★★
“At least it’s imaginative. Unfortunately, that’s all it is.”
Samurai 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
Confusingly titled in the West, without any indication it wasn’t the first of the rebooted franchise, this perhaps explains why there’s little or no explanation of… Well, anything, really. What is Section Zero? Who is Rei? Where did she come from? “Never mind about that,” seems to be the film’s attitude, “Here are Natsuki Ozawa’s breasts to distract you from such trifles.” That’s particularly the case early on, when it seems Rei is unable to go five minutes without showing them off, whether it’s through being molested, becoming inescapably randy or simply taking a soapy shower (to wash off the blood after a kill, so I guess it’s a shower necessary to the plot – it also replays the intruder shower scene from its predecessor, with a different ending).
Probably the least accurate title of any film ever – at least Friday the 13th put out a few movies before using “final” – you definitely should begin here if you’re looking for much coherence. Rei (Iijima) is now partly employed as secretary to the head of Section Zero, but also takes out criminals for whom traditional channels of law enforcement aren’t enough, for one reason or another. She also pals around with Takako (Fukuoka), a detective from another section and a girl he helped bring out of delinquency, in what’s vaguely intimated as a love triangle. One night, they witness a hit and run, and discover the perpetrator (Suzuki) is the daughter of a powerful economic figure. Despite encountering official resistance, Rei and Takako persist with their investigation and, inevitably, this brings out more robust sanctions.
When the series started in 1974, it originally appeared to be trying to take on the Female Convict Scorpion series at its own game – both were inspired by Toru Shinohara manga series. However, going by the fact it took more than two decades for a second entry in the series, I can only presume the commercial returns weren’t anywhere near as strong. This starts off well, with policewoman Rei (Sugimoto) luring in, and then blowing away, the man responsible for torturing and killing another woman. Turns out the perpetrator was a diplomat and in the resulting scandal, Rie is sent to jail. Her chance at redemption comes when a gang of thugs stumble into the kidnapping of the daughter of a politician (Tamba): to avoid a scandal, Rie is offered a pardon if she infiltrates the kidnappers and kills them all. Initially, all goes to plan, with the first member taken out quickly, but it soon becomes clear the other members are rampaging psychos, and the situation rapidly spirals out of control, to the point where the politician yanks his support and orders the deaths of everyone, in the name of damage limitation – including both his daughter and Rie.
If the first Queen Bee movie was a fairly effective romp through the genre, that’s a lot less the case fot the follow-up, with Ike largely floundering around, as Maki, the leader of the Pearl Gang, who finds herself embroiled in a battle with another crew, the Black Lilies and their leader, Yuri (Kazama). Their spat is interrupted, when the Kuroji clan of yakuza throw their weight behind the Black Lilies. However, the triumph of the Lilies is short-lived, as they find out that they are about to be forced into life as prostitutes, for the benefit of their new allies, ending their life of freedom in the ‘hood. There are also subplots in which Yuri’s former boyfriend, Eizo wants to be a top racing driver, bringing him into conflict with the yakuza as well, and a suitcase filled with stolen guns.
Reiko (Ike) is leader of the Athens Gang, a low-level all-girl gang, who specialize in car thefts and rolling naive salarymen with the lure of hot sex. They’re part of a hierarchy, which includes a male gang under whom they loosely operate, who are in turn on the fringes of a Yakuza group. There’s also a motor-cycle gang and its leader (Taki) who don’t obey anyone, and that independence is really what Reiko wants, even though her group is obliged to follow certain rules, such as not getting attached to any man. Things are disrupted by the return of former leader Jun (Kagawa) from reform school: will Reiko be able to hold on to her position? It’s just one of a large number of plot threads here: you also get the blackmail of a pop star; a hitman agreeing to one last mission; a gangster estranged from his wife and daughter; sex on motorcycles for no apparent reason; a journalist with a nose for scandal; and, of course Reiko failing to follow her own rule about no attachments.
You can almost imagine the trailer for this anime series being done by The Trailer Guy [y’know, who does all the voice-overs for Hollywood action flicks]: “In a world where demons stalked the land… One woman… Was humanity’s final hope…” The particular focus here is Clare (Kuwashima), one of 47 Claymores, an all-female sect of nomadic warriors who travel a fictional country, battling the flesh-eating Yoma, with combat abilities that border on the magical. But doing so requires them to unleash their own Yoma power, an act which runs the risk of them becoming what they hunt if they lose control. Clare rescues Raki (Takagi), who becomes her companion and cook, but out heroine has a mission of her own: hunting down and killing the Yoma who, years previously, killed her own mentor, Teresa of the Faint Smile.
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 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.
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.