Tag: 1970

Natassa

  By

★★½
“A blonde, not having more fun.”

I am reluctant to be overly harsh on this one, because I suspect I didn’t get to see this in its best format. The fact it feels very choppy and disjointed could potentially be a result of the IMDb giving this a running time of 136 minutes, but the only print available ran a good half-hour less. It was also dubbed from Greek into English and pan-and-scanned. Pretty much the holy trinity of cinematic suckage, right there. It’s the story of Natassa Arseni (Vougiouklaki), who lives in Greece when the Nazis invade during World War II. She’s initially largely unconcerned, but gradually becomes involved in the local resistance.

There are two men in her life. A former college friend, Max (Karras), followed his father’s German heritage, and is now a member of the occupying forces, who has feelings for Natassa. Her affections are elsewhere, haven fallen in love at first sight with Orestis (Papamichael), a partisan dedicated to ridding his home country of the occupying forces. She marries him and throws her lot in with the resistance, but is captured by the Nazis, and tortured for information. Except, this was a cold-blooded decision to sacrifice them, in order to provide false information to Germany about the location of a future Allied invasion. Orestis escapes capture, and hatches a daring plan to disguise himself and his men as the Nazi firing squad sent to execute Natassa. Fate, however, has other plans.

There are some good ideas here. The character of Max, with a foot in both camps is an interesting one, and I liked how there are biggest issues at play, requiring sacrifices – unwittingly, admittedly – from those on the front lines. Some scenes are very effective. The wedding of Orestis and Natassa, where they are ambushed on the way to the church, and she pushes through with the ceremony despite being shot, would be one. Then again, I’m a sucker for a bloodstained wedding dress. Vougiouklaki is strikingly blonde, and rather unGreek. However – again, perhaps due to the editing down to the most dramatic scenes, or maybe the dubbing – it feels as if she has her acting permanently set at a level of “11”, occasionally toppling over into overacting.

There are points where this is justified: I mean, you’re being interrogated and tortured (even if Max points out, “I’m not in the Gestapo, I’m in the SS” – not sure that makes much difference…), a little hysteria would seem fair enough. But when it seems most scenes are played out like that, it reduces the impact when it’s needed most. There are also moments which dangle awkwardly, such as the opening, where a post-war Natassa visits Dachau, or when she’s a singer, bursting into(presumably patriotic?) song when the Nazis show up. That feels like a knock-off of the Marseillaise bit from Casablanca. I don’t recall the heroine wielding an automatic weapon at any point, as the poster suggests, either. I’ve read that this was the biggest-grossing local movie in Greece for years after its release. Needs a remake, I’d say. 

Dir: Nikos Foskolos
Star: Aliki Vougiouklaki, Dimitris Papamichael, Kostas Karras, Kakia Panagiotou
a.k.a. Lieutenant Natassja or Battlefield Constantinople

Blind Woman’s Curse

  By

★★★
“The girls with the dragon tattoo”

Akemi Tachibana (Kaji) is second in command of her yakuza gang. During a battle with another group, she accidentally blinds Aiko Gouda (Tokuda), the sister of an enemy – an incident Akemi believes leaves her cursed, after a black cat laps up the blood spilled as a result. Following three years in jail, she returns to find the clan on the verge of war against their rivals, the Dobashi group. Various members of the Tachibanas are turning up dead, and with their tattoos flayed off. Turns out that Gouda has joined the Dobashi gang, with the aim of extracting vengeance on the woman who took her sight, even though Akemi has borne the guilt of that event ever since. 

When it concentrates on their relationship, the film is really good, with both actresses commanding the screen with an impressive presence. This leads to a final confrontation which certainly feels like it may have been an influence on the one at the end of Kill Bill, Volume One, between the Bride and O-Ren. What’s particularly outstanding is the surprising way in which it is resolved: based on everything you’ve seen to that point, you’d be forgiven for betting, odds-on, that there will be an oce-lot of arterial spray. There isn’t – though I’ll say not much more than that. It’s a strangely effective moment, like a Western where the two gunslingers eventually face off at high noon… and decide to go for a pint instead.

What’s considerably less effective is the stuff around the edges, much of which is silly – or, perhaps, played a great deal better on the page than the screen. For example, Akemi’s female minions each have part of a dragon tattooed on their back, so when they expose their shoulders and line up, it forms the entire thing. Which sounds really cool, but ends up looking more like a samurai version of the Human Centipede. There’s also the member of the enemy clan who goes around wearing a scarlet loin-cloth. It’s difficult to take someone as a threat, when they’ve apparently forgotten to put their pants on. In its defense, this is apparently played for comedy purposes, because he smells. Yeah. About that…

This illustrates the film’s main weakness, an apparent desire to be all things to all viewers. I’m not if the audience in 1970’s Japan was crying out for comedy-horror-yakuza-swordplay films, because that’s what they get here, and the various elements vary too much in quality and fail to mesh together at all. When it concentrates on what it does well – and that’s the relationship between the two female leads – it’s very good. You can easily see why Kaji, making her debut under that name here, would go on to stardom. Given how effectively they play off each other, it’s something of a surprise Tokuda didn’t follow suit, though she did go on to become (briefly) the last of writer Henry Miller’s five wives.

Dir: Teruo Ishii
Star: Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda, Makoto Sako, Hideo Sunazuka

A Daughter’s Vengeance

  By

★★
“S’no good.”

Look, I tried. I really did. When I found my attention had drifted away from watching the film, in good faith, I rewound the film to the point where I’d lost interest, and took up the movie again the following day. After all, maybe it was me. But when I still could barely bring myself to finish this leaden lump of poorly-crafted revenge-fu… No, having gone above and beyond the required effort, it’s really not me. This is lacklustre stuff, to put it mildly, even by the generally low standards of Taiwan.

The heroine (Chen), seems only to be referred to as the Snow Maiden,  and is an orphan, brought up in the mountains by the Snow Woman (Tiu); I kept wanting to call her Mrs. Narwhal, due to her striking snaggletooth, which is remarkably distracting. When the Snow Maiden discovers the truth about her orphanness – namely, that her pregnant mother was betrayed and abandoned by her father – she vows vengeance on the man responsible. While she’s looking, she adopts a “Robin Hood” like persona, rescuing the oppressed and making the oppressors pay for their crimes, in a range of (usually) non-lethal ways.

She eventually finds the family responsible: in about the film’s only interesting twist, her father is old, feeble, and largely filled with regret about having abandoned Maiden’s mom, which does present her with a bit of an ethical dilemma. Complicating matters further, his son (Wu) falls for Ms. Maiden; despite trying to keep herself emotionally distant, so that she can carry out her mission, she begins to have feelings for him too. So, will love triumph over vengeance? And, more importantly, will anyone care? At the risk of spoiling this for anyone, I can reveal the answer to the second question is a fairly conclusive “No”.

Chen isn’t a bad heroine, with a reasonable degree of screen presence – at least when standing still and glowering at people. And she does this a lot – about the only thing there’s more of in this movie is probably maniacal laughter, which appears to sit just behind Mandarin as the preferred method of communication. However, the novelty of this wears off rapidly, and the feeble excuse for martial arts this offers is a long way short of an adequate replacement. Neither the ability nor the quantity of action is acceptable, and any quality there may have been in the performances is destroyed by terrible dubbing, including atrocities such as the son being given a posh British accent. I would have been better off to cut my losses and not bother, after my first attempt to watch this failed.

[Worth noting, there was a movie released the following year, Vengeance of a Snowgirl – a very similar title to the alternate here. Don’t confuse them: while both are about orphans seeking revenge, the other was the last movie Lo Wei directed for Shaw Brothers, and has a crippled heroine who can’t use her legs. Not that this stops her, naturally…]

Dir: Chou Hsu-Chiang
Star: Chen Chen, Wu Chia Chi, Tiu Shut,
a.k.a. Vengeance of Snow Maid

Janie

  By

★★★
“Janie hasn’t got a gun. But that won’t stop her…”

janie ad matThis grindhouse obscurity manages to rise above the limitations of its budget, and proves an effectively nasty piece of work. The titular teenage “heroine” (Carpenter) is on the way to see her older lover, but embarks as well on a killing spree that first includes a classmate and the guy who picks them up, then a householder (Michael Findlay) whose swimming pool Janie hijacks, before moving onto a predatory lesbian and finally her lover’s girlfriend (Roberta Findlay), whom she strangles with a belt. This is all told in flashback as she tells the story to her disbelieving bedmate – though the corpse he discovers in the bath-tub rapidly changes his mind. Oh, and did I forget to mention, for extra sleaze points, he is also Janie’s daddy? Damn. All of her exploits are accompanied by narration from what could be seen as an ancestor of Dexter’s “dark passenger”, exhorting Janie to further murderous acts, in a placid and matter-of-fact tone that is actually all the more chilling for its calmness.

While credited to Bravman, there was definite creative input from the husband-and-wife partnership of the Findlays, both in front of and behind the camera. Bravman says Michael “helped” direct a number of scenes, though insists he was in charge overall. And as well as her on-screen role, Roberta also provided the narration and shot the film under her pseudonym, Anna Riva. The Findlays would go on to achieve worldwide notoriety for their 1976 film, the purportedly real Snuff, before Michael was killed in a rooftop helicopter accident the next year. The film appears to be Carpenter’s only movie, though reports indicate she was the director’s girlfriend, whose real name was Linda, and she was not a natural blonde, as depicted here – the early, failed efforts involving wigs account for some of the woeful continuity present here. She’s not a bad actress, though isn’t asked to do much more here than alternate between psychotic and cute; it’s the narration and overall sleazy feel that are mostly responsible for making this flesh-crawlingly effective.

Make no mistake: this is cheaply-made, with all the killings save the last (because you don’t need much to fake a strangulation) thoroughly unconvincing and lacking in impact. And for a grindhouse film of the era, it’s actually kinda tame, with less nudity than you’d see in a typical Game of Thrones episode [this runs 65 mins, so isn’t much longer either!]. Still, this is such a nastily twisted piece of work, it can only be admired as such, and is a fine example of how low-budget and independent film-making can go places mainstream cinema would never dare venture.

Dir: Jack Bravman
Star: Mary Jane Carpenter, Roberta Findlay, Peer St. Jean, Michael Findlay

Die Weibchen

  By

★★★½
“Deadlier than the male.”

This German 1970’s film is well ahead of its time in some ways, but is postively Neanderthal in others, being basically a scream of fear about women’s liberation. It feels like a far-less subtle version of Neil LaBute’s re-make of The Wicker Man, taking place in a matriarchal town, where women are in charge, with the exception of a couple of incompetent men, to lift heavy things and provide a facade of normality (the police commissioner is an alcoholic, who knows little and cares less about what’s going on). Into this scenario comes Eve (Glas), a stressed-out secretary who has been booked in for a six-week course of treatment at the local spa. It’s not long before she stumbles across the body of a man with a knife embedded in his back, only to discover that no-one believes her, with the clinic’s doctor telling people Eve is suffering from post-tramautic hallicinations. Is that the case, or is there something genuinely unpleasant going on? And what’s this on the dinner menu?

It’s clear this is a warning tale of what might happen if that pesky feminism is allowed to continue unchecked to its “logical” conclusion: there’s even an actual bra-burning, though fortunately it’s only the more photogenic members of the cast who take part in this. It does a particularly good job of straddling the line, where you’re not certain whether or not the whole thing is simply a product of Eve’s deranged imagination. It does finally come down to a decisive conclusion, with a scene which is surprisingly graphic for the time. Up until this point, the cinematography and direction do a nice job of capturing the hallucingenic feel of a nightmare, where it feels like you can only move in slow-motion and wherever you go, whatever is chasing you is already there ahead of you. However, it’s also surprisingly pro-feminist, in that it’s basically only the women who are portrayed as strong and competent: the men are all sex-obsessed or drooling idiots – occasionally both. If ever a film were guilty of sending out mixed messages, this would be it – but, surprisingly, I didn’t feel that hurt it much.

It’s certainly a unique entiry, perhaps to be filed alongside other seventies gynophobia, such as Invasion of the Bee Girls. However, with a woman at its protagonist, as well as the antagonists, this strikes a better balance between its elements and, despite occasional obviously dated elements, stands the test of almost half a century, better than I expected.

Dir: Zbynek Brynych
Star: Uschi Glas, Irina Demick, Francoise Fabian, Giorgio Ardisson
a.k.a. Mujeres carnivores

Delinquent Girl Boss: Blossoming Night Dreams

  By

★★
“Not very delinquent, and certainly not much of a boss.”

This was my first true vintage “pinky violence” movie, though I had bumped against some fringe entries in the genre before e.g. Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, which I enjoyed and really must get round to reviewing for here some time. This one…not so much. It focuses on Rika (Oshida), who gets out of reform school, and gets a job as a ‘companion’ at a bar, where most of the girls have a similarly troubled background. The local Yakuza boss is sniffing around, and his path crosses Rika’s after she (semi-unwittingly) helps a colleague steal some drugs from them. As a result, the house mother/bar owner, is on the hook for three million yen, plus interest.

It’s hard to say exactly why I found this so disappointing. I did like Oshida’s performance, as she has a kind of breezy delinquence that carries the film. However, most of the other characters (particularly the men) are little more than caricatures: witness the comic-relief gay character, while the Yakuza boss could have strayed straight from a Victorian melodrama, if only he had twirled his moustache a bit more. The plot doesn’t go anywhere interesting, capping itself off with a battle in a pachinko parlour 0 and even here, the owner has to call on male help, in the shape of the man who murdered her father, but is now very, very sorry about it…

Including action sequences that are largely lamely staged and executed (the director would do a lot better when he got someone who could actually fight, like Sue Shiomi), plus just enough nudity to make Chris tut disapprovingly, without actually providing any cheap thrills, this looks and feels every one of its forty years. I suppose this might be the point, for a certain audience. But it fell far enough short of expectations that I was left suddenly rethinking my plans to have an entire section of the site dedicated to pinky violence.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Reiko Oshida, Tatsuo Umemiya, Yukie Kagawa, Bokuzen Hidari
a.k.a. Tokyo Bad Girls

Crimson Bat: Wanted, Dead or Alive

  By

★★★½

Director Ichimura returned for the fourth episode, and despite similar problems as the third installment – most obviously, an apparent doubt that Oichi’s character can hold the viewer’s interest by herself – makes a much better stab at things here. Bounty-hunter Oichi finds out what life is like on the other side of the law, after she helps rescue an unwilling bride from a local magistrate; he slaps a 100 gold-piece reward on her head, which naturally, brings other bounty-hunters on her trail, led by Sankuro (Meguro).

She ends up in a fishing village, where the “evil property developer” subplot makes a surprising appearance, despite the historical era. The reconstruction of the harbour threatens to put the locals out of work, but a plot is afoot among the local authorities to pay them only one gold piece each in compensation, rather than the 15 gold pieces actually provided by the federal government. Residents, officials, bounty-hunters and Oichi all inevitably collide, including one character played by Tetsuro Tamba, who remains even now one of the most respected (and prolific – the IMDB lists 193 films for him!) actors in Japanese cinema.

There’s a lot of devious double-crossing and deception here, which is okay to watch, but isn’t really the reason we watch these things. And that it also turns out to be Sankuro’s birthplace is too much of a fluke to swallow. Fortunately, it all builds nicely to an extended finale, where our heroine (now also framed for the murder of a village elder) gets a chance to take out her aggression and resentment on all those who have turned her life into that of a hunted animal. It’s a great urban battle, through the town which is being demolished around her, in and out of buildings until she finally confronts the chief villain of the piece.

Though this was the last entry in the series, there isn’t much sense of closure at the end, with (and I trust I’m not really spoiling this for anyone) Oichi merely walking off into the sunset, alone again, naturally. One senses Shochiku were hoping to continue, but for whatever reason – most likely box-office success, or rather, the lack thereof – it never materialised. However, for a series from the 60’s, it was undeniably ahead of its time, and most of the films have survived the passage of three and a half decades in an impressive style. If any enterprising DVD company were to snap them up, the rewards would likely be significant.

Dir: Hirokazu Ichimura
Stars: Yoko Matsuyama, Yuki Meguro, Tetsuro Tanaba, Reiko Oshida
a.k.a. Mekura No Oichi Monogatari: Inochi Moraimasu