Aka - Karei-naru tsuiseki
This trashy Japanese action film isn't really good from any reasonable sober
perspective but I wish I had another 100 films in the same vein. I
enjoyed it way more than I should have, Wonderfully trashy fun with oodles
of action provided by Etsuko Shihomi, Sister Street Fighter and student of
Sonny Chiba. In this she is a professional race car driver but in her spare
time she works for a secret crime fighting organization, the Japanese Defense
Agency, whose boss tells her as he sends her off on another assignment "Failure
will not be tolerated" which is usually what the bad guys say. Besides her
racing skills (and oddly for a film titled The Great Chase, there are no
car chases), she is a mistress of disguise and a martial art master.
That is where the action comes in. Now the exploitation comes in from director
Norifumi Suzuki, who was behind such exploitation classics as School of the
Holy Beast, Sex & Fury, a couple of the Girl Boss films - in the 1970's
he was one of the leaders in Japan's turn to these sort of films. This one
is a real mix - just when you think it is settling down into a conventional
female action film he will throw in a rape, some torture, needles shot into
the eye, nudity, a singing female wrestler, killer nuns, bad toupees and
the main bad guy Isao (Eiji Gô) performing cunnilingus dressed in a
full cat suit with head attached beneath a picture of Adolf Hitler on the
wall. Mind you, Etsuko Shihomi doesn't participate in any of this.
The new case for her is to stop a drug gang who are bringing in heroin in
the bodies of dead women. There is also a connection to her father's death
and disgrace five years previously when he was framed for drug smuggling,
sent to jail and then committed "suicide" with scars all over his body. Shinobu
(Etsuko) has been looking for revenge and now she has her chance. We first
see her after she has won a race and with a pop tune on the soundtrack, dressed
in polka dot pants, she turns to us and gives an adorable crooked tooth smile
and I was enchanted. Not too many more smiles though as she gets into various
fights against a large group of men and a few deadly females. At one point
she disguises herself as a man, another time as an old tea lady, once as
a gambler dressed in a shimmering sleek white gown, as a hideous Cambodian
crone and as a nun.
Against her in the gang is a guy who breaks rocks over his head, another
one who has killer slicing cards, another with a blow dart gun and a knife
thrower. A fair fight I guess. She also has a bang up fight with a female
wrestler played by a real female wrestler, Mach Fumiake, who joins up with
Shinobu later on. Obviously with all this in a 82 minute film there is not
a lot of room for character development, drama or a plot that really holds
together (a lot of narrative jumps). But do I care? Not even a bit. There
are a lot of action set pieces but I have to admit that the camera work was
often poorly placed - it is clear too many times that the punches and kicks
are not hitting anything but air - you need HK choreographers to fix that.
Etsuko made this in the same year as 13 Steps of Maki which was great fun
too. I would like to find more films from this period in which she
isn't secondary to Sonny Chiba.
