Out There By Toei Boxset (BLU-RAY)

Spanning nearly three decades, this electrifying boxset showcases the fearless imagination and genre-shaping legacy of Japanese powerhouse TOEI. From cosmic spectacle to punk-inflected revenge to uncanny body horror, these films trace a lineage of excess, invention, and cultural bite that only TOEI could deliver. Together, these films form a vivid portrait of TOEI’s genre-bending bravado, unapologetically stylish, often confrontational, and endlessly inventive, capturing the studio’s enduring commitment to pushing popular cinema to its most extreme and exhilarating edges. Kinji Fukasaku’s A MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978) launches the set in operatic fashion: a wildly ambitious sci-fi epic that fuses space opera with samurai myth, international star power, and the director’s trademark intensity. Nearly thirty years later, in YO-YO GIRL COP (2006) Kenta Fukasaku brings that rebellious energy crashing into the 21st century, reinventing the schoolgirl action film with pop-punk attitude, kinetic violence, and a weaponised yo-yo at its center. From there, descend into the uncanny with EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS (2007), a uniquely Japanese strain of modern horror in which beauty culture and bodily obsession intertwine with chilling consequences. Finally, X-CROSS (2007) explodes into brutal, neon-lit survival horror, as a group of women stumble into a nightmare of sadism, vengeance, and feral resistance deep in the forest.