I can't remember exactly where, but I am sure that I had heard of Katsuya Matsumura's All Night Long series somewhere before. I knew it was supposed to be terribly violent, so naturally my interest was piqued; however, I thought little of it until I became aware of Media Blastersâ Tokyo Shock label's release of the infamous series. I was still hesitant, however, as, at $29.99 per volume, the purchase remained a bit too extreme of a gamble. However, with the release of the three volumes in the $34.99 All Night Long Collection, this problem was eliminated, and I was free to finally experience this wonderful little series for myself.

Starting off the collection is naturally, All Night Long, the first volume in the series. While waiting for a train to pass so she may cross a street, a girl is asked for directions by a man. When she gives an unsure response, the unstable individual explodes, attacking her with a knife and brutally stabbing her. He starts toward one of the three teenage boys who are also waiting for the train, but the other two manage to subdue him. The third boy, grateful for their saving his life, invites them to his house for a party. However, the proceedings are not particularly exciting, and so the three decide to re-convene in a couple of weeks. Each is to bring a date. For a rather long stretch, we watch the three trying to find dates to the party. Tetsuya, the nerdy boy, manages, or at least thinks he does, to strike a deal with the jock at his school to borrow his girl for the evening. The other two manage to find girls as well; however, their plans soon go awry. On the night of the party, Tetsuya finds that his deal with the jock was simply a cruel joke, and he is stood up; Kensuke, the oldest and the one whose life was saved, is handcuffed to a fence with his pants down by his date, a girl who turns out to be a bit of a radical feminist; Shinji, the only one in a stable relationship, is accosted by a group of thugs who restrain him and rape & kill his girlfriend. Bruised and beaten, the three still convene at Kensuke's house and decide that vengeance is in order. Tracking down the thugs, the three exact their revenge until their newly realized cruelty leads the violence to spiral out of control.

All Night Long 2: Atrocity is a corollary examination of violence in society and a sequel in name only. It concerns Shiunichi, a nerdy young boy who is occupying most of his summer by chatting on the Internet and building models of manga women. Shiunichi, we learn, has a problem: it seems that he is in a great deal of debt to a local gang. In addition to this, he definitely picked the wrong organization to be beholden to. The gang's leader, in addition to being an extreme sadist, also has a crush on Shiunichi and uses the position of power he has gained by loaning the boy money as an excuse to see him abused psychologically and harassed sexually. Unsatisfied with his current boyfriend, the gang leader (his name is never given so get used to this phrase) pours glue in the boy's ear as he sleeps, then slices his ear off before ejecting him from the gang and inviting Shiunichi over for dinner. After making a failed pass at Shiunichi, he then decides to show him his pet, a young girl reduced to a feral state by near-constant rape by most of the gang's male members. Shiunichi is horrified, but not so much so that he is able to resist viciously kicking her after she insults him. Leaving the girl at the local garbage dump, the leader renews his efforts to get his debts from Shiunichi. Shiunichi agrees to pay soon and, in desperation, replies to someone on the Internet promising to be a problem-solver. He agrees to meet this person at a local park but finds, to his chagrin, only a couple of other boys who were tricked just like he was. Telling them of his problems, the three agree to meet at Shiunichi's apartment and try to come up with a plan. However, this is also the night the gang decides to pay Shiunichi an unexpected visit...

All Night Long 3: The Final Chapter, appropriately concludes the set, though apparently its title, in grand Friday the 13th Part 5 tradition, is a misnomer, as two more sequels have supposedly been shot following this entry. Final Chapter concerns Kikuo, a young boy who works (with other young boys) as a janitor at a sex hotel. Kikuo, we learn quickly, has a fascination with decay that manifests itself in the collection of pitcher plants that he keeps in his room and in his obsession with collecting and sorting through trash. At the hotel, Kikuo makes a habit of collecting various leftovers from the various encounters that have transpired there, even going so far as to save shed pubic hair by patting beds with tape. One day, when some of the other boys chase after one of the young whores that has just finished with a client, Kikuo follows them to a nearby dump (seeing a theme here?) where they track her down and he watches as they rape and humiliate her before nearly beating her to death. Fascinated, Kikuo takes the girl from the dump and brings her home, tying her to his bed and tormenting her in various Guinea Pig Series-style ways. Meanwhile, he cultivates an obsession with a girl at the local supermarket, whose trash he goes through by night. Growing tired of the girl he is holding prisoner at home, Kikuo kills her and takes her back to the dump, intending to dispose of her. However, he is discovered by Kawasaki, an older trash collector, who takes a keen interest in this dead girl. Of course, Kikuo cannot have this, and so he finds he must kill this man too. Having been driven to a state of dementia by his brutal actions and desperate longing, Kikuo, gun in hand, decides that it is time to find his crush and satiate his desires.

It is hopefully easy to see, either by growing paragraph length or the increasingly frenetic nature of my plot descriptions, that this series grows much more substantial as it progresses, both in terms of plot and content. The first volume definitely stands out the most from the pack stylistically and is the least impressive. ANL1 is shot on film, and, aside from the over-the-top opening murder and bloody final showdown, is the most restrained. Character development takes precedence, and, while this is not necessarily a bad thing, ANL1 tends to bog down just a little, as much too much time is spent on the character's searches for their dates. Certainly there's a message in here, but there's a lot to sift through to get to it. I'm willing to bet that much of what I'm criticizing may be director Matsumura's reaction to different Japanese social customs and mores; unfortunately, if it was, I wasn't culturally literate enough to catch the comments.

Final Chapter is quite similar to Atrocity in style, mixing professional video production with clear, relevant social commentary (indeed, one of Kikuo's last lines is so perfectly-phrased that it could be quoted in any debate on youth violence today) and violence that, while not quite as gory as Volume 2's, is no less horrific and still contains several juicy highlights. I kind of hate to keep coming back to the violence when I describe these films, but indeed, that is what they are known for. Still, I hope that if you are a gore afficionado you will be able to look past the violence (while still enjoying it) and see Matsumura's social commentary as well. While I, too, love a good, gory time, I personally am even more pleased when a film will step above its blood-spraying origins and comment on the violence it's presenting. The All Night Long series does this, and I found it (particularly entries two and three) richly satisfying.

Sadly, what is not richly satisfying is the presentation of the films by Media Blasters through their Tokyo Shock label. At least the films themselves look fine, with All Night Long being presented in its 1.85:1 ratio, without anamorphic enhancement (a surprise, since Media Blastersâ obsession with anamorphic transfers is notorious and has, say some, even extended to the point of compromising the aspect ratios of films). The All Night Long transfer is marred by occasional specks but is, overall, pleasing and totally acceptable. Since the second and third volumes are video productions, their appearance is even cleaner, and they look quite pleasing overall in their intended full-screen formats. All films come with easy-to-read removable subtitles and motion menus, all of which are a nice touch. The problem lies in Media Blastersâ lackluster presentation. The only extras on these disks are trailers that play unprompted before taking you to the feature menu, which simply offers you the option of playing the movie with or without subtitles. I think it would have been nice for MB to at least give us a chapter menu and perhaps a page for the trailers as well. As it is now, the DVDs seem pretty hastily thrown together. Still, at this new retail price, this is much less of a problem. At the original $29.99 per volume, I would have been slightly to fairly pissed by what I received for my money; however, at a retail of $34.99 (and you can probably find it much cheaper on the internet), these DVDsâ lack of professional polish is redeemed.

In the end, I'm just glad that such fine cult films now enjoy a market in the US. While the first film may be a bit of a shaky start to the series, it is more than made up for by the subsequent two entries, which have shot up to the topmost tier on my list of personal favorite movies, floating somewhere around there with Visitor Q and Argento's Opera. While Tokyo Shock's presentation of this fine series (or at least its infamous first three entries) may be gratingly bare-bones, the films themselves are all worth having and definitely belong in the collection of anyone interested in intelligent, subversive and powerfully brutal filmmaking. Go out and secure your copy of the All Night Long Collection right now. That's not a suggestion, it's an order.