Tag: japan

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

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★★★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

The Sasori: Female Prisoner Scorpion series

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In the first half of the 1970’s, Meiko Kaji was to the slightly-disreputable end of Japanese cinema, much what Pam Grier was to the same end of Hollywood movies. Both made a career out of playing strong female characters, often operating on or beyond the boundaries of the law, and with no compunction about using violence to achieve their ends – which often involved taking revenge on those (almost alwayx men) who had wronged them. The Sasori [Japanese for “scorpion”] was not Kaji’s first foray into the genre, having cut her teeth on the Noraneko Rokku [Straycat or Alleycat Rock] films, a couple of years previously.

And it’s probably not even her most well-known work in the West: that would be Lady Snowblood, which deposited her in an earlier era, as a female swordswoman, and whose theme was “borrowed” by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill, Volume 1. But in terms of enduring appeal, the character Sasori has them both beat, with sequels, remakes and spin-offs continuing for more than 35 years after the original, through the 2008 Hong Kong remake. Even now, it’s an iconic character that has rarely been matched for sheer bad-assery.

The credit for this is not entirely Kaji’s, though obviously her portrayal is indispensable. Often forgotten is that the character of Sasori did not originate on the silver screen, but in a manga, by Toru Shinohara (shown, left). He has something of a track record in the genre, having also created the comic on which the Zero Woman series was based, and written the story for Metropolitan Police Branch 82. Perhaps even more important to the saga’s lasting suggest was director Shunya Ito, who took the potentially-tawdry premise, and elevated it above and beyond the level you’d expect, with a visual style that goes far past any other mere “women in prison” flick. It’s such a fully-formed approach, right from the get-go, that it feels like the work of a far more experienced director.

Truly, it was one of those moments in movie history where things come together in such a way as to produce results which manage to be more than the sum of their parts. While the quality of the six films which came out during a five-year span from 1972-77 is undeniably variable. they all have their merits and remain worth your attention, even four decades later. Let’s take a look at each entry from the seventies incarnation in turn.

The series theme, Urami-Bushi, written by director Shunya Ito and sung by Meiko Kaji.


“You’re a beautiful fiower”, his words flatter you today.
But once you’re in full bloom, he’ll just toss you away.
Foolish, foolish, foolish woman’s song…
Her song of vengeance


“Sorrow is my fate”, so you’ve given up on men.
Show him your tears and he’ll bring you grief again.
Tearful, tearful, tearful woman’s song…
Her song of vengeance.


“You cling to your dreams,” they scorn your world of lies.
So you try to wake up, but you can’t open your eyes.
A woman, a woman, a woman’s heart is her song…
Her song of vengeance.

  • Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

    ★★★★
    “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 Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

    ★★★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 Scorpion: Beast Stable

    ★★★
    “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: Grudge Song

    ★★★
    “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).

  • New Female Prisoner Scorpion 701

    ★★★
    “Reset! Reset!”

    Just goes to show that the “cinematic reboot” is not a 21st-century invention, e.g. Batman or James Bond. For a mere three years after Meiko Kaji showed her sting as Nami, the studio reset the series, giving it a new director, new (and much more talkative) lead actress, and returning Nami Matsushima to a happy, criminal record-free young women, with a loving boyfriend. Except, of course, he turns out not to love her quite as much. Things start to collapse after her sister uncovers evidence of major government corruption, and passes it to Nami, shortly before being kidnapped. After Nami uncovers the truth – her sister is killed and she is framed for the murder, with the help of her boyfriend, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Initially an easy mark for the tough girls in her cell, Nami soon develops her mean streak. And she’s going to need it, because the politician behind it all is looking to tidy up the loose end she represents, by killing her and making the death look like a suicide. Name turns the tables, in incendiary fashion, and it’s clear that she’s one loose end that won’t be quietly disposed of.

    Y’know how On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a really great Bond film, with a crappy Bond, Lazenby being the merest shadow of Connery? That’s the situation we have here. The film would be perfectly serviceable, but with every (largely superfluous) word, gesture and action, the viewer can’t help but be reminded of Kaji, who simply fits the character being depicted here, far better. Not that Takigawa is a bad actress. It is just that Kaji made such a strong impression in the role, anyone else playing the character is almost bound to seem like a pale imitation in comparison. Without Kaji or the surrealist touches brought to the previous entries by Shunya Ito, there really isn’t much to distinguish this from the rougher end of the pinku genre, with Kohira appearing to take particular interest in the rape.

    The sections after Nami breaks out are the best, in terms of style, and it’s hard to put your finger on any problems: “competent” is likely a good word for this. But probably the most damning indictment, is that I watched the film, wrote most of the review, and then realized almost nothing about the second half had stuck in my mind at all. I ended up having to pull the movie up, just to convince myself I hadn’t been called away to dinner half-way through or something. I hadn’t: it had just failed to make any significant impression on me.

    Dir: Yutaka Kohira
    Star: Yumi Takigawa, Ryoko Ema, Nobuo Kaneko, Ichiro Nakaya

  • New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Special Cellblock X

    ★★★½
    “And we bid a fond farewell to Nami, and a third different actress.”

    The comparisons of Takigawa to Lazenby above proved appropriate in another way, both being canned after one entry playing the iconic title character, which is probably just as symptomatic of something. The replacement here as Nami Matsushima is Natsuki, who seems to go back toward a more taciturn heroine, closer to the original. But it’s, effectively, another reboot, with not even a nod to the previous entry. In this case, the heroine is a nurse, framed for her involvement in the hospital murder of a politician who was threatening to expose corrupt practices. The film starts with her being sent back to jail after a failed escape attempt: that resulted in the rest of the inmates being punished, and they’re none too pleased to see her brought back. There’s also a pragmatic guard who is happy to keep the inmates supplied with cigs and chocolate in exchange for peace, but his position is threated by the arrival of a new head of “security”, with a much tougher stance. After trying to expose the abuse to a visiting dignitary, he ends up in hot water, and teams up with Nami, the pair going on the lam through the mountains, chained to each other – it’s a bit like Black Mama, White Mama, with characters forced to work together for their mutual benefit.

    In some ways, this feels like a combination of the first two movies: it has the “woman wronged by the man she loves” theme of the original, and then the “escape through a blasted landscape” plotline from its immediate sequel. There’s also the usual helpings of abuse, though the sexual content here is significantly toned-down, with Natsuki barely showing a nipple. On the other hand, the S&M seems more intense, most notably a scene where multiple prisoners are bound and hung up, to be brutally beaten. By this point, I’ll confess that my interest in that aspect, never exactly great, was all but non-existent. Things did perk up post-escape, with some excellent cinematography, as the pair struggle through the deserted landscape [it’s easy to forget how concentrated the Japanese population is, leaving some areas almost desolate]. Of course, it ends with another vengeful confrontation for Nami – not for the first time, on a roof.

    The paucity of original ideas to be found here likely indicates why the series went into dormancy thereafter. As a way to wrap up, however, it works fairly well, particularly if you consider it as a “greatest hits compilation” from the preceding entries. While Natsuki still falls short of the intensity brought to the role by Kaji, she is an improvement on Takigawa, and this moves at a brisk enough pace to sustain interest, even in a viewer looking for less prurient aspects.

    Dir: Yutaka Kohira
    Star: Yoko Natsuki, Masashi Ishibashi, Hiroshi Tachi, Takeo Chii

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See also

  • Lady Snowblood 1 + 2
  • Sasori
  • Scorpion Double Venom
  • Scorpion’s Revenge
  • The Zero Woman series

Zeiram + Zeiram 2

  By

★★★

Zeiram and its sequel, Zeiram 2, both concern a creature which combines all the most unpleasant and lethal features of The Thing with The Terminator. It’s humanoid, at least in the number of functioning limbs, but its head appears almost mushroom shaped – though it’s hard to tell where Zeiram ends and its hat begins, for there’s a second face, embedded in the hat. This is capable of extending on a tentacle, to attack victims, taking in nourishment, and there’s evidence to suggest that it can absorb their DNA and use it to create monsters. Oh, and the rest of it is almost impossible to destroy.

However, trying to do exactly that is Iria (Moriyama), an interstellar bounty hunter, who has laid a trap to take Zeiram into an alternate, uninhabited dimension, in order to deal with him in a way that will pose no threat to the local population. However, she reckons without the arrival of electrical techs Kamiya (Hotaru) and Teppei (Ida), who have been dispatched by the power company to investigate the power-drain resulting from Iria’s tech. Through an unfortunate series of events, they end up in the alternate dimension with Zeiram, while Iria is largely stuck in our world, trying to keep them alive until she can fix her portal and get in there to help them.

The problems here are largely two-fold. Kamiya. And Teppei, There are few things less appealing than comic relief characters whose antics and mugging are supposed to be endearing or amusing, but fail miserably on both fronts. They bring very little to proceedings except for running time, and that’s a shame, because there is no shortage of bizarre inventiveness on view. And when the pair stop trying to be characters, shut the hell up, and simply team up with Iria to kick alien arse, it’s a lot better, because whatever they do to Zeiram, he/she/it just keeps mutating into another form and fighting back. You get the sense being fed through a wood-chipper would only be a minor inconvenience.

This also helps cover up Moriyama’s somewhat limited set of fighting skills. Admittedly, it’s possible she had to slow things down in order to fight a giant mushroom, but the hand-to-hand combat here is choreographed at about the speed of a Strauss waltz. She does have screen presence, however, and looks decent enough firing a gun. To a casual eye – that’d be my wife’s, wandering through the living-room – this could look like an episode of Amemiya’s Power Rangers, and it’s not surprising he would go on to direct some Kamen Rider films. But it’s too uneven to succeed: for every moment where you go, “Cool!”, there’s another where you’ll roll your eyes, or just go “Eh?”. For instance, the section where Zeiram squeeze out goo onto the ground, which grows into a half-man that has a burbling conversation with Zeiram, before getting its head stomped on. Altogether, now: eh?

The sequel, which came out three years later, restores the “i” in the title, which was inexplicably removed from the original for it US release by Fox Lorber. This installment starts off as if it’s going to go in some radically different directions, even if all the main players are back. Iria is seeking an ancient artifact called the Carmarite, and additionally, has a new assistant, but he turns out to be untrustworthy. Meanwhile, a shadowy group has succeeded in regenerating Zeiram as a cyborg warrior (which makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen the anime, and know its origins), bending its will to their needs and turning it into a weapon. While initially successfully, this works about as well as most plans usually do, and it’s not longer before Zeiram is much more a menace than an ally.

However, just when you think the film is going into new and interesting territory… Well, I’m not quite show how it happened, but before long we were back in more or less the same situation as the original. Blah blah irritating comic relief blah another dimension blak Iria unable to help (this time because she gets herself locked in a room), etc. You’re looking at something which borders on being a remake of the original, and unlike something like Terminator 2, which upped the ante significantly, while telling a largely similar story, there isn’t any real sense of progression or development. Much as before, things do get better when things move into action, and Zeiram is again, a shape-shifting nightmare that won’t stay dead. And this time, not even a cute dog which strays into proceedings is off the menu.

It also helps that, this time around, Moriyama has a better handle on the action angle. Previously, it was very much a case of kick, pause, punch, pause, move, but she is a good deal more fluid here, and makes for a more credible heroine as a result. However, her strength is still more in the “looking cool with a gun” department, because her punches still look like they might be troubled by a damp paper-bag. On balance, the sequel’s lack of invention is approximately balanced by the overall improvement in Iria’s character and the slightly better overall production values – it still looks like you could fund it from your bedside table change – and it’s as worth watching as the first part. Which would be “somewhat”: call both of them a rent (or more likely these days, a download), rather than a buy.

Dir: Keita Amemiya
Star: Yûko Moriyama, Mizuho Yoshida, Kunihiro Ida, Yukijirô Hotaru

Zeiram

  By

“Z is for Zeiram”

Keita Amemiya was one of the directors of the show Kyõryû Sentai Zyuranger, a Japanese series which provided the initial basis (and much footage) for Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. But he is a bit of a Renaissance man, also working in animation, video games and illustration. His work seems to have a common sense of imagination, to the extent that it can be a bit overwhelming. A review of his first feature, Cyber Ninja – a title that, alone, give you a fairly idea of the location from where Amemiya is generally coming – hits the mark: “A feature length video game commercial, a much too-long advertisement for a Namco arcade game that never made its way into American pizza parlors.”

For our purposes here, however, we are concerned solely with Zeiram, his creation which spawned two live-action movies, a six-part anime adaptation, and I’m pretty damn sure a comic-book [though Google isn’t proving much help, and I’d have to go down and open my comic boxes to confirm that; since the last time they were cracked was, I kid you not, in 2000, I am reluctant to break the seal on them now]. As we’ll see the titular creature is very much the villain, but it easily qualifies here thanks to its kick-ass heroine. I had hoped to get round to watching the anime in time for this month’s installment, but I didn’t quite make it. Since baseball Opening Day and the subsequent summer go-slow is almost upon us, probably best if I cover the two movies now, and I’ll add the anime… hopefully in April, but no promises! [Update: got to it in May, so not too bad!]

Zeiram + Zeiram 2

By Jim McLennan

★★★

Zeiram and its sequel, Zeiram 2, both concern a creature which combines all the most unpleasant and lethal features of The Thing with The Terminator. It’s humanoid, at least in the number of functioning limbs, but its head appears almost mushroom shaped – though it’s hard to tell where Zeiram ends and its hat begins, for there’s a second face, embedded in the hat. This is capable of extending on a tentacle, to attack victims, taking in nourishment, and there’s evidence to suggest that it can absorb their DNA and use it to create monsters. Oh, and the rest of it is almost impossible to destroy.

However, trying to do exactly that is Iria (Moriyama), an interstellar bounty hunter, who has laid a trap to take Zeiram into an alternate, uninhabited dimension, in order to deal with him in a way that will pose no threat to the local population. However, she reckons without the arrival of electrical techs Kamiya (Hotaru) and Teppei (Ida), who have been dispatched by the power company to investigate the power-drain resulting from Iria’s tech. Through an unfortunate series of events, they end up in the alternate dimension with Zeiram, while Iria is largely stuck in our world, trying to keep them alive until she can fix her portal and get in there to help them.

The problems here are largely two-fold. Kamiya. And Teppei, There are few things less appealing than comic relief characters whose antics and mugging are supposed to be endearing or amusing, but fail miserably on both fronts. They bring very little to proceedings except for running time, and that’s a shame, because there is no shortage of bizarre inventiveness on view. And when the pair stop trying to be characters, shut the hell up, and simply team up with Iria to kick alien arse, it’s a lot better, because whatever they do to Zeiram, he/she/it just keeps mutating into another form and fighting back. You get the sense being fed through a wood-chipper would only be a minor inconvenience.

This also helps cover up Moriyama’s somewhat limited set of fighting skills. Admittedly, it’s possible she had to slow things down in order to fight a giant mushroom, but the hand-to-hand combat here is choreographed at about the speed of a Strauss waltz. She does have screen presence, however, and looks decent enough firing a gun. To a casual eye – that’d be my wife’s, wandering through the living-room – this could look like an episode of Amemiya’s Power Rangers, and it’s not surprising he would go on to direct some Kamen Rider films. But it’s too uneven to succeed: for every moment where you go, “Cool!”, there’s another where you’ll roll your eyes, or just go “Eh?”. For instance, the section where Zeiram squeeze out goo onto the ground, which grows into a half-man that has a burbling conversation with Zeiram, before getting its head stomped on. Altogether, now: eh?

The sequel, which came out three years later, restores the “i” in the title, which was inexplicably removed from the original for it US release by Fox Lorber. This installment starts off as if it’s going to go in some radically different directions, even if all the main players are back. Iria is seeking an ancient artifact called the Carmarite, and additionally, has a new assistant, but he turns out to be untrustworthy. Meanwhile, a shadowy group has succeeded in regenerating Zeiram as a cyborg warrior (which makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen the anime, and know its origins), bending its will to their needs and turning it into a weapon. While initially successfully, this works about as well as most plans usually do, and it’s not longer before Zeiram is much more a menace than an ally.

However, just when you think the film is going into new and interesting territory… Well, I’m not quite show how it happened, but before long we were back in more or less the same situation as the original. Blah blah irritating comic relief blah another dimension blak Iria unable to help (this time because she gets herself locked in a room), etc. You’re looking at something which borders on being a remake of the original, and unlike something like Terminator 2, which upped the ante significantly, while telling a largely similar story, there isn’t any real sense of progression or development. Much as before, things do get better when things move into action, and Zeiram is again, a shape-shifting nightmare that won’t stay dead. And this time, not even a cute dog which strays into proceedings is off the menu.

It also helps that, this time around, Moriyama has a better handle on the action angle. Previously, it was very much a case of kick, pause, punch, pause, move, but she is a good deal more fluid here, and makes for a more credible heroine as a result. However, her strength is still more in the “looking cool with a gun” department, because her punches still look like they might be troubled by a damp paper-bag. On balance, the sequel’s lack of invention is approximately balanced by the overall improvement in Iria’s character and the slightly better overall production values – it still looks like you could fund it from your bedside table change – and it’s as worth watching as the first part. Which would be “somewhat”: call both of them a rent (or more likely these days, a download), rather than a buy.

Dir: Keita Amemiya
Star: Yûko Moriyama, Mizuho Yoshida, Kunihiro Ida, Yukijirô Hotaru

Iria – Zeiram the Animation

By Jim McLennan

★★★½

Though released several years later, this is a prequel to the two Zeiram movies, telling the story of the first encounter between Iria (Hisakawa, who was also Sailor Mercury) and Zeiram. At the time, she was an apprentice bounty-hunter, working alongside her brother Gren. They take a mission to rescue a VIP and recover the cargo from a stranded space-ship. However, once there, they discover the “cargo” is actually the alien Zeiram, which a corporation is interested in using as a weapon. The result leaves her brother apparently dead, and Iria now the target for the corporation, who want to hush up their thoroughly-dubious plan, by any means necessary. Fortunately, as well as her own skills, our heroine has the assistance of former rival bounty-hunter, Fujikuro (Chiva), endearing urchin Kei (Kanai), and Bob (Ikeda), a colleague whose consciousness has been turned into an AI.

The six-episode (about 25 mins per part, by the time you skip the opening and closing credits) series worked, for me, a little better than the live-action, simply because of the nature of animation: there’s no need for restraint. There were times in the movies where you could see where Amamiya wanted to, but has to restrain his imagination for budgetary reasons. Here, there’s close to a fully-fledged universe, with content which would likely be well beyond the budget of anyone not named James Cameron. There’s also a nice character arc for Iria: initially, she is probably too big for her boots, with an over-inflated sense of her own skills. When she meets Zeiran, she soon discovers she isn’t quite the cat’s whiskers, at least, not to the extent she thinks.

As with most animation of the time, it’s not going to be confused with Miyazaki, and it would be silly to expect otherwise. However, there remain weaknesses. Most obviously, and surprisingly – because it’s the same issue as in the live-action version – is the diversion of time to secondary characters, in particular Kei and sidekick, the latter of whom is there for one purpose only (too spoilerific to discuss in detail; I’d say it falls into the category of “surprising, but almost entirely pointless”). That’s true for much of the plot, which feels over-similar to the Aliens series, and at times, the conspiracy angles just seem to be there to fill in time, before we get to the inevitable final battle between Iria and Zeiram. It did generally keep my interest, overall; but I can see why it hasn’t exactly been remembered as a classic of the medium.

Dir: Tetsuro Amino
Star: (voice) Aya Hisakawa, Shigeru Chiba, Mika Kanai, Masaru Ikeda

Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture

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★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

High School Girl Rika: Zombie Hunter

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★★½
“High School Girl? Check. Zombies? Check. Hunting? Not so much.”

Rika (Kudo) and her schoolgirl pal ditch education for a day and head off to a remote village to check up on her grandfather, who hasn’t been heard from for a while. But as soon as they arrive, the pair come under attack by zombies, initially spawned as the result of a euthanasia drug being tried out by the Japanese government to address the whole “inverse pyramid” thing. They do reach Grandpa’s house, but find him in the stages of advanced Alzheimer’s – at least, until Rika is bitten. Gramps removes the limb, and replaces it with one conveniently lying around, which happens to belong to a master zombie hunter. Who cares if it’s the wrong colour and incredibly muscular? With America preparing a Return of the Living Dead style cleansing operation on the area, Rika and her allies have to locate the King Zombie and kill him, before being reduced to their constituent atoms.

There are a couple of nice ideas here, so let’s get those out of the way first. The master hunter is an amusingly male version of the Onechanbara heroine, both in the cowboy hat and otherwise scanty clothing. And I liked the fact there is actually an intelligent, polite zombie thrown into the mix, who retains his fondness for humanity (or does he? For he’s still a bit bitey…). However, it’s the best part of an hour before anything approaching the title is seen, by the time Rika loses her arm, gets her new one and comes to terms with the new, strong urges to swing a sharp sword in the direction of anything lacking a pulse. When it does…it’s really no great shakes either, and the action aspects of this are absolutely no match for the likes of Machine Girl or Hard Revenge Milly.

This is, however, operating in a rather different genre, as you’d expect from the makers of the catchily-titled Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers, which occupies an uneasy middle-ground between horror and soft-porn. This is mostly horror, occasionally comedy (the Three Stooges who are also roaming the town could have taken their comic mugging and left, without doing the film the slightest damage), and the action is some way back, likely less important than the “let’s all compare our breast sizes” scene. I’m certainly not averse to horror, and on that basis, given its low-budget, it’s a harmless time-passer. But given the title, I’d have liked to see Rika do an awful lot more actual hunting of the zombies.

Dir: Kenichi Fujiwara
Star: Risa Kudo, Takeshi Yamamoto, Mai Minami, Tsugumi Nagasawa

Girl Boss: Escape From Reform School

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★★½
“Bad girls go to…the seaside?”

Serial escaper Ruriko (Sugimoto) is more persistent than good, and is dragged back to reform school after her seventh escape attempt ends the same way as her previous six. After whizzing through most of the standards of the women-in-prison genre in about 30 minutes or so e.g. corrupt staff, gratuitous nudity, solitary confinement, etc. she and a few of her colleagues (supposedly teenagers, but that clearly ain’t the case) break out as a group. Splitting up to avoid detection, they arrange a rendezvous at a deserted building by the sea, from where they plan to hijack a ship and escape Japan for good. Truth be told, a sense of urgency isn’t exactly top of the their skill-set, and as they meander their way there, various escapades happen, of which the only significant one is Ruriko meeting, by chance, a male criminal (Watase), who is also trying to out-run the law. But the police are also keen to ensure that they run their record in terms of Ruriko to a perfect 8-for-8…

I watched this less than a week ago, but already, I can’t remember very much about it. Sugimoto is her usual charismatic self, and the film is certainly more interesting when she’s on-screen. However, the supporting characters are entirely forgettable, and in my mind, all merged into one amorophous, largely uninteresting blob. That’s particularly problematic after they split up, which is when the film seems to lose direction entirely, meandering around until the finale, where the police besiege the perps in their beach-house. I have to say, the major takeway from that is how incredibly inept the Japanese SWAT team are. Not only are they easily held at bay by criminals armed with precisely one gun, they mill around like disturbed sheep in the face of anything coming the other way, e.g. burning tyres, and are completely oblivious to even the most basic law-enforcement principle, such as “maintaining a perimeter.” If those are supposed to be the elite, it makes me wonder how the hell Ruriko managed to get herself caught the previous seven times she escaped.

It’s probably significant that the lack of compentence by the special forces of law and order is my lasting memory here. While competently made, and touching all the expected bases [that’s clear from the way solitary confinement in the prison involves Ruriko both bondaged up and topless!], it doesn’t have any real heart or passion, and if you skip this one, you won’t be missing much.

Dir: Sadao Nakajima
Star: Miki Sugimoto, Yuko Kano, Hiroko Isayama, Tsunehiko Watase

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

Yakuza Hunters: Revenge Duel In Hell

  By

★★½
“The Good, The Bad And The Hardly Ugly.”

If its predecessor (reviewed here as Sukeban Hunters) echoed the tropes of pinky violence, this one seems to have much more in common with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns. A mysterious stranger with a dark past rides into town, only to find that the violence they sought to escape has no intention of leaving them alone, and they must once again put on their weapons to fight for…something or other. Here, it’s returning Yakuza hunter Asami (as before, conveniently played by…Asami), who comes back to visit her old master, now a bar-owner, Inokuma (Kato), who arranges for her to stay with Miki (Yoshiyuki), who used to be a bit of a Yakuza hunter in her younger days. But all is not well, for the evil Shoryu clan are intent on turfing everyone out so they can build a casino. When that turns out to include both Inokuma and Miki, with extreme prejudice, Asami must take on both their minions and the hired uber-killer Akira (Miwa), who proves she is more than a match for most.

It certainly hits the ground running, the Shoryu members wielding a chainsaw in a deeply brutal fashion on both male and female victims, but overall, it’s just a tad less worthy than the original – there were times, particularly with regard to the audio, when the cheapness just seemed too much to handle. On the plus side, most of the gore effects are practical, rather than CGI, which was a welcome surprise after watching several genre entries from the Sushi Typhoon stable, and the action sequences are occasionally surprisingly impressive, most notably when Asami battles two Shoryu henchmen, in what’s effective a single take for each fight. However, the final battle – which, it’s no spoiler to say, is between Asami and Akira – is a disappointment, with flaky CGI and a really dubious conclusion.

Supposedly set three years after part one, I’d guess it was more or less filmed back-to-back, though there’s enough continuity issues to make me steer clear of calling this a “sequel” – not least, Asami possessing several more fingers than she should. I can see what the makers were aiming for [not least the soundtrack, which shamelessly adopts the spirit of Ennio Morricone], but they’ve picked a much harder target this time. They don’t have the necessary ability to pull it off, and the results don’t make up for the shortfall in skill with adequate energy.

Dir: Shinichi Okuda
Star: Asami, Yumi Yoshiyuki, Sakichi Kato, Hitomi Miwa