Japanese Title: (Sukeban: Kankain Dasso)
Director: Sadao Nakajima

Jitsuroku (true account) yakuza film director, Sadao Nakajima, made the fifth Sukeban picture, Escape From Reform School, one of the best and most relentlessly nihilistic of the series. There’s little of the sophmoric hijinks that sometimes slow things down in Norifumi Suzuki’s entries, and what there is is better integrated into the story.

Miki Sugimoto and mates break out of stir after setting their reform school dorm ablaze. The girls separate for a time, with Sugimoto hooking up with a truck driver (Tsunehiko Watase) who is also a drifter and thief. They enjoy a brief sojourn in a mountain cabin, and Sugimoto is about to rip off Watase when he wakes up. But the tension of conflict dissolves in the face of the pair’s lust for each other. Sugimoto and Watase subsequently reunite with the other escapees in an abandoned boathouse on the shore, only to awaken the next day surrounded by the cops. All escape in Watase’s truck but are stopped short by a police blockade. Watase is shot in the head, the girls are pulled out by the cops and the truck bursts into flames, with Sugimoto all the while screaming, scratching and kicking as she watches her dead beau go up in flames.

©2006 - Chris D.