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.

Teddy Girls (Hong Kong, 1969)

As one of the more prolific and thematically adventurous directors in 1960s Cantonese cinema, Lung Kong found it wise to placate his backers by alternating his output between lucrative crowd pleasers and the ambitious social dramas that seemed to be closer to his heart. 1969’s Teddy Girls is one of the latter. And while the film boasts a level of grit and violence uncommon to the relatively conservative Canto cinema of its era, it is nonetheless a far cry from the many more exploitive depictions of the delinquent schoolgirl that would come pouring out of various corners of Asia within just a couple of years. Held up against, say, one of Norifumi Suzuki’s Terrifying Girls High School films, for instance, Teddy Girls comes across as something more akin to Rebel Without a Cause; a slick yet sober A-list entertainment that gains added cachet through its sincere desire to address a pressing issue of the day while at the same time still cadging some of the edgy glamour associated with youthful rebellion.

To bear the burden of personifying at-risk Hong Kong youth, Lung chose Josephine Siao, whose popularity with Cantonese cinema audiences at the time was second only to that of one woman industry Connie Chan. After starting out as a child star, Siao had spent much of the 60s starring in wuxias and the occasional Jane Bond entry, but, by the time of Teddy Girls, had for the most part left such roles behind in favor of appearing in dramas and comedies. Nancy Sit, another of the belles of 1960s Canto cinema, also makes an appearance, and one of the joys of watching Teddy Girls is seeing these actresses, so often called upon to exemplify wholesome heroines, stretching their acting wings to portray cold-eyed teenage hard cases.

As the film begins, Siao’s character -- a teenaged child of privilege who is named Hsu Yu-ching but called “Josephine” by friends and family -- is hauled into court after being involved in a brawl at a discotheque. Her mom (Teresa Ha Ping) pleads for leniency, blaming her own failings as a parent for Josephine’s wayward ways. But when the judge lets her off with probation, Josephine says that she would rather be confined to a reformatory than sent back home, where -- as a later flashback reveals -- mom is too busy lolling around in bed with an oily hoodlum (played by Lung himself) to be at her father’s deathbed during his final moments, and who, when reminded by a servant that Josephine’s birthday is coming up, simply hands the kid a wad of cash to throw herself a party and fucks off.

Josephine is thus sent to a reform school run by the progressively-minded rector Du (Kenneth Tsang Kong), who believes in effecting positive change through encouragement rather than punishment. Josephine endures the expected hazing at the hands of her fellow inmates, but eventually bonds with a group of toughs lead by the steely Ma Pi-shan (Sit), and soon seems to be making progress. That is, until she receives word that her mother has committed suicide, having been swindled out of her money by the aforementioned hood. Bent on revenge, Josephine schemes with Ma Pi-shan and two other girls to make an escape.

As comparatively genteel as it may be, one thing that Teddy Girls does share in common with the Japanese pinky violence films is its depiction of its protagonists as being the inevitable losers of a rigged game -- and that thanks to the simple fact that they are women in a man’s world. Violence may be presented as an option to be frowned upon, but, under such circumstances, it is also hard not to see it as these characters’ only recourse. And so, upon making their break, Josephine and her cohorts’ separate paths carry all but one of them toward a brutal reckoning with a male betrayer. In Sit’s case, it is the deadbeat father of her out-of-wedlock child, and in the case of the prostitute Sussie (Mang Lee) it is her cheating boyfriend and former pimp. Finally, all converge upon the apartment of Josephine’s nemesis, as rector Du, the film’s lone example of masculine virtue, desperately searches the night in hope of finding them and averting catastrophe.

Perhaps somewhat predictably, Teddy Girls (a term that seems to be used as a catch-all for delinquent youth with no apparent connection to the British subculture that spawned it) ultimately shows us that the crooked path leads to tragedy and that society is to blame. Happily, Lung Kong has the sense to balance the earnest didacticism with which these points are laid out with a corresponding level of flash and style. This is, after all, a movie that closes with Kenneth Tsang Kong delivering a lengthy lecture about the causes of delinquency (which amusingly include “those films that show brutal fighting”). So it helps that, to make that medicine go down more easily, Lung avails himself of most of those thrills that the JD genre places so closely within reach. These include, of course, brutal fighting, but also wild dancing to that devil rock and roll music, angsty teenage melodrama, and endless scenes of young actresses in Capri pants copping loads of threatening attitude. I’m also happy to report that the sobriety of the message doesn’t preclude such whimsical flourishes as the improbable, funhouse layout of Josephine’s mom’s apartment, or the arty, self conscious minimalism with which certain courtroom and funeral scenes are staged.

All of which is to say that you don’t have to be of moral mind to be entertained by Teddy Girls, although the strong performances by its young leads do go a long way toward inviting our empathy and compassion. It also should be noted that the film is worthwhile for providing a window onto what may have been an abiding concern for Hong Kong society at the dawn of the 70s, especially to the extent that the causes of teddy girl-ism enumerated therein seem to be products of creeping westernization. Nonetheless, the fact is that the violent transgressions of female juvenile offenders hold an allure that no amount of high-mindedness can dampen. Certainly anyone with a conscience would hope for these girls to eventually turn their lives around and find salvation, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t also want to watch them break stuff along the way.