Panik House | Review by J. Robert Nevets
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If your thing involves any variety of schoolgirl uniforms, topless Japanese women, and women-in-prison films then you have a veritable wet dream with Norifumi Suzuki's TERRIFYING GIRLS SCHOOL: LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM. For the most part, the film plays out like a combination of Suzuki's later women-in-prison/convent film SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST (1974), the female revenge film THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE (1974), and the girl gang flick SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975). Granted LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM came first, but I don't really know how much influence it would have had on the other films with the exception of HOLY BEAST, which I think was Suzuki's attempt at perfecting some of the ideas and visuals of this movie. Regardless, while I think LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM is great fun as an exploitation film, for some reason it hasn't stuck with me like those later titles.
The film opens with possibly the most visually exciting sequence of the whole film – and lots of screaming. We see a half-naked student surrounded by a group of girls in black school uniforms and red surgical face masks. The group, using some kind of vacuum pump, is slowly draining the blood of the student. The girl eventually escapes and leads a chase to the roof where the very realistically terrified student has only one option of escape. Mind you, this is before the credits and before any kind of major character is introduced.
We soon learn that we have been introduced to the School of Hope's Disciplinary Committee. Several times throughout the film we return to their office, a science lab all too reminiscent of the various Nazi death camp films from the same era. There are the usual shock treatments and water tortures and a horrifying game of hide the light bulb. But, while the Disciplinary Committee are not the subject of the film, they are proof that within the logic of the film, anyone who achieves or tries to achieve power or status within any type of traditional institution is obviously corrupt.
You can get TERRIFYING GIRLS SCHOOL: LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM as part of Panik House's PINKY VIOLENCE COLLECTION. Not to be confused with pinku eiga (or sex films), pinky violence is a genre of Japanese girl gang/reform school pictures that traditionally features lots of girls and lots of skin. All of these films in the set are sukeban or girl boss films. Of course, our first gang we come across is the Disciplinary Committee. Our heroes in the film, however, are the three new delinquent transfers to the school. Among them is a strong and stoic girl boss played by Miki Sugimoto, one of the most famous actresses of these films. Eventually the new delinquents team up with a renegade blackmailing yakuza and another girl gang boss – played by Reiko Ike of SEX AND FURY (1973) and FEMALE YAKUZA TALE (1973) – in order to turn the school inside out. I mean that that literally, because beyond exposing the corruption within the school, the police force, and the local government, these prototype riot girls want to turn the school into a chaotic girl riot.
Suzuki is particularly relentless here. The nihilistic view of traditional bastions of power is one of the strongest themes of the film. The film looks at any means of traditional power as corrupt, this means politics, the police, education, everything. Even the traditional dichotomy of male and female is reversed in that we see all male leaders in traditional roles, but the only leaders deemed honorable are the girl bosses and their gangs. The likable and honest characters all seem to come from the underworld including the blackmailing yakuza journalist. What is interesting though is how Suzuki plays out this point-of-view until the end. The corrupt power structure seems to win amidst images of riot police, paddy wagons, a burning Japanese flag, and a slapstick sendoff of our yakuza character. Is Suzuki also poking fun at the cool loner tradition that reemerges in Japanese films over and over again as a site of power? Or is he just reminding us that no matter what social commentary the film makes, in the end, it's just a movie to entertain us? My feeling is he wanted to do a little bit of both.
Panik House gives us a great transfer with this release and the DVD is stacked with the usual extras like trailers, bios, pictures, etc. The DVD also contains great commentary by punk musician and American Cinematheque programmer Chris D. This guy has an encyclopedic knowledge about Japanese film. He has two books out that I am also eager to check out: Gun and Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films and Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film.
