The first in what would become Toei's most successful, longest-running bosozoku film series. It lasted from 1968 till 1972 through sixteen films.
Social & External
The people behind it
Tatsuo Umemiya
Hayato Tani
Shigeru Katsumi
Reiko Ōhara
Tamami Natsu
Yukiko Kuwahara
Tamaki Sawa
Oh Ranfan
Kyōko Izumi
Rika Fujie
Thomas Hoshino is a tough Japanese detective, who lost his partner by a deadly Yakuza killer Jaho. He tracks down the killer and his master to Los Angeles, where he teams up with Det. Karen Ryder. Soon they discover that Jaho is preparing a gang war and weapon smuggling ring. Hoshino must find a way to defeat the killer who posses mystical ninja powers.
Part 3 in a long running (8+1 films) action/comedy/melodrama series about a pair of short tempered, amoral, but not evil chinpira (Bunta Sugawara and Tamio Kawachi) thinking too big of themselves.
The last in the series. Sugawara runs into two mahjong cheaters (Ichiro Araki and Mako Midori + sidekick Takuzo Kawatani) whom he takes for friends in need as his naivety prevents him from seeing their true nature.
A member of the jieitai ("Self-Defense Force"; i.e. Japanese military) is on leave and finds a woman giving birth in a graveyard in the former Yoshiwara district. He takes her to an inn to gove birth, and stays on a few days as she recovers, but becomes fascinated with the strange people he meets there, particularly the owner, who visits a house in his courtyard every day to talk and give food to his mother. He says she is very sick and can't leave bed, but no one else has ever been inside or seen her.
Bungo is released from prison to find his son Kenichi in the care of strangers. Teruko, the woman originally looking after the boy, was forced to leave town and sell herself into prostitution. Bungo and Kenichi, in their search for Teruko, arrive in a new place and find work running a peddling stall for the upright Tatsumaki family. However, the drifting father and son soon find themselves caught up in a struggle for territory. Boss Negishi, the head of the yakuza family responsible for the death of the former Tatsumaki leader, will stop at nothing to take over the marketplace. Sickened by the injustice, Bungo takes on the rival boss knowing it might cost him his newly acquired freedom..
Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he used to work 19 years ago, to settle the probate of his girlfriend who left him shortly after marriage without a trace.
There is a man, who always win a mahjong game... His name is Ryu the Caller.
A cabdriver and a cop race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.
Shiratori Tatsuhiko works as a scout for talent agency Burst in Kabukichō, Shinjuku's red light district, recruiting young girls for the adult entertainment industry. In a business where money means everything, Tatsuhiko finds himself in a constant struggle between rival scouts and the Yakuza.
A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.
This is one of the many films based on the legend of Chuji Kunisada, a wandering gambler and a defender of the weak in the Edo period. In other words, he was the Japanese Robin Hood. In this film Kunisada (Chiezo Kataoka) arrives to a small town terrorized by an evil gang. He insists that he is not Kunisada, as the word is Kunisada has been executed, but of course the audience know better. Sonny Chiba plays an unusual supporting role as a helpless young man unable to defend himself from the gangsters. He does, however, get to play taiko drums and dance with Junko Fuji (who makes her film debut here). Chiba's father, an old judge who helps Kunisada, is played by Takashi Shimura. The film hardly anything exceptional, but it's a pretty decent jidai geki / yakuza drama.
The story deals with a juvenile delinquent gang surviving through petty thievery. However, everything gets screwed up when they accidentally steal big bucks from the Yakuza.
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.
Ulisse, following his father's death, inherits a bar frequented by motorcyclists. One day, unusual events convince him that there is a drug courier among his customers.
Osaka, 1907: Asajiro lives between a rock and a hard place: he has to keep his business clean and running, tame his late oyabun’s hot-blooded son and suffer the throes of his impossible love for beautiful geisha Hatsue.
Two penniless orphans, Black and White, struggle to survive on the mean streets of Treasure Town. When a megacorporation threatens to tear down the town to build an amusement park, Black and White engage in the fight of their life.
Two contract killers cross paths in the middle of the same job and realize they are childhood friends. Together they take a break from killing and visit the small island they once called home. After reflecting on their past lives they decided to team up and use their talents in killing for good... much to the upset of the crime syndicates.
A touching action film about a young yakuza who becomes infected with evil because he has the ability to easily decipher the mechanism of a safe. After being released from prison, he hopes to be rehabilitated thanks to the love of his family and risks his life to fight the evil that stands in his way.
A Japanese intelligence officer faces personal crises in the years preceding the Manchurian conflict.
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.
A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
A barkeeper saves a yakuza boss' life and thus makes his way up in the organization. However, his fear of nothing soon causes problems.
When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
When a young yakuza torments the customers in a rival crime family's nightclub, it is not long before his dead body is found. Soon, inter-family retaliation follows, resulting in the death for a prominent crime boss. Devastated by this turn of events, the temperamental Kenzaki vows to avenge his boss's death and, as bloody violence ensues, the body count reaches excessive proportions.
A Japanese assassin stranded in Taiwan must take work from a local crime boss to make ends meet when suddenly a woman from his past delivers a son to him.
Ryūichi and his small gang of Triad vie for control of the Japanese underworld in a crime-ridden Shinjuku quarter while Detective Jojima tries to bring it down.
After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.
A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy.
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a gang of female thieves.
Feeling unhappy with his gun, Jigen is looking for the world’s best gunsmith. He finally finds out that Chiharu, who runs a watch shop, is the person he’s been seeking. Then, Jigen meets Oto, who comes to Chiharu’s shop looking for a gun. Jigen finds out about Oto's secrets and the mysterious organization that’s after her. After Oto is kidnapped, Jigen gets into a desperate battle to save her.
A Philadelphia gang member becomes a drug kingpin and starts a feud with vicious rivals in his quest for the American Dream.
After a failed sabotage mission, a trio of anti-apartheid freedom fighters ends up in a tense bank hostage situation. Based on a true story.
After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on.
Li Mansei is a martial-arts champion turned undercover agent. When he is captured by a drug lord, his sister Li Koryu turns to his former martial-arts school, including the powerful Sonny Kawasaka, for help in the inevitable battle royale.
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.
Zee is a feared contract killer known as "the Queen of the Dead," but when she refuses to murder a young blind woman, she finds herself hunted both by criminal colleagues and a determined police detective.
Long is a Taiwanese killer known for his sword skills. After Long fails a Tokyo mission, he moves to a small town where no one knows about him.
