Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan, and you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we are tackling not a movement, more a brand, really, Japanese v. Cinema.

I'm excited to talk about this because I think this is a subject that

most of you listening aren't really familiar with. And once you enter this door, you're

entering into a whole world. The cinema, which specifically that title is Toe's brand of straight to

video film. But kind of like Kleenex's, the brand overtook everything that it represents.

That if you're talking about a Japanese straight to video movies,

especially if it's coming out in the early 90s,

you usually put it under the qualifier of V-Cinema.

You may not be familiar with V-Cinema, but you're likely familiar with some of the directors who have come up through it. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Mika, Hideo Nakata, who made Ringu, Takashi Shimizu, who made Ju-on-the-Grudge and its Hollywood remake, all came up through V-Cinema, as well as, you know, like the

American Poverty Row Studios of Yore, the V-Cinema sector was a place for veteran directors to

continue working, notably Teru Oishi, who made orgies of Edo and horrors of malformed men, and

someone will discuss at a minute, Masaru Konuma, who made

Flower and Snake. Now, looking at this kind of group of films, I asked myself the question of

why am I fascinated by these kind of movements? And I link them to regular listeners,

we'll know, me and Will are obsessed with

Povery Row. Drink. Yep, we said it. And V-Cinema in a way is like that, in that it is something

that was just done for financial reasons and that it was, like Will just said, a breeding ground

of directors, let's be honest, probably past

their prime, coming back and making movies. Like all the old school veterans got classics

under their belt directors that are working in V-Cinema are often not really doing it for the

love of the game. They're doing it because they need

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