Tag: f

Friday Foster

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★★
“Thank God It’s Not Friday…”

Friday_Foster_PosterI was quite surprised to realize this was actually adapted from a nationally-syndicated comic strip, the first to have a black woman – indeed, a black character of any kind – as its focus. However, by the time the film came out, in 1975, the strip had already come to an end, running from 1970-74; despite it’s groundbreaking heroine, it’s now largely forgotten. The film is too, with a title that is so bland, I nearly skipped over it entirely on Netflix. If it wasn’t for the completist in me, I’d probably have been better off doing so, for this is a very minor Grier entry, despite what is almost an all-star cast. Besides Grier and Kotto, as the poster mentions, there’s also Eartha Kitt, Carl Weathers, Jim Backus, Scatman Crothers and Rosalind Miles (the last who was in the surprisingly-decent Al Adamson flick, I Spit on your Corpse!).

Shame the storyline doesn’t really know what to do with them, meandering instead through a muddy plot that tries to make up, in whizzing from Los Angeles to Washington, what it makes up for in genuine coherence. Friday (Grier) is a photographer who is sent on New Year’s Eve to get the scoop on the unexpected return of Blake Tarr (Rasulala), the “black Howard Hughes,” she instead witnesses an assassination attempt. [I note, this is one of the few genre entries which depicts black citizens at all tiers of society, including the top of the power elite.] Shortly after, her best friend is stabbed to death at a fashion show, after intimating to Foster that something is up. You will not be surprised to hear that these things are connected, and finding the truth takes the help of a friendly private-eye (Kotto), and Friday crossing the country, before a massive shoot-out erupts on a preacher’s country estate.

However, Friday is not very much involved in this – indeed, despite the obvious flaunting of a gun in the poster, she’s disappointingly pacifist. I mean, when an assassin (Weathers) breaks into her apartment while she’s showering, she runs away. That is not the Pam Grier for which I signed up, I signed up for the one that would have kicked the assailant’s arse, strangled him with her towel, then calmly returned to her shower. I was kinda amused by the way she steals cars at will – first a hearse, then (of all things!) a milk-float. But as a plucky investigative heroine who steps aside and lets the men do just about all actual fighting necessary, she’s more like Brenda Starr than Foxy Brown. Aside from Grier’s shower and the occasional N-word, this romp could just about play on TV without anyone getting too upset. And that just ain’t right.

Dir: Arthur Marks
Star: Pam Grier, Yaphet Kotto, Godfrey Cambridge, Thalmus Rasulala

Foxy Brown

  By

★★★★
“…and I’ve got a black belt in bar-stools!”

foxyBrown (Grier) has a drug-dealing brother Link (Fargas), who works for a mob run by Steve Elias (Brown) and Katherine Wall (Loder). He tells them where to find Foxy’s boyfriend, a former undercover cop, a betrayal which leads to the latter’s death. Understandably peeved, Foxy works her way in to the gang responsible through their modelling agency, a prostitution front used to keep happy the judges and politicians who protect them. But when her presence is discovered, she’s shot up with heroin and sent off to the ranch where they package the smack. Does that stop her? Hell, no.

Following on from the success of Coffy, director Hill teamed up again with Grier – this was originally intended to be a sequel, under the original title Burn, Coffee, Burn! but AIP decided to make a new character instead, albeit with more or less the same script. There’s no shortage of grindhouse material, with neither the nudity nor the violence being soft-pedalled: interestingly, given this, the heroine doesn’t actually kill either villain, though you could certainly argue Elias, in particular, suffers a fate worse than death. The plot and characters have stood the test of time well, even the scummy Link, who has a pretty compelling explanation for his life of crime: “I’m a black man, and I don’t know how to sing, and I don’t know how to dance, and I don’t know how to preach to no congregation. I’m too small to be a football hero, and too ugly to be elected mayor.”

It’s an improvement on Coffy in a number of ways, with Grier more self-assured, and Hill apparently having a better handle on things as well. While it has been criticized for race-baiting – there are literally no good Caucasians – I’m as white as they come and it feels more like an attack on established power. The supporting cast also deserve credit, with Brown and Loder appropriately sleazy, Sid Haig being Sid Haig, and Juanita Brown deserving mention as another prostitute. Lots of moments here to treasure, including a spectacular death by propeller, Foxy hiding a gun in her afro (!), and a lesbian barroom brawl that’s glorious, which leads to the line at the top of the review. Among the dykes there, are Stephanie and Jeannie, stuntwomen from the famous Epper clan. with the latter a mentor to Zoë Bell.

But this is Grier’s show, and she carries it magnificently, even if at times it feels more like she is modelling the Foxy Brown fall collection, rather than engaging on a roaring rampage of revenge. [Some things about the seventies are likely best left there: the fashions would be one of them!] That’s a minor complaint, as what we have here is an iconic heroine, who has rarely been matched in the 40 years since, for her combination of heart and brain, courage and empathy, all wrapped up in one seriously kick-ass package.

Dir: Jack Hill
Star: Pam Grier, Peter Brown, Antonio Fargas, Kathryn Loder

Female Ninjas: Magic Chronicles, Part 1

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★★
“At least it’s imaginative. Unfortunately, that’s all it is.”

femaleninja1Samurai lord Toyotomi Hideyori is about to lose his lands, to an assault from his wife’s grandfather, Tokugawa, but he’s not going down without a fight. Or, at least, to continue the battle, he has sex with her multiple female ninja handmaidens, in the hope of having a son who can continue the battle – that’s some long-term thinking, right there. Lady Sen (Shiroshima) is down with her husband’s plan; Tokugawa, not so much. When he finds out about the resulting pregnancies, he dispatches a series of ninjas of his own – men who have, shall we say, a very particular set of skills; skills they have acquired over a very long career – to ensure there’s no live births. Fortunately, the lady ninjas have some unusual abilities of their own, with which they can counterattack: as one of them says, “As ninjas, we’ve been trained to master sexual challenges.” Let battle begin!

This is such an… educational movie. I mean, if your sperm lands on a woman’s skin, she won’t rest until she has had sex with you. Who knew? Maybe it needs to be ninja sperm or something: the film is kinda unclear on the specifics. Meanwhile, on the distaff side, there’s the transference of a fetus from woman to woman as necessary, and most impressively of all, the ability to blow bubbles from your vagina, which send men they contact back to the womb. It’s insane moments like these which keep this marginally watchable, simply on the level of “What the hell will they come up with next?”, and it’s clear this is where the majority of the makers’ imagination and effort went. The rest of the time is filled with soft-core gropings and largely unconvincing fight sequences, when the sexual trickery proves inadequate. Though I did quite like the bit where one ninja’s shadow detaches itself and goes into battle independently.

The actors and actresses involved make absolutely no impression at all, though deserve applause, simply for keeping a straight face while dealing with “female ninja lock magic”, which is exactly what it sounds like, and delivering lines like “Now, I’ll squirt my own seed into your vile body,” without bursting out laughing. I’d be lying if I said this was in the slightest bit “good”, by any conventional measure. But even I have to admit it’s once seen, never forgotten, and so deserves credit above and beyond that given to many, far more forgettable flicks.

Dir: Masaru Tsushima
Star: Yasuyo Shiroshima, Ginji Gao, Reiko Hayama, Hitomi Okazaki

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Grudge Song

  By

★★★
“Can Sasori escape the hangman’s noose and live happily ever after?”

Nami (Kaji) is about to get married, but her wedding day is rudely interrupted by the arrival of the cops, who arrest her. On the way to prison (and, unsurprisingly, death row, given the body count left behind in the previous three movies), she takes out the driver, causing a crash. The injured Scorpion staggers away, and is rescued by Kudo (Tamura), a former political radical who was brutalized by the police for his actions, and so has a massive load of resentment against them. After being informed of Kudo’s harbouring of Nami by a worked at the sex-club where he works, the cops take him in: and use both physical and psychological torture to try and make him give up her location. Eventually arrested, Nami is sentenced to death, but the cops intend to make sure the time leading up to her execution is as unpleasant and possible, and the detective in charge, Hirose (Tsukata), is intent on making even Nami’s death as lonely an experience as possible.

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” Michael Corleone’s quote from Godfather III seems appropriate here, as it appears Nami was preparing to settle down to a normal life, difficult though it is to see her as a happy housewife. Of course, the cops won’t let it lie, and so begins another cycle of revenge. As in the previous entry, it’s less Nami’s vengeance than her associate’s, at least initially, as we discover Kudo has as much, if not more, reason to hate the police as she does. The final section, however, returns to its roots, with Nami back in prison and having to handle hostility, not only from the police but the guards, though by this time, she has at least attained near-legendary status among the other prisoners, as you’d expect. Doesn’t stop her screwing with another prisoner, who appears to be calmly awaiting her fate: the point of that seemed kinda lost, and unnecessarily cruel.

The last of the series in which Kaji starred, it was also the only one of her four movies not directed by Ito. His replacement, Hasebe, is competent enough, but only rarely brings the same sense of style to proceedings. Kaji is as worth watching as ever, but for too long, she seems like a supporting character in her own movie, with the focus more on Kudo. Chalk up another win for misleading advertising though, as Nami certainly does not use the long rifle with which she is pictured on the DVD sleeve (right).

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable

  By

★★★
“Because a baby is for life – even if the Yakuza think otherwise. “

When this begins, Nami (Kaji) is on the run, and slices the arm off Detective Kondo (Narita) after he handcuffs himself to her. She befriends street hooker Yuki (Watanabe), who runs foul of the locak Yakuza gang by turning tricks on their turn, while trying to care for her brain-damaged brother, whom she also services sexually, to stop him from raping women(!). After Nami is involved in the death of a gang member who was blackmailing her, the gang’s madam Katsu (Lee), who knew the Scorpion from her own prison days, captures her, locking our heroine up in a literal big bird-cage. But after the true horror of the Yakuza’s treatment of their women is revealed (it starts with a golf-club going where no golf-club should ever go), Nami escapes and carves a bloody path of revenge on those responsible. When Katsu realizes what’s going on, she turns herself in to the police, figuring jail will be safe from Sasori’s wrath. Take a wild stab in the dark… Which, by coincidence is exactly what Katsu deserves.

There are some angles to this I liked. For instance, the way that Nami is taking revenge here, less for herself – really, she gets off pretty lightly, in comparison to the previous two installments – than for others. I also enjoyed the way she… Well, I’m reluctant to spoil it, but let’s just say, she takes care of Katsu and Kondo without getting her hands dirty. However, the positives are largely balanced out by Yuki, who is one of the more irritating and pointless creatures in cinematic history. Her life appears to be a litany of bad choices, and the film seems to realize how tiresome she is: in the second half, she’s largely relegated to flicking lit matches into the sewer where Nami is hiding out (in a fetching blue dress, it has to be said).

This would be Ito’s last entry in the series: he’d later go on to direct Gray Sunset, which beat out Kurosawa’s Ran to become Japan’s official Academy Award entry for the Foreign Film category in 1985. He seems to have reined in some of his more stylish visual excesses here, which is a bit of a shame, as that’s one of theings which helped elevate this series above the level of generic exploitation. This certainly delivers on the sleaze front [yet could be seen as pro-life, an interesting combo!], but at least in the first half, doesn’t have a great deal more to offer.

Dir: Shunya Ito
Star: Meiko Kaji, Mikio Narita, Yayoi Watanabe, Reisen Lee

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

  By

★★★½
“Out of the frying-pan and into the fire goes our heroine.”

Right from the start, Nami (Kaji) established her utterly hardcore credentials, as she’s trying to dig her way out of the dungeon where she has been for the past year. With a spoon. Held in her teeth. She’s let out for the day because a bigwig is visiting, but takes the opportunity to attack warden Goda (Watanabe), almost depriving him of the sight of his other eye. As punishment for the resulting riot, Goda sends four guards to gang-rape Nami, and all the inmates are sent to a hard-labour camp. On the way back, they beat Nami as punishment, leaving her near-dead but it turns out that was just her ruse to get the guards to open the back of the van and escape. She leads the women across a blasted landscape, revenge once more on her mind, with Goda’s men in hot pursuit.

It doesn’t work quite as well as the original, in part because Nami’s motivation isn’t as clear and powerful: it’s only at the end that I realized who she was out to get (and, for the second time, we get a climax on a roof that, remarkably, actually ends, without someone toppling off it). It’s just not as strong a motive, considering everything she has been through by that point, and her terseness reaches almost epic proportions, so isn’t much of a help. Second time round, Ito has reined in the sexual aspects considerably, but has upped the surrealness, as if to make amends, and the results are a couple of truly brilliant sequences. One has a body turn into leaves and blow away, while the other sees a literal river of blood announce the death of a character. However, once they break out of jail, Nami seems largely passive, observing proceedings rather than driving them, and that deflates her value as a heroine.

It’d certainly be wrong to describe this as a failure, because it is undeniably successful at generating the atmosphere and tone desired by Ito, and Kaji is as charismatic as ever, with a powerful screen presence few actresses of any era can match. However, those elements exist in something of a vacuum here, and the results, while worthwhile, are less effective than I seemed to remember them.

Dir: Shunya Ito
Star: Meiko Kaji, Kayoko Shiraishi, Fumio Watanabe, Yukie Kagawa

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

  By

★★★★
“One of the all-time classics of the women-in-prison genre.”

This archetypal “women in prison” film is lifted above its colleagues in the genre, most of which are little more than crude exploitation, by being pretty damn sophisticated exploitation. The two main factors are Ito’s great sense of visual style, and Kaji’s almost-silent performance as Nami Matsushima. She ends up in jail after being betrayed by her cop boyfriend Sugimi (Isao), who turns out to be in league with the Yakuza he was investigating. Nami vows to escape, and the film starts with her doing so, but she is quickly recaptured, thrown back into jail, and her fellow inmates are punished for her actions, causing them to turn against her. While not her fault, she’s involved in an incident which costs the warden (Watanabe) his eye, and he vows to break her at any cost. That’s an awful lot easier said then done, and what happens as a result might be what Nami wanted all along. Meanwhile, Sugimi, seeking to tie up the loose end she represents, promises another inmate, Katagiri (Yokoyama) parole, if she takes care of Nami.

I’m not quite sure how the DVD sleeve on the right reaches the conclusion that this “inspired” Kill Bill: maybe nodded to it in an elevator once, because “female revenge” is really about all they have in common. However, it stands perfectly well on its own merits, powered by Kaji, who has one goal in mind – escaping and taking revenge – and anything else just washes off her back. If you can imagine her as a female, darker version of Cool Hand Luke (without the hard-boiled eggs!), refusing to bow to the sadistic guards, when it would be far easier to do so, you’ll be in the right ballpark. She has no “superpowers,” just an extraordinary persistent resilience and inner strength that makes her a remarkable heroine. Particularly considering this was his feature debut, Ito’s use of colour and Dutch angles to enhance the action are quite remarkable in its lack of restraint. The screen glows green as Nami takes her revenge, for example, and there’s another shot which looks like a Hieronymus Bosch vision of hell, for its lurid shades, while the camera will till 90 or even 180 degrees to make its point.

There’s no shortage of the exploitative aspects, however, with copious amounts of toplessness and arterial spurting, as well as an amusing chunk of lesbian lust, where five minutes with Nami proves sufficient to turn a stool-pigeon into a devoted admirer. So this is not exactly family viewing, let’s be clear on that front. However, it’s quality is difficult to deny, and as sex ‘n’ violence goes, this is definitely from the top-shelf of the liquor cabinet.

Dir: Shunya Ito
Star: Meiko Kaji, Rie Yokoyama, Natsuyagi Isao, Fumio Watanabe

Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture

  By

★½
“I should have paid more attention to the second-half of the title.”

This starts with a memorable sequence in which Inoshika Ocho (Ike) fights off a number of attackers, armed only with her umbrella; albeit, an umbrella that is rather more heavily-armed than most. While she succeeds, she ends up losing all of her clothes in the process, leading to some artful staging in which the discarded umbrella is used to hide her naughties bits. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, while occasionally reaching the same levels of unsanity is largely crude and unpleasant. Even the central concept – a gang smuggling drugs in the vaginas of junkies – falls firmly into that category.

Ocho falls into the gang’s clutches when an unfortunate wardrobe choice leads them to mistake her for one of their mules. When they discover there is no heroin in our heroine, they try to frame her for the “Crotch Gouge” murders, which they have been carrying out themselves to inspire fear in their employees. She is assisted in escaping this peril by the clan’s former boss, Joji (Uchida), who has just got out of jail to find his spot taken by Goda (Endo), who has embarked on the scheme in question. Since Ocho had some history with an earlier clan boss, after he sacrificed his own digit to save hers, when she was caught cheating in a gambling den, she teams up with Joji to restore the clan’s good name.

Its an odd combination that manages to mix nasty levels of sexual violence with slapstick comedy, and the results are unsatisfying in just about every way. There’s no shortage of breasts on view – particularly at the finale, which echoes the opening, except with the nipple-count increased by a factor of x50. However, the film also diverts itself off into a number of thoroughly uninteresting subplots, which chew up time and offer very little except more Japanese women being pawed. A sequel to Sex and Fury, despite a decent lead character, there was almost nothing here to inspire any interest in seeing its predecessor. I was left with a feeling of distinct exploitation, and not in a good way.

Dir: Teruo Ishii
Star: Reiko Ike, Ryohei Uchida, Tatsuo Endo

The Forty-First

  By

★★★½
“Robinson Crusoe during wartime.”

It’s the war between the Bolsheviks and the White Guard. A platoon of the former is left with no route of escape except across the desert to the Aral Sea. They begin the perilous trek, under Commander Yevsyukov (Kryuchkov), aided by the unit’s best sniper, Maria Filatovna (Izvitskaya). During the journey, they capture a White officer, Lieutenant Vadim Govorkha (Strizhenov, who looks kinda like Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride!) who is carrying information vital to his side. The Bolsheviks take him with them, as they head back to HQ, with Maria given the task of guarding him. But when she is separated from her comrades, and left with Vadim to fend for themselves after a storm, duty and loyalty to the cause of Communism becomes conflicted with other less revolutionary emotiona.

Given this was made in 1957, during the height of the Cold War, with Joe Stalin barely cold in the ground, it’s relatively even-handed, with Govokha portrayed sympathetically, especially given he was The Enemy [his colleague in the White Guards are definitely bastards, as we see when they ruthlessly interrogate an torch a native village in pursuit of the Bolsheviks]. This apparently led to some issue with the censors, who were less impressed. Anyway, Maria is an engaging character, well ahead of her time, and prone to random outbursts of “Fish cholera!” when vexed [look, I’m just reporting that’s what the subtitles say]. She takes surprising glee in gunning down the enemy, keeping count as she does so: Vadim almost becomes kill #41, hence the title. It’s the middle section where she really comes to the fore, taking charge of a difficult situation until the more romantic elements take over.

Even these, which would normally have me rolling my eyes, aren’t too bad, because of the political angle, leading to lines such as “You’re asking me to loll on a feather-bed with you and eat chocolates? When those chocolates are all smeared with blood?” Not your usual romance, shall we say. The ending is just superb: it’s one of those which you absolutely should see coming (it’s foreshadowed enough), but still comes as a surprise. Add in some great settings, both in the desert and by the sea, as well as an interesting visual style and, if this isn’t as action-packed as one might wish, given its era, this remains a surprisingly worthwhile watch.

Dir: Grigori Chukhrai
Star: Izolda Izvitskaya, Oleg Strizhenov, Nikolai Kryuchkov

FMW: Torn to Shreds

  By

★★
“Megumi Kudo: the real ‘Barb Wire’…”

I really wanted to use little barb-wire icons to mark this one, instead of the usual stars, but whenever I typed in “barb wire jpg” into search engines, I always seemed to find myself staring at Pamela Anderson.  Yes, get those digressions out of the way early, that’s what I always say…

This is the sixth in Tokyo Pop’s ongoing series of releases featuring Japanese wrestling from the FMW (Frontier Martial-arts Wrestling) federation, and while the others have all contained women’s matches, it’s the first to concentrate exclusively on this angle. So credit to them for putting out what is – correct me if I’m wrong – the first official release of Japanese women’s wrestling in the West. Unfortunately, that’s largely where the credit stops as far as they’re concerned.

To start with, FMW are a long way from being the best Japanese federation for women’s wrestling – they don’t even bother these days, having given up several years ago (these bouts largely date from 1995, so are hardly current) and think they might even have gone bankrupt now. Secondly, in line with FMW’s policy of hardcore – they’re kinda the Japanese equivalent of ECW – the women have largely been chosen for their willingness to do the extreme stuff, rather than any actual wrestling ability. This shows itself most prominently in the case of Shark Tsuchiya, whom I’ve encountered on several “unofficial” tapes, and is definitely one of the worst pro wrestlers I’ve seen. It’s significant that the best wrestler to be seen in this title is KAORU, who’s actually from another federation.

Thirdly, while they could have cherry-picked the best matches, most of the fights here are off one card, including lame rookie bouts not really worthy of note. [People like Sonoko Kato might be good now, but she had a lot to learn in those days…and was unlikely to do it in FMW] Fourthly, and most damningly, since the others are perhaps less within Tokyo Pop’s control, the two presenters are awful. John Watanabe is clueless, while his irritatingly fey partner, Eric Geller, annoyed me in a disturbingly Tarantino-esque way. On the DVD, you can at least switch to Japanese commentary during the matches, but you will want to skip their inter-bout “banter”.

There’s only one bout here that’s genuinely memorable, and it’s purely on a geek-show level. It’s part of the long rivalry between Shark Tsuchiya and the queen of FMW, Megumi Kudo, and is notable for it being a barbed-wire match, with the ropes of the ring being replaced by strands of (entirely genuine, I might add) barbed-wire. Having seen Kudo fight in cards for other promotions, I know she can actually wrestle, but there’s no sign of that here, stuck as she is with a useless lump like Tsuchiya. The bout follows almost the same pattern as all their others: Tsuchiya brutalises Kudo, Kudo bleeds, Kudo comes back gallantly.

The only major change here is how much Kudo bleeds: it’s buckets. I’ve seen few men’s matches as gory, and this is certainly among the worst of women’s bouts (there was a cage match pitting Shimoda and Mita against Watanabe and Ito that may come close). Kudo takes some severe bumps, particularly against the folding table that just won’t give, taking four attempts to break it [the Japanese must make them of stronger stuff!] You’ll probably find yourself shaking your head as Kudo’s face becomes totally red, a mask of blood.

The DVD offers some extras: brief highlights from an additional bout, extra footage of Watanabe and Geller (oh, joy…), a picture gallery of FMW wrestlers and some cheesecake footage of Kudo, which you’d be advised to watch before you see her gushing blood, as that will likely destroy any cuteness factor present for her. In other words: nothing to sway the vacillating purchaser.

As mentioned, it’s good to see this release, even if as an introduction to Japanese women’s wrestling, it’s largely a failure, being neither representative, nor good enough to attract the casual viewer. Meanwhile, the hardcore fan will likely have the bouts already, and will certainly possess better. This is a shame since there are some phenomenal athletes to be found, and it’s an area deserving of exposure here, particularly given the largely-woeful state of mainstream women’s wrestling. If it opens the gate to other, better titles, it’ll have performed an excellent, much-needed job, but on the whole, you should go for some of the unofficial tapes available through the Internet: names to look for would include Manami Toyota, Akira Hokuto, Aja Kong, Kyoko Inoue and Mima Shimoda. And definitely not Shark Tsuchiya…

Star: Megumi Kudo, Shark Tsuchiya, KAORU, Combat Toyoda