The Executioner Collection – Arrow Video (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Dates: Japan, 1974 (The Executioner, The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)
Director: Teruo Ishii (Both Films)
Cast: Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, Eiji Go, Yutaka Nakajima, Makoto Satô, Ryo Ikebe, Hiroyuki Sanada (The Executioner), Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, Eiji Go, Yutaka Nakajima, Makoto Satô, Ryo Ikebe, Sue Shihomi (The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)

Release Date: January 9th, 2023 (UK), January 10th, 2023 (USA)
Approximate running times: 86 Minutes 38 Seconds (The Executioner), 85 Minutes 51 Seconds (The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC (Both Fiilms)
Rating: 18 (UK), NR (USA)
Sound: LPCM Mono Japanese (Both Fiilms), LPCM Mono English (The Executioner)
Subtitles: English (Both Fiilms), English SDH (The Executioner)
Region Coding: Region A,B
Retail Price: £24.99 (UK), $39.95 (USA)

The Executioner: "Ryuichi Koga (Chiba) is a descendent of the Koga Ninja school, now earning his living through more nefarious means as a gun for hire. When he is enlisted to take down a drug cartel alongside Hayabusa (Makoto Sato), a disgraced former narcotics detective now operating within the criminal underworld, and renegade Aikido master Sakura (Eiji Gō), tensions grow among this three-man team of ne'er-do-wells as each come to question each other's motives." - synopsis provided by the distributor

The Executioner II: Karate Inferno: "Koga returns in the even more gung-ho follow up, Karate Inferno, as the ringmaster of a gang of thieves plotting to steal a priceless jewel from a master criminal." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.25/5 (The Executioner), 4/5 (The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)

Here’s the information provided about the transfers, “The High-Definition masters were produced and supplied by Toei from the best available archival materials, with additional grading and picture restoration by Arrow Films at R3Store Studios.”

The Executioner and The Executioner II: Karate Inferno come on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 44.5 GB

Feature: 22.1 GB (The Executioner), 19 GB (The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)

The transfers for both films are in excellent shape. They both look better overall than Arrow Video’s other Sonny Chiba Blu-ray releases. The colors are nicely saturated, the image looks crisp, the black levels are strong, and the compression is solid.

Audio: 4.25/5 (The Executioner, The Executioner II: Karate Inferno)

The Executioner comes with two audio options, a LPCM mono mix in Japanese and a LPCM mono mix in English. Also, there are two subtitle options: removable English for the Japanese language track and removable English SDH for the English language track.

The Executioner II: Karate Inferno comes with one audio option, a LPCM mono mix in Japanese, and there are removable English subtitles.

All of the audio tracks sound clean, clear, and balanced. Range-wise, ambient sounds and the score are well-represented, and fight sequences sound appropriately robust.

Extras:

Extras for this release include an image gallery for The Executioner (26 images-posters/stills), an image gallery for The Executioner II: Karate Inferno (22 images-posters/stills), The Executioner Japanese theatrical trailer (2 minutes 40 seconds, DTS-HD mono Japanese with removable English subtitles), The Executioner English theatrical trailer (1 minute 55 seconds, DTS-HD mono English, no subtitles), The Executioner II: Karate Inferno theatrical trailer (2 minutes 25 seconds, DTS-HD mono Japanese with removable English subtitles), Teruo Ishii filmography, a featurette on the legendary Sonny Chiba titled Sonny Chiba, Karate King (29 minutes 51 seconds, DTS-HD stereo English and Japanese with removable English subtitles), an audio commentary with Chris Poggiali and Marc Walkow for The Executioner, reversible cover art, a double sided poster (limited to first pressing), a slipcover (limited to first pressing), and twenty page booklet (limited to first pressing) with cast and crew information for both films, an essay titled Making Martial Arts Funny: Sonny Chiba and Company Deliver Laughs Together with Hardcore Action in Teruo Ishii’s Two Executioner Films written by Mark Schilling, and information about the transfers.

Summary:

1974 was a busy year for Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, who would star in a total of seven films. Most notably, there are three Street Fighter films. In 1974, he also starred in two Executioner films that were directed by Teruo Ishii, who also directed The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, the delirious conclusion to the Street Fighter series.

Though Teruo Ishii is known best for his adaptations of mystery author Edogawa Rampo stories and work within the Ero Guro film genre, When it came to action films, specifically karate films, he did not enjoy working in this genre. That said, the two Executioner films show that he was more than capable of delivering when it came to karate films.

The Executioner is more coherent than The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s previous collaboration with Teruo Ishii. Despite the fact that The Executioner contains all of the ingredients that one would expect from a karate film. It is actually a parody of karate films in which he turned the humor up to eleven and let anarchy run rampant in hopes that Toei would not ask him to direct another karate film. Unfortunately for Teruo Ishii, The Executioner would be a bonafide success at the box office.

With The Executioner, Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s talents as one of cinema’s badasses are on full display. Whether he gets to show off his ninja skills by crawling on the ceiling or his brutal fighting style that often leads to the removal of body parts, The Executioner lets Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba do what he does best: kick ass. Though there are many similarities between Ryuichi Koga and Takuma "Terry" Tsurugi, the latter is an antihero, while the former is a straight-up bad guy who is only interested in money. Also, one of Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s protégés, Hiroyuki Sanada, would make his debut in The Executioner in the role of Ryuichi Koga when he was a young boy.

Though Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba is the most known of the cast, The Executioner is actually part of an ensemble cast that has three other characters that share screen time with Ryuichi Koga. Makoto Satô (The Killing Machine) is cast in the role of Takeshi Hayato, the leader of the four-person crew that Ryuichi Koga is part of. His character bears a strong resemblance to Lee Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes character in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. In one scene, right before Takeshi Hayabusa is about to kill a man, the man offers him money to kill the man who hired him, and he replies, "I always finish every job." When he later reports that he has completed the job to the original man who hired him, he tells him the story of how the other man hired him before finally killing him to complete the cycle. This sequence of events and most of the dialog is almost exactly how it happens in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Takeshi Hayabusa is the most level-headed of the four lead characters, and there are several instances in which he has to break up near fights between Ryuichi Koga and Ichiro Sakura.

The other two members of the crew are Ichiro Sakura, a sexual deviant who is deliriously portrayed by Eiji Go (Bodyguard Kiba). This character ends up being the focal point of every prank or joke, and his nickname is "klutz." And Yutaka Nakajima (The Street Fighter) is in the role of Emi, whose job it is to keep the other three in line and on task.

The Executioner’s fight scenes are among the most brutal and some of the best of Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s career. The anything goes aspect of The Executioner is without a doubt its greatest asset. Instead of yet another "by the numbers" karate film, The Executioner goes against the grain and turns everything one expects on its head. That said, from a purely visceral level, The Executioner is one of Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba's best films.

The Executioner II: Karate Inferno opens up in a similar fashion to The Executioner. We are introduced to all the lead characters, and this time around we are told what they have been up to since their last mission. This time around, instead of taking on drug dealers, this film shifts its focus to a heist caper that has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. Teruo Ishii returns as director, and once again he injects the right amount of chaos into the mix. He keeps the action flowing, and there are several inventive compositions throughout The Executioner II: Karate Inferno.

All the main actors, Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, Eiji Go, Yutaka Nakajima, and Makoto Satô, reprise their roles from the previous film. This time around, there isn’t as much action, and the main emphasis is on comedy. Most of the situations and jokes are sophomoric, like farting, picking noses, and scratching dandruff into another person's drink. Some of these comedic bits are pretty funny, like when Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s character Ryuichi Koga is hanging outside of a high-rise building and a bikini-clad woman leans out of the window with her enormous breasts hanging over his head. Another funny moment that almost crosses the barrier of good taste is when Ichiro Sakura's body catches fire and, when all else fails, Ryuichi Koga puts out the fire with his urine.

Though The Executioner II: Karate Inferno isn’t as action-heavy as The Executioner, there is some bone-crunching action near the end that rivals some of Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba’s best work. Also, there is a surreal moment when Ryuichi Koga is being chased by two thugs who stop to look at an advertisement on a wall that has Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba on it. As a team, nothing ever seems to go right, as they end up getting cheated in some way, and one has to wonder why they keep on working with each other. The Executioner II: Karate Inferno has it all and then some; if you like eyeballs popping out of their sockets and intestines being ripped out, then you should thoroughly enjoy The Executioner: Karate Inferno. Seriously though, even though The Executioner: Karate Inferno ignores the ingredients that made The Executioner so successful, The Executioner II: Karate Inferno is still a lot of fun in a it's so good it's bad way.

The Executioner Collection is another solid release from Arrow Video that comes with strong audio/video presentations and a pair of informative extras, highly recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer