Navigation
Criminal Woman: Killing Melody - aka “Zenka onna: koroshi-bushi” (1973)
Dir: Atushi Mihori
Maki (Reiko Ike, “Sex and Fury”) is introduced
attempting to assassinate Yakuza boss Oma (Takeo Chii) at a rather groovy topless
Go-Go Club. She fails and is sent to prison .
She is put into a dorm with other female prisoners and, via flashbacks, we learn
about who they are and what they did to end up in jail;
Happy go lucky Netsuke (Chiyoko Kazama) was arrested for being drunk in charge of a stolen motorbike and for knocking over two motorcycle Cops with her beer bottle!
Kaoru (Yumiko Katayama) is the top dog in the cell and worked as a prostitute, but after assaulting a customer who did not pay as much for her services as she thought they were worth, she is sentenced to over 3 years.
Yukie worked as a pickpocket but after a purse only netted her 500 Yen and a condom she made the mistake of picking the pocket of a plain clothes Detective!
Masayo (Miki Sugimoto, from the highly successful and influential “Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs“) is rather withdrawn and surly and is supposedly the girlfriend of a Yakuza boss. After being caught cheating in a card game she sliced her would be captors up with a razor and ended up in prison for it.
Maki is trying to keep herself to herself and won’t say what she is in
for, which causes friction with the other women and results in a glass shard
fight with Masayu which soon becomes an extremely extended, all out kicking
and scratching, catfight (with no guards in sight I might add) .
Maki loses but her sheer determination and refusal to give up wins her the respect
of the other women.
She tells the women that her Dad was murdered by the local Yakuza (’Oba
Industries’) , she was raped by Oba’s men (which we are shown in a
surreal ,clothes ripping frenzy flashback) and it was then she attempted to
kill Oba in the Go-Go Club.
But even behind bars her thirst for revenge against Oba and his clan still burns white hot and when released a few years later (and after meeting up with the now free Natsuko, Yukie and Kaoru who all agree to help) she puts her elaborate plan, to turn the Yakuza clans against each other, into operation. But there is a surprise in store for our gang of Female avengers….
‘Pinky Violence’ films were a staple of 60’s/70’s Japanese
cinema, where sex, nudity, violence and bloodshed was mixed together with heavy
Western pop-culture styling and various ‘Women in Prison’, ‘Women
on a path of Revenge’, general Yakuza plotlines with the main focus being
on strong, sexy women willing to get naked for the cause.
A lot of the movies came in a series of basically unrelated (plot wise) films,
where some were heavily comedic, some were bleak and dark, some were a mixture
of all elements in varying strengths.
“Criminal Woman: Killing Melody” is one such entry in an unconnected
series and is one of four ‘Pinky Violence’ movies in the ‘Pinky
Violence Collection’ box set from ‘Panik
House Entertainment'. The other three being “Terrifying
Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom”, “Girl Boss Guerrilla”
and “Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless To Confess”.
One of the most unusual aspects of “Criminal Woman” is that it starts
out as a ‘Women in Prison” flick before doing a very fast about turn
(where the sub-title ‘A few years later’ pops up) and suddenly becomes
a fully fledged Yakuza based movie with any bridging plot explained in a quick
conversation between the women when they meet up as Maki is released.
It’s a classic example of the B movie (from any country) attitude to get
the story moving as fast as possible. It’s a bit weird but ensures that
we get right back into the action, and Director Atushi Mihori has plenty of
action to deliver.
As mentioned above ‘Pinky Violence’ films like to slap a lot of sex,
nudity, and more often than not sexual violence as well, into their running
times and sure enough all are present and correct here.
From the outset, at the Go-Go Club, breasts are on display and a lot more make
regular appearances throughout the movie. But it’s not always good news
for them I'm afraid.
Breasts are bared, fondled roughly, squeezed and nibbled on (as well as selective
backsides also given a showing and once again given a rough squeeze or if they
are lucky, sloshed with champagne) and it has to be said that they do take an
awful lot of abuse. And if they are not being squeezed to death they being prodded
with guns, burnt by cigarettes or tied up tightly with ropes (in a sequence
that plays around with the popular Japanese fetish of elaborate rope bondage,
only with some brutal face slapping violence thrown in). All in all the gorgeous
globes have a very hard time of it!
Sex itself though is infrequent pretty tame and surprisingly sedate.
The other ingredient of course is violence and although the film is never very explicit it does have some nicely spaced out, sometimes bloody, action scenes, although the finale, though fun, is not as balls-out as I had hoped.
Massed, utterly chaotic gunfights, with some splattery squib work (especially
during the finale), are mixed with a dash of bloody Samurai sword action, knife
attacks and much punching, slapping and kicking. But this plays far more like
a conventional thriller in it’s attitude to violence and bloodshed (not
that this is a bad thing) than other more outrageous and blood drenched movies
like “Sex and Fury” and “Female
Yakuza Tale”.
The longest ‘fight’ is the glass blade one-on-one in the prison, which has to be seen to be believed for the sheer amount of time it goes on for and the total exhaustion that wracks the bodies of Masayo and Maki. It plays almost like a fetish sequence as the camera follows and zooms in on the exhausted, dusty, sweaty women with total reverence.
Away from the ’traditional’ violence though there are a few moments
of pretty extreme sexual violence or at least sexually tinged violence.
The main sequence for such events is the aforementioned ’rope sequence’
that delivers a very unsettling scene of threatened violence to a helpless,
naked, woman when a chainsaw is used to saw off the breasts and head of a manikin
to warn the would-be victim what she can expect.
And certainly the shots of the woman’s naked body being actually threatened
with the chainsaw are something that would be totally unacceptable, even today,
in any kind of mainstream American cinema for example.
Talk of women of course brings us to our ‘Gang’.
Decked out in groovy 70’s fashion disasters the girls trick and blast their
way through the male Yakuza members with tough and deft aplomb but (the odd
cool riding through explosions, while dodging bullets, dressed in leather scenes
aside) always remain very human in their attitude to what they are doing and
how they do it. Maki especially is shown to register emotion and even shock
when she deals out death. A wonderfully subtle moment that shows this is when
she looks uncertainly, and obviously shocked, at the blood on her hands after
knifing a man to death.
The rest of the gang are pretty much overshadowed by Maki but they look good,
act cool and have a nice, lightly humorous relationship with each other. And
Yumiko Katayama as the feisty Kaoru has a great little scene during her flashback
where she jumps, naked, on the bag of her shocked punter and proceeds to beat
him up!
Miki Sugimoto as the torn Masayo makes a big impression both in and out of
her clothes.
Be it during her extended hand to hand fights, or in her intense relationship
with Maki, or when her naked, tattooed, body takes command of a scene, she makes
for a suitably strong protagonist for Reiko Ike to work with.
Talking of which, once again Reiko Ike has no worries about showing off her
gorgeous body, be it in a shower scene or a clothes -ripping fight sequence,
and she once again drips with a strong, sophisticated sexuality.
She also handles a knife, a gun and her fists with as much gusto (if not as
much skill!) as she handled a sword in “Sex and Fury”. All in all
she once again shows why she was one of the most striking and powerful actresses
working in these films.
The male cast is mostly kept in the shade by the women, but two members of
the Yakuza clans most certainly make a lasting impression.
Kabuki is a steely eyed henchman of Oba who likes to spit out lethal projectiles
of chewing gum!
And Tetsu is the Son of Oba’s rival Yakuza clan boss and quite frankly he’s a swaggering, booze chugging (he is never seen without a huge bottle of wine either in is hand or somewhere near to him) mad dog who constantly lets out crazed cackling laughter while dishing out gun toting mayhem. The sight of him constantly swigging from his huge bottle of wine as he shoots his gun or marshals his men is a stroke of comic book genius.
The whole enterprise is wrapped up in that swinging 60’s, psychedelic
70’s, Americana styling that has jazzy, funky instrumental cues and pop-bubblegum
female vocal songs accompanying the action.
And as always the eye watering colours, ‘hip’ fashions and neon light
decorations are everywhere.
Overall then “Criminal Woman: Killing Melody” may not be as insane or intense as the two earlier Reiko Ike movies (especially “Sex and Fury”) from ‘Panik House’ but it’s still a fast moving, politically incorrect, violence tinged, blood dappled, nudity drenched slice of warped Japanese, bubblegum pop entertainment of the highest quality.
As mentioned above, this film is part of the ‘Panik
House Entertainment' ‘Pinky Violence Collection’, along with
three other movies, which comes (in truly marvellous day-glow pink, hardback
novel sized packaging) with a full colour booklet on the genre, a sticker and
a wonderfully trashy and generally cool CD of Reiko Ike pop songs filled with
sexy moaning and groaning.
The extras on the actual “Criminal Woman” disc are the Theatrical
trailer, bios, stills, production Notes and a commentary track by film critics
Andy Klein and Wade Major.
Unlike Chris D who did the specific, detailed commentary tracks on “Sex
and Fury” and ”Female Yakuza Trail”, Major and Klein give a far
more general commentary that takes in non-Japanese films like “Ilsa”
and “I Spit on Your Grave” and American cinema in general and although
they do offer specific information on the ‘Pinky’ films the commentary
does come across as far less academic and knowing on Japanese cinema and instead
(which is not a criticism) takes the more enthusiastic fan approach.
All in all it makes for an interesting listen and the only real fault (which
also proves American’s still can’t tell the difference between the
British and the Australians) is that they mention, in connection to the ’Women
in Prison’ aspect of the plot, the Australian TV series “Prisoner
Cell Block H”, but describe it as British! Shame on you!
Once again ‘Panik House’ has given us a lovely looking anamorphic,
2.35.1, transfer that captures the movie’s vibrant colour scheme perfectly
and a nice and clear Japanese, 2.0 Mono, soundtrack with excellent subtitles.
Rush out and grab yourself a bit of ‘Pinky’ action as soon as you
can as once again ‘Panik House’ have delivered.
