Retaliation (Japan, 1968)

By Hollywood standards, you’d think that Yasuharu Hasebe barely had time for a bathroom break between making 1967’s Massacre Gun and its sequel, Retaliation, which came out less than a year later. But that’s just the way Nikkatsu, with its systematic approach to quickly and economically churning out low budget genre entertainment, did business in those days. And directors like Yasuharu, who reliably churned out one crowd pleasing pulp movie after another, were the studio’s life blood. Hell, he even turned out a third film The Singing Gun¸ between the two.

Massacre Gun was only Yasuharu’s second film, following his psychotronic debut Black Tight Killers. In comparison to that film, Massacre Gun is a surprisingly conservative film, with very little of the stylistic experimentation of its predecessor, which may account for its success. As the career of Yasuharu’s mentor Seijun Suzuki attests, Nikkatsu didn’t put a lot of effort behind films that it thought were weird. And Black Tight Killers may just be as weird as Suzuki’s chosen method of career suicide, Branded to Kill, which famously featured Jo Shishido as a rice-sniffing hit man.

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etaliation is less of a direct sequel to Massacre Gun than it is a spiritual one. Both star Jo Shishido and Hideaki Natani as similar but differently named characters. Both films concern a trio of Yakuza foot soldiers who rebel against their boss and become hunted by them as a result. And though the differences between the two movies are mostly formal they are nonetheless considerable.

For one, that Massacre stars Jo Shishido and is filmed in shadowy black and white makes it seem more akin to the Nikkatsu New Action films that came before it. While Shishido has a substantial role in Retaliation, the above the title role goes to Akira Kobayashi, one of Nikkatsu’ touted “Diamond Line” of charismatic male stars. This fact made the studio loosen the purse strings enough to give Yasurahu a decent budget this time. And his most obvious expense was to film in Eastman Color, giving him the opportunity to splash around a lot of that fire engine red blood that Japanese filmmakers of the time were so fond of, and also lens a lot of naked female flesh. The resulting increase in violence, simulated sex and nudity makes Retaliation read like a precursor of the more violent “Pinky Violence’ and “Roman Porno” films that the studio started making in the 1970s. Acting as a harbinger of this is Female Convict Scorpion/Lady Snowblood star, Meiko Kaji, who has a small role as a captive farmgirl.

The film begins with Yakuza assassin Jiro, played by Akira Kobayashi, returning from an eight year bid to visit his boss, the godfather of the Ichimanji Family, who is on his deathbed. The godfather tells him that Hasama (Hideaki Natani), the Godfather of a rival clan, has been paying his medical bills and asks that Jiro pay him a visit and thank him for his kindness. Hasama is impressed by Jiro and recruits him on the spot. He asks that Jiro go to Takagawa City, a rural farming community turned boom town thanks to a factory being recently built there. The reigning Yakuza clan there, the Tono, are rapidly being displaced by a new gang, The Aoba Clan, who are driving the remaining farmers off their land and selling their property to the factory’s owner at a profit. Hasama promises that, if he can put an end to the conflict, Jiro can have complete control of the city. Taking Hasama at his word Jiro heads to Takagawa with JoJi (Jiro Okazaki) an ambitious younger Yakuza, by his side.

Meanwhile, another assassin named Hino (Jo Shishido) is tailing Jiro, planning to avenge Jiro’s murder of his brother. His first attempt fails when Hino’s tearful wife intercedes. This happens a few times in the film as, Hino’s wife appears to always be hovering on the sidelines waiting for her chance to jump in and tearfully plead with him to give up his life of crime. Each time, Hino begrudgingly accedes, reminding Jiro “You’re mine. Don’t forget that.” As Hino’s dogged pursuit makes him Jiro’s virtual traveling companion, the two of them eventually forge a reluctant bond, Hino agreeing to accompany Jiro to Tagakawa City.

And when the trio of Jiro, Hino and Joji reach the city, Retaliation doubles down on the Kurosawa homage. A la Seven Samurai, Jiro, Hino and Joji find themselves sympathetic to the plight of the humble farmers and appalled by the strong-arm tactics of the Aoba clan. The Aobas, you see, are a new strain of Yakuza: crude young street thugs with none of the respect for honor and decorum that their elders have, and prone to rampaging through the streets and terrorizing the women and children for fun. Thankfully, a la Yojimbo, Jiro manages to escalate the conflict between the gangs until it leads to an apocalyptic gun battle that greatly reduces their numbers.

It is appropriate that Retaliation concerns itself with generational conflict, as it is a film which occurred at a time of transition for a studio that famously survived economic turbulence by changing with the times. And it’s audience. Given those times were the 1960s and 1970s, that’s no small accomplishment. During that time, Yasuharu Hasebe was one of the few directors who directed films in every one of Nikkatsu’s cycles, including New Action, Pinky Violence, and Ero Guro. When the studio started leaning more toward full-on porn at the start of the 80s, he finally called it quits, thought not before directing such appetizing titles as Rape!, Raping! And Rape! 13th Hour. He then closed out his career directing for various television series, including the classic Tokusatsu show Spectreman.

Of course, people like myself who yell about movies on the internet tend to spend too much time parsing genre. The truth is that, if a film is well made, which Retaliation certainly is, your enjoyment of it should not depend on how it’s bagged and tagged. That I enjoyed Retaliation very much is largely due to Yasuhara Hasebe’s unfailing commitment to his craft. It’s beautifully lensed, well-acted, fast paced and peppered with expertly staged action throughout. File it under: recommended.

Massacre Gun (Japan, 1967)

It’s been said that every man must have a code. And, if we’re in a movie, that’s likely to be the code decreeing that no cruelty must go unmatched, no betrayal unpunished, and no slight un-avenged, no matter the cost to you, your loved ones, or society at large. According to this credo, men are nothing more than unfeeling puppets animated by an irresistible moral symmetry that sees violence as its own reward and no brutality too great if settling a score is the goal.

This scenario is often presented as a cautionary tale; as the camera slowly pans over the corpse-littered landscape at the film’s conclusion, it’s difficult not to imagine an unseen narrator clucking his tongue somberly and saying “Do you see?” However, it’s very difficult to imagine what is to be gained from seeing this tableau played out as often as it is in pop culture.

Fortunately for the Japanese, they had directors like Seijun Suzuki and Yasuharu Hasebe to astheticize these revenge dramas to within an inch of their lives, ornamenting their nagging ritualism with the quirks of personal expression. Though, of course, not all of Suzuki’s films were Branded to Kill, and not all of Yasuharu’s Black Tight Killers. Both men, while contributing their share of eccentric oddities to the Japanese crime film canon, were also well capable of towing the line for their masters at Nikkatsu and reliably churning out artful and competently made potboilers.

Such a film is Yasuharu’s Massacre Gun. It is a film generic enough to be a genre template, while at the same time being noteworthy for its style almost to the exclusion of its content. Which is to say that it is a very nice looking film, as dense with gloomy atmosphere and signifiers of urban cool as its heroes are with honor and regret.

The film opens with hitman Kuroda (Branded to Kill’s Jo Shishido) being ordered by his boss, the sadistic Akazawa (Takashi Kanda) to murder his lover. Shockingly, Kuroda dutifully heads straight to his girlfriend’s apartment and, under the guise of an out-of-town getaway, drives her to a remote stretch of road and summarily executes her. Kuroda is a little conflicted about this, as you would be, so, later, when he confesses to his younger brother Saburo (Jiro Okazaki), he responds to Saburo’s outraged pleas that he quit Akasawa’s gang by doing that very thing, thus incurring the kingpin’s wrath. Never mind that he could have quit the gang before killing his girlfriend, which clues you in that Kuroda may have more problems than an exaggerated sense of honor.

Saburo, an aspiring boxer and jazz drummer (accompanying Stray Cat Rock’s Ken Sanders as Chico, whose mournful torch songs comment on the action like a Greek chorus) is also in the employ of Akazawa. When, acting as a sparring partner for the boss’s star fighter, he loses control and KO’s him, Akazawa, already enraged by Kuroda’s defection, responds by having his goons crush Saburo’s hands.

At this early point in the film, it’s clear that Kuroda and his two brothers have been chafing under Akazawa’s grip for some time, and the final straw comes when the gang trashes Club Rainbow, the nightclub owned by third brother Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji, likewise of the Stray Cat Rock films.) At this point, the brothers decide to strike back against the crime lord, taking over a handful of his operations with surprising ease.

This turn of events puts Kuroda at odds with his best friend and former fellow gang member Shirasaka (played by Tokyo Drifter’s Hideaki Natani), who runs the Black & White Bar with his lover Shino, whom actress Tamaki Sawa gives a spooky, Cassandra-like presence. Of course, since the world of Massacre Gun is one in which men are rendered incapable of acting in their own best interest by their sense of honor, Shirasaka swears fealty to Akasawa and tells Kuroda that, the next time they meet, they will meet as enemies.

Finally, brother Eiji assassinates Akasawa and is taken down by the gang in a veritable tsunami of bullets that is downright comical in its overkill. Because this is not only hurtful, but rude, the stage is set for Kuroda to have his revenge.

Throughout all of this, Ysuharu employs all the arty bellwethers of alienation and isolation to portray his protagonists’ state of mind. These guys are incapable of relating to anybody, he seems to be shouting, much less even hearing them! I lost count of how many deep focus shots there were of a person having a conversation with a person whose back was turned to them while standing a good twenty feet behind them. Lessening the chances of boring old sanity prevailing is the fact that the only people suggesting that maybe all of this killing isn’t necessary are mere women, those same mewling killjoys who have been keeping us guys from setting off fireworks in our mouths since we were in short pants.

The film’s climax, when it comes, really puts the “mass” in massacre, an all-hands on-deck gun battle featuring a towering platform that seems to only exist so that Jo Shishido can assume his trademark sniper’s pose and pick off all of his former friends and associates with alacrity (I was wondering if Kuroda built it himself, which would have been difficult in the middle of enemy territory, even if he was disguised as a TV repairman or something.) In keeping with the film’s allusions to Greek Tragedy, this scrap ends with everyone dead, except for the relative innocent Saburo, who is left behind to assess the horror.

And the lesson of all this is… what, really? “Don’t try this at home?” But how can us men be expected to heed such a warning when our sense of honor compels us to murder our friends and loved ones simply because someone with a bigger gun told us to?

I’m sorry; I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t enjoy films like Massacre Gun. I do. It’s just that, as someone who grew up with a very different idea of masculine strength from the one presented in this film, I sometimes have to step back and remark upon how absurd it all is.

OK, I’m done.

Star Virgin (Japan, 1988)

I approached Star Virgin expecting lightweight Japanese erotica, but what I got was something altogether more charming. What it was instead was a frenetic procession of goofy rubber monsters, robots, fun miniature effects and perky idol pop, all revolving around an appealing heroine.

Pin-up model and actress Eiko Kuroki stars as Eiko, an alien visiting Earth in the guise of a normal teenage girl who turns into the bikini clad superhero Star Virgin by way of a “transformation bracelet” given to her by her scientist father. When we first meet Star Virgin, at the film’s opening, she is tied to a crucifix and being threatened by a giant spiny frog with an endlessly extendable tongue. Two ineffectual hand puppet aliens look on. After she punches her way out of this sticky situation, she makes her getaway on a flying scooter as her catchy disco theme song plays in the background. And with that, as they say, we’re off.

In short order, Eiko returns to Earth and reunites with her nerdy friend Koh, only for the two of them to be immediately attacked by a maurading futuristic tank. They are next stalked from the air by a gigantic, bird-of-prey like spaceship, and then a virtually indestructible robot. All of this turns out to be the work of one Colonel Arashiyama (Isao Sasaki) a demented scientist type who heads the Tsukenerawa Organization, an evil cabal that conducts its world domination plans from a lair inside a hollowed out volcano. But this no ordinary hollowed-out volcano, as it is also a hollowed-out volcano that flies.

With her skimpy attire, indomitable cheerfulness, game physicality, and evident baby fat, Star Virgin reminds me a lot of the Philippines’ Darna, especially as played by Wilma Santos – and longtime readers of this blog will know that that is not a comparison I make lightly. And despite a montage of Eiko Kuroki posing that looks like a magazine spread, there is very little salaciousness to the way she is depicted. Mind you, one synopsis I read of the video game that either inspired or was inspired by the movie (details are unclear) described Star Virgin as having a super power that allows her to detect when a man is planning to rape her. This doesn’t seem like too much of a super power, as one of the super powers that men are sorely lacking in is the ability to be subtle when they’re horny. Japanese exploitation films are likewise ham fisted in portraying male horniness, so given I didn’t see any Oafish perverts chasing Star Version in Benny Hill-style fast motion, I feel I can conclude, even without subtitles, that that story element was left out.

I want to be careful not to over-praise Star Virgin, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. It is clearly a film of modest ambitions, but it doesn’t use those ambitions as an excuse not to do the best it can. While its special effects are far from convincing, they are always clever and fun (I mean, if I’m seeing a flying volcano hideout, I really don’t care how well it's executed; I just want to see that shit.) Likewise, its acting, while not of awards caliber, is always enthusiastic and appropriately cartoonish. In short, I would recommend Star Virgin to anyone who doesn’t have a huge stick up their ass, while urging anyone with a huge stick up their ass to seek medical attention immediately.

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (Japan, 1970)

Nikkatsu's Stray Cat Rock films established a couple of precedents in Japanese exploitation cinema. For one, they contained the seeds of the Pinky Violence films that Toei would produce throughout the 70s. Second, they mark a first step in the ascent of actress Meiko Kaji, who was just on the cusp of achieving Tarantino-certified cult icon status with her titular roles in the Lady Snowblood and Female Convict Scorpion series.

However, those coming to the first film in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss, with hopes of seeing a nascent version of the cold-eyed badassery Kaji would evince in those later films will be at least a little disappointed. Because here Kaji is little more than a supporting player, leaving the spotlight to star Akiko Wada, a Japanese pop singer here making her screen debut. And that is as it should be.

Wada makes her first appearance in the film under it’s opening credits, playing surly loner Ako, who comes roaring into town on her motorcycle like a distaff Brando, her face—and gender—obscured by her helmet. Soon she runs into Mei (Kaji), a waifish street kid who demands she give her a ride. Ako drops Mei at a mucky unused reservoir, where she joins in a fight against a rival gang with her fellow cadre of bad girls. Mei and her friends quickly lose their advantage, and are saved by Ako, who chases the other gang away while doing sick jumps on her hog.

Now having made fast friends with the gang, Ako retires with them to a noisy psychedelic nightspot, where she finally removes her helmet to reveal her long hair and arguably feminine features (by which I mean that the permanent cocky smirk on her face is somewhat on the far side of demure.) Mei is undeterred by this revelation and asks Ako to dance, which she does. This is as far into Sapphic territory as the film goes, though there are other vague intimations of Mei’s attraction for Ako.

Mei is saddled with a boyfriend, Michio (Koji Wada), who, by all appearances, is a cowardly loser. Michio is intent on gaining entrance to a neo-fascist criminal gang called the Seiyu Group, and endeavors to do so by convincing the gang to bet heavily on his boxer friend in an upcoming match, with the understanding that he will convince his friend to throw the fight. He fails in this, and ends up a prisoner of the Seiyus, who beat him mercilessly. A real “stand by your man” type, Mei convinces the other girls to join her in rescuing him--and, in the ensuing brawl, Ako comes very close to blinding Hanada, the gang’s boss. This is enough to make the elimination of the gang, and Ako especially, a top priority for Hanada and his giggling top enforcer Katsuya (Tatsuya Fuji).

In classic Pinky Violence tradition, the battle-hardened young women of Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (not to be confused with just plain Delinquent Girl Boss, a later Toei film) find themselves in a world populated only by the most grotesque examples of the male species. This is true from the sickeningly weak-willed Michio all the way to the leering Katsuya, who, at one point, leads his men in violently raping Mari, a member of the gang portrayed by Yuka Kumari, the sister of  Branded to Kill's Annu Mari.

These portrayals are given a sharper edge by the fact that the movie has a bit more grit than later PV films, which had a tendency to go over the top into lurid absurdity (surprising, given its director Yasuharu Hasebe is famous for directing the modish fever dream Black Tight Killers.) Unlike some of Toei's later PV films, which seem targeted at dirty old men, you get the sense with this picture that the filmmakers are actually trying to speak to the disaffected youth they are portraying. To this end, there are a lot of moody location sequences that, while celebrating Tokyo nightlife, also seem to hint at its emptiness and isolation. The nightclub scenes are harshly chaotic, and gain an added sense of verisimilitude from the appearance within them of actual bands of the time, like long-haired psych rockers The Mopps and OX.

All of this is not to say that the film is without stylization, as the occasional appearance of blinding, primary colored wipes and overlays clamorously attests. Also, it being a Japanese studio film of its era, it almost goes without saying that many of the shots are beautifully composed--especially when Hasebe chooses to forefront his young actors, dwarfed by the indifferent urban landscape looming above them. As an added concession to pop consciousness, we also get a couple of songs from Akiko Wada, including her hit “Boy and Girl”, (which was featured on Volume 2 of Big Beat’s Nippon Girls series if you want to hear it.) To these the husky voiced, sleepy-eyed Wada brings the same confident swagger that she does to her acting.

I have to say that Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss seems pioneering for how it so matter-of-factly presents an androgynous female protagonist in the typically male role of the laconic outsider hero. Contrary to expectations, none of the exploitative tropes concerning same sex attraction (the shower scenes, the leather clad bdsm, etc.) are in evidence.

All of this allows Wada to emerge as a female action hero of rare charisma and gravity. Though Kaji would eventually take over the lead in the Stray Cat Rock films, in Delinquent Girl Boss it is Wada who provides the film with exactly the kind of compelling central presence that Kaji did to her more well-known films. Check it out.