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Stars: Riki Takeuchi, Seiji Matano, Masanori Sera, Minako Tanaka, Chikako Aoyama, Ren Osugi, Rikaya Yasuoka, Sho Aikawa, Shiori Sakura, Joji Abe, James Fujiki, Masumi Harukawa, Yûzô Hayakawa, Minoru Ôki, Hideki Saijô, Kiyoshi Nakajoe, Natsumi Nanase, Tetsurô Tanba, Kimiko Yo, Makiko Kuno, Johnny Ôkura, Katsuo Tokashi, Kôji Shimizu, Maiko Kazama | Directed by Toshimichi Okawa, Banmei Takahashi, Kazuhiro Kiuchi, Teruo Ishii, Masaru Konuma

In the 1980s and 90s there were tons of direct-to-video releases, driven by the creation and popularity of the VHS tape. and Toei Company, Ltd., undoubtedly most known in the West for the myriad of Henshin and Sentai shows they produce, was at the forefront of the Japanese V-Cinema the direct-to-video industry.

Now, from Arrow Video comes a massive collection of 9 V-Cinema films on one Blu-ray set. Not only does this set include 9 films, but a nice stack of bonus features as well. Let’s take a look at...

Toei’s decision in 1989 to begin releasing feature-length productions directly to video—bypassing the ailing theatrical circuit—proved immediately successful. Its first straight-to-video live-action release, “Crime Hunter: Bullet of Fury”, was a profitable venture that laid the foundation for a phenomenon that would profoundly shape the Japanese industry over the next decade: V-Cinema.

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In a style that strongly echoes Cannon Group productions, the movie launches straight into the action. Two police officers, Joker Kawamura and his partner Ahiru (played by a young Riki Takeuchi), arrest a notorious criminal, Bruce Sawamura. As they attempt to transport him to the station, they are ambushed by his gang. A chaotic gunfight follows, resulting in Bruce escaping, Ahiru being killed, and Joker surviving, despite being shot 43 times, and ending up in the hospital.

Defying orders from his superiors to drop the case, Joker resumes his...

In the 1980s, Japanese studios began to increasingly make direct-to-video animated and live-action movies as a means of controlling costs and giving filmmakers more freedom. And as the formerly robust economy of the nation crashed at the end of the decade, Toei Studios inaugurated its V-Cinema industry. Shot quickly on video, V-Cinema productions became not merely an additional revenue stream but a lifeline to keep the studio afloat. Now, Arrow Video’s V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal is the first disc collection in the West to pay tribute to this brief but crucial period in Japanese cinema that helped to incubate the country’s J-horror and gangster cinema of the late-’90s and beyond.

Toei’s first V-Cinema release was Okawa Toshimichi’s Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage. Barely an hour long, the 1989 film might be best described as a bootleg tape of a Heroic Bloodshed movie with all the “boring stuff” removed,...