Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974)

Lady Snowblood is one of the best-known of the Japanese pinky violence movies and a movie very much admired by Quentin Tarantino. It was a success in 1973 and a sequel followed in 1974, Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance.

Both movies were directed by Toshiya Fujita and had the same writing team.

The setting is Japan in 1906, just after the the Russo-Japanese War.

Now it really seems like luck has finally run out for the notorious killer Yuki Kashima, known as Lady Snowblood (Meiko Kaji). She has fallen into the hands of the police. It only took about forty cops to capture her and she was only able to kill a dozen or so of them first.

Now she is about to be hanged. Or maybe not. She is rescued although rescued may not be quite the right word. The secret police have decided that they need the services of one of the most skilled assassins in the country.

So now Lady Snowblood is a secret agent and a government assassin. She’s not thrilled about this but she doesn’t have much choice.

Her job is to infiltrate the house of notorious anarchist Ransui Tokunaga (Jûzô Itami) by posing as a maid.

Ransui has in his possession a document that could bring down the wicked corrupt government. He is captured and tortured by the secret police. He asks Yuki to deliver the document to his brother. For reasons that are never explained she agrees to do so. None of Yuki’s actions make any sense. She has no reason to get involved in childish revolutionary plots and there is no indication that there is the slightest emotional attraction between Yuki and either of the loathsome brothers.

Much misery and violence follows. There are a few action scenes but they’re uninspired and rely entirely on gushing fountains of blood.

Strident political subtexts could be a problem in Japanese movies of this era. This movie is nothing more than an adolescent wallowing in revolutionary chic. Everybody connected in any way with the government is portrayed as a grotesque cartoon villain.

Yuki plays no real role in the movie. She only seems to have been included so they could promote the movie as a sequel to Lady Snowblood. The focus is entirely on the two brothers and the glorious revolutionary struggle. Meiko Kaji gives her worst ever performance but it’s not her fault. The script gives her nothing even remotely interesting to do and offers not the slightest hint of her motivations.

The violence and torture are both nauseating and boring.

This is not a pinky violence movie. It’s a political violence movie. Not only is there no sex or nudity there’s no indication that any of the characters has any emotional life. The heroes are too busy with the glorious revolutionary struggle, and the villains are too busy being wicked and dastardly.

This is a movie absolutely dripping with venomous loathing for Japan, for Japanese society and Japanese culture.

It’s also an extraordinarily boring movie about worthless people being worthless people.

I have seen worse movies than this, but not many.

I’m generally a very big fan of pinky violence movies but Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance is bitterly disappointing. It has no style, no excitement, no suspense.

This movie just seriously rubbed me up the wrong way. If you enjoy incredibly brutal torture scenes you might enjoy it. My recommendation is to give it a miss.

It looks OK on the Criterion Blu-Ray but it’s no a particularly visually impressive movie to start with.

Sex and Fury (1973)

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Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970)

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and released in 1970, was the fourth of the five very successful Stray Cat Rock pinky violence movies made by Japan’s Nikkatsu studio at the beginning of the 1970s. The legendary Meiko Kaji features in all five movies.

The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that the Stray Cat Rock movies were not what today would be thought of as a franchise. There are no direct links between the five films. Each film features entirely different characters. Meiko Kaji plays different women in each film. Each film has a slightly different feel. What they all have in common is that they all involve the adventures of girl juvenile delinquent gangs.

The second thing to be pointed out is that while Machine Animal feels like a pinky violence movie it features no nudity and no sex and the violence is very restrained. This is a rather good-natured movie.

Maya (Meiko Kaji) is the leader of a Yokohama girl gang. They have a friendly relationship with a male juvenile delinquent gang, the Dragons (led by a guy named Sakura), but Maya’s gang is fiercely independent. They sort out their own problems.

Both gangs, Maya’s gang and the Dragons, encounter three young guys whose car has broken down. Two of the guys are Japanese while the third is an American, Charlie. It seems like these three guys are going to get beaten up, but that doesn’t happen. These juvenile delinquents are not mere thugs. They’re not out for aimless violence. If you don’t bother them they won’t bother you.

The girls later discover that these three guys have a huge stash of LSD tablets that they’re trying to sell. The girls steal the drugs.

Maya then finds out that Charlie is a U.S. Army deserter tired of the carnage of the Vietnam War. He’s trying to escape to Sweden. The drugs are to be sold to finance his escape on a cargo ship. Now the girls feel really bad. They don’t want Charlie to have to go back to the war.

The girls decide to return the drugs but then things get really complicated, with everybody trying to steal the acid tabs from everybody else. The Dragons get involved. Various pushers get involved. Sakura’s somewhat sinister sister Yuri (Bunjaku Han), the major local dealer, gets mixed up in it as well. Nobody is sure any longer where the LSD stash is.

There is major trouble between Maya’s gang and the Dragons, with both gangs resorting to kidnappings in order to force their rivals to negotiate a deal. Inevitably things get dangerously heated.

It’s fun in these Stray Cat Rock movies seeing Meiko Kaji playing characters far removed from the ice-cold killer psycho bitch roles with which she later became associated. She was perfectly capable of playing very sympathetic nice girls and she could be funny and even adorable. In this movie she’s very likeable. Maya is a nice girl. She does not rule her gang by fear. The other girls accept her leadership because they know they can trust her and they know she’s smart and resourceful. She’s the queen but she’s a benevolent queen.

The way girl gangs are treated in this series (and other pinky violence series) is extremely interesting. These are young women trying to cope with a world that they find confusing and alienating. They deal with this by forming girl gangs which function as tight-knit emotionally supportive female groups. Girls who have fun together, but who will unhesitatingly back each other up.

It’s not done in a heavy-handed feminist way. It’s just the natural inclination of women to want to bond with female friends. They like men but they need the mutual trust and respect of female friends.

Meiko Kaji was a successful pop singer as well as an actress and she gets to sing in this movie. There are in fact a number of pop songs featured in the movie which makes it a nice time capsule of 1970 Japanese pop culture. Even better, this film features go-go dancing!

I loved the fact that at one point the girls need motorcycles so they steal them from a showroom but after they’ve finished with them they return the motorcycles to the showroom. They may be juvenile delinquents but they’re not common thieves! And when they ride the bikes through a restaurant they apologise to the customers for the inconvenience. Being a juvenile delinquent doesn’t mean you have to forget to be polite.

The acting is fine with all the girls being likeable and cute.

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal’s greatest strengths are Meiko Kaji’s star power and its sense of female camaraderie. It’s also fast-moving. Don’t expect lashings of sex and violence. This is more like a good-natured caper movie. But it’s entertaining, it’s a great chance to appreciate Meiko Kaji’s versatility as an actress and it’s recommended.

All five Stray Cat Rock movies are included in Arrow’s Blu-Ray boxed set and all five movies look terrific. There are a few extras as well.

Yasuharu Hasebe also directed the first and third movies in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970) and Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970). I’ve also reviewed the second movie in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970), which was directed by Toshiya Fujita.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973)

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, released in 1973, was the third of the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies. Once again Meiko Kaji is the star and Shunya Itō is the director.

One of the cool things about the Japanese pinky violence movies is that there are often considerable differences between the various entries in a series.

If you haven’t seen the first two Female Prisoner Scorpion movies you won’t have the remotest idea what’s going on in this movie. You’ll be wondering why this girl is such a psycho bitch. If you have seen the first two movies you’ll understand. We do get snippets of her backstory in the course of the movie but nowhere near enough to make her personality comprehensible.

Matsu (Meiko Kaji), who gained the nickname Scorpion in prison, is on the run. The cops, led by Detective Kondo (Mikio Narita), almost catch her on the train. Poor Kondo has no idea what he is dealing with. There are two cops and one lone girl but if the girl is the Scorpion the odds are all on her side. The way she escapes is a fine illustration of the breathtaking excesses that make pinky violence movies so addictive. When you think you have Matsu cornered and helpless that’s when you should be really scared.

Matsu makes a friend. Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe) is a prostitute. She lives with her brain-damaged brother. She has sex with him regularly because it makes him happy.

Yuki has gangster problems. Those problems become Matsu’s problems. The first problem is Tanida (Takashi Fujiki). He knows Matsu is an escaped convict. He is going to force Matsu to provide him with regular sexual services. If she doesn’t play along he’ll turn her in. That annoys Matsu. Annoying Matsu is a seriously bad idea. The method Matsu adopts to deal with this problem is delightfully fiendish. It’s a woman’s revenge.

The other problem is sinister crazy sadistic procuress Katsu. Katsu had been in prison with Matsu. Katsu is a very tough very mean lady but she’s terrified of Matsu. She decides that Matsu will have to be dealt with.

Meanwhile Matsu still has the cops to deal with.

It all leads up to an extended pursuit through the city’s sewers, or at least we think that’s the finale but then we get a whole new subplot. And an amazing ending.

Stylistically this movie switches between gritty realism and outrageous theatricality.

One thing I like about the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies is that Matsu is not a typical kickass action heroine. She doesn’t have superpowers. She’s no stronger than any normal woman. She has no advanced unarmed combat skills. There are several factors that make her a formidable opponent. Firstly there’s her patience. She has the ability to withdraw into her shell and wait. She doesn’t care how long she has to wait. Eventually her chance will come. Then she strikes like a scorpion. And there’s her will to survive and her crazed savagery. When cornered she fights like a wounded panther at bay. She will do whatever it takes to survive. If she has to kill she will do so without hesitation. She will strike the death-blow without flinching. And she goes into a killing frenzy.

There’s a lot of emphasis in this film on Matsu’s utter aloneness. She cannot form emotional relationships with men. She cannot form friendships with other women. She trusts no-one. Yuki has some of the same problems. Both Matsu and Yuki need the friendship of another woman but can they learn to trust each other?

There’s a temptation to see Matsu as a feminist icon but in fact she’s a tragic figure. She has lost her humanity. She has been pursued and mistreated (often by other women) for so long that she has developed the personality of a hunted animal. We admire her extraordinary determination to survive but we feel desperately sorry for her. She was once a perfectly ordinary young woman. Now only a shell remains. She has survived in one sense, but perhaps not in other senses.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable is a weird disturbing movie but that description applies to all the movies of this series (and it applies to pinky violence movies in general). Highly recommended, but see the first two movies first.

All four movies in this cycle are included in Arrow’s Female Prisoner Scorpion Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfers are excellent. There are some extras, for those who bother with such things.

I’ve reviewed the first two movies in this series, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972) and Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972). These movies absolutely have to be seen in production order.

Terrifying Girls High School: Animal Classmates (1973)

Terrifying Girls’ High School: Animal Classmates (AKA Terrifying Girls’ High School: Animal Courage) was the fourth and last of Toei’s Terrifying Girls’ High School pinky violence films. It’s now been released, with English subtitles, on Blu-Ray.

Only two of these movies are currently available in English-friendly versions, the other being the wonderful Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom.

Animal Classmates, like Lynch Law Classroom, deals with girl juvenile delinquents in a high school setting, with the high school being the setting for all manner of criminal shenanigans. Animal Classmates also has some affinities with the curious Japanese Catholicsploitation sub-genre.

Reiko Ike (who starred in all four movies in the series) is Aki Kazahana, one of five new pupils at the very exclusive Seiwa Academy for Girls.

The school is the stage for a power struggle between two factions, the Athletic Association and the Black Rose Society. They’re both pretty ruthless. Aki, despite her reputation as a very tough cookie, is reluctant to get involved with either faction. But remaining uninvolved may not be an option.

One student from the school will be chosen, by competitive examination, to be an overseas student at the Seiwa Academy’s American sister school, Saint Gregory’s College.

The power struggle between the factions heats up. The Black Rose Society is quite wealthy - they run their own prostitution racket and various other criminal enterprises.

The male teachers seem to enjoy watching the girls in the showers. Like most pinky violence movies this one has a very strong anti-establishment anti-authoritarian stance. The establishment is greedy ruthless sleazy men with no honour. The girl juvenile delinquents at least have some vague code of honour.

This movie, like Lynch Law Classroom, shows definite samurai movie influences with rival girl leaders challenging each other to formal duels.

There’s something very sinister going on at this school. It does seem a bit odd when one of the girls competing for the overseas student scholarship is told that if she wants to be in the running she’ll have to consent to being photographed nude. She is told that no Catholic school would consider a girl as a student without first seeing nude photographs of her! This is the kind of WTF moment that makes Japanese exploitation movies so endearing.

The Athletic Association seems to be mostly interested in fencing and archery. Which means that this is a girl juvenile delinquent movie that is going to feature some swordplay.

There’s no shortage of violence. If you enjoy seeing pretty girls in sailor suits beating the daylights out of each other you’ll love this movie. And if you enjoy seeing pretty girls in sailor suits trying to kill each other with swords you’ll love it even more. The climactic swordfight is pretty good. You also get a full-scale battle scene (and I do mean full-scale) between the girls of the rival factions.

There’s a fair amount of nudity (although being a 70s Japanese movie there’s no frontal nudity) and a fair amount of sleazy sex.

One of the things that differentiates Japanese exploitation movies of the 70s (such as the pinky violence films) from similar movies from other countries is that these Japanese movies were major-studio productions. They were made by people who were seasoned professionals. They tend to be technically flawless. They also feature acting of a generally fairly high standard.

While I still consider Miki Sugimoto and Meiko Kaji to be the queens of pinky violence I must admit that Reiko Ike does a very fine job here.

This is a movie that ticks most of the pinky violence boxes and it’s great sleazy entertainment. A must-have for pinky violence aficionados. If you’re new to the world of pinky violence this film is not a bad starting place. It’s a typical representative of the genre. Highly recommended.

The Discotek Media Blu-Ray has no extras but offers a very nice transfer.

I’ve also reviewed Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973) which is absolutely essential viewing.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, released by Toei in 1972, was the second of the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies. These fit into the very successful Japanese pinky violence genre but are also women-in-prison movies. They do however have a flavour of their own that distinguishes them sharply from other women-in-prison movies.

The extraordinary Meiko Kaji returns for this second outing.

Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji), nicknamed Matsu the Scorpion, is a prisoner in a maximum-security women’s prison. She is considered so dangerous that she is kept in solitary confinement in a cell which is in fact merely a hole in the ground. Just to make sure she is kept chained. The Warden also has a personal grudge against her.

What makes Matsu so dangerous is her patience. She is prepared to wait a very long time for her revenge. She often appears so passive that one might think she has lapsed into catatonia. But all the while Matsu watches and waits. Sooner or later her enemies will make a mistake. If you wait long enough everybody will eventually make a mistake. When that happens Matsu strikes, just like a scorpion.

Of course Matsu escapes, along with six other women prisoners. They find themselves in a weird almost post-apocalyptic landscape. They find refuge in a village buried beneath volcanic ash.

They are being hunted, but these women are very dangerous prey.

What makes this movie so interesting is that it abandons any pretence at realism. This is more like a folk tale. It has some of the flavour that you get in Japanese stories of the supernatural. There are hints of the supernatural, or at least hints that we are in a world that is not the world of everyday reality. Matsu is like a figure from a story of ghosts, demons and monsters.

This feeling is increased by some extremely interesting choices by director Shun'ya Itô. He directed the first movie in this series but this second film is very very different. The colour palette he uses is all blues and greys. This has now becomes one of the most tiresome of all cinematic clichés but in 1972 it was fresh and original. It emphasises the feeling that we are in a kind of fairy tale/folk tale world.

He uses lots of disturbing camera angles, freeze frames and moments of total silence. Matsu often appears as if she is in the frame, but perhaps in another plane of existence, cut off from ordinary reality. At times we wonder if she is a woman or a ghost.

He uses colour boldly. He will suddenly switch from blues and greys into an explosion of reds.

This is an incredibly brutal movie. The brutality is made slightly more bearable by that subtle feeling of unreality. It’s worth mentioning that while most of the male characters are vicious sadists the women in this movie are just as vicious.

There is a temptation to approach this movie in feminist terms but while it might be valid I don’t think that’s a rewarding approach in this case. When Japanese movies in the 70s dabbled in politics they invariably did so in excruciatingly obvious and heavy-handed ways. When this movie gets into political territory it loses direction badly. Fortunately soon afterwards it make another much stranger and more interesting detour, into the world of dream and the unconscious.

Meiko Kaji is incredibly intense, even by Meiko Kaji standards. She does not get a single line in the movie until very close to the end and she speaks a total of half a dozen words. Apart from that the only time we hear her voice is when she sings the movie’s theme song.This all adds weight to the suspicion that she is not really of this world. Perhaps she was once a woman but is now something else.

You can see this as a female revenge movie but it’s more complicated than most such movies. If you look at other female revenge movies made at that time, such as the excellent Hannie Caulder (1971) or Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1974), they’re quite straightforward. They’re about women seeking vengeance on men who have done them great wrongs. But Matsu (in both the first two Female Prisoner films) takes her revenge on women who have wronged her as well as men. And in Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 the lines between good and evil are not always clear-cut. Is Matsu a woman seeking righteous vengeance or some kind of avenging angel or even an avenging demon?

We also do have to consider the possibility that Matsu is in fact totally insane.

This is a bizarre movie, a blend of surrealist dreamscapes and pop art and exploitation. It has no right to work but it does work. And there are plenty of wild crazy visual flourishes. Highly recommended if you’re not afraid of the bizarre.

Arrow have released all four Female Prisoner Scorpion movies in a Blu-Ray set.


I’ve also reviewed the first Female Prisoner Scorpion movie, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970)

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo was the second of Nikkatsu’s five Stray Cat Rock pinky violence movies. It was released in 1970.

It should be explained that this was not a franchise in the sense that we understand the term today. These were five totally separate movies with the only real connection being that all deal with juvenile delinquents. Meiko Kaji appears in all five movies but playing a different character each time.

The Pelicans are a youth gang of four boys and a girl, the girl being C-Ko (Meiko Kaji). Their deadly rivals are the Seibukai gang. The Pelicans might be juvenile delinquents but they’re pretty good-natured. They’re a bit wild but really they’re just kids looking for some fun.

They do kidnap a girl, but it’s not exactly a kidnapping. They know that one of the Pelican gang members, Taki, has developed a major crush on rich girl Asako (Bunjaku Han). Taki is a bit scared of girls and the other gang members intended the kidnapping as just a way of bringing these two together. They never intended to hurt Asako, and they don’t. In fact Asako is amused rather than scared. And the plan works. Asako and Taki fall for each other, and Asako is soon an unofficial member of the Pelicans.

At this stage Wild Jumbo is almost as lighthearted as an early 60s Annette Funicello beach party movie.

One of the Pelicans is behaving very strangely. He spends every night digging up the grounds of the local high school, much to the bemusement of the other Pelicans. Maybe he’s digging for buried treasure? That is exactly what he is doing, but the treasure he is after (and which he finds) is a cache of very old machine-guns. This is the first hint that the movie might eventually take a slightly darker turn.

Another such hint is the fact that Asako is the mistress of the leader of the Seikyo Society. They’re a kind of quasi-religious quasi-political group and they’re very rich and very powerful. And very dangerous if you get on the wrong side of them. Playing around with the mistress of the top guy could certainly land you in trouble.

Asako has been cooking up a plan that will make the Pelicans very rich. It isn’t legal but she thinks it’s foolproof and Taki agrees. They persuade the other Pelicans to agree as well.

This has now become a heist movie. It seems like it’s going to be a very lighthearted heist movie but in the third act it takes a very much darker turn.

It’s a movie that certainly springs some surprises on the viewer, with not just plot twists but major tonal shifts.

Of course the heist doesn’t go the way the Pelicans had hoped.

Meiko Kaji was not yet a major star but she was on her way. It was during the course of the Stray Cat Rock that her star quality started to become evident. In Wild Jumbo she’s just one of the six principal players. She would go on to play some very dark rôles so it’s interesting to see her here in a much lighter rôle, and handling it well. C-Ko is a nice fun-loving girl.

There is some violence in this movie but it’s not the slightest bit graphic. The shock value of the violence comes from its unexpectedness. There’s absolutely no sex and no nudity. This movie came very early in the pinky violence cycle. Later movies in that cycle would ramp up the violence, sex and nudity rather spectacularly.

In fact Wild Jumbo is so tame in those areas that some might question whether it really qualifies as a pinky violence film.

Arrow have released all five Stray Cat Rock movies in a Blu-Ray set. It’s a very welcome set. Prior to this very few pinky violence movies were available on DVD or Blu-Ray in English-friendly versions. Wild Jumbo gets a very nice anamorphic transfer.

The five Stray Cat Rock movies are all different and Wild Jumbo has quite a different feel compared to the first movie, Delinquent Girl Boss.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo isn’t one of the great pinky violence movies but it has a certain quirky quality which I found rather appealing. Recommended.

If you’re new to the pinky violence genre you’re better off starting with something more typical, such as Girl Boss Revenge (1973).

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970)

At the beginning of the 1970s the Japanese film industry was on its knees as a result of competition from television. Drastic steps would have to be taken. The obvious solution was sex. Or, even better, sex and violence. It was a brutally realistic assessment of the situation. This resulted in the birth of two new exploitation film genres, roman porno and pinky violence. Nikkatsu’s roman porno series (a mixture of sex and violence movies and sex comedies) was prolific and immensely successful. Pinky violence films, which were also very successful, were made by various studios.

These movies were made in series, each series comprising from two to five loosely linked titles.

Which brings us to Nikkatsu’s Stray Cat Rock pinky violence series, and to the first movie in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (released in 1970). And at this point I’m going to have to confront the rather confusing subject of Japanese exploitation movie titles. In 1970 Toei made the first film in a pinky violence series of its own, the Delinquent Girl Boss series (beginning with Delinquent Girl Boss: Blossoming Night Dreams). Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss has no connection with the Delinquent Girl Boss series. It’s a totally different movie belonging to a different series from a different studio. To add to the possible confusion Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss was also released under several alternative titles - Female Juvenile Delinquent Leader: Alleycat Rock, Wildcat Rock and Alleycat Rock: Female Boss.

The movie with which we are concerned today is Nikkatsu’s Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss and that’s the title we’ll stick with.

The pinky violence movies all had female protagonists. These movies launched the careers of some superb actresses. The most famous was Meiko Kaji. Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike should also be mentioned.

The female protagonists were invariably Bad Girls, but they were Good Bad Girls. They were Bad Girls in the sense of being outsiders and outcasts and often criminals but they were never evil (although they could be extremely vengeful). They always had a sense of honour. They were loyal to their friends and to fellow members of their gangs. They were loyal to their men, unless and until their men betrayed them. They were brave and resourceful. They could be ruthless and ultra-violent, but their violence was always (in their own minds and according to their own sense of honour) justified. They had no time for the forces of authority such as the police. If these girls had a problem they would solve it in their own ways.

They’re usually women who have rejected conventional society because it seems corrupt and seems to offer them nothing, or they have themselves been rejected by conventional society. These girls have tried to create their own little alternative societies, living by their own code of honour. It’s a brutal violent code of honour but they live by it and it offers them a self-respect that mainstream society denies to them.

Another thing that needs to be said is that these were not low-budget independent movies. These were big studio productions, made by film-makers with all the resources of a major studio behind them. They’re professionally made movies and production values are quite high.

The star of this movie is pop singer Akiko Wada. Meiko Kaji plays a supporting rôle but she had such obvious star potential that she became the lead in the remaining movies in the series.

Mei (Meiko Kaji) is a girl gang leader. There’s a major fight between her gang and a rival gang. The rival girl gang leader brings in men to help her. That’s contrary to the code of honour by which the girl gangs live. You don’t get men involved in a women’s fight. Mei gets some help from a girl biker named Ako (Akiko Wada). Ako isn’t a member of Mei’s gang, or at least she wasn’t a member, but she becomes a kind of unofficial member.

Mei has other problems. Her boyfriend Michio has become mixed up with the Seiyu Group. They’re kind of a mix between an organised crime gang and a right-wing political group. Mei thinks that Michio should have nothing to do with them. She mistrusts and fears the Seiyu Group. Michio isn’t bad but he’s weak and not too bright. Mei loves him anyway, because he’s her guy. Mei and Ako find themselves, rather reluctantly, having to take on the Seiyu Group. This comes about through Michio’s involvement in trying to fix a boxing match for the Seiyu Group.

Since Akiko Wada was the star it’s Ako who is the lead character although in some ways it’s a kind of female buddy movie with much of the focus being on the friendship between Ako and Mei. There’s also plenty of emphasis on loyalty, and the price of loyalty.

It can be tempting to see the pinky violence films as feminist films. You have to be careful about doing that. There are male characters who are evil, treacherous and vicious but there are female characters who are pretty damned nasty as well. There are good people and bad people in these movies and whether they’re male or female isn’t terribly important. In these movies the divide is between those who have honour and those who don’t.

It’s probably more useful to see them as anti-authoritarian movies, with a kind of nostalgia for a world in which honour mattered. Those who claim to stand for the establishment and tradition pretend to live by a code of honour, but they don’t. It’s the outcasts such as the girl gangs who truly live by a code of honour. Mei would cheerfully beat a rival girl gang leader to a pulp or even kill her, but she’d do it in a fair fight. She’d do it the way a samurai would do it. And like a true samurai, she would only do it if she felt it to be necessary, either for survival or for her honour.

There’s also a focus on youth culture, with lots of pop songs and with youth culture being portrayed as preferable to the greed and dishonour of groups such as the Seiyu Group.

This being a pinky violence film there’s torture and there’s some pretty graphic violence. This being a very early pinky violence film there’s very little nudity (in fact almost none). There’s no shortage of action. There’s a very cool very cleverly staged car/motorcycle chase.

Akiko Wada makes an interesting heroine. She’s a loner who finds friendship and a sense of belonging. It’s hinted that she may have some lesbian leanings but they’re really just vague hints.

Arrow’s Blu-Ray release offers all five Stray Cat Rock movies in very fine transfers.

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss provides excellent entertainment with action and emotional involvement, and plenty of style. Highly recommended.

Flight Attendant: Scandal (1984)

Flight Attendant: Scandal (subtitled Hold Me Like an Animal) is a 1984 Nikkatsu roman porno film.

“Pink films” (as the Japanese called erotic films) were a bit of a thing in Japan in the 60s but most were independent or modestly budgeted efforts. Much like American sexploitation films of the 60s they found a market and being cheap they could be quite profitable. All this changed in 1971 when Nikkatsu, a very major studio indeed, launched its “roman porno” cycle of pink films. All the big Japanese studios had been very heavily hit by competition from television. Nikkatsu not only decided that pink films would be its salvation, they decided to switch entirely to pink films. Between 1971 and 1988 roman porno films were what Nikkatsu made.

It was a spectacularly successful move. It saved the studio, which is still thriving today.

Nikkatsu’s approach was to let its writers and directors do whatever they wanted, as long as the resulting film contained the necessary quota of nudity and sex. This made the writers and directors pretty happy. They could be as commercial or as arty as they wished. They could pick whatever genre they liked. They could make these films without suits from the front office breathing down their necks. Even better, they had all the facilities of a major studio at their disposal and reasonable budgets to work with.

As a consequence the roman porno films were incredibly varied. Most were successful with the public and some attracted very favourable attention from critics.

In spite of the extreme variety of these films it’s possible to divide them very broadly into two categories. The first comprised movies that relied on extreme sexual violence. The second category comprised sex comedies which tended to be goofy, good-natured and often totally insane. The Flight Attendant films definitely belong in the sex comedy category.

The movie focuses on four Japanese flight attendants (so the formula is superficially similar to Roger Corman’s 1970s stewardess and nurse movies). Most of the focus is on Misako. She’s a sort of chief stewardess. She’s suddenly developed a fear of flying, along with with some odd sexual fantasies. Her boyfriend is a pilot but the relationship gets a bit rocky when she comes home to find him with his face buried between the thighs of her flatmate (who was so drunk at the time she didn’t even know what was happening). A fortune teller tries to cheer Misako up but without success. His prediction about her future will however prove to be significant.

Our four flight attendants spend most of their off duty time getting drunk and having sex, sometimes on outrageous circumstances. They also do some skeet shooting which provides some of the film’s best comic moments. These gals are kinda dangerous with guns, especially when they’re excited.

There’s a subplot involving drug smuggling which will end up becoming unexpectedly related to Misako’s romantic problems. A couple of the girls get to ply hostess to some drunken salarymen, which ends as you’d expect. Flight attendants are very friendly girls.

Misako has a therapist but his methods are a little unconventional. At least I think that feeling up your female patients is usually regarded as unconventional. He’s treating her for her sexual hangups but his sexual kinks are way more extreme than hers.

Misako also encounters a coffee fetishist. It’s not a sexual fetish. He’s just obsessed with making the perfect cup of coffee. In fact he seems to find this more interesting than sleeping with her, which doesn’t please her too much.

Japanese movies were not allowed to show pubic hair at this time. You might think that as a result a Japanese erotic movie would be just a little tame compared to its contemporary British, American and European counterparts. If you do think that then you’re seriously underestimating the Japanese. Even with this restriction they could make an erotic movie that was more sexually raw and in its own way more sexually explicit than most British, American and European softcore offerings of that period. In fact in some ways the restriction was an advantage. It made Japanese directors work harder to achieve the necessary erotic charge. This is a very sexy movie.

The craziness is not as extreme in this movie as in some Japanese movies but there’s plenty of low-key weirdness.

Is it funny? I think that will depend on your tastes. Much of the humour is obviously very Japanese (and very broad) but yes it does have some amusing moments and it is pleasingly goofy and good-natured. In fact it’s very good-natured. There’s even some romance, mixed in with all the frantic coupling.

The Impulse DVD is barebones. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles. It’s a reasonable anamorphic transfer.

Flight Attendant: Scandal provides some fun if you’re in the right mood.

Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer (1973)

The Rica trilogy, which began with Rica in 1972, was a very successful if rather atypical example of the pinky violence sub-genre, that fascinating genre of 1970s Japanese exploitation movies. Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer followed in 1973.

The pinky violence genre, an off shoot of the pink film genre, was a desperate attempt by a number of Japanese studios to keep themselves afloat in the face of the devastation that television was inflicting on the Japanese film industry. The idea was that if you wanted to tempt audiences back to movie theatres sex and violence was the way to do it.

As Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer opens Rica (Rika Aoki) is in reform school but she naturally has no trouble at all breaking out. She wants to find her friend Hanako who is in trouble. Hanako, like Rica, is only half-Japanese and therefore occupies a slightly uncomfortable position in Japanese society. Rica’s father was an American serviceman who raped her mother during the Korean War. Rica was later raped as well.

Hanako’s problems began when she was one of a number of girls who were “entertaining” American soldiers on board a ship, the Tohuko. The ship mysteriously blew up. The Tohuko was at the centre of complicated illegal yakuza activities which we will discover have something to do with a yakuza kingpin, Boss Shimamura.

Boss Shimamura is old school yakuza and feels very strongly that yakuza should settle their differences without harming innocent bystanders. But he is an old man and he is dying. The new boss of the Shimamura Gang is going to be his beautiful young daughter. And she’s a lot more ruthless. Yes, this time Rica will be going up against a glamorous lady gangster.

Rica’s interest in the Tohuko case is very inconvenient for a lot of people. Four professional assassins are sent to kill her. Four men against one girl is just not a fair fight. Those guys don’t stand a chance. Rica is not just a girl, she is a one-woman army. Eight guys might have had a chance. She has no difficulty killing three of the assassins and terrifying the survivor.

Finding Hanako will be more difficult. Rica tracks her down to a mental hospital, but getting her out of the hospital will be a challenge.

She can’t expect any help from the cops. They’re in the pockets of the yakuza.

Then some mysterious guy named Hachiro shows up. Is he on Rica’s side or not? Is he a yakuza, or a cop, or something else? More importantly, could he be the man Rica needs? Rica is an awesome killing machine but she’s still a woman. What she needs is love. If she can find love she might be able to give up killing people. And she obviously thinks Hachiro is kinda hunky.

The plot is a bit creaky but it’s mostly an excuse for an endless series of fight scenes so it doesn’t matter too much. The thinking behind this movie seems to have been that if the action slowed down for thirty seconds, just have half a dozen guys leap out of the bushes and attack Rica for no obvious reason. I have to say that it’s a technique that works fairly well.

This movie has an odd tone. There are countless fight scenes, most of them pretty impressive but at times rather stylised. The violence is, on the whole, rather restrained compared to the more famous pinky violence films. There’s also not all that much of the sex and nudity which were such distinctive features of this genre. At times the tone becomes whimsical and at other times slightly surreal. There’s a definite cartoonish feel.

This movie could be described as Pinky Violence Lite. There’s a huge body count but no fountains of blood. The delirious sleazy excesses and the sadomasochism of bona fide pinky violence classics like Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973) are not to be found here. Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer is not exactly wholesome family entertainment but it’s wholesome by pinky violence standards.

There’s a great scene in which Rica and Hachiro are tied up and are about to be fed to the sharks. Then Rica remembers that she has a knife in her panties (a sensible girl never leaves home without a knife concealed in her panties). If only Hachiro could reach that knife. But they’re both tied up. There’s only one thing for it. Hachiro will have to use his mouth. He’s a brave lad and he’s willing to give it a try even if it does mean having to bury his face in her panties.

The Rica movies made beautiful half-Japanese actress Rika Aoki a major star but her film career was extremely brief. She made just four movies in total. The truth is that compared to the queens of pinky violence (Meiko Kaji, Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike) she just wasn’t quite as good an actress and she didn’t have their star quality or their charisma. She does get to sing several times.

She also gets to wear a rather cool cape which is the sort of thing you wear if you’re a kickass action heroine.

The Media Blasters Rica DVD set includes all three movies on three discs. The anamorphic widescreen transfer for Rica is excellent.

Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer compares reasonably well with the first Rica movie. It’s fast-moving and entertaining. It’s recommended but if you’re new to pinky violence then I’d suggest movies such as Girl Boss Revenge (1973), Sex and Fury (1974), Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973) or Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972) as being more representative of the sleazy delights the genre has to offer.