TATTOOED LIFE (1965)

Tetsuo (Hideki Takahashi, Fighting Elegy), a low-level yakuza is double-crossed by his boss and attacked.

His younger brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto, This Transient Life), an aspiring artist with no connections to crime, comes to his aid and kills Tetsuo's assailant. Fearing repercussions from the yakuza they flee to Manchuria where they risk coming under suspicion of rival gangs. Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) remains loyal to the conventions of the yakuza film, but Tattooed Life contains flashes of his later creative genius, including a final act of explosive visual excess that has become one of the director’s all-time classic scenes.

LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High-Definition digital transfer
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio
• Audio commentary by William Carroll, author of Seijun Suzuki and Postwar Cinema (2024)
• Newly edited archival interview with Seijun Suzuki (2006, 10 mins)
• Newly edited archival interview with art director Takeo Kimura (2006, 12 mins)
• Trailer
• Newly improved English subtitle translation
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Tom Vick and a newly translated archival review of the film
• Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings