On March 3, 2025, 88 Films is releasing a Blu-ray (Region A/B) release for 1970’s Play it Cool, a little-seen gem by one of Japan’s most highly regarded directors of the 1960s, Yasuzō Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi), a filmmaker known for his social satires and powerful portrayals of women.
Play it Cool is a chic and erotically charged drama starring popular Japanese singer of the day Mari Atsumi as a college girl negotiating her way through the male-dominated hierarchies of Tokyo’s seductive but treacherous nightclub culture.
Yumi (Mari Atsumi) is a pretty fashion student who shares a cramped home with her mother Tomi (Akemi Negishi, The Saga of Anatahan) and good-for-nothing stepfather Ryoichi. Tomi works at a local hostess bar and hopes for a better fate for Yumi. When Ryoichi violently forces himself upon her blossoming daughter, Tomi is not afraid to take action to protect her, an act which lands her in jail. Left to fend for herself, Yumi is taken in by her mother’s former place of employment, where she finds herself fighting off the unwanted attentions of the men who swarm around her. Then one day, a rescue by handsome former lawyer Nozawa (Yusuke Kawazu, Cruel Story of Youth) from a vicious gangster seems to offer an escape into an altogether glitzier world, albeit one that turns out fraught with similar dangers.
Arrow Films is proud to release Play it Cool for the very first time for the home video market outside of Japan in a brand new high-definition transfer.
Features:
- LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
- Original uncompressed mono audio
- Optional English subtitles
- Brand new audio commentary with critic and Japanese cinema specialist Jasper Sharp and professor and Japanese literature specialist Anne McKnight
- Too Cool for School, brand new video essay on Play it Cool and the career of writer-director Yasuzō Masumura by Japanese film scholar Mark Roberts
- Original theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Earl Jackson
This title will soon be available at The Goodie Emporium, a U.S.-based online store that currently has many Import Shaw Brothers/Golden Harvest/martial arts DVD/Blu-ray movies in-stock – with New titles being added regularly!
