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ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO VIDEO ARROW ARROW VIDEO VIDEO VIDEOVIDEO VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEO ARROW VIDEO CONTENTS ARROW VIDEOOf Blood and Sparks: Two Decades with Versus ARROW VIDEO Cast and Crew 4 VIDEO ARROW An Interview with Ryûhei Kitamura ARROW VIDEO by Tom Mes 7 ARROW How We byMade Tom VersusMesVIDEO 15 by Ryûhei Kitamura 31 About the Restoration VIDEO ARROWARROW ARROWARROW 38 VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO VIDEO CASTARROW VIDEO CREW Tak Sakaguchi Prisoner KSC2-303 ARROW Directed by Ryûhei Kitamura Hideo Sakaki The Man Screenplay by Ryûhei Kitamura and Yudai Yamaguchi Chieko Misaka The Girl Produced by Keishiro Shin Kenji Matsuda Yakuza Leader VIDEOExecutive Producer Hideo Nishimura Yuichiro Arai Motorcycle-Riding Yakuza AssociateVIDEO Producer Nov Takahashi Minoru Matsumoto Crazy Yakuza ARROW Director of Photography Takumi Furuya Kazuhito Ohba Yakuza with Glasses ARROW Film Editor Shûichi Kakesu Takehiro Katayama Red-Haired Assassin Special Makeup Effects Susumu Nakatani VIDEOAyumi Yoshihara Long-Haired Female Assassin Action Director Yûji Shimomura Shôichirô MasumotoVIDEO One-Handed Cop Music by Nobuhiko Morino Toshiro Kamiaka Samurai Warrior Second UnitVIDEO Director Yudai Yamaguchi Yukihito Tanikado Cop with Barrett VIDEO Hoshimi Asai Short-Haired Female Assassin ARROW Ryosuke Watabe Yakuza Zombie ARROW MotonariVIDEO Koyima PrisonerVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW 4 5 ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW ARROW ANDARROWOF SPARKS: BLOOD TWO DECADES WITH by TomVERSUS Mes 7 VIDEOVIDEO Around the turn of the millennium, a wave of new films from Asia and especially VIDEOabsorbed into the Asia Extreme roster at film festivals and film markets. The new from Japan announced something of a revolution in genre cinema. The back-to- branding strategyVIDEO simply transplanted some films from the ranks of art to a newly back emergence of Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998),ARROW Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999), constructed category of “wild” and “dangerous” genre cinema from East Asia—a and Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000), to mention onlyARROW the most prominent move whose dubious Orientalist undertones have rightly been pointed out and Japanese titles, formed the vanguard of what would soon become known as “Asia criticized on many occasions. Yet, Asia Extreme retained the notion of the auteur Extreme”—a moniker coined by Tartan Films, the British distributor that was the filmmaker that is so central in art film discourse: many of the Asia Extreme releases first to realize their potential, seizing the momentum by launching a specialist featured the director’sVIDEO name prominently on the packaging, usually above the title. label for their release. This strategy, of using the auteurVIDEO name as a guaranteed promise of transgressive Oldboy The impact of this first wave of titles was greatly aided by theARROW fact that they were content to be found within, would find its apogee when Park Chan-wook’s skillfully crafted and generously budgeted films. Among them was also a ARROWfilm (2003) won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, at the height of somewhat moreVIDEO modest stature, but one that overflowed with such creative of Asia Extreme’s success—launching polemic tirades from established film critics ambition that it would leave a VIDEOlasting imprint in Japan and beyond: Ryûhei such as Manohla Dargis against the dangers of “mainstreaming exploitation.” Even st century, elitist laments over the dangers of popular culture for the Kitamura’s largely self-financed and independently made Versus (2000). in the 21 uneducated and impressionable massesVIDEO were alive and well. DANGEROUS DISCS VIDEO ARROW SPAWN OF A MOTLEY CANON None of this likely would have happened, though, without DVD. By the time of ARROW Versus was hardly a likely contender for arthouse status, but it still became “Ryûhei Asia Extreme’s unveiling, the home video market had almost entirely abandoned VIDEO Kitamura’s Versus” to browsers glancing at DVD box spines on the shelves at their the VHS cassette and switched to the digital disc, which was significantly cheaper VIDEO nearest HMV, Virgin Megastore, or Tower Records. And indeed, over the years to produce than videotape, resulting in lower retail prices yet higher profit margins ARROW the name Ryûhei Kitamura has remained a remarkably consistent guarantee for studios and distributors—a situation that worked in favor of developing a sell- VIDEO ARROW of a certain brand of cinematic thrill ride, one that combines regular bursts of through market rather than one for rental. Tartan’s Asia Extreme releases were VIDEO gory horror with virtuoso action sequences, its components culled from a motley firmly a product of the DVD age: branded as a new kind of film for a new kind of ARROW canon of both Eastern and Western influences. One might argue that a sense of medium, a collectable commodity, recognizably packaged and sold at one’s local ARROW familiarity rooted in the latter was as much a reason for Versus’ popularity with chain retailer, where it was neatly stocked in its own easy-to-locateVIDEO section. This Western audiences as the novelty of the Asian extreme cinema wave. Kitamura’s mainstream domain was where Asia Extreme made its mark and most of itsVIDEO profits: love of the roving camera, for instance, is a feature most of us will recognize as much of theARROW label’s intended audience did not have access to arthouse cinemas and springing from the fertile soil of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981)—not to VIDEOmention even if they did, the films theyARROW would find there were, in the words of Tartan CEO the use of a forest locale as a practical stopgap for the financially impoverished but VIDEO Hamish McAlpine, “Italian soppy, weepy romantic comedies rather than the more creatively prosperous indie ARROWfilmmaker. When it comes to the bloody shenanigans ballsy cinema that’s out there.” ARROW happening in front of that camera, Versus perhaps even more resembles Thou Shalt That those same arthouse films had until then formed the company’s brand VIDEOidentity Not Kill... Except (1985), that murder-a-minute showcase for gleefully effective low- was a moot point. Indeed, Tartan discovered many of the films and filmmakers it VIDEO ARROWARROW budget mayhem created by Raimi acolytes Josh Becker and Scott Spiegel. 8 9 ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO ARROWARROW ARROWARROW VIDEOVIDEO A good deal of Kitamura’s horror fix arguably also came from the Italian B-movies. His VIDEOshot.” De Palma’s most memorable use of this bravado technique is in a sequence way of wrangling zombies certainly owes more to Lucio Fulci’s belief in guts for guts’ from Body DoubleVIDEO (1984), in which the apparatus, mounted on a circular dolly track, sake than to the sociological allegories of GeorgeARROW Romero. It’s more than just placing twirls around and around the hapless protagonist as he finally comes face to face the living dead in a leafy setting that evokes the Italian zombieARROW movie, in particular with the woman of his dreams. But Kitamura would go on to push the envelope by one of the last entries in this much maligned but fondly remembered subgenre that also spinning his camera vertically, under and over his characters, as seen in Azumi. once dominated mom-and-pop video store shelves: the free-for-all Zombie 3 (Zombi 3, 1988), which Fulci co-directed with Hell of the Living Dead’s (Virus – l’inferno dei morti GORY, GORYVIDEO HALLELUJAH viventi, 1980) Bruno Mattei and which features a horde of undercranked sword- With the demise of itsVIDEO wielding, karate-kicking undead in various states of decomposition.ARROW progenitor Tartan Films— But there is another source of influence on Versus that springs closer to its home:ARROW which overstretched itself by the martial arts VIDEOcinema of Hong Kong. One title particularly worth mentioning entering the US market—the in this regard is Donnie Yen’s remarkableVIDEO directorial debut Legend of the Wolf once-buzzing Asia Extreme (Chin long chuen suet, 1997; a.k.a. The New Big Boss), which shares some notable brand receded into obscurity. VIDEO characteristics with Versus, as sparks fly when blades clash, gore is not shunned, What’s more, today’s dispersed VIDEO and most of the action is set in a forest as a way to work around the budgetary ARROWmedia distribution landscape limitations that were the sine qua non for allowing an up-and-coming movie star offersARROW no room for the same to prove his mettle as a film director. Indeed, Versus exists at only one degree of kind of convenient funneling: separation from Donnie Yen, since theVIDEO film’s fight choreographer Yûji Shimomura DVDs and the chain outlets had just worked under him as a stuntman on the GermanVIDEO television series Der that carried them have nearly ARROWPuma (1999–2000), on which Yen served as action director. disappeared,