Blind Woman's Curse
Director: Teruo Ishii
Year: 1970
Rating:
7.0
The film
opens to a twangy picked guitar and rain pouring down turning everything
to mud. A group of men led by a woman rush up for revenge against Boss Gouda.
His men surround him protecting him. The invading force stand body to body,
pull down their shirts or kimono far enough to display the similar tattoo
across their back of a dragon. They are the Tachibana Yakuza Group and the
fight begins in the rain with blades slashing and men falling into the mud.
What a wonderful way to start a period Yakuza film. It pulls you right into
it like a vortex. The female is played by Meiko Kaji in what I have read
was her first lead in a film. Director Teruo Ishii knows exactly what he
has on his hands. Her beauty, her stillness, her ferocity, her stare. He
gives us what was to become the legendary Meiko beat-down stare throughout
the film. Her just looking like she wants to kill something.
It looks to the viewer that this is going
to be a traditional film of this genre - yakuza against yakuza - but this
again is Teruo Ishii, the director of Horrors of Malformed Men, Shogun's
Joy of Torture and Orgies of Edo and he usually doesn't play it straight.
After this opening, the film goes off into unexpected directions - part horror,
part supernatural, part sexual torture - only to end up where it started
in a traditional blood-soaked Ninkyo Eiga as Meiko and her gang slowly march
towards fate. Ishii even messes up with the time period - it looks to be
set in the mid 1800s for 99% of the film - mainly swords with one gun in
it - and period dress. Then out of nowhere a modern truck is seen. What the
hell. It makes absolutely no sense as if they are in some time warp in their
little village while outside of it the world has passed them by. That's
it though - just the one truck.
Meiko plays Akeemi, who has become the Boss
of the Tachiban Group upon the death of her father. The film cuts from the
opening fight to Akeemi in jail serving three years, but that passes in a
jiffy. When she gets out, she is still the Boss. Some of her female inmates
join her gang showing her their newly carved dragon tattoo. A striking image.
First the Aozora gang try and cause trouble in her territory and she has
to battle them - and is joined by a stranger, Mr. Tani (Makoto Satô)
who tells her he wants nothing from her but believes in justice. The Aozora
gang are a bunch of ruffians though of no consequence - the real danger is
Boss Dobashi (the cruel faced Tôru Abe) who has a traitor in the Tachiban
and begins a conniving plot to wipe them out. Still sounds traditional I
know but then the blind woman shows up with Zatoichi like skills - and her
creepy crawly hunchback friend who can leap into trees. And slice tattoo's
off the backs of women. And lick the removed skin.
Along with a black cat. A freak show has
come to town. Boss Dobashi keeps a den of half-naked female opium smokers
in his basement as sex slaves. But the mysterious blind woman wants revenge
- and she can literally smell good and evil in men. And whether they have
bathed recently. Perhaps too many characters and subplots jump in because
Meiko disappears for long stretches and that is why many of us are here.
Of course, 50 years ago, Ishii had no way of knowing this. She has a bit
of the Hamlet syndrome - her father wanted her to go legit and she tries
to honor him by not fighting back - until the long walk. The film also has
two songs of hers playing over the film.
Her music is up on YouTube.
