RINGU and AUDITION may be better known stateside as being responsible for a new Asian horror cinema boom, but VERSUS – back on Blu-ray from Arrow Video – truly embodies what would become known as "Asia Extreme".

There are 666 portals between the underworld and the Earth. Anyone who has the determination to open one of them can gain the powers of darkness. Somewhere in Japan is the "Forest of Resurrection" which contains the 444th portal. In the tenth century, an evil samurai (Hideo Sakaki, FLOWER & SNAKE: ZERO) attempted to open the portal with the "blood of resurrection" and a human sacrifice but his efforts were thwarted. In the present day, escaped prisoner (Tak Sakaguchi, RED BLADE) meets up with a yakuza gang lead by a butterfly knife-flicking nutcase (Kenji Matsuda) whose unseen boss has made a mysterious offer of help with the multiple-murderer's escape. The prisoner gets increasingly antsy about the gang's behavior since the leader announces that he is planning to ambush his boss when he arrives and take over, but things come to a head over their treatment of an abducted young woman (Chieko Misaka, SUICIDE CLUB) but the stalemate of guns becomes a Mexican standoff when the bullet-ridden corpse of a dead gangster gets up and attacks his own colleagues. As the prisoner and the girl escape into the forest, the gangsters come to realize that the dumping ground where they have buried many of their victims has the power to resurrect the dead. Also running around the forest are the cops who were transporting the prisoner – one of whom (Shôichirô Masumoto, REINCARNATION) is missing the hand that was cuffed to the escapee while the other (Yukihito Tanikado) boasts of his abilities to smell the escapee's trail and his superior martial arts abilities – and a trio of hitmen (and woman) held in reserve to deal with the yakuza boss who steadily become transformed into the walking dead closing in on the prisoner and the girl as the evil samurai plans again to attempt to open the 444th portal.

Although it runs an epic length of two hours in its original cut, VERSUS is oddly minimalist, expanding upon director Ryuhei Kitamura's well-received Hi8 film DOWN TO HELL – in which a gang abducted and hunted a wealthy man in a forest only to discover the area's supernatural properties – only in terms of length, the move to 16mm film, and the most superficial appearances of greater production value of what in fact was very much a DIY production shot over a span of six months (with a long break for winter) with most of the onscreen cast also serving as assistant directors and production assistants, Kitamura operating the camera most of the time in the absence of an actual director of photography – the camera was otherwise operated by Takumi Furuya who would go onto become Kitamura's regular cinematographer – and many other responsibilities beyond the credits of co-writer and second unit director taken on by Yudai Yamaguchi (whose splatter punk contribution is evident in his subsequent works like MEATBALL MACHINE and his contribution to THE ABCs of DEATH short film anthology). It really is just fight scene after fight scene enlivened by mobile camerawork and quick cuts in between some zombie action and the most expositional of dialogue by characters who really do have no names. That it remains watchable for two hours is due to the filmmakers' unflagging energy in something that feels inspired by THE EVIL DEAD and other eighties pictures without feeling slavishly imitative of them. Kitamura shot the mainstream just a few years after VERSUS by helming Toho's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS and then made his Hollywood debut with the Clive Barker adaptation THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN which boasted a pre-stardom lead by Bradley Cooper (THE HANGOVER) but more or less went straight-to-video. His more recent Western films have increasingly veered away from horror towards from NO ONE LIVES and DOWNRANGE to his latest THE DOORMAN as well as the synopses two films listed as being in pre-production (and no doubt drawn out by the pandemic):99 and SONS OF THE CROSS.

VERSUS had showings in English-speaking territories around 2001-2002, getting its first English-friendly DVD releases in the U.K. from Tartan in 2003 and Media Blasters in the U.S. (in R-rated and unrated single-disc and two-disc versions); however, that same year, Kitamura and company reunited to create ULTIMATE VERSUS which ran ten minutes longer, including some CGI as well as the replacement of some fight scenes (and shots) and gore with newly-shot stuntwork suggesting that Kitamura felt that the film was a passion project rather than something that just a calling card. That version became available stateside in a 3-disc edition from Media Blasters in 2009 while their 2010 Blu-ray went back to the original cut.

Arrow Video's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen two Blu-ray disc set featuring the original cut (120:07) and the ULTIMATE VERSUS version (130:12), and the bulk of the restoration came from a 4K scan of the 35mm intermediate elements; however, the differences in overall look between it and the Media Blasters Blu-ray did not mean the latter was an upscale. The new transfer still looks gritty but the uptick in resolution is more evident because the transfer lacks the color filters that Kitamura added originally in post-production. This omission was at the director's request, with Kitamura stating that their application in the first place as a "rushed decision." Fans of the film may miss them but newcomers probably will not feel that anything his lacking from the mood of the film. The ULTIMATE VERSUS transfer has some variable standard edition inserts that give that version a patchier feel and some of the timing choices from the earlier version evident in those additions make some shots look even poorer with some shadows solarizing either deliberately or inadvertently.

The original cut includes Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 stereo tracks as well an English LPCM 2.0 stereo track – the film is post-dubbed in both languages but the English dub makes an already absurd film seem even sillier – while the upgrades to ULTIMATE VERSUS also included a 6.1 remix for the then-innovative DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX formats which added a rear center channel (a discrete one for DTS and one matrix-encoded into the left and right rear channels in Dolby using the same methods for the encoding of the mono rear channel of the earlier Dolby Stereo format), and this 6.1 track is included in both Japanese and English in DTS-HD Master Audio along with LPCM 2.0 downmixes in both languages. There are plenty of directional effects but this is not really an immersive soundtrack, and it is not mean to be as characters observe the unnatural silence of the forest and the inability to hear the others that the girl senses nearby. Optional English subtitles are available for the Japanese tracks and SDH for the English tracks.

The original version of the film is accompanied by two audio commentary tracks. The first is an English-language track with director Kitamura and producer Keishiro Shin, moderated by Napalm Films marketing director Vanessa Shin in which Kitamura discusses how evoking the chanbara Samurai cinema style in the opening recalling the films of his childhood that he felt were no longer being made, how the film grew from a cheap video project as the budget increased but how it was still hampered – they only had one day with a Steadicam operator and utilized it to the fullest – utilizing two cameras to get coverage but wishing he could redo it since he hates the handheld style, the mistake of letting second unit director Yamaguchi shoot some zombies and splatter effects that he did not like for his style of zombies, having to use real explosives rather than squibs, and some context about the DOWN TO HELL film.

The second is an English-subtitled, Japanese-language track featuring Kitamura, actors Sakaguchi, Sakaki, Masumoto, producer Shin, and second unit director Yamaguchi in which they note that actor Sakaguchi originally suggested samurai versus zombies, Yamaguchi's and Kitamura's differing opinions on gore, the gag in which Masumoto ends up with a second left hand stemming from a real miscommunication when creating the prop, and noting about the post-synching of the film the different accents of the performers. Kitamura also comments on the "cheesy" color filters and his desire to remake the film.

The ULTIMATE VERSUS cut is accompanied by an audio commentary by Kitamura and actors Sakaguchi, Sakaki, and Masumoto, and it is another rowdy track as the group catch up after four years, debate whether people listening to the track have already seen the original cut and heard the other commentary or whether they have to rehash old anecdotes. Kitamura discusses the added scenes, noting that he has not disavowed the original cut but wanted to reintroduce the film in a different manner than some of the later director's cut releases of films that just add some deleted footage or featurettes. He reveals that he wanted to add more sword-fighting while Yamaguchi wanted to add more zombies. Amidst the discussion there is a lot of irrelevant commentary that fans of the film and the performers may still enjoy.

"Body Slamming Body Horror" (16:04) is a visual essay by Jasper Sharp who couches the film in the late nineties boom of "Asian Extreme Cinema" in contrast to the RINGU and JU-ON films that drew from folklore, and the film's contemporaries like AUDITION, TETSUO, and BATTLE ROYALE by established filmmakers while Kitamura and VERSUS in contrast seemed to come out of nowhere. "First Contact: Versus Evolution" (9:39) provides more context on DOWN TO HELL in promoting VERSUS while "Tak Sakguchi's One-Man Journey" (14:25) is a video diary by the actor while attending a Japanese film festival in Germany in 2001. "Deep in the Woods" (24:43) is a French DVD extra in which Kitamura discusses quitting film school in Australia because he felt he learned everything he needed to know by watching ALIENS and THE ROAD WARRIOR seventy to eighty times, his frustration with the Japanese film industry who felt that they could not compete with Hollywood and did not make their own brand of action films – the chanbara of the sixties – anymore, and his determination to fuse the eighties spirit of the likes of John Carpenter, George Romero, Sam Raimi, and James Cameron to a millennium filmmaking style.

"Behind Versus" is a two-part documentary on the shoot (26:40 and 46:06) that features a look at the locations, the ski resort where they were rehearsing in the off-season (with some amusing bits of fight choreography in cramped hotel rooms), injuries and near-misses as they brought the staging to the uneven ground of the locations, making-up and choreographing the zombies, and Kitamura revealing that about ninety-nine percent of the ideas Matsumoto contributed were bad, but the one they did run with has the crew behind the camera rolling in laughter. "Team Versus" (1:05) is a very brief look at the Napalm Films office. "The Encounter" (12:33) is an archival interview with editor Shûichi Kakesu who started out as an animation editor with films like GHOST IN THE SHELL but had little opportunity to move onto feature film editing until underground filmmakers like Shin'ya Tsukamoto (KUROE) came to him and he got a reputation as a helper of independent films, and was impressed by Kitamura and Yamaguchi and the rough cut they brought him.

A selection of deleted scenes comes with commentary by Kitamura, Sakaguchi, Matsumoto, and Masumoto (21:30) which consists of shots cut for length or pacing, as well as some character bits like Misaka using Sakaguchi's old clothes to cover up the corpse from which he took the duster jacket. The disc also includes "VERSUS: FF Version" (19:52), condensed recut of the film, clips from festival screenings (2:06 and 3:07), two VERSUS side shorts directed by Yamaguchi involving characters from the film before the events (6:31 and 15:56) as well as a making-of (1:17) for the second film which is just a glorified promo, as well as four photo galleries, and five trailers: one that emphasizes the link to DOWN TO HELL titled THE RETURN: DOWN TO HELL (1:43), an English-language trailer (1:41), a trailer with behind the scenes footage (4:30), a Japanese theatrical trailer (2:02), and a promo trailer (0:19).