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Audio Format: DD 2.0 Stereo, DD 1.0 Mono Video Format: Widescreen 1.78:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Japanese Subtitles: English Region Code: 2, PAL Year Made: 1973 / 1976 Running Time: 99 / 133 / 88
Please note: Please verify that PAL formatted DVD will play on your machine prior to purchasing this title. (PAL TV and DVD players required.)
The Yakuza Papers (aka: Battle Without Honour and Mumanity)
 In the ruins of Hiroshima an ex-soldier, Hirono Shozo, dealing on the black market just to survive, shoots and kills the drunken yakuza who attacked his colleagues. Sent to jail, Shozo shares a cell with another yakuza who has his boss, Yoshiwara, bail Hirono out and give him a place in their organisation.
Hirono soon proves his loyalty and rapidly rises through the ranks, culminating in his undertaking a dangerous hit on a rival gang boss that lands him back in jail.
Meanwhile, the gang wars continue unabated in his absence??
Inarguably the most important yakuza film, or giri-ninjo, of the 1970s, Kinji "Battle Royale" Fukasaku's The Yakuza Papers, inspired by the prison memoirs of a real-life mobster, Mino Kozo, presented the yakuza in an unfamiliar light. Through the 1960s countless programmers ? many from the same Toei Studios ? had flattered the gangsters somewhat, painting them as "men of honour", their traditions one of the few vestiges of the Samurai ethic left. Fukasaku chose, instead, to present the gangsters as men "without honour and humanity", as the film's alternative title puts it.
His protagonist, Hirono, vividly brought to life by genre star Bunta Sugawara, only becomes a yakuza because few other options present themselves and his personal qualities ? loyalty, bravery and other conventionally positive attributes ? suggest an elective affinity with their way of life. The other yakuza exploit Hirono's basic decency whilst themselves paying only lip service to their codes of honour. The finger amputation scene, a staple of the genre, encapsulates the film's position in a nutshell: Following an error of judgement Hirono offers to chop off his pinkie in penance, believing that that is what a good yakuza should do. The other yakuza are ignorant of the ritual he should follow, but nevertheless keen to see him follow through on his pledge.
If one is lacking this context, one is left with Fukasaku's impressive direction, crackling with raw energy; his unflinching depiction of violence; and an extremely swinging theme that coolly reworks Ennio Morricone's titlepiece for The Sicilian Clan with a Japanese twist.
Whether this is enough in its own right, and whether or not the succession of slashings, beatings and shootings that more or less seem to comprise the film contribute to or undercut the director's critique, is perhaps debatable.
But, then again, this is surely the central paradox of the gangster in Hollywood as well as in Japan: His power is an appealing, seductive one.
Yakuza Graveyard (aka: Yakuza Burial)
 When Kinji Fukasaku was 15, the war his Japan had been waging suddenly ended in the detonation of an atomic bomb. The young Fukasaku, who had been working at an armaments factory -- his time mostly spent cleaning up the corpses of his co-workers killed every day in Allied bombings -- watched as his proud country collapsed into chaos, disgrace, and economic ruin. Years later, Fukasaku would translate those firsthand childhood experiences of Japan's disintegration into a bravura catalog of vibrant and blisteringly angry films that would make him that country's most successful director. But, while Fukasaku is praised by Japanese critics and idolized by filmmakers like Takeshi Kitano and Quentin Tarantino, his many films are largely unknown in America, and only one of them is widely available on video. The Austin Film Society's 12-movie retrospective, "Sympathy for the Underdog: The Films of Kinji Fukasaku," co-presented by the Alamo Drafthouse, offers Austinites a rare chance to watch some of these well-kept secrets in all their lavish Cinemascope glory.
Fukasaku is best known in Japan for attacking, with neo-realist zeal, the yakuza organized crime genre, discarding its antiquated chivalric pretenses in favor of brutal depictions of the back-stabbing and drug-addled moral squalor that characterizes actual mob life. Fukasaku weds his lurid gangland tableaux to a thrilling, kinetic style in which jarring still-frame impositions, scrambled-up film stocks, and colorful explosions of text are punctuated by frequent crimson splatters of gore. His revisionist yakuza films provide, beneath their surface of pulpy cheap thrills, harsh-lit exposes of postwar Japan's demoralized spirit and unflinching dissections of human evil.
Fukasaku's yakuza series is well-represented in the AFS' retrospective, which includes 1973's Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Oct. 11), widely considered Fukasaku's masterpiece and one of the best Japanese films of all time. The retrospective also includes Graveyard of Honor and Humanity (Oct. 21), in which Fukasaku allows his violent nihilism, usually tempered by a muted compassion, one single dark triumph. An orgy of rape, heroin addiction, disease, death, and quasi-cannibalism, Graveyard... might be one of the most disturbing pictures ever made.
Income stablisation and economic stagnation have threatened the financial security of many organised crime families. As a result, many organisations are encroaching on rival territories. Police are concerned by the explosive tension that is building as yamashiro, the underworld giant, moves in on the nishida organisation's extensive gambling operations. Even the smallest incident has the potential to spark an all out war at any time.
Hard-hitting and controversial, Kinji Fukasaku is also the director of the recent highly acclaimed film Battle Royale and is Japan's most successful director. With more than sixty films to his credit over a forty year career, Fukasaku is renowned for his ability to shock, grab, and disturb the viewer. His crime films are strong statements of social criticism, and became ideal vehicles to vent his anger and frustration over hopelessness and poverty in post-war Japan.
Street Mobster (aka: Modern Yakuza)
 Isamu Okita is a street mobster who likes fighting. When the Takigawa Gang tried to take over his turf, he initiated a payback killing in a bath-house which led to a stint in prison.
When released he discovers that things have changed, and the old gangs no longer have the power they once had. He teams up with Kizaki, an aspiring gangster who suggests to him that he re-unite his old gang and take on the existing gangs for territory.
After challenging the Yato Gang in one of their restaurants, the leader recruits Okita??s men to his own gang when he is impressed by the way they fight. With the help of Okita, Yato??s gang crushes the Takigawa Gang, and an alliance is formed. But it??s not to Okita??s liking, as things are way too peaceful. All that is shattered when a rival gang leader, Mr Owada from Kobe, appears on the scene to join the alliance, and after a major display of disrespect towards Mr Owada, Okita and his men are banished from the gang. Okita decides to start a guerrilla war between the gangs with deadly consequences for all.
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