TheDenizen is back and about to tackle a subject that's near and dear to my heart: half-naked Japanese girls kicking ass.
The Japanese film industry was pretty austere and serious during the 50's and 60's with only a few exceptions (Seijun Suzuki's 1967 mindfuck Tokyo Drifter springs to mind)...the most popular films of the era were stately dramas and rousing action adventure films. But by the time the 70's rolled around, pretty much everyone in the country had a TV set at home and movie theater revenues were plummeting. In order to coax patrons back into the movie houses, filmmakers often took the tasty bits that couldn't be shown on TV and cranked them up to 11. Mainly, the sex and violence quota skyrocketed.
Masterfully written and acted samurai films gave way to gory and over the top swordplay flicks. As the market for exploitation fare soared, one subgenre of chambara and yakuza films carved out a niche for itself by telling the lurid stories of female gangsters: Pinky Violence. Packed with wall to wall swordfights, brawls, nudity and sex, these flicks certainly weren't innocent, but they usually lacked the meanness of a lot of contemporary American exploitation fare. They were just more fun.
Here's a quick look at a few of the series from the 1970's I enjoy the most.
Rica - Rica is a half Japanese, half American teenager who runs an all girl gang in modern day Yokohama. After a huge battle with a rival gang, Rica is carted off to juvenile hall and her gang is captured and sold to slavers who intend to ship them to Vietnam as rape fodder for American GIs. Rica busts out of detention and goes on the warpath, facing off against one tough male gang boss after another, trying to get back her girls. There is more plot in the first 20 minutes of this movie than most complete films, and it just moves at a breakneck pace the whole way. There's an extended scene where Rica sings in a strip club, and her dance moves are some of the worst stuff you've ever seen, but her outfits are amazing. In practically every scene, Rica is wearing a new cape or midriff-baring pantsuit with incredibly detailed and colorful patterns. Very kitschy. Tons of knife scraps, kung fu catfighting and bouncing boobs.
Rica was followed by two sequels. Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer is about Rica trying to unravel the story of one of the reform school girls from the first film, who has somehow ended up in a mental institution in Misawa. The plot was much more coherent and conventionally paced, but there was almost no nudity and too much use of guns. Rica 3: Junvenile Lullaby features Rica using a fucking spear gun to bust up a pornography ring that was exploiting girls from the Juvenile Prison. Much better.
Sex & Fury - Reiko Ike plays a fearless swordswoman, pickpocket and gambler named Ocho who is on the trail of her father's killers. She plays some poker and gets whipped naked by Swedish nymphette Christiana Lindberg along the way, and ends up slashing her way to the top of the yakuza syndicate responsible for her father's death. The first major set piece of the movie is a swordfight in a bath house, in which Reiko takes on a dozen or so men completely nude. She also fights the final battle topless, but by the end she is so soaked in gore that you can't even tell. Nice.
Sex & Fury had only one sequel, the ludicrously titled Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture, in which Ocho solves the equally ludicrously named "Crotch Gouge Murders" while doing battle with a bunch of opium smugglers. The story is kinda confusing and some of the sex scenes are just creepy, but there's lots of cool visuals and and swordplay.
Lady Snowblood - Meiko Kaji plays Yuki, a woman who was born in a prison to a widow who died in childbirth. She was then raised and trained as an instrument of vengeance, possessing deadly skills and a concealed sword. This is probably best known as the flick that Quentin Tarantino used as the basis for Kill Bill, even reusing Lady Snowblood's theme song. Meiko Kaji is beautiful, and has a fierce glare that could bore a hole through titanium. She uses that glare to stunning effect as she smoothly dispatches her enemies. Plenty of splashy blood, but this flick also asks some serious questions as Yuki continually ponders the point of avenging the family she never met.
Lady Snowblood was followed by Love Song of Vengeance a year later, a less interesting film in which Yuki gets mixed up a political scheme. It still has no shortage of swordplay, and fans of Meiko Kaji will want to check it out. Meiko Kaji was also famous for playing Sasori (aka Scorpion) in the Female Prisoner 701 series, a woman who breaks out of prison to exact revenge on the men who wrongfully put here there. Maybe for my next blog I'll review those, or some other Women In Prison flicks.
Other notable Pinky Violence films from the era include Stray Cat Rock, Girl Boss Guerilla, Girl Boss Revenge, and Terrifying Girls' High School.
The Pinky Violence genre still exists today in a slightly altered form, way down on the low budget end of the filmmaking spectrum in Japan. Recent efforts use less sex but WAY more bloody gore, often for comedic effect. Movies like Machine Girl, Zombie Hunter Rika, Oneechanbara, Samurai Princess and Tokyo Gore Police all show off sexy female leads unleashing copious amounts of ultraviolence.
I love that shit, it never goes out of style...
