YAKUZA LAW (1969) Blu-ray
Director: Teruo Ishii
Arrow Video USA/MVD Visual

Teruo Ishii diverges from using women in the "Joys of Torture" in favor of "transgression into the masculine body" with YAKUZA LAW, on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

The Japanese yakuza have certain rules that cannot be violated on penalty of brutal punishment and even death, explored here in three stories set in the Edo period and at the beginning and end of the Showa period. In the first story, young orphan Shinkichi (Hiroshi Miyauchi, SISTER STREET FIGHTER) plays at being a gangster but lacks the nerve to kill. When his boss (Ichirô Sugai, BLACK TEST CAR) discovers that he has not killed anyone in the latest battle with a rival gang, his mentor Tsune (Bunta Sugawara, COPS VS THUGS) stands up for him and loses both face and a finger but is protected from further punishment by Tomozo (Ryûtarô Ôtomo, CASTLE OF OWLS) who has just earned the boss' good will for his performance in the battle. When Shinkcihi gets in trouble again, his sister Oren (Keiko Fujita, LONE WOLF AND CUB: SWORD OF VENGEANCE) saves him by becoming the mistress of the boss although she has fallen in love with Tsune, and this betrayal is witnessed by weasel Mamushi (Renji Ishibashi, WATCHER IN THE ATTIC) who has already put in motion his plan to possess young Setsu (Yôko Koyama, BLACK MONEY) by revealing that fellow yakuza Shohei (Shin'ichirô Hayashi, SEX & FURY) has been gambling at the rival gang's casino to pay for the medical treatment of Setsu's dying father, leading to a bloodbath in which the members of the gang reveal who among them are truly honorable.

In the next story, Ogata (Minoru Ôki, SHOGUN ASSASSIN) is released from prison after three years for cutting off the hand of the leader of the Koda group, an act unsanctioned by his boss Aakida. Scarred Iwagiri (Hisaya Itô, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS), who actually manipulated Ogata into the act, suggests that Ogata be exiled to send a message to the Koda group and other gangs. After his release, Ogata returns to find his fiancée Sayo (Masumi Tachibana, HOT SPRING GEISHA) only to discover that she is the lover of tubercular Amamiya (Toyozô Yamamoto, SPRING DREAMS) of the Koda group whose willingness to face Ogata unarmed prevented him from finishing off the boss. Realizing that he has been betrayed only by fate, Ogata resolves to leave Sayo and Amamiya alone; however, Iwagiri decides to stir up trouble between the two in order to kill two birds with one stone, resulting in yet another bloodbath.

In the final story, the Hashiba Organization has been robbed of a fortune in gold. Although the boss (Ken Sawaaki, PRINCE OF SPACE) suspects the rival Omura family, he also believes that there are traitors within his own organization; however, the only person who has discovered that the traitors are Hashiba's own daughter (Yumiko Katayama, FEMALE PRISONER 701: SCORPION) and his right hand man Shimazu (Shôtarô Hayashi, MESSAGE FROM SPACE) is Omura hitman Hirose (Teruo Yoshida, HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN) who agrees to finish off Hashiba for a payment of gold bars only to then frame Hirose for the killing and leak a photograph to the press. In spite of the betrayal, Hirose repeatedly saves Shimazu from betrayal from within the family; but is he doing it out a misplaced sense of honor or for his own gain?

The second film in Teruo Ishii's "Joys of Torture" series, YAKUZA LAW retains the omnibus format but focuses on violence of men against men, with only one female character on the receiving end of violence that is tamer in depiction than implication compared to any of the other onscreen kills. The theme of yakuza law shows here how it can be constraining to the truly honorable and manipulated by the crooked for gain and the sadistic for thrills. All three tales are economically told even though the plots could fill out your standard feature-length yakuza flick in the hands of any other director. The first and second are very "traditional" as far as samurai stories go except the fighters serve yakuza bosses rather than the shogun while the third story come across like a more playful sixties crime film while the amped-up onscreen gore anticipates some of the Italian crime pictures of the mid-seventies (particularly those of Umberto Lenzi) as a traitor is dragged through the water and along the sand suspended by a rope from a helicopter while another has his face burned off slowly by a lighter after his "stink" is detected by fellow gangster Hideo Kô (the alien-possessed hijacker of GOKE: BODYSNATCHER FROM HELL); however, it is most uneven with regard to the lightly comic antics of Hirose and the blunt violence throughout. The film is less interesting than ORGIES OF EDO but less tiresome than INFERNO OF TORTURE, and the focus on the yakuza and violence against men means that it could stand on its own as a riff on the yakuza genre.

Unreleased in the United States theatrically or on home video, YAKUZA LAW got an English-subtitled DVD release in the Netherlands but the transfer came from a panned-and-scanned master, while the anamorphic widescreen French DVD release was not English-friendly. Arrow Video's dual-territory 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a newer HD master that sports colorful bloodshed and some refined textures in clothing and prosthetic make-up while also revealing some uneven blacks in the shadows which are more noticeable in the night exteriors than the sometimes vignetted corners of some interior scenes (a lighting effect rather than a lens issue). The LPCM 1.0 mono track is clean and conveys the dialogue and wild scoring (particularly in the case of the third story), and optional English subtitles are included.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by author and critic Jasper Sharp who comments on the incongruity of the "exaggerated intensity" of the title sequence vignettes with the violence within the film itself, identifies many of the performers and their Toei and Ishii careers, and notes that the third segment could be seen as a riff on the yakuza genre but that many of the critics have noted the formulaic nature of such films lack the context of Toei's largely-unexported crime films to which those other films were made in response, and that the wider availability of the Toei crime films – including Ishii's ASHIBIRI series – would change prevailing opinions on Toei's contributions to the genre. Sharp also provides some context to the pink violence genre which started out independently-produced and distributed before Shintoho Eiga picked up some of them for wider distribution and then brought them into the mainstream by producing their own entries (the company also distributed some Euro sex horror films in Japan including works by Jess Franco).

"Erotic-Grotesque and Genre Hopping: Teruo Ishii Speaks" (47:40) is a re-edited version of an archival interview with the late director who discusses his beginnings as a screenwriter, his chance to direct with the SUPER GIANT series of films (and his decision to leave the series after a child was injured imitating the superhero), the "Line" series of underworld prostitution films, and the move to the "Joy of Torture" or "Abnormal Love" series in which he describes the person who complained to the studio and the media about his treatment of women on the series as having "nihilistic view of sex" amidst discussion of the various series of films, his research and inspirations, and the formulaic nature of them. The disc closes out with an image gallery (2:00). Not provided for review were the disc comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacob Phillips or the illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Tom Mes (the latter only included in the first pressing). (Eric Cotenas)

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