Based on a 1997 television drama, Bayside Shakedown begins as a corpse is found floating in the river near Bayside Precinct. Not only that, but their own commissioner has been kidnapped. To complicate matters, The Metropolitan Police Department gets put in charge of the case over the local cops, and refuse to clue them in on any of the details of their investigation. But Aoshima (Yuji Oda) will have none of that, and forces himself into the fray; much to the chagrin of the MPD. Luckily for Aoshima, his friend Muroi (Toshiro Yanagiba) is heading the MPD investigation, and had promised Aoshima long ago that he would do his best to use his position in the MPD to make things easier for beat cops—but will he keep his word? You can find the full trailer here.

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Trailer for Hard Revenge, Milly and The Masked Girl, coming out 8/9/2008.

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When I wrote up this wiki article on Takanori Tsujimoto’s Hard Revenge, Milly last month it seemed odd that it had a run-time of only 44 minutes. Well, it all makes sense now, because it’s actually being packaged with Isao Kaneko’s The Masked Girl as part of the Neo Action double bill premiering at Q-AX on Saturday August 9, 2008. It’s pretty good timing, considering The Machine Girl will be going public in Japan on the previous Saturday and they might be able to piggyback on whatever new found interest in senseless violence that generates.

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As a mysterious organization begins killing off a group of swindlers who witness a kidnapping and one of them decides to get revenge. You can find the teaser here.

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Amongst fans of Japanese direct-to-video releases it’s pretty much set in stone that the first two actors of the “V-cinema big four” are Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa. There’s some room for argument beyond that, but it would be hard to dispute actor/director Hitoshi Ozawa being a solid #3. You’ve probably seen him before—he’s usually the hardboiled cop or vengeance-fueled Yakuza with a combed back mullet that isn’t Riki Takeuchi. Now 25 years into his career he’s had roles in over 200 movies, but most of those movies have never even been mentioned in the English-speaking world, let alone watched. Well no more, I say. It’s time for the well-coiffed sultan of shooting stuff to take his rightful place in the pantheon of V-cinema greats. As the first order of business on that front, we bring you two of his latest releases: the 2-part cliché-ridden gangster flick Taiyo ga Hajikeru hi followed by the slightly higher profile crime thriller Immoral: Kogoeru Shitai (frozen corpse) which he also directed.

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