Here And There

Love samurai films? Wish they were… dirtier? Welcome to Hanzo the Razor’s deranged world of crazy swordplay and sexploitation set to a 1970s funk soundtrack. Uncut for the first time ever in the UK, this cult 1970s Japanese pinku trilogy was seemingly influenced by Dirty Harry and Shaft, but there’s no doubt who has the ‘longer arm of the law’! Shintaro Katsu (best known as the blind swordsman in the original Zatoichi) stars as Hanzo a rebellious yet obsessively moral samurai police officer who slashes his way through the backbone of crime, uncovers corruption at higher levels, and tortures relentlessly using his own unique techniques. Shocking audiences even today, the hardest man in Edo regularly unleashes his special weapon in the form of his oversized penis, which he uses to ‘interrogate’ female suspects into pleasured compliance…

Hysteria grips California in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. An assorted group of defenders attempt to make the coast defensible against an imagined Japanese invasion, in this big budget, big cast comedy. Members of a Japanese submarine crew scout out the madness, along with a Captain in Germany's Kreigsmarine (Navy).

One of the three big staples of American sexploitation clichés (the other two being cheerleaders and stewardesses), the nurse movies of the 1970s proved popular enough that exploitation king Roger Corman did big box office with four of his entries all made in the first half of the decade (for some reason the first one, 1970's drive-in hit Student Nurses, has not been included). Shout! Factory, in their ongoing efforts to release the finest of Corman's films in excellent special edition DVD releases, wrangles up those four films for this new two-disc set, aptly titled Roger Corman Cult Classics - The Nurses Collection.

Handsome playboy Nicky Ferrante and beautiful night club singer Terry McKay have a romance while on a cruise from Europe to New York. Despite being engaged to other people, both agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months. However, an unfortunate accident keeps Terry from the reunion, and Nicky fears that she has married or does not love him anymore. Will he discover the truth behind her absence and reunite with his one true love, or has fate and destiny passed them by?

A Sin City bachelor party leads to unspeakable suffering thanks to the sadistic clients of Elite Hunting Club. When four friends are lured off the Strip by a pair of lusty escorts, they think they're in for the time of their life. But it may be the last mistake they ever make, because the Elite Hunting Club has come to town, and once they've got you, there's no escaping.

Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders…

Five teenagers head off for a weekend at a secluded cabin in the woods. They arrive to find they are quite isolated with no means of communicating with the outside world. When the cellar door flings itself open, they of course go down to investigate. They find an odd assortment of relics and curios but when one of the women, Dana, reads from a book she awakens a family of deadly zombie killers. There's far more going on however than meets the eye as the five campers are all under observation.

The Ring is based on Koji Suzuki's novel Ring is a remake of the 1998 Japanese film of the same name, and focus on a mysterious cursed videotape which contains a seemingly random series of disturbing images. After watching the tape, the viewer receives a phone call in which a girl's voice announces that the viewer will die in seven days. The Ring Two is a sequel to the 2002 film The Ring. This sequel is not based on any of the previous Japanese sequels to Ring, and is an original storyline, continuing from The Ring.

This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini, satirizes the director’s youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nina Rota’s classic, nostalgia-tinged score. The Academy Award–winning Amarcord remains one of cinema’s enduring treasures.