What are Tales Of Terror From Tokyo? Well, basically, they're five minute long shorts dealing with Japanese ghost stories originally broadcast on television in the land of the rising sun. They're pretty much related only in theme and genre, and aside from a couple of two parters, there's no continuity at all between episodes.

Media Blasters, through their Tokyo Shock line, have assembled fifteen of this five minute short films for the first compilation DVD release. Quality varies from episode to episode and, generally, they're pretty unremarkable save for one or two fleeting instances of legitimate and original horror. Sadly, despite the myriad of talent involved in this concept, most of what we get we've seen done before and we've seen it done better. With only five minutes worth of time to tell their stories, most of the filmmakers have opted to go for quick, cheap scares – and unfortunately that's what makes up the bulk of this collection.

Elevator: Directed By Takashi Shimizu, a girl tries to take a trip up on an elevator but when the door opens, it's full of ghosts who are heading down.

The School Excursion: Directed By Ryuta Miyake, this one follows a girl who uses the rest room only to find that the stall she intends to use is inhabited by a female ghost.

Kengo Nishioka: Directed By Norio Tsuruta, this one follows the ghost of a dead construction worker who visits a woman in her home and wants to know where her husband has gone to.

Visitor: Directed By Keisuke Toyoshima, this one begins with a mother asking her two daughters to watch TV nicely. When the youngest hears a noise at the door she thinks they have company – and she's right.

Covering The 100 Tales: Directed By Ichiro Nakayama, this one tells the story of a reporter who shows up to hear 100 tales being told at a temple. When the group start telling their stories, strange things start to happen and soon visitors from beyond the grave show up, wanting to hear more stories.

Cassette Tape: Directed By Shiro Sano, we begin with a man waking up then going through his tape collection. He puts on a tape to listen to some music and instead hears strange, ghastly voices.

Spilt Water: Directed By Norio Tsuruta, a young girl looks at pictures of her late father and, after going grocery shopping with her mother, may or may not receive a message from him.

Backward Suit: Directed By Ryuta Miyake, this one tells the story of a young woman who is pestered by her well meaning drunk father. The more she ignores him the worse he gets until he starts to show up in a different form…

Examination Room #3 (Parts 1 and 2) : Directed By Akio Yoshida, this is the only two parter on this first volume. A boy and a girl explore and abandoned hospital and once they find Examination Room #3, find it to be haunted by a ghost who has a strange attraction to the young lady.

A Forgotten Item: Directed By Ryo Nanba, this one follows a girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend. She tears up their picture in order to move on, but soon gets strange phone calls from someone or some thing.

Video: Directed By Hirokatsu Kihara, we begin when a young woman enters an apartment building alone to visit her sister. She arrives, enters, they greet, and watch a strange video together.

A Drop Of Blood: Directed By Eiji Arakawa in glorious black and white, a woman enters a store, finds it void of people, and is puzzled to find a drop of blood on a picture of herself.

Enlightenment: Directed By Takashi Shimizu, a girl goes through a box of pictures from her childhood, reads her childhood journal, and receives a strange visit from the past.

Waiting Time: Again, directed By Takashi Shimizu, a man sits in a hotel lobby waiting for his girl to come down so they can go get dinner. While he's waiting he's visited by a creepy long haired girl from beyond the grave!

Considering that Takashi Shimizu directed Ju-On: The Grudge, and that Norio Tsuruta did Ring 0: Birthday you'd think we'd get some originality in here somewhere, but no, most of the stories are more or less the same thing – man or woman gets visited by long haired female ghost, gets scared and either dies or helps the ghost get back to where it needs to go. There's very little variation on the theme outside of that, and it gets quite repetitive fairly quickly, even if you do happen to have a high tolerance for Japanese horror films (and I do).

The DVD

Video:

These were all shot on digital video fast and cheap, and it shows in the lighting and overall murkiness of this release. While the picture isn't terrible considering the origins of the material, there is a softness and lack of detail throughout that hurts the disc a bit – this is to be expected to an extent, but it's a shame that more care wasn't put into making the episodes look a little better than they do on this DVD. The overall presentation of this material is watchable but not much better than that as some scenes are really dark. Lighter scenes fair better and there aren't any problems in terms of mpeg compression artifacts or serious edge enhancement issues.