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This reminds me of my reaction to Ryûhei Kitamura’s VERSUS when I caught a festival screening of it a couple decades back. The program booklet made it sound like the most gonzo, breathlessly entertaining yakuza/zombie movie ever and I gritted my teeth through its entire two-hour running time. I made note of Kitamura’s name so I could steer clear of anything else he directed. The one exception to that was GODZILLA: FINAL WARS.

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Kitamura was a staple of Midnight Madness screenings for a while, which is how I saw VERSUS. Completely agree with you on him.

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Man, VERSUS. Picked up a bootleg of this at a comic convention back in the day, having heard nothing but feverish hype. Cut to two hours of a camera spinning around in circles in the fucking woods.

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Craig, was that at SIFF by chance, a midnight screening at the Egyptian? If so, I was there too, and the diminishing enthusiasm of the audience as it slogged on matched my own....

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This was at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema (as it was called at the time). The screening was at International House.

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