Suicide Club - from Nihon Nights

[dickdarlington]

So after a full play-through on the big guns (Panasonic UB820, TCL 6-Series, Vizio Atmos setup), I decided to put in the second-release TLA put out on DVD (the one that said it had an anamorphic transfer, but didn’t - albeit it’s a better transfer than the initial release). Weirdly enough this is one of the rare DVDs I still own as I never thought this day would come.

Knowing the fact that this was an extremely low budget film (supposedly $250,000 USD), a mixture of source elements, and the fact this DVDs were produced from pretty piss poor SD masters - this is a gigantic jump in quality.

The Blu-ray does suffer from a lot of grain / noise, and that’s especially noticeable in the hospital sequence early on. Like I know this is an issue with the source elements (16mm, poor lighting, etc). Everything here is extremely detailed unlike the DVD where you literally couldn’t decipher what was happening on screen. I don’t expect the film to look any better unless there was a lot more money thrown at the restoration.

Audio mix is serviceable. I completely spaced that previous releases were all Dolby Digital 2.0 - so at least we get an upgrade going to a lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 mix. Audio is clearer than the DVD. We get the original audio and that’s all we can ask for.

I’m not familiar with Discotek’s releases - but the player-generated subtitles here are bonkers. EVERYTHING gets translated and it’s all color coded (yellow for dialog, blue for music, and white for on-screen text). And when I say EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING (we’re even getting definitions of some words as well).

It’s disappointing that the only bonus feature is a trailer. I know there’s probably not much out there previously made as all DVD releases were bare bones (unlike 2LDK which saw a plethora of vintage bonus materials make its way to the Unearthed Films release), but this was a cult film from the aughts. It might not be as well known as some other Japanese films from that era (Battle Royale), but there was discourse around it once people discovered it on DVD. I know there’s been allegations against Sion Sono over the past few years, so I completely understand the lack of people wanting to discuss or create materials after the fact.

I don’t understand the logic Third Window Films had behind not releasing it, as releasing a bare bones disc with the HD restoration is better than no release at all - especially since its been nearly two decades since the last physical release of this film.

I’m happy with the release as, again, I never thought this day would come.

I’d love to see Noriko’s Dinner Table hit Blu-ray, but I know that’s never going to happen. It cost less to make than Suicide Club and was shot entirely on DV, so it would be a glorified upscale at that point. I don’t expect it to ever happen, so that gets to remain one of the last remaining DVDs that I own.