Panik House | Review by Curt Purcell | Buy at Amazon
As part of its PINKY VIOLENCE COLLECTION, Panik House has released this four disc, uh, PINKY VIOLENCE COLLECTION. As part of the broader collection, they have also released, to date, SEX AND FURY and FEMALE YAKUZA TALE, neither included in the set I'll be reviewing here. I'd actually recommend that "Elder Sister" pair before this set. SEX AND FURY, especially, delivers the most bang for your buck; it's a truly masterful production, and also more way-out than any of the movies in this set. Having said that, if you have the dough to blow, the PINKY VIOLENCE COLLECTION is worth getting.
You just gotta love that snazzy hot-pink package! The fly in the ointment is the liner-note booklet by Chris D. (author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film, not to be confused with the infamous rapper) awkwardly attached in the middle of the case. It looks great until you try to read it. While it's a nice, informative overview of Pinky Violence films, it's like an art project run amuck. It's printed collage-style in just about every font, direction, color, etc., and interspersed with pictures that distract more than illustrate.
An audio cd, 'Reiko Ike Sings!', didn't come with my review copy, but is supposed to be included with the set. I didn't miss it, because it's not the kind of extra I bother with anyway, but if that's your thing, there it is.
As for the movies, there's some controversy about the selection offered here. This is a sampler set, featuring the best movies (or so it's claimed) from four different series. I've read some grousing that Panik House didn't release some or all of those whole series as sets, but I think they chose wisely. I only have Chris D.'s notes to go on, but the lesser entries in some of those series sound entirely skippable. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like the various series have tight enough continuities that it would make much difference whether they're released in whole or in part. Finally, as a practical matter, who but the hardest-core fans would plunk down the money for that many box sets? As a casual fan, I appreciated the representative glimpse into this genre. Much as I enjoyed it, this isn't a genre I'd care to explore all the way to the bottom. This was a perfectly satisfying taste for me, and I'm happy to leave it at that.
I watched the movies in the order that they're listed on the back. That means I started with DELINQUENT GIRL BOSS: WORTHLESS TO CONFESS. The image on the box set cover of Reiko Oshida in her cute little star-and-stripes outfit is taken from the DELINQUENT GIRL BOSS poster, but doesn't actually appear anywhere in the movie. That's too bad, because the movie could have used a lot more spice. A rebellious daughter's no-good boyfriend incurs gambling debts that the yakuza expect her father to pay. The father puts up with this until his back is to the wall, then reveals himself to be a legendary razor-killer. At that point, they just flat-out assassinate him. Things finally start to cook as his repentant daughter and her friends from prison all don scarlet dusters and take vengeance on the yakuza in a comic-bookish sword battle. This final fight is worth the price of admission all by itself – and it had better be, since the movie has so little else to recommend it. The setting for the showdown is an ultra-mod nightclub. Parts of the scene are shot from beneath a groovy glass floor. Chris D. does the commentary, which is informative sometimes to the point of tedium. I found this to be the weakest entry in the Collection.
Next up, GIRL BOSS GUERILLA. This one really starts with a bang, then goes all over the place before fizzling to an anticlimax. We open on the highway with girl bikers – the Red Helmet Gang. A male biker gang accosts them, but the guys are posers. One is wearing an "Easy Rider" t-shirt. Miki Sugimoto pulls rank by tugging down the zipper of her black riding suit, exposing her breast and the yakuza tattoo on it. They brawl, and of course the girls win. In Kyoto, the girls establish their dominance over other girl gangs, and quickly start butting heads with male yakuza. Miki falls in doomed love with a boxer. Without spoiling too much, let's just say she ends up having to avenge him. The main problem here is a lack of focus, and that's true of the story, the tone, the characters, and even the setting. There's a lot of change, but to little purpose, which robs the movie of dynamism and makes it all seem merely meandering. There's a lot of nice stuff packed in along the way, though. Miki just couldn't be hotter, and she brings a bulletproof cool to the role. She and Reiko Ike (who is also hot as can be) have an amazing catfight in a shallow river. There are some decent action scenes, blasphemous humor, and plenty of sexual sadism. It's too bad the center doesn't hold for this movie, because it has the makings of a truly great exploitation flick. A little discipline is all it would have taken. Oh well! Panik House President Matt Kennedy and Asian Cult Cinema columnist Wyatt Doyle handle the commentary chores with insight and gusto. Of all the commentaries in this set, I enjoyed theirs the most, and felt I got the most out of it. Despite the squandered promise, I'd have to call this movie my favorite of the Collection.
On to TERRIFYING GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL: LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM. Whoo-ee, but this one opens on a creepy note! What we see first are a bunch of shiny-red-gloved hands ripping the clothes off a schoolgirl. It's a shot that would be right at home in any giallo. Then the camera pulls back, and we see that the wearers of the gloves are schoolgirls with matching red surgical masks, and there are a lot of them. The girl being stripped is in a spotlight, and her situation seems hopeless, surrounded as she is by all these weird assailants in the shadows. Worse still, they start to drain her blood! They taunt her cruelly about her imminent death by exsanguination. She snaps, escapes to the roof, then jumps to her death. It turns out that the girl was Miki Sugimoto's gang lieutenant, and Miki soon shows up to find out what happened and exact some vengeance. As the movie runs its course, it quickly becomes clear that the sadistic schoolgirls are just extensions of the school as an institution, and that Miki's quarrel is with hypocritical adult society as a whole. The clever outcast youth who rally to Miki's side find the adults easily fooled and seduced – but also dangerously punitive and all too eager to resort to violence. The movie ends with a good old fashioned riot, with police storming the school to club down the disobedient students. Along the way, Reiko Ike makes a grand entrance, an outside male reporter joins the students with his own agenda, and sleaze sloshes by the bucketfull. Chris D. gives his usual sort of commentary. This is certainly a worthy entry in the Collection.
Finally, there's CRIMINAL WOMAN: KILLING MELODY. Reiko Ike is on the road to vengeance, once again, after a yakuza gang has killed her father. Her first strike not only fails, but lands her in jail. She makes friends, though, who stick with her when they all get out. She whores herself to American servicemen, then uses the money she makes to buy weapons from them. Meanwhile, there's a loose cannon running around the underworld – a guy who wears a leather bomber jacket, swigs from a huge liquor bottle, and laughs like a maniac. Reiko takes advantage of him to set gang against gang, until the streets run red. As with GIRL BOSS GUERILLA, this is a very mixed bag, and whether you love it or find it simply too disappointing depends on whether you see the glass as half-full or half-empty. In places, it has style to burn, with scenes of groovy ambience that terminate in ultra-cool freeze-cuts. It also features two of the longest and worst catfights you've ever seen. How could anyone fuck up a catfight?, you might wonder. Somehow they manage, and they take their good sweet time about it, too. Andy Klein and Wade Major do the least satisfying of the commentaries, in that they seem to bring a lot less expertise to the task than any of the others; they frequently raise interesting questions, but then only leave them hanging or answer them with speculation. I'd rate this third out of four, for this set.
In conclusion, the PINKY VIOLENCE COLLECTION is a fun sampling of an interesting genre, and worth a look if you can handle the cost of a box set. I'd only recommend it if the price tag doesn't seem like too steep an investment, because frankly I can't guarantee that you'll feel you got your money's worth.
