It’s been a rough 4 or 5 years for fans of Japanese horror, gore, and general head-explodey extremeness. Sure, there are the usual suspects like Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura who generally have the means and contacts to make whatever they feel like making, knowing that the distribution rights will get snatched up by western distributors pretty quick. However, most Japanese genre stuff has been pushed so far into indie territory due to lack of domestic interest that the western “extreme” labels have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for silly no-budget OV releases that nobody in Japan has even heard of. There simply aren’t enough quality genre films coming out of Japan to fill the international demand. If you’re like Media Blasters, you could just finance your own made-to-order extreme projects, sell them in the US as something uniquely Japanese, and then sell them in Japan after the fact because hey, Americans liked it. It’s a bizarre system, to be sure, but it seems as though the game is about to be changed.

Screen Daily is reporting that Japanese film company Nikkatsu is starting up a new extreme gore label called Sushi Typhoon. And with a name that ridiculous, you know their releases will be primarily geared toward the west. On a positive note, it will give the filmmakers who are exceedingly good at that stuff at least one major outlet of production and distribution that simply hasn’t existed over the past few years as they struggled to create and promote everything themselves.

Producer Yoshinori Chiba, who’s worked on several of those aforementioned Media Blasters-financed projects, will be overseeing the label. First up will be an action film called “Alien vs. Ninja” by Yuji Shimomura (Death Trance) which will be released on DVD in North America at the same time it hits Japanese theaters. Future projects are promised by heavy hitters like Nishimura, Iguchi, Takashi Miike, and Sion Sono. Here’s hoping the new label also gives opportunities to some lesser known directors who haven’t had the backing to accomplish what they’re capable of yet, much in the way Nikkatsu Roman Porno did in the 70s. If that does end up being case, this could turn out to be a very good thing. If not, well, at least the gorehounds will be happy for a while.

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Tags: alien vs ninja, noboru iguchi, sion sono, takashi miike, yoshihiro nishimura, yuji shimomura