Japanese Title: (Gincho Wataridori)
Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Nami (Meiko Kaji), leader of a juvenile gang, kills an executive member of a yakuza organization due to a territorial conflict and goes to a prison. Released from the prison three years later, she stays at a billiard hall and, through Ryuji, starts working as hostess in Ginza, where she instantly becomes very popular. In an attempt to take control of the bar, Owada, a local yakuza, kills Ryuji's sworn brother. Enraged, Nami seeks bloody revenge!

Japanese Title: (Gincho Nagaremono Mesuneko Bakuchi)
Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Japanese Title: (Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi)
Director: Teruo Ishii

Set in the Tokugawa (or Edo) period, the first in Teruo Ishii's Joys of Torture series opens with a montage portraying a succession of women being decapitated, burnt alive at the stake and torn in two by oxen. The film then adopts a portmanteau approach of three short stories which all culminate in lengthy torture sessions.

In the first, a girl is tortured after an incestuous relationship with her brother and suspended upside-down with her head immersed in the sea until she drowns. Secondly, sexual shenanigans at a nunnery lead to fun with a bathtub of leeches, chili peppers applied between the legs, branding and multiple crucifixions. In the final and most substantial of the three stories, a sadistic torturer criticises the work of a tattoo artist who has attempted to portray the expression of woman in pain. For the artist's next masterpiece, the torturer offers to demonstrate what this expression really looks like by allowing him to sketch a selection of Europeans accused of entering Japan with the aim of spreading Christianity. In the end it is the face of the torturer that ends up being portrayed in the resulting tattoo.

Whatever accusations of misogyny or bad taste can be leveled at this film, it is ultimately a product of its time. During the late 60s, as censorship patterns relaxed around the world, films such as these were made the world over to pander to audiences clamouring for more and more excesses in their desire to be shocked. Whether in the increasingly sadistic work of Jess Franco in Europe, the low-budget gore films of US independent practitioners such as Robert L. Frost and Andy Milligan, or even the increasing levels of sex and violence in Hammer's films, the boundaries of sadism and nudity were constantly being pushed as an easy way of getting people into cinemas against the now firmly established threat of television.

Like its European contemporaries (for example, Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General, 1968; Adrian Hoven's Mark of the Devil, 1969; or Jess Franco's The Bloody Judge, 1969), the camera remains fairly distanced from the proceedings rather than lurching into extreme gory close-ups, though admittedly the torture scenes here are a little more abundant. By today's standards the special effects, though fairly effective, look basic and perfunctory and the nudity mild.

However, what sets Japanese films of this type apart from similarly conceived offerings from around the world are the higher production values resulting from the conditions under which they were made. Japanese cinema during this time was completely dominated by the studio system. Directors were merely required to churn out a given number of films a year, and as long as the films made money they were afforded a moderate budget and a considerable degree of autonomy.

Because of the consequent financial and professional resources, technical expertise and wider distribution opportunities available under such a system, the Toei-produced Shogun's Joy of Torture looks a good degree more polished than films of this type made outside of Japan and hardly plumbing the tacky, self-conscious depths of later Occidental sex and sadism spectacles like Don Edmonds' Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS (1974) and its sequels. With its colourful art direction, polished cinematography and sombre funereal death march soundtrack, it is undeniably well made.

Straight-faced sado-sexual fantasies such as this and such contemporaries as Woman's Prison (Hiroku Ona-Ro, 1967 - Akira Inoue) and Violated Angels (Okasaretu Byakui, 1967 - Koji Wakamatsu) therefore became, and still are, a commercially viable staple of Japanese cinema, mutating into the more overt SM-heavy 'ero-gro' (erotic grotesque) fare by way of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno films of the 70s.

Technical merits aside, what is most striking about Shogun's Joy of Torture is the literal sombre seriousness of the exercise. Historical veracity is the order of the day, and as such there's an almost academic coldness to the film not found in similarly pitched films made in either Europe or the US. It spawned a quick succession of sequels from director Ishii, all trading on the images of women being broken, branded and bound: Tokugawa: Woman Genealogy (1968); Tokugawa Tattoo History ('69); Decadent Edo Women Genealogy: Brutality, Abnormal, Abusive ('69); Shameless: Abnormal and Abusive Love ('69); Meija Era, Taisho Era, Showa Era: Grotesque Cases of Cruelty to Women ('69); Yakuza Torture History: Lynching! ('69); Porno Samurai Theatre: Bohachi Code of Honour ('73).

© Jasper Sharp courtesy of Midnight Eye

Japanese Title: (Kyofu Joshi Koko – Animaru Dokyosei)
Director: Masahiro Shimura

Animal Courage is the uneven, but entertaining forth and final Terrifying Girls’ High School movie. We find Reiko Ike once again cast as a tough schoolgirl who eventually has to band together with her enemies to upset the reign of their private Catholic high school administration where institutionalized sexual abuse is endemic. Tables are turned finally on the lay principal (Nobuo Kaneko), various sanctimonious teachers as well as an American priest (who drives a vulnerable virgin to suicide when he deflowers her!). Ike teams up with another one of those goodhearted, loner yakuzas, this one a fellow who has had a change of heart after being employed by principal Kaneko in setting up blackmail schemes. He enthusiastically comes over to Ike’s side when Ike saves his life from Kaneko’s whip-wielding dominatrix assassin! Per usual, the climax sees the prinicpal and adult evildoers publicly humiliated and exposed before the entire student body.

©2006 - Chris D.

Japanese Title: (Kyofu Joshi Koko – Furyo Monzetsu Guruupu)
Director: Masahiro Shimura

Delinquent Convulsion Group, the third Terrifying Girls' High School picture, features Reiko Ike as a strong-willed student butting heads with her more ruthless, amoral rival (Yuko Kano) whose father (Hiroshi Nawa) is the principal. Ike wins a vote of the girls as the defacto student sukeban, and shortly thereafter her trucking company owner dad is murdered in a fake car accident. Ike’s mom (exploitation veteran, Yoko Mihara) is not only conned into signing over dad’s business, but also rudely seduced into becoming the new American mobster owner’s mistress. Principal Nawa turns out to have been in on the plot to kill Ike’s father and is in cahoots with the American gangsters’ heroin-smuggling operation. Ike is subsequently toppled from her place at the school, and, to make matters even worse, has to powerlessly sit by while her mom degenerates into a drunken whore! Ike befriends a handsome halfbreed guy (his father was an American GI), who is something of a closet anarchist bent on destroying the hoodlums who have also ruined his life. Too bad he gets murdered by the gang when he’s caught snooping around. Ike and her mates finally manage to turn the tables when they set up principal Nawa in an incest sting with his own drugged daughter, synchronized to the police breaking in just as it finally dawns on Nawa what’s going on. Ike then heads over to her dead beau’s pad where she retrieves his machine gun, makes a beeline to the gang HQ in the driving rain, then massacres the villains in a well-paced, stark and very satisfying climax.

©2006 - Chris D.

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.

Japanese Title: Onsen suppon geisha
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

Japanese Title: Onna banchô: Nora-neko rokku
Director: Yasuharu Hasebe

Yasuharu Hasebe developed and directed this first installment in a five-film series dealing with the adventures of an all-girl motorcycle gang. Pop singer Akiko Wada heads the distaff bikers in this episode, with the gang involved in rigging boxing matches until the yakuza intervenes by killing Wada. Her assistant (Meiko Kaji) takes over the gang, which then gets revenge on the mobsters. Good-looking and fast-paced, this film and its sequels are typical of Nikkatsu Studios' slick output before they dedicated themselves to erotica as the decade progressed. Stray Cat Rock : Wild Jumbo (1970) and two more sequels followed later in the year.

©Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Japanese Title: Hibotan Bakuto - Isshuku Ippan
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

Ryuko Yano, better known as Oryu, the Red Peony is back in action. And she’s better than ever. Part 1 of the Red Peony Series was rather tame in comparison to this (first) sequel. Under the direction of Norifumi Suzuki (who also scripted this one and the two Tai Kato-directed Red Peony Movies) things get a little livelier, sleazier and bloodier. Considering this is one of Suzukis earlier directorial efforts, its astonishing how Gamblers Obligation already has the visual flair that would later be a trademark of Suzukis (see School of the Holy Beast for his absolute highpoint).

Oryu is a guest at Togasaki’s place in Tomioka, a town that lives from its silk farms. Times are hard on the silk farmers, as they are under the iron thumb of Gisuke Kuramochi, a loan shark who secretly works with the other Gang in town, the Kasamatsu-Gumi. Not aware of this nefarious going-ons, Togasaki (Michitaro Mizushima) tries to calm the farmers who want to raid the Kuramochis place. Kasamatsu and his brutal lieutenant (Bunta Sugawara in evil mode) visit Togasaki and they offer their help to wipe out Kuramochi, but he declines. Of course the offer only was a scheme to push Togasaki into action, a ploy that would allow Kasamatsu to tip of the police and get the Togasaki-Gumi rubbed out, but more on that later. During this conversation the two Oyabuns are interrupted, when an underling lets them know, that a Gambling Woman is making too much profit in one of the Gambling Dens. Togasaki sends Oryu, to stop the winning streak. Oren, the Woman Gambler of question, is a heavily tattoed lass, who is accompanied by her husband and knows how to play a mean game. When Oryu steps in to gamble, Oren thinks she can beat the famous Red Peony Gambler, but in the end she looses everything she had won earlier on back to the bank. But she vows to herself, that she will get her revenge on Oryu. The next day Togasaki asks Oryu for a favour. He wants her to get a message to Kumatora (Tomisaburo Wakayama) an Oyabun both of them are acquainted to. Oryu senses, that it’s only a way, to get her out of danger but she is obliged to do him the favour and so she hits the road. That evening Togasaki assembles his men, expect for his loyal Lieutenant Yukichi (Kunio Murata) who is in love with Togasakis daughter Machi. Togasaki tells Yukichi, that he needs someone to watch after the Gang in case he fails. Reluctantly Yukichi stays behind, while Togasaki and his men try a raid on Kuramochis place.

In the meantime Oryu arrives at Kumatoras place, which leads to some comical action from Tomisaburo Wakayama, who’s back as the love blind Oyabun who wanted to marry Oryu in Part 1. Also at Kumatoras place are two bumbling wannabe-Yakuzas who want to be in Oryus Gang and follow her everywhere she goes. But the comical interlude is abruptly interrupted through the message of Togasakis death, who had fallen for the trap that Kasamatsu had planned. Oryu decides to go back to Tomioka to straighten things out. She finds the Gang reduced to Yukichi and Togasakis daughter Machi. While Yukichi tries to take on the Kasamatus single-handedly (and in the last minute gets saved by Oryu), Machi tries to hold on to the business her father had left her and not to sell to Kasamatus who tries to get the business in his hands using any means possible. He even brings together the superior council (the Über-Oyabuns) in Tokyo to get an official approval for the lead over the whole Tomioka-Region. But he didn’t reckon with Oryu turning up and telling her side of the story. To her big disappointment the council decides against her plea (though it seems they were bribed by Kasamatu). When Kasamatsus men, lead by Bunta Sugawara, try to kill Oryu, she gets unexpected help by a stranger, who later turns out to be Shutaro Kazama (Kouji Tsuruta) also known as Killer Shutaro. While they manage to fight of Kasamatsus men, it is one of the two Yakuza-wannabes who actually saves Oryus life by giving his own. Although Oryu is a very patient woman, she finally has enough of Kasamatsus evil plans and returns to Tomioka to clean things up and if it means to gamble her life for justice.

While the first part of Red Peony was definitely good, I still felt it to be a little “stiff” and not much different from other Ninkyo-Eigas of that time. I expected a little more of a series that is heralded as one of the best Yakuza-Series ever. Well, part two came much closer to my high expectations. All the signatures of a classic Ninkyo-Eiga are played out to extreme, the Tattoo’s (the Gambling Woman Oren for example), the Gambling-Scenes, the introduction ceremony (Oryu in front of a blood red background... wonderful) and of course the fights. Visually Red Peony: Gamblers Obligation is a feast. But the story doesn’t hold back either. There are many different side stories woven into the main story and Suzuki manages to combine them with bravura. Though I must admit, that Tomisaburo Wakayamas Country Pumpkin Yakuza in love with Oryu is kinda annoying. I guess it’s just not my kind of humour. If you were disappointed by Red Peony 1, give the series another chance with Part 2, I’m sure you might change your mind and might want to see more. And believe me, Part 3 gets even better.

Courtesy Yakuza Eiga

Other Red Peony Films:

Red Peony Gambler aka Lady Yakuza (1968) (Pt.1)
Red Peony: Hanafuda Game (1969) (Pt.3)
Red Peony: Second Generation Ceremony (1969) (Pt.4)
Red Peony: Notorious Gambler (1969) (Pt.5)
Red Peony: Here comes Oryu (1970) (Pt.6)
Red Peony: Request for your Life (1971) (Pt.7)
Red Peony: Execution of Duty (1972) (Pt.8)

Japanese Title: Nora-neko rokku: Wairudo janbo
Director: Toshiya Fujita

Toshiya Fujita, best known for the JD hit Hiko Shonen: Hinode No Sakebi (1967) and its sequel, directed this first of four follow-ups to Female Juvenile Delinquent Leader: Stray Cat Rock (1970). Meiko Kaji returns as the leader of an all-girl motorcycle gang, this time tricked by a corrupt preacher into helping to fleece his congregation for a share of the loot. Tatsuya Fuji co-starred before finding international fame in the classic In the Realm of the Senses (1976).

©Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Japanese Title: Tokugawa sekkusu kinshi-rei: shikijô daimyô
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

Japanese Title: Kyofu Joshi Koko – Boryoku Kyoshitsu
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

The first installment of the Terrifying Girls High School series, Women’s Violent Classroom, is the weakest, a relentlessly mean-spirited yarn with little of director Norifumi Suzuki’s trademark outlandishness on display until late in the narrative. Even usually supercharged Miki Sugimoto as the thoroughly nasty delinquent boss fails to register much on the jolt meter. But Reiko Ike’s charismatic portrayal of a super-intelligent teen orphaned by the murder/suicide of her parents is an astonishingly matter-of-fact performance that truly embodies the essence of cool without flashy emotional pyrotechnics. Her character is schizophrenically divided between playing classical piano and acting-out as a yakuza lone wolf. Her refusal to knuckle under to her lecherous guardian (Hiroshi Nawa, who is also a head school official) or her bullying rival, Sugimoto, raises the film up out of its programmer status.

©2006 - Chris D.

Japanese Title: Sukeban Buruusu – Mesubachi No Gyakushu
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

The first of the Girl Boss series, Girl Boss Blues – Queen Bee’s Counterattack, directed by Norifumi Suzuki, features the memorably infamous sex-on-a-motorcycle-last-one-to-come-wins race, Reiko Ike’s violent sparring with a returning rival (Yukie Kagawa) and an evil yakuza kidnap-for-ransom of Ike’s bosozuku (biker gang) beau (Shunsuke Taki). Taki is released when his rich dad pays the swag, and everything culminates when Ike convinces her other abusive boyfriend, one of the yakuza (Hiroshi Miyauchi), to help steal back the loot from his gang. Then for good measure, add in a subplot of a world-weary, single father hitman (Shigeru Amachi, of Hell) who dies at the climax when he sides with the wayward youths. Miyauchi and the gang bite the dust, too, with the yakuza boss (Toru Abe) pursuing Ike and Taki down a perilous mountain road in a wild car chase. Both cars go off the cliff, and only Ike survives when she jumps free.

©2006 - Chris D.

Japanese Title: Sukeban Buruusu – Mesubachi No Chosen
Director: Norifumi Suzuki

The second installment of the Girl Boss series, Girl Boss Blues – Queen Bee’s Challenge is also helmed by Norifumi Suzuki, this time finding Reiko Ike and Chiyako Kazama as feuding sukebans from Kyoto and Osaka respectively. A wicked yakuza boss (Asao Koike) takes advantage of their enmity to ensnare both of the girls for a round of sexual abuse. By the end, the two girls are reconciled, and Kazama sacrifices her life to save new friend, Ike. In the final frames, the avenging Ike is finally able to trap their sadistic tormentor, Koike, in a revolving door and blast him to kingdom come.

©2006 - Chris D.

Japanese Title: Edogawa Ranpo Zenshu: Kyofu Kikei Ningen
Director: Teruo Ishii

Unique minds make unique films. Case in point: Teruo Ishii. Now in his 80s and still going strong, Ishii has amassed a filmography of over 80 titles since his debut with Ring No Oja: Eiko No Sekai in 1957. Though he is predominantly known for his series of gleefully sleazy exposés on Edo-era torture practices that began with The Joys of Torture, his back catalogue contains more than a few films whose outrageousness is of quite another kind.

Of these, The Horror of Malformed Men stands out as one of the most singular cinematic experiences not just in Ishii's history, but in all of Japan's. Combining a spectrum of influences that stretches from Rampo to butoh, it taps into the country's post-nuclear trauma so audaciously that people fled theaters in disgust upon its release and that it has been consistently barred from appearing on video or DVD since. Yet, it is beautiful, haunting and oneiric; it is the closest one can come to a dreamlike experience without closing one's eyes.

Recounting the plot of The Horror of Malformed Men is futile. Despite being narrative in nature, it ascribes to no apparent logic. Ishii and his co-screenwriter Masahiro Kakefuda have strung together elements from a variety of Edogawa Rampo works, including The Human Chair (Ningen Isu), The Stroller in the Attic (Yaneura No Sanposha), The Twins (Soseiji) and the title story, and fashioned them around an amnesiac young doctor's search for his missing father. The father, a Dr. Moreau-esque deranged scientist, lives on an island where he has created a private dominion populated by horrible hybrids of man and beast, the by-products of a wish-turned-obsession to cure his disfigured wife.

Symbolic of The Horror of Malformed Men's refusal to surrender to plausibility or narrative verisimilitude is the central figure of butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata as the unhinged doctor, scurrying across the rocky island coast in a crablike fashion, Ishii's jump cuts making his choreographed movements seem even more erratic. Dressed in a skintight silver dress, his mad eyes peering through a shroud of long black hair, Hijikata delivers his dialogue in a procession of gutteral intonations. Spastic at one moment, brooding at another, his performance is the polar opposite of star Teruo Yoshida, who wisely tones down his acting to the point of seeming to sleepwalk, a very appropriate decision given the film's overall ambience.

In a more literal reading this film could doubtlessly be called messy and illogical, but it's the kind of unordered, primal illogicality of a dream that it displays. The Horror of Malformed Men is a dream; one that would be a nightmare if it weren't so grotesquely beautiful.

© Tom Mes courtesy of Midnight Eye