our protagonist is in over his head.

Is Akiko just as jealous as her husband? Are men who try to be white knights destined to fail? Why would Tetsuro think she was trying to kill herself when that bridge is just a few feet tall? So many questions and luckily, this gives you the answers.

The Third Window Films Blu-ray release of Scent of a Spell has extras, including an interview with Tokyo Intl. Film Festival programming director Shozo Ichiyama, a feature-length audio commentary by Samm Deighan, a video essay by Matthew Carter, a slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju, and comes in a 2,000-copy Directors Company limited edition with an insert by Jasper Sharp.

You can get this from Terracotta or Diabolik DVD.

What if they made a budget-friendly version of Hardcore that featured Barbara Crampton as Bonnie, a woman searching for her sister who has been lost in the Los Angeles world of cinema? And what if Dr. Pepper Werewolf David Naughton played tough cop Vince McCarthy, the only man who can help her find her sister, Debbie (Kimberly Evenson, Inga from Porky’s Revenge) escape the clutches of maybe Hugh Hefner but named Victor Nardi (Elvis’ stunt double Lance LeGault), because it’s cool to make Italian stereotypical bad guys even in 2025. And what if Jimmie Walker played a porn store employee? And how about if Charles Napier was the angry cop boss?

This is that movie.

It’s the kind of movie where the cop and the girl sneak onto a porn set and almost have to act in it, with one of the bad guys asking to look at Vince’s cock, who unzips away from Bonnie and then the scumbag replies, “Holy Christ! What do you feed that monster?” Where everyone suddenly knows kung fu. And can we get a role for Robert Dryer, the evil Jake from Savage Streets, please?

Who would make something like this?

Howard Avedis, that’s who.

The man who gave us They’re Playing With Fire, Separate Ways, Mortuary, The Teacher, The Specialist, The Stepmother, Dr. Minx, Scorchy, The Fifth Floor and Texas Detour. A drive-in guy made good, who also realized exactly what Hardcore was missing.

A chimpanzee roommate for the cop.

The cop has a monkey that lives with him and that monkey straight up walks in on a nearly fully nude Barbara Crampton, who just laughs it off. Oh, what a cute little guy! When he just came in, eating a banana, I didn’t know what was happening. That’s the kind of movie this is.

A film that ends with a victim who should be far away from the bad guy somehow getting a gun and killing him in front of tons of cops, who had to have been rock hard watching her kill a man with no due process.

This is why I don’t get to have film series at local theaters: if I did, I would totally pick Kidnapped and stand before audiences, telling them the mystery of moviemaking and preparing them for it. But I couldn’t. In no way could I get them ready. Additionally, there would be no audience, because who, other than me, wants to watch this?

You can watch this on YouTube.

Also known as Hellfighters of the East and its VHS-era name Strike 4 Revenge, this Chang Cheh film is odd for the director, his stars David Chiang and Ti Lung, and the Shaw Brothers. It’s shot overseas in Seoul and isn’t a historical epic. It’s as close to modern day as it gets, nearly, being set in 1953.

Sergeant Feng-xia (Ti Lung) and Private Gao Yin-Han (Wang Chung) are sick of military service and go AWOL, meeting up with another soldier who has run, Jin-yi (David Chiang), and Li Wei-Shi (Chen Kuan-tai). They run into a Yakuza operation led by Yasuaki Kurata.

As this is a Chang Cheh movie, you can expect that nothing ends happily but at least there are plenty of fights and good triumphing over evil — somewhat. There’s also an awesome war bar called Hello John and a final battle inside a gym that finds so many pieces of sports equipment used to destroy human beings.

All four films on the Horrible History box set from Eureka are presented on Blu-ray from HD masters supplied by Celestial Pictures. Extras include two new commentaries by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth, two new commentaries by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, interviews and essays on these films, an O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré with a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on all four films in this set by writer and critic James Oliver. It’s all limited to 2,000 copies and you can get it from MVD.

Just read this IMDB synopsis and tell me you don’t want to watch this: “In the year 1900, China was being invaded by an eight-nation alliance (Japan, Russia, England, France, Germany, the United States, Italy and Austria-Hungary). Meanwhile, three martial artists join a xenophobic kung fu cult, with a large following, whose leader claims that he can teach his followers how to become bulletproof.”

Chi Kuan-chun, Alexander Fu Sheng and Leung Kar-yan play the three brothers who have been taken in by The Boxers and seek to battle the foreign forces that have taken over their country.

Directed by Chang Cheh, this has brave men believing that Taoist magic can protect them from bullets. It goes about as great as that sounds. It has two and a half hours of story, a cast of nearly thousands — and one Richard Harrison  — and if you know Chang Cheh, plenty of people get stabbed.

When this came out in the UK, 45 minutes were cut out — the anti-foreigner elements had to go and it became Spiritual Fists. This upset its director, who believed that it was the best artistic statement he’d made in his career. It’s a big movie but not one afraid to just stop and show you a martial arts demo. If you love Shaw Brothers, you’ll be ready for that.

All four films on the Horrible History box set from Eureka are presented on Blu-ray from HD masters supplied by Celestial Pictures. Extras include two new commentaries by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth, two new commentaries by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, interviews and essays on these films, an O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré with a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on all four films in this set by writer and critic James Oliver. It’s all limited to 2,000 copies and you can get it from MVD.