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.
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