Battle Royale

Author: Kinji Fukasaku

Japan has been making wonderful science fiction films since before the Second World War. Sadly, those early films were pretty much destroyed in the War, but through the 50s with the Tojo films, and the 60s and 70s with low-budget action hero fare, they've stayed with Scifi all along. With Battle Royale, they manage to make a film that would change the way people looked at teen-oriented scifi. A dystopian Japan has devolved into madness, and a school class is gassed and set against one another in a dangerous game. It's incredibly brutal, and the entire scenario is played out for the whim of… well, that's the play and we wouldn't want to give it away. The film is based on a popular novel, and once released in English, would influence everything from The Hunger Games to Kill Bill. The film was hugely popular in Japan, and is still shown as a midnight movie in the US, and has made several of the stars into cult figures on both sides of the Pacific. Why it's on the list: Japan's most influential film of the last twenty-five years.