If you’re a fan of the kind of cinema that feels like a pressurized steam pipe about to burst, Takashi Miike is your dude. While most directors would be happy finishing one masterpiece in a lifetime, Miike dropped Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q and The Happiness of the Katakuris all in the same year as this movie, a yakuza epic that trades the cartoonish gore of Ichi for a dense, Shakespearean power struggle drenched in sweat and cigarette smoke.

It all kicks off when a yakuza member, played by Miike himself, decides to violently assault a hostess on rival turf. He gets whacked for his trouble, and just like that, the match is dropped into a pool of gasoline. This isn’t just a street fight; it’s a catalyst for a full-scale gang war, as every faction in the city scrambles for a piece of the pie.

Written by Shigenori Takechi (Graveyard of Honor), Agitator isn’t just a shoot-’em-up. It’s a dual-layered look at how the mob actually works: You’ve got the senior figures like Mr. Kaito (played by Hiroki Matsukata, The Rapacious Jailbreaker) doing the backroom maneuvering. These guys treat human lives like chess pieces, playing a slow game of political redistribution. Then you have the low-level soldiers and street-level mobsters who actually have to bleed for the decisions made in those air-conditioned offices. The movie builds toward an inevitable collision where the suits and the tracksuits finally clash in a messy, tragic finale.

For the longest time, we only had the theatrical cut. But Miike doesn’t do brief. This release finally brings the two-part, 200-minute extended version out of the shadows of Japanese VHS obscurity. It’s a sprawling, epic deep dive into the yakuza underworld that demands you sit down, shut up, and watch the world burn.

As one character says, “If life is shit, then why shouldn’t the two of us smash into it as hard as we can?” Any movie that ends with two men driving a stick of dynamite into a building is one I love.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray of Agitator has a high-definition digital transfer of theatrical version and a standard definition transfer of 200 minute extended version of this movie, presented in its original two-part form; a newly filmed interview with Takashi Miike; audio commentary by Tom Mes; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes. You can get it from MVD.

Date With a Vampire (2001): If you spent any time wandering the aisles of a mom-and-pop video store, you know the vibe of SOV (shot-on-video) movies, produced during a time when digital cameras were making everyone with a tripod think they were the next Jean Rollina, and many of them are!

Date with a Vampire mixes softcore erotica with horror. Directed by Jeffrey Arsenault, written by Kevin J. Lindenmuth and featuring an appearance by cult East Coast horror actor Joe Zaso, this is Violet (Lori Thomas), a vampire who brings men home for both pleasure and someone to drink.

We follow Violet (Lori Thomas), a vampire who operates with a very specific business model: bring guys home, give them a little hospitality and then turn them into a liquid lunch. It’s a simple life, really.

Enter Chuck (Robin Macklin). Violet gives him a love bite so potent it triggers a psychotropic hallucination involving a sapphic encounter with Rebecca (Cynthia Polakovich). Poor Rebecca doesn’t last long, though. She ends up as a snack for a basement-dwelling creature played by East Coast indie legend Joe Zaso (5 Dead on the Crimson Canvas).

Somehow, this film’s hour-long runtime still seems much longer. Perhaps that could be the fault of a movie all in one or two rooms, with long dialogue and multiple extended softcore scenes. That said, I would have totally rented this in 2001 if my local store had a better selection than what we got. And I applaud the lo-fi feel of this!

Blood Craving (2002): Director and writer Jeffrey Arsenault kind of owned the SOV-era erotic vampire shelf, if there was one in your video store, if not through sheer force of will than through how many of these movies he made: Crimson Nights. Crimson Kisses, Crimson Desires, Vampire Playmates 2, Date With a Vampire and this film.

Originally a sequel to his movie Night Owl, this has a short run time. The most jarring and, frankly, delightful part of the experience is that a massive chunk of that runtime is dedicated to an interview with the legendary Caroline Munro. Yes, that Caroline Munro, the Bond girl and Hammer Horror icon. Finding her in the middle of a grainy, ultra-low-budget SOV vampire flick is like finding a vintage Bordeaux inside a juice box. Consider me shocked, pleased and slightly confused as to how she ended up here, but I’m certainly not complaining.

Inspired by Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle and Françoise, this stars Tiffany Helland as Jillian, who is really great in it. As I said at the top of this, some filmmakers in this era may have aspired to Jean Rollin-style movies. This one gets close, and with a bit more story, it could overtake the lead film in the Visual Vengeance set, Date With a Vampire.

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This Visual Veneance release features an SD master from original tape elements, commentary with director Jeffrey Arsenault; interviews with Arsenault, Kevin J. Lindenmuth, Cynthia Polakovich and Joe Zaso; location videos; an image gallery; an original trailer; commentary and interview on Blood Craving with Jeffrey Arsenault; an After Midnight Entertainment: trailer reel; Visual Vengeance trailers; a reversible sleeve featuring new Blood Craving art; a folded mini-poster and a limited edition O-Card by Rick Melton. Get it from MVD.

Master hacker Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) was busted by the FBI for infecting their Carnivore program with a computer virus. He can’t even look at a computer ever again. He can’t see his ex-wife Melissa (Drea de Matteo) or daughter Holly (Camryn Grimes) because of a restraining order.

Then, Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) offers him $10 million for one last hacking job.

Ginger Knowles (Halle Berry), who gets him into this, may be a DEA agent. Gabriel could be the boss of Black Cell, a secret organization created by J. Edgar Hoover to battle terrorists. Or he could be dead and the Gabriel we’ve met is someone else.

It could be both, to tell the truth, because Gabriel loves misdirection.

With support from Don Cheadle, Sam Shepard and Vinnie Jones, this starts with a 135 camera-filmed explosion that has CGI elements. It starts strong and keeps moving, a film that really got Jackman and Berry noticed by audiences.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has commentary by director Dominic Sena, interviews with composer Paul Oakenfold and production designer Jeff Mann, the promotional HBO First Look: Swordfish, another feature on the effects, a music video, conversations with the actors, two alternate endings and a theatrical trailer. It comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tommy Pocket. The sleeve includes a double-sided fold-out poster and an illustrated collector’s booklet. The booklet features new writing on the film by Priscilla Page and an article from American Cinematographer about the film’s opening sequence. You can order Swordfish from MVD.

In 2010 — 9 years in the future from when this was made, 15 years in the past from when this was written! — Jason is captured by the U.S. government but can’t be killed, so government scientist Rowan LaFontaine decides to place the killer in suspended animation. Of course, a bunch of soldiers screws the whole thing up and Jason kills everyone in his path before he stabs Rowan and freezing both of them.

445 years later, Earth is ruined, so everyone moves to Earth 2. So why not send some students back to the old Earth on a field trip? Why not send their Professor and an android, too? While exploring the Crystal Lake facility where Jason was experimented on? And why not put the still frozen bodies of Jason and Rowan on the Grendel, their ship? Nothing bad can happen, right?

Well, it turns out that Jason is dead and his body could be worth plenty. The Professor calls his money man, Dieter Perez (Robert A. Silverman, who has been in five Cronenberg* movies and the two episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series that he directed, too), and they discuss how Jason’s body could be worth something to collectors. Luckily — or maybe not — they bring Rowan back to life.

Of course, kids keep having sex around Jason, which brings the maniac back to life. He wipes out nearly everyone on the ship, including all the soldiers on board. He even takes out an entire space station!

The teens upgrade their android, KM-14, which wipes out Jason. Or so everyone thinks — a medical station brings him back as Uber Jason, filled with cybernetics so powerful that he can punch the android’s head off. Not even a holographic simulation or a shuttle crash can slow him down! It takes flying him through re-entry and burning him up to take him out.

That said — two teens see his mask land on Earth 2, so he could always return. He can come back, right?

This was written by Todd Farmer (Drive Angry, the remake of My Bloody Valentine) and directed by James Isaac (House 3). I have a real weakness for this film as it goes places none of the others did. It’s the Abbott and Costello school of running out of ideas and doing something completely off the wall. It’s been a punchline forever, but you owe it to yourself to watch it again!

*Cronenberg shows up in a cameo as Dr. Wimmer, too!

The Arrow Video UHD release of Jason X has an introduction to the film by Kane Hodder, three audio commentaries (film historians Michael Felsher and Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton; writer Todd Farmer and author Peter Bracke; director Jim Isaac, writer Todd Farmer and producer Noel Cunningham), an interview with Harry Manfredini, a making of, archival interviews with Farmer and actor Kristi Angus, archival docs on the history of the character and the making of the movie, cast and crew interviews, behind the scenes footage, an electronic press kit, trailers and TV commercials and stills, behind the scenes and poster galleries, all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin with a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Matt Donato and JA Kerswell. You can get it from MVD.