1990 • United States • Directed by Nico Mastorakis

No man on earth could get him out of prison alive. Seven women will try. Starring legendary actors Oliver Reed and George Kennedy, Hired to Kill is an essential slice of '90s action fare featuring guns, girls and a plethora of budget-busting ex...

Bunta Sugawara is Miyoshi, a low-level assassin of the Yamamori gang who is sent to jail after a bungled hit. While in stir, family member Aoki (Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama) attempts to seize power from the boss, and Miyoshi finds himself stuck between the two factions with no honoura...

1982 • Hong Kong • Directed by Wong Jing

Ti Lung plays a Vietnam vet who's now an 'honourable' mercenary-for-hire taking on an assignment tracking down an assassin who's fled to Cambodia after murdering an industrialist from Hong Kong. He recruits a team for the task which consists of who's who ...

1970 • Spain • Directed by Mario Camus

In Mario Camus' Wrath of the Wind (1970), genre superstar Terence Hill (They Call Me Trinity) shows his darker side as an assassin who finds his conscience when he and his brother (Mario Pardo, Knife of Ice) are hired by a ruthless landholder (Fernando Rey,...

1974 • Japan • Directed by Teruo Ishii

Ryuichi Koga (Sonny 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 Satô), a disgraced former narcotics detecti...

1974 • Japan • Directed by Teruo Ishii

When a priceless jewel owned by rich heiress Sabine is stolen, along with her daughter, Professional thief and hired killer Ryuichi Koga and his gang are hired to retrieve both. At a ransom exchange, the team save the girl but lose the money and the jewel. ...

1993 • United States • Directed by Scott McGehee & David Siegel

Inspired by the paranoid visions of John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, the desert noir of Detour and the black and white widescreen beauty of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another and Woman of the Dunes,...

Moving beyond the true stories dramatized in the first two episodes of the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, director Kinji Fukasaku and screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara embark on their most complex narrative yet in Proxy War, a multi-character web of alliances and betrayals set against the ...

1970 • Italy • Directed by Antonio Margheriti

The inimitable Klaus Kinski (Double Face) gives an uncharacteristically restrained performance as a wronged man chasing justice in And God Said to Cain, a dark, uncompromising western from celebrated Italian horror maestro Antonio Margheriti (Canniba...

1967 • Italy • Directed by Romolo Guerrieri

In Romolo Guerrieri's $10,000 Blood Money (1967; a.k.a. $10,000 for a Massacre), Gianni Garko - best known for his portrayal of supernatural gunslinger Sartana - takes on the part of another beloved western antihero, Django, who is on the trail of band...

2000 • Japan • Directed by Takashi Miike

Dead or Alive 2: Birds casts Aikawa and Takeuchi together again, but as new characters, a pair of rival yakuza assassins who turn out to be childhood friends; after a botched hit, they flee together to the island where they grew up, and decide to devote t...

1987 • United States • Directed by Nico Mastorakis

Featuring an early score from the great Hans Zimmer, Terminal Exposure focuses on two carefree beach photographers, who accidentally photograph a murder and immediately set after the assassin: a tall, gorgeous blonde with a rose tattoo on her be...

In the second entry, The Boss's Head, Sugawara is Kuroda, an itinerant gambler who steps in when a hit by drug-addicted assassin Kusunoki (Tampopo's Tsutomu Yamazaki) goes wrong, and takes the fall on behalf of the Owada family, but when the gang fails to make good on financial promises to him, K...

1976 · Greece · Directed by Nico Mastorakis

Death Has Blue Eyes is a gripping paranormal action thriller with shades of giallo from the director of the cult classic video nasty Island of Death (1976). When local gigolo Chess (Chris Nomikos) greets his vacationing friend Bob Kovalski (Peter Winte...

1978 • Japan • Directed by Tôru Murakawa

In this career-defining triptych, Matsuda is Shohei Narumi, an ice cool hitman of few words, a steely trigger finger, and a heart of stone, hired in The Most Dangerous Game by a company bidding for a lucrative government air defence contract to take out t...

1978 • Japan • Directed by Tôru Murakawa

In The Killing Game, Narumi finds himself caught in the midst of violent yakuza gang warfare, while his own brutal past catches up with him in the form of two beautiful women still bearing the emotional scars of his past assignments.

1979 • Hong Kong • Directed by Chang Cheh

Venom regulars Philip Kwok, Chiang Sheng, and Sun Chien star as a gang of unemployed martial artists who spend their days stuffing their faces at local restaurants and letting the staff beat them up instead of paying the bill. Their fortunes appear to im...