Battle Royale [VHS]

Such a classic film. It almost 20 years old, people need to stop saying it’s like hunger games. It came out 12 years before hunger games.If it wasn’t for this film you wouldn’t have hunger games, an games like PUBG and fortnight.

I've always been a huge fan of Battle royale and this box is superb 👌 just fantastic.This was originally a book which I highly recommend and then a film.The writer of hunger games must of been a big fan too seeing as he seems to of Hollywoodfied it with a new title leaving people to thing this was the copy. Nope. This is fantastic cult cinema.

This strange Japanese dystopian film is set in an imagined near future Japan in which youth have become so badly behaved and disrespectful that their elders have taken revenge by passing a law that every year a class of adolescent school boys and girls will be forcibly taken to an island. There, still in their school uniforms, they must fight each other to the death, using weapons they find there, and their own guile and ruthlessness, until, they are told, a maximum of one will survive.Perhaps we lose something in translation from the Japanese, but 'Battle Royale' seems mostly just an unpleasant festival of murder.I tried to watch it because the basic premise is often compared to the 'The Hunger Games', which I loved and strongly recommend all 3 of the books and at least the first 2 of the films. However, in 'The Hunger Games', the characters and the outcome mean much more to us because the contest to the death only begins some way into the story. We first had a lot more time learning about the heroine Katniss and other contestants, Katniss's family, her life before the 'Games', why she has to take part in them, her preparation and her trainers. We have also seen much more of those who ordered the Games and why, and the world in which the Games take place. The eventual battle to the death comes as a long-running climax to the story, not as nearly the whole story as in 'Battle Royale'.

Having watched the film whilst I was still at Uni (and it having shocked me!!) it was great to come back to it a bit more matured and ready for it(!!). It is a great film and on the back of it so many games have created specific Battle Royale modes of play which have become some of the most popular modes in these games.The film itself runs well. A tad grainy in its visuals when being played on PS5 UHD bluray drive. Lots of extra features and an attractive steelbook case as well. I recommend this to any fan.

Although considered edgy at the time, this now looks daft and dated with only weaboos and manga fans getting any thrills from it, and the premise of a whole class of schoolchildren having to kill each other for public entertainment is ridiculous. Everybody seems to hang around to give their final, stoic words, even though they've been shot 15 times in the chest with a machine gun. The ketchup-blood special effects look like they belong in the 1980s. Okay in its day, but has since been handed its redundancy notice by many superior films of the genre.

12 years before the Hunger Games, Koushun Takami came up with this quirky novel about school children taking part in a last-person-standing gladiatorial contest, later to become a manga, a film and a computer game.Veteran filmmaker Kinji and his son Kenta Fukasaku were hired to adapt the story to the big screen and what a brilliant job they have done, ably abetted by the very funny, almost Chaplinesque, antics of Takeshi Kitano.The film wastes very little time on set-up or creating a believable story world, instead plunging us straight into the action and playing-up the parodic aspects of this yarn. The result is quirky, fun and not to be taken seriously.

Quentin Tarantino rated this movie top of his 20 best list.A metaphor of facing the real adult cut-throat world. Woke school children will have to fight in the real world.Hints through the demented transfer student that non pure-blood's will corrupt this struggle.Tarantino likes girl's bare feet, and here, this director likes slim thighs. So much so that I was reminded this was the home of the noodle.Hammer Horror fun.

One of my favourite films of all time, the books i would say are as good as the films although they are dated looking as the film is quite old, i like this about Battle Royale though, and just wish amazon had battle royale 2 to stream.