Stray Cat Rock - Beat '71

More Hippy, Less Kaji

Stray Cat Rock - Beat '71
aka Nora-neko rokku -
Bôsô shûdan '71
Japan 1971
Directed by Toshiya Fujita
Nikkatsu/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B
As part of Arrow’s Stray Cat Rock Dual Edition Set

Warning: Spoilers included in this review.

Okay so... Beat ‘71 is the fifth and final of the short, barely tied together, five film series of Stray Cat Rock movies. It’s also the second one by the director of the most disappointing of the five, Wild Jumbo (reviewed here).  Well, most disappointing until I’d seen this one, that is... this is not the best way to end the series, to be honest. Going out on a low rather than a high, it seems to me. I find it hard to believe that this is the same director who would go on  to direct the two, classic Lady Snowblood movies but... well, there you are.

This one has all the problems of the second movie in that the camerawork, editing and presentation are all pretty good... but they’re not outstanding like in the first and fourth (and to a certain extent the third) films in the series. There’s also not the same attitude from the main protagonists in this one either, although it does start off in ‘gang’ territory and ends up there for the finale, to be fair. But there’s no girl gang involved and the star of the series, Meiko Kaji (this time playing a girl called Furiko), is certainly not the leader of the small band of hippies who make up the main players in the movie.

The plot is simple. A hippy guy named Takaaki (played by Takeo Chii) forces himself on hippy gal Furiko in a field and she somehow instantly falls in love with him for a few moments before a gang, employed by Takaaki’s respectable father, beat him up to ‘straighten him up’ and take him home... but not before Takaaki manages to stab one of them. They knock Furikoo unconscious and leave her to take the rap for the guys murder before returning with Takaaki.

When Furiko escapes from the local Remand Centre two months later with her sister, she travels to Takaaki’s home town. Her sister tells her hippy friends and after much umming and ahhhing (and a ‘disgraceful hippy orgy’ staged for the press on a broken down bus to grab some money, they go off on their tandem and accompanying bicycles to try and catch up with Furiko, to see she doesn’t get into trouble. However, Furiko is also kidnapped by the father, for fear she will expose his son as a murderer and the hippies have to stage protests outside his mansion in an effort to get her back. Alas, they eventually have to steal Takaaki to hold him for an exchange but he goes back to his father. Meanwhile, the police break up the ‘dangerous hippies’ and the majority of them go and hide in a nearby Wild West Town set, where some film studios used to shoot Westerns.  

Things come to a head when Furiko is about to be killed by one of Takaaki’s father’s aides. The two escape and head towards the Western Town and then, as you would expect from the Stray Cat Rock films, the whole thing ends in tragedy for three of the main protagonists (and a couple of the antagonists) when the gang and some other’s of the father’s company go there for a showdown on their motorcycles and a bulldozer, as the hippy kids try and defend themselves with their limited weapons, plus some handy dynamite they just happened to find laying around in the abandoned Wild West Town set (okay... how did this get there? Perhaps I missed a plot point somewhere.).

One of the things about the movie to note is that the star of the series (by now), Meiko Kaji, is hardly in it (although the plot does at least revolve around her). She’s in the first ten minutes, comes back for a couple of short scenes in the middle (and sings a few bars of a song in one) and then returns for the last ten minutes or so... just in time to be killed while she is trying to avenge the death of Takaaki. Looking at her CV, she was in seven films just in 1971 alone and the years before and after were similarly cluttered.. they obviously worked their contracted workers hard at Nikkatsu and it must have been exhausting for them. My guess is she was probably, as she had on the second and third films of this series, shooting two films simultaneously... possibly even the previous Stray Cat Rock film, at the same time. She also doesn’t have the trademark big floppy hat and look of her characters from the Sex Hunter and Machine Animal films in the series but I’m pretty sure she uses this in some of her successful Female Prisoner Scorpion movies too, if memory serves.

As I said, it’s not the most technically innovative film in the series by a long shot but there is a nice moment where she confronts semi-regular Stray Cat Rock star Bunjaku Han (who has even less screen time than Kaji in this) at a petrol station and the director uses the upper part of Kaji’s body in the foreground as a vertical shape to split up the frame into two sections. So that’s nice.

There are no cuts back to any kind of nightclub in this though so, almost to make up for this, when the hippies are demonstrating outside the mayor’s manor (Takaaki’s father is the mayor, it turns out), a wandering pop group suddenly turn up out of the blue from nowhere and sing a song for the crowd off the back of their truck. There’s also, as I said, a brief musical interlude from Kaji as she sings a song in her cell, a little later on in the film (but nowhere near as ‘spot lit’ as the songs she sang previously in the series).

And... okay, Stray Cat Rock - Beat ‘71 is a fun film which, once again, gives us a portrayal of ‘doomed youth’ but, like I said, it’s not nearly as punchy as even the previous weakest link in the series, Wild Jumbo and, like that one, it doesn’t really feel like it belongs with the other three. However, it’s still an interesting film when you don’t compare it to the others and Arrow’s Blu Ray set of the Stray Cat Rock films is surely an essential purchase for lovers of a certain vibrant era of Japanese cinema, for sure.
 

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal

Acid Drops

Stray Cat Rock -
Machine Animal
aka Nora-neko rokku -
Mashin animaru
Japan 1970
Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
Nikkatsu/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B
As part of Arrow’s Stray Cat Rock Dual Edition Set

Warning: Yep... this one has spoilers.

Well this is more like it. Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal is Yasuharu Hasebe’s third and final entry into the loose series of Stray Cat Rock movies following the first, Delinquent Girl Boss (reviewed here) and the third, Sex Hunter (reviewed here). This is the fourth in the series and I have to say, he’s really on form here, capturing a lot of the mood and directorial style of his series debut in a way that both Toshiya Fujita’s Wild Jumbo (reviewed here) and his own Sex Hunter failed to do.

The film opens strongly with a low down shot looking up from some train tracks as characters are introduced scattershot by a title sequence which, apart from the title song, also has the dialogue and the actors starting the story straight away, as a girl gang headed up once again by the inimitable Meiko Kaji deal with two rapists and the rapid cuts and completely changing frames of the titles, due to constantly splitting and masking various areas of the screen off. It looks and feels like an explosive, crazy pop art comic strip brought to life and really makes an impression.

We then see the girls giving an aggressive but ultimately non-physical welcome to a couple of drifters whose car has broken down. These characters and their friend are in town to try and get a boat out of Japan... it transpires a little later in the plot... and they have 500 capsules of LSD (I know absolutely nothing about drugs and didn’t even know LSD came in capsules)that they need to sell, to buy passage on a boat out of there. The reason being that their naive young friend Charlie, is basically deserting from the war in Vietnam, so they are all set to grab a new life in Sweden.

Meiko Kaji is playing a different character again, Maya, who is fairly interchangeable with most of her other roles in the series it has to be said. For the second time in the series and, following on from Sex Hunter, she is wearing the trademark black floppy hat pitched against a white outfit. She certainly has a hard boiled delinquent presence about her which is quite hypnotic and is the character the eyes seem to go for when she’s in a shot.

As usual, the film is scattered with scenes in the girl gangs regular night club hangout with the live, wild and trendy pop songs playing to give the youthful atmosphere the Nikkatsu suits probably insisted on but, it has a level of coolness that fits the characters well. Also as usual, most of the ‘alley cats’ or ‘stray cats’ in the movies all seem to be played by the same actresses as previous installments.

As the film progresses and it’s discovered the three guys looking to get out of Japan have drugs, everybody seems to want the drugs... especially Maya’s mob. They manage to successfully steal the three friends’ car and drugs but, when they catch up with them one of them, Nobo (played by Tatsuya Fuji), appeals to their better judgement when he tells them the truth of why they need the money to get out of Japan... and so Maya and her clique decide to help them instead and, because they damaged their car so much, put them up in their secret dockland lair while Maya finds a buyer for the drugs. She also become’s Nobo’s ‘almost lover’ and the film almost becomes a musical when Maya sings a song to signal to the audience her desire for Nobo. And, if you’re wondering... Nobo is short for Nobody. So take that Terence Hill, this character’s name really is Nobody.

Maya’s buyers are the local friendly male group known as the Dragon Gang. However, they double cross her and steal the drugs back for themselves and from then on, it’s various chases, fights and hostage exchanges... including a scene where the likeable Charlie is shot in the leg by the military police and ‘taken away’. The film isn’t over yet though but, like the previous four movies, ends as you would expect... in tragedy... although, similar to the last film, at least two of the people you want to survive manage to come through the film fairly unscathed.

There’s also another late part of the plot which involves the ‘real’ and somewhat nefarious boss of The Dragons being the girl Yuri, played by Bunraku Han from two of the previous films. In this she’s in a wheelchair due to an accident and she lives in a wonderful looking apartment which, in terms of the furniture, drapes and wallpaper... are all purple. Another brilliant stylish decision from the director which enlivens the look and feel of the film.

And like I said earlier, the various ‘in your face’ stylistic flourishes are back in full swing in this one. A striking example is when four of the girls steal Nobo’s car. As they drive off the director crosscuts two shots, one of the back of the car driving off and one of the girls inside. The two shots are rapidly cut together to create a kind of discernible visual strobe and then, when it finally resettles on the back of the car which is speeding off into the distance, away from the camera in the middle of the shot, the next shot enters quite slowly but simultaneously from both sides of the screen in a double wipe, reminiscent of a gatefold sleeve album cover, coming together to give us all of the information. This is then followed up straight away by a series of split screen shots contrasting the three guys on foot, running around and looking for the car with various shots of the speeding car itself. It’s a slick, sophisticated visual language the director is peddling here and, because of the youth and vibrance of the target audience being exploited, he can get away with it too. It fits the attitude of the characters and the situations they get in and it makes for a great cinematic experience, not to mention reminding the audience that film is a major art form.

There’s a curious scene later in the film where the girl gang of anti heroes are chasing the Dragon Gang and the girls all steal Honda bikes out of a Honda showroom following Meiko Kaji’s outcry that... “We need Hondas!” It’s a bizarre and suspiciously unnecessary scene which completely seems like it must be a bit of product placement from the company in question... which seems a bit odd since they are therefore associating their product with a gang of girl delinquents who regularly consume booze and drugs and threaten people with their knives. Also strange is that, for this one chase scene only, so far that I can remember in a Stray Cat Rock film, the girls have all taken time to grab a proper motorcycle helmet and, they certainly look the opposite of ‘cool’ in this scene. One wonders if the helmets were a stipulation of whatever contract that the studio signed with Honda, if that is indeed the case (if you know the answer to this, please let me know in the comments below).

And that’s Stray Cat Rock - Machine Animal done and dusted, other than to say... just like Wild Jumbo and Sex Hunter, I have absolutely no idea what Machine Animal is supposed to be referring to. There are no real machines present (other than the odd motorcycle) and no animals in the mix either... I mean, it kinda sounds cool but, yeah, I’ve got no idea. Answers on a postcard please. Apart from that, though, this is easily the second best of the Stray Cat Rock films I’ve seen, next to the first installment, so this one gets another solid recommendation from me, as does Arrow’s superb Stray Cat Rock dual Blu Ray/DVD boxed edition. And I hope to be watching the fifth and final entry into the series very soon.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo

Wuthering Heist

Stray Cat Rock -
Wild Jumbo
aka Nora-neko rokku -
Wairudo janbo
Japan 1970
Directed by Toshiya Fujita
Nikkatsu/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B
As part of Arrow’s Stray Cat Rock Dual Edition Set

Warning: Full on spoilerage.

First of all... I have to say I have no idea what the phrase Wild Jumbo means. I have tried to find out if it’s anything which has any kind of significance in Japanese and, well, I’ve come back empty handed. However, I will assure you that no elephants were harmed in the making of this movie. In fact, there aren’t even any elephants anywhere in the movie so... yeah... no idea.

Stray Cat Rock - Wild Jumbo is the second of the five, very loosely thematically linked Stray Cat Rock films that Nikkatsu churned out at great speed to have four releases in 1970 and the fifth released in 1971. Indeed, I read that the Alley Cats (or Stray Cats cast) were making the third movie in the series, Sex Hunter, simultaneous to this one and that the Alley Cats were being driven between sets. However, I’m not so sure of the source on that one because, in terms of the two female cast members, this film only has Meiko Kaji in common so... yeah, maybe and maybe not. Don’t know.

The five films all featured rising superstar Kaji but always playing a different character in a different set up. Here, she is still part of a ‘gang’, “The Pelican Club”, but she’s the only female member, C-Ko... sharing the screen with the other members played by Takeo Chii, (Takeo) Tatsuya Fuji (Ganishin), Yûsuke Natsu (Jirô) and Sôichirô Maeno (Debo)... all playing stereotypical characters associated with leadership, strength, stupidity etc. When Takeo, the leader, falls for a ‘girl with a mission’, the playful group get involved in a daring heist to rob a major religious group of 30 million yen for the second half of the movie. The girl with a mission is striking actress Bunjaku Han, playing a character called Asako here.

Now, it has to be said, this film isn’t a patch on the last one. it doesn’t have many of the stylistic flashes and pacing of the previous director’s movie in the run and even the attitude of the main characters, who are all pretty much a lovable bunch, adds to the tone of the film being a little ‘old fashioned’ rather than something which is capturing the edginess of the first movie. Indeed, while the inevitable ‘rival gang’ does indeed inflict some damage to the characters, it’s not as violent and full on as the gang warfare in the other pictures (at least not the ones I’ve seen and nor does it compare to the delinquent girl gang movies I’ve seen put out by other studios).

It does have a few brief moments of stylistic bravado though. For example, the moment in the title sequence, superimposed over a montage of four of the gang having a playful time by a river, has some nice shots cut out of circles of just their feet as they walk past some tubes (presumably that’s what that sequence of shots is supposed to represent). This sequence also features a foreshadowing moment when Ganishin pushes Jirô into a deep drop into water. As Jirô’s body falls, the film does a deliberate stutter, freezing the frame just briefly, twice, before he hits the water and the title card comes up. It means nothing at this point but, right near the end of the movie, when Jirô is shot dead by the police and he takes a tumble off the side of a bridge into water, the director similarly stutters his downward descent with the same technique. Ganishin falls to the floor with a similar stutter too when he’s taken out by a police sniper a little later on.

Other stylistic flourishes such as static shot montages showing American tourists snapping pictures of their holiday and sped up footage of the gang fixing a burst tyre, seem a little lame and out of keeping with the frenetic, kinetic, high speed pace of Stray Cat Rock - Delinquent Girl Boss (reviewed here). One moment, where a rival gang are introduced with comic book bubbles instead of sounds almost won me over but... no, it was a nice idea but it didn’t quite make it.

That being said, it’s not a bad film... I had a good time with it but, its not great to compare this one to the first entry in the series, I think. There are nice moments like Charles Bronson’s face advertising Mandom Cologne on a poster used as a visual metaphor for Ganishin’s personality and appearance, at one point. There’s an interesting diversion where Debo is digging up holes around a school at midnight over a series of nights which has a nice pay off... kinda tying into the fatal craziness of the end of the picture. There’s even a cameo appearance of the night club footage of Akiko Wada singing from the first film tracked in (I think) as a cross cut audio commentary on the state of Takeo’s mind at one point... although it’s a bit bizarre to have this character just suddenly turn up as a non-sequiter like this. Actually, I can’t find confirmation anywhere on the internet but I’m pretty sure she has a very small cameo at the start of the movie too... as the ‘cop’ who breaks up the other gang from beating up Takeo at the start. If anyone could confirm it in the comments section below, that would be nice.

And other than that... yeah, Stray Cat Rock - Wild Jumbo is a fine film and entertaining enough but it’s not compulsive like the first one. I’d watch it again though... it just feels like a strange fit and change of pace for the series. I don’t remember too much about Stray Cat Rock - Sex Hunter (even though I’ve seen it at least twice, once at the cinema) but it has the same director as the first movie and I’ll be rewatching that one next. Review coming soon to this very blog.

Stray Cat Rock - Delinquent Girl Boss

Delinquent We Stand

Stray Cat Rock -
Delinquent Girl Boss
aka Nora-neko rokku:
Onna banchô
Japan 1970
Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
Nikkatsu/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B
As part of Arrow’s Stray Cat Rock Dual Edition Set

I’ve only ever been able to see the third of the five Stray Cat Rock movies over here in the UK, previously. I have an old Region 1 DVD copy of Stray Cat Rock - Sex Hunter which I loved and, a few years after I bought that, the NFT showed the same one as part of a festival of Japanese cinema they had programmed (I was luck enough to see one of the early Zatoichi movies on a big screen in that season too), so I went to see it on the kind of screen it was shot for. But, for some reason, I’d never come across subtitled copies of the whole series before Arrow released this lovely Blu Ray set a few years ago... which I’ve now finally got around to cracking open. I have to say, this is a real treat.

First things first... I have to give appreciation to Jasper Sharp, a man I have come to respect as somewhat of an authority on the art of Japanese cinema over the years (and also slime moulds and fungi but, that’s another story). He wrote the accompanying booklet in this set and it alerted me to the fact that, since I’d only ever seen the third, that while the films retain some of the same actors throughout... most notably the young ‘superstar on the rise’ Meiko Kaji, receiving only second billing here... there are no running characters and so it’s a series really only in terms of it focuses on youth culture and ‘girl gangs ‘ of the period. I mean, I would have figured out the abstract nature of the idea of a series by the end of this picture because of something which happens (and I won’t spoil that for you here)... but it’s nice to be forewarned sometimes, at any rate. So, loosely connected or otherwise, Nikkatsu (a studio I always tend to associate with crime and action cinema by the likes of Seijun Suzuki), must have really worked their actors hard in those days. The first four Stray Cat Rock movies all came out in the same year with the fifth and final one coming out the following year. I’ve seen a few of these ‘girl gang delinquent’ style films over the years, most notably in a top notch Panik House box set release, The Pinky Violence Collection, from a couple of decades ago (which needs a Blu Ray release please folks) but, I have to say, this first movie of this series, Stray Cat Rock - Delinquent Girl Boss, is probably one of the most amazingly gobsmacking films of this genre I’ve seen.

Now, for the record, I don’t think the ‘good gal’ girl gang in this one are called Stray Cats or even Alley Cats (as in some English translations) so I’m really not sure what the collective title means on this series. However, my best guess is it’s a female equivalent of terms like Stray Dog or Lone Wolf which tend to be used as a metaphor in Japanese films for a kind of maverick, roaming character and this one certainly has that in the form of the actress who actually does have lone status (and top billing above Kaji) in the film and joins in the action as a peripheral to the gang... Akiko Wada as Ako.

Stray Cat Rock - Delinquent Girl Boss must have been one in a whole raft of movies at the time in Japan which were a blast of fresh air on the cinematic climate. I was bowled over when I watched this and I can only assume it had a, perhaps more muted but somewhat similar effect on audiences (especially since they grouped five of these films together under one binding title).

The film starts off with a blue wash of colour and a circle cut out from this reveals the screen, a lone biker, Ako played by Wada, riding up front and centre of the circle which heralds the title card of the movie. She gets into an altercation with a guy in a beach buggy and his gang of bikers, as he rear ends her but, instead of getting in a fight, they just drive off. These are the notorious ‘black shirts’, the thuggish gang employed by a crime syndicate in the city. She speeds after them without ever catching them but the credits as we follow her on the bike are absolutely amazing with the Stray Cat title song pitched against high speed shots rapidly cut together in a way that makes the whole thing just very exciting without once being confusing. Great stuff.

The director makes some really wild stylistic choices on this film about two rival gangs getting into conflicts, after the boyfriend of gang leader Meiko Kaji fails to successfully rig a boxing match for the criminal organisation he works for, losing them a lot of money and potentially his life. There are the usual rivalries between the gangs and also the syndicate as the girls alternatively hide and do battle in a not overly bloody but decidedly nasty series of incidents as everyone crosses paths. It’s well acted but standard stuff in terms of story content but, as I said, it’s not shot in a standard way and it’s an absolute joy to watch.

For starters, the director will suddenly black out portions of the screen artificially to make new shapes. A moment during the titles, for example, has the credits staying where they are but the picture content is further narrowed down to a horizontal slat from the 2.35:1 aspect ratio it is already framed as. And he’ll do things like this to highlight different things at different points. Such as, in one scene, suddenly bringing the sides of the frame in so just the character who is the main subject of the shot is in his own, vertical slice so we can focus on his facial expressions. There’s even a point later on in the film, at the end of the boxing match which is so central to the plot, where he’ll just put washes of different bright colours filled in crudely around characters to isolate them within the frame. It’s not subtle but the rock and roll sensibility of the film and the aggressive editing we’re already used to... not to mention the groovy, psychedelic night club where the girls hang out and listen to the local rock group do their thing... means that the sudden introduction of techniques like this don’t feel in any way out of place with the tone of the movie. They just seem like a natural fit somehow.

Another thing he does, which is far from subtle, is to announce the time stamps in the film in a very ‘in your face’ way. The opening time check is the numbers reversed out of a big, green wash that flashes alternatively against the picture for a second or so and, similarly, he does this throughout with subsequent cards such as Saturday Night flashing  out of pink, Sunday Morning (heralding the moment when the rival gang bikes to the hiding place of our heroes, armed to the teeth) in orange, the denouement of Sunday Night flashing in crimson... perhaps to foreshadow the bloodiness of the fate of some of the characters... and Monday Morning flashing up out of magenta, for the final aftermath and farewell scene. They’re a bit like those rapid cuts Dennis Hopper uses in Easy Rider but with a time fix and it’s a great way for the director to burn the ‘documentary’ detail of the information (an old trick to add a certain weight to a fiction)  into the audience’s collective retina and to make sure we don’t miss it.

I was just in awe of the way this film looks, to be quite honest, especially for the first two thirds. There’s a wonderful moment where Meiko Kaji follows her boyfriend into a street to talk to him. They are only about six feet apart but the director suddenly goes into a split screen and, rather than to show us two separate, simultaneous incidents, the director uses it to dislocate the space of the conversation from our perceptions and focus us on different perspectives. So the boyfriend is in the left half of the screen in long shot, more or less in profile, looking back over his shoulder at his girlfriend but, Kaji is in close up at a different angle dominating the right of the screen... it’s fantastic stuff and a really arresting way of staging the conversation. Then Hasebe reverses it so the boyfriend is in a close up and Kaji is shot from a longer distance. It’s just incredible stuff.

Even the action scenes, such as the fights with the fluid but fast camera movements which will then pull right back to give you a shot of the action all taking place at once as several ‘girl versus girl’ combat scenes are happening simultaneously, makes the whole film completely enthralling. It’s like watching a rock video (the soundtrack to this is cool although, some of the night club songs lose their edge a little) and it’s one of those films you can watch with your toes tapping all the time.

And as if this wasn’t enough... the acting and chemistry from the actors, many of whom I’ve seen in other films (I just can’t put names to faces here) is just amazing. I mean, Meiko Kaji is always great to watch and the tough attitude she conveys coupled with her strong screen presence means you’re always onto a winner (even this early on in her career). However, as brilliant as she is here... and she is... she’s kind of playing second fiddle to the wonderful, attitude filled, tough gal role of Akiko Wada’s lone wolf... err... stray cat kind of character, charming all the girls here who revel in her coolness in a way which almost brings a sapphic admiration to the front (which I’m sure was probably a deliberate move on the part of the director but it’s not spelled out too much here). She’s pretty amazing in this and she and Kaji make a rip roaring pair of main protagonists to get behind on this kaleidoscopic whirlwind of a movie (kaleidoscopic to the point where the director even rotates the frame 360 degrees in one club scene).  

With all this plus an unusual beach buggy versus motorcycle chase, this film is an absolute wonder and, despite some warnings in the back of the booklet about the ‘rawness’ of certain aspects and why they’ve made the restoration decisions they have (bearing in mind I don’t think Arrow restored these themselves, possibly), the film looks absolutely brilliant with a very clear transfer and no picture damage that I could see. Literally, my one grumble was that I wish they’d subtitled one or two more of the Japanese language songs sung by the random groups in the film but, it doesn’t detract from the movie in any way and, frankly, I just loved this first entry in the series. I’m not sure the second one can live up to it but I’ll find out very soon. I’d recommend this to pretty much anyone who wants to see how brilliant the aesthetic visual language of cinema can be utilised to tell even a basic story and capture the imagination. Stray Cat Rock - Delinquent Girl Boss is a real assault on the senses but, you know, not in a bad way and I can’t wait to see what’s in store next (although this director doesn’t return to the series until the third film).