Shingo Tsurumi

Beginning with an explosive, six-minute montage of sex, drugs and violence, and ending with a phallus-headed battle robot taking flight, Takashi Miike's unforgettable Dead or Alive Trilogy features many of the director's most outrageous moments set alongside some of his most dramatically moving scenes. Made between 1999 and 2002, the Dead or Alive films cemented Miike's reputation overseas as one of the most provocative enfants terrible of Japanese cinema, yet also one of its most talented and innovative filmmakers.In Dead or Alive, tough gangster Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) and his ethnically Chinese gang make a play to take over the drug trade in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by massacring the competition. But he meets his match in detective Jojima (Show Aikawa), who will do everything to stop them.

When Hideo Nakata's 'Ring' was released in Japanese cinemas in 1998, it did so as part of a double bill with 'Spiral', a sequel directed by Jôji 'George' Iida ('Another Heaven'; co-writer of the original 1995 TV adaptation of 'Ring') and based on Koji Suzuki's novel of the same name. Due to the film's mixed reception, it was superseded a year later when Nakata was hired to direct his own sequel, 'Ring 2'. Despite this, 'Spiral' has retained a loyal following of its own, and spawned its own sequels, effectively resulting in two competing 'Ring' timelines. In the aftermath of the events of 'Ring', Reiko, her ex-husband Ryuji and their son Yoichi all turn up dead. After finding a cryptic note in Ryuji's stomach, pathologist Mitsuo Ando (Koichi Sato, 'New Battles Without Honour and Humanity') soon learns of the Ring curse. Tormented by the death of his own son, Ando deliberately watches the notorious video, but soon finds out that Sadako's plans for him are different and altogether more terrifying than he could have predicted...