Available in The Pinky Violence Collection | Review by Crites
You can tell right away this one is gonna be good – it opens inside a Japanese titty bar, and within seconds a woman with a great big knife comes charging out to attack a group of presumed gangsters.
Bussed to prison as the sorrowful CRIMINAL WOMAN theme plays and the credits roll, Maki (Reiko Ike) finds herself in a cell full of other criminal women. Their various stories begin to come out, shown in flashback: one reckless hottie got nabbed stealing a police motorcycle; Yukie is a pickpocket; Natsuko a ruthless whore; and Masayo (Miki Sugimoto) is a yakuza moll (who gets picked up for starting a knife fight in a den of gamblers, topless, her tattoos and bare breasts flashing). When Maki ignores her cellmates' inquiries as to her reckless past she's put to the test: holding a length of rope between their teeth she and Masayo duel it out with glass daggers. This test of honor degenerates into an all-out catfight, and while Maki takes a beating she earns respect by refusing to quit. In fact, amazed by her opponent's perseverance despite the thrashing she's received, Masayo quits the match, yielding the victory to Maki.
At last Maki tells her new friends her story. After forcing her father to work as a drug dealer for them, the Oba Industries clan of the yakuza killed him when they found out he had become an addict himself. Not only that, but they gang-raped Maki for his failure as well. And with this tragic tale Maki wins the hearts of her fellow convicts for good.
So much so that when, years later, Maki is released from prison she finds her former cellmates waiting for her outside the prison walls. She gives them the cold shoulder at first, but before long the girls are sharing ice cream and beers and making plans for the future. Maki in particular has something in mind – to crush the boss of the Oba clan completely, then kill him as he did her father. Her friends are all onboard with this idea, and in no time at all Charlie Chan's angels are hatching an elaborate plot for revenge.
Maki quickly builds a nest egg by hooking, and with this money purchases a sizeable cache of weapons – automatic rifles, pistols, even hand grenades. Getting to know their enemy, the girls put it together that the Oba clan beat out the long-standing Hamayasu clan in a fierce gang war, but due to the intervention of a councilman stopped just short of slaughtering the Hamayasu entirely and instead allowed them to eke out a living as petty dock contractors. The Oba, meanwhile, grew rich and prosperous in the underground markets of drugs and money-lending. The best way to go about things, scheme the girls, is to fire up that bad blood and allow the rival factions to kill each other off before moving in for the final blow.
To this end the vixens pinpoint and assassinate one of the Oba druglords and have Yukie play the hapless witness to the 'yakuza murder.' Believing Hamayasu's "Mad-Dog" son Tetsu to be the culprit, the Oba pay him and his father a visit. But when they are unkindly received by the sake-swilling Tetsu the Oba vow to finish the Hamayasu clan for good. Which is when our gang of criminal women show up at Tetsu's hangout with an inviting crate of firearms...
Meanwhile the virtuous assemblyman Tanno, who brokered the truce between clans long before, steps in to prevent further bloodshed. It seems that an untimely gang war could jeopardize the imminent plans corporate giant Toto Industries has for developing the dock region, and if the Hamayasu hold off on further hostilities they'll reap the rewards of rich contracts in the future. This is inconvenient to say the least, and as the ladies plot the death of Tanno Masayo pays them an unexpected visit. She was not among the well-wishers at Maki's release, instead going back to her yakuza boyfriend Ogata at the end of her sentence, and she's come to warn Maki away from any plans that might put her man's life in danger.
Unmoved by Masayo's veiled threats, Maki goes ahead with her plot and uses a sniper rifle to take out assemblyman Tanno. This does not sit well with Oba, who sends his goons down to the docks in full force to dynamite Hamayasu headquarters and gun down all remaining henchmen. During the fray Tetsu sees his father murdered in the midst of valiant battle, but is dragged away by his followers before he too is killed.
Maki and the girls carefully pick off another couple of Tetsu's men, and on a roll Maki picks up one of Oba's top dogs, Hayami, coming out of a drunken orgy. But something tips him off, and instead of allowing himself to be seduced he sticks a gun in her breast and the next thing we know she's tied up nearly naked at Oba HQ. Maki takes a brutal beating but refuses to talk, even when her captors try to intimidate her by using a chainsaw to lop the breasts and head off of a mannequin.
At this point Masayo steps in to help, saying that only another woman can make a woman truly feel pain. Putting a cigarette out on one of Maki's nipples, an act that puts off even the hardest of the gangsters, Masayo uses the distraction to pass the captive a straight razor. When Hayami comes down alone some time later to 'get a good taste of her' Maki slashes his face and holds the blade to the startled gangster's throat until he tells her where Oba's big 300-million yen drug deal is going down. Satisfied that she has everything he knows, Maki slits his throat.
As the exchange is made late at night on the wharf, Maki's girls spring into action by hurling Molotov cocktails and a hail of bullets at the gangsters, using the chaos they've caused to make away with the drugs. Convinced Tetsu is behind this latest outrage Oba begins planning another slaughter, but is interrupted by a surprise visit from Maki. Claiming to have sold his drugs to Tetsu she offers Oba a chance to get them both by giving away their hideout - for a fee of 30-million yen.
Oba's men storm the abandoned ship Maki has told them serves as Tetsu's hiding place, only to be ambushed by Tetsu and his grenade-hurling henchmen. A violent shootout ensues, with many casualties taken on both sides, but in the end Oba discovers that Tetsu doesn't have the drugs - he doesn't even know anything about them.
And that's when Maki pushes the final confrontation with Oba. But even then the story isn't over; in gangster sagas there's always another score to settle, and it always involves some element of poetic justice...
This one has everything a classic pulp film requires: babes behind bars, drunken brawling, dope, guns and fucking, angry topless women, brutal murders, knife fights, tattooed ladies, explosions, catfights...and, as if one was really needed it after all of that, an actual plot. I can't tell you how much fun this film was to watch; if you are lucky enough to find it, load up beforehand on sake and Japanese snacks and be sure to make a party out of it.
The film also stars Chiyoko Kazama, Masami Soda, Shinzo Hotta, Seiya Sato, Keiichi Kitagawa and Johnny Sako's Yumiko Katayama. Special Features include original theatrical trailer, audio commentary, poster & still galleries, production notes on the Pinky Violence tradition and Criminal Woman's place therein, and biographies of the director and stars.
This looks to be great fucking box set. Four feature Toei Company films from the Seventies ("Presented for the first time anywhere") complete with plenty of extras, a CD of songs by "Pinky Violence icon" Reiko Ike and a special edition booklet, Toei's Bad Girl Cinema, written by Chris D. specifically for the set. Granted, Panik House only sent along two of the DVDs for review, but based on these two alone (see review of DELINQUENT GIRL BOSS: WORTHLESS TO CONFESS) this limited-edition box set looks to be well worth the $99.95 price tag.
Re-mastered in crisp and colorful 16x9 widescreen, The Pinky Violence Collection is presented in original Japanese language with easy-to-read English subtitles. Highly recommended.
