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KINO ON VIDEO TO RELEASE Stairway to the Distant Past and The Trap --- PLUS, the MAIKU HAMA BOX SET.
"Kaizo Hayashi has designed a striking package with a mix of hip humor, genre nods, and visual oomph." - Dennis Harvey, Variety.
Kino on Video is proud to release for the first time on DVD the last two offerings in director Kaizo Hayashi’s Maiku Hama trilogy: STAIRWAY TO THE DISTAND PAST and THE TRAP. Additionally, these two releases can be purchased along with the already available THE MOST TERRIBLE IN MY LIFE in the attractively packaged MAIKU HAMA PRIVATE EYE DVD box set.
STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST, THE TRAP, and THE MAIKU HAMA PRIVATE EYE box set all will be available for prebook on June 7, 2005, streeting July 5, 2005 with a SRP of $24.95 for the individual DVDs and $59.95 for the entire set.
With the gorgeous black and white, widescreen THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE, first Japanese director Kaizo Hayashi inaugurated a savvy pastiche of hardboiled detective films that hit home with cult audiences around the world. In the second two films of the crackerjack trilogy, Hayashi continues to walk the tightrope between spot-on parody and sincere appreciation of classic detective and gangster films from the past – at all times acutely aware of the cross-cultural genre paradoxes at large in Global Village.
THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE (1993)
Detective Maiku "Mike" Hama (Masatoshi Nagase; MYSTERY TRAIN) navigates the Yokohama underworld with razor sharp threads, Belmondo cool and two-fisted street savvy. But when he comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter at a local mah-jongg parlor, the unflappable Hama has no idea what he's in for. Though seemingly a luckless immigrant teetering on the threshold of Yokohama's gutter, Hama's Taiwanese client holds the secret to a ferocious gangland revenge triangle that soon has bullets, fists and severed fingers flying. Hama's plunge into a dizzyingly escalating, brutally violent multiethnic gang war ultimately snares him in a web of revenge and deceit that spans continents and severs bloodlines.
Things aren't what they seem in director Kaizo Hayashi's glorious black and white widescreen valentine to French New Wave, American Film Noir and Japanese gangster flicks. Though a hard-boiled P.I. in the Spillane mold, Hama is really all heart and as likely to trip over his kid sister's apron strings as trip up a two-faced gangster. Once he's out of his movie theater office and on the case, Hama becomes a punching bag for everyone from corrupt cops to Yakuza thugs and even his detective mentor (Seijun Suzuki regular Shishido Jo).
Though THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE begins as a meticulous and sly parody of all things Noir, it is "at heart a work of infectious, un-ironic affection." (Village Voice). Hayashi's shadowy retro gloss and self-made hero decorate a very real portrait of shifting allegiances in a modern Japan of ebbing compassion and a modern Asia with vanishing borders.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Theatrical Trailer
- Trailer Gallery
- Stills Gallery
- Optional English Subtitles
THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE
Japan * 1993 * 92 minutes
B&W * Letterboxed 2.35:1
In Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Kaizo Hayashi
THE STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST (1995)
"I get 50,000 Yen a day, plus expenses," growls tough-talking detective Maiku "Mike" Hama (Masatoshi Nagase) in STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST, the second part of director Kaizo Hayashi’s stylish modern-day Japanese film noir trilogy. Picking up where THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE left off, STAIRWAY delivers a knockout combination of widescreen color visuals and savvy pulp storytelling more luridly violent, outrageously ironic and sincerely affecting than its predecessor.
Broke, his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama’s past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld. Hama’s search for his long lost parents soon has him up to his neck in a simmering conspiracy pitting corrupt politicians, local Yakuza gangsters and the Taiwanese mafia against the mysterious "Man in White." Forced to admit the truth of his past to both himself and his plucky kid sister, Hama now must discover whether private eyes are born or made - if he can just keep from getting killed first.
STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST unites three generations of Japanese cinema icons as Masatoshi Nagase (MYSTERY TRAIN) joins legendary HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR art house heartthrob Eiji Okada, Seijun Suzuki muse Jo Shishido (BRANDED TO KILL), and cult director Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO) in a dazzling crime film dripping with retro gloss and irreverent post-modern cheek.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Trailers
- Stills Gallery
- Cast & Crew Profiles
- Optional English Subtitles
STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST
Japan * 1995 * 100 minutes
Color * Letterboxed widescreen
Directed by Kaizo Hayashi
THE TRAP (1996)
In love for the first time, cases booked solidly for months and a brand new fax machine prodding his office into the nineties, down-on-his-luck private eye Maiku "Mike" Hama has the world on a string at last. Or does he? In THE TRAP, appearances are often deceiving. When a hooded stranger appears in his office with the cryptic challenge "I want you to look for me," Hama is drawn into a string of bizarre serial murders that have Yokohama's police baffled and the city terrified.
Though decorated with the same retro film noir gloss as THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME IN MY LIFE and THE STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST, this third chapter in writer-director Kaizo Hayashi’s cult trilogy of hardboiled stories from the case files of Yokohama's smoothest private eye is by far the darkest. THE TRAP transforms from a playful pulp detective story into a modern nightmare as corpses of waterfront bar girls pile up and faked evidence fingers Hama as the killer. Stalked by a psychopath, chased by the cops and haunted by his mute girlfriend’s mysterious past, every step Hama takes towards solving THE TRAP’s gruesome mystery pushes him, and everyone around him, deeper into danger.
In this his final widescreen outing as Maiku Hama (before resurrecting him for a wildly popular Japanese TV series), Masatoshi Nagase (MYSTERY TRAIN) is once again joined by Japanese B-film icon Joe Shisido (GATES OF FLESH, BRANDED TO KILL). "Recommended by the Japan Detective Association," THE TRAP is a fittingly lurid, harrowing and romantic conclusion to this
celebrated series.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Trailers
- Stills Gallery
- Cast & Crew Profiles
- Optional English Subtitles
THE TRAP
Japan 1996 100 Min.
Color Letterboxed
widescreen
In Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Kaizo Hayashi
THE MAIKU HAMA PRIVATE EYE DVD BOX SET
THE MOST TERRIBLE TIME OF MY LIFE
STAIRWAY TO THE DISTANT PAST
THE TRAP
In Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Kaizo Hayashi
PREBOOK: JUNE 6TH STREET: JULY 5TH
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Rodrigo Brandão, Dir. of Publicity
Kino International
333 West 39th street - Suite 503
New York, NY 10018
http://www.kino.com
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