Japanese Title: Sukeban Gerira
Director: Norifumi Suzuki
The third film in the Girl Boss series, Girl Boss Guerilla is also courtesy of madman Norifumi Suzuki, and features feisty Miki Sugimoto as the leader of a girl biker gang who falls for an anti-social boxer. Her crew runs afoul of a mob of yakuza cutthroats shepherded, once again by one of Toei’s favorite bad guys, actor Toru Abe -- something that spurs Sugimoto to re-align herself and reconcile with her former rival, Reiko Ike. This maintains the status quo for a short time, and the middle third of the saga finds the girls setting their sights on seducing, then blackmailing various Buddhist monks and Catholic priests. A situation ripe for director Suzuki who reveled in such profane-humor digressions. It’s too bad that these alternately funny and inane stretches slow down the story.
Thankfully, at last, Sugimoto and her gals head down the highway to coastal Katsuragawa where her pugilist lover is working out with his trainer (yakuza movie veteran, Michitaro Mizushima). Before they arrive, Abe and his goons materialize to put the heat on the two men. Violence erupts, and it’s only after fists have been flying for a time that Sugimoto, Ike and their wild bunch stampede in like the cavalry to save the outnumbered duo. Before the battle is over, Abe’s minions pin Sugimoto down in ‘Perils-of-Pauline’ fashion, attempting to slice off her arm with a buzzsaw. Her chivalrous beau wades in, rescues her, but gets stabbed to death for his trouble. This spurs the gangsters’ retreat. Sugimoto and her comrades then withdraw to the sunset-dappled beach to hold a wake for the fallen hero while the boxer’s hippie minstrel pal strums a plaintive song of farewell in the background. Now it’s payback time, Sugimoto trying to sneak into Abe’s gang HQ through a heating duct. Predictably, she’s caught, beaten, tortured and is about to be subjected to an update of the ‘Perils’ style-situation – with a cigarette lighter held between her legs -- when Ike brazens in with a rifle. She rescues Sugimoto and holds the mobsters at bay while her thrashed partner makes a run for it. This time Ike gets captured and is subsequently raped by boss Abe. Afterwards, Abe’s number two henchman, who carries a torch for Ike, secretly frees her, and she escapes. Sugimoto and Ike then manage to trick the pursuing Abe into stealing their bomb-rigged car, and he’s blown to smithereens.
©2006 - Chris D.
