The Pinky Violence Collection

The Pinky Violence Collection is a fantastic entry-point to a genre that, until very recently, was almost completely inaccessible to the Western viewer. In the 1970s, facing stiff competition from television, the Japanese film industry fought back by providing viewers with what television couldn’t – excessive sex and violence. Nikkatsu started with its Roman-Porno line of bizarre soft-core films, and Toei, in response, chose to follow a more action-oriented route. The resulting Pinky Violence films featured female heroines, and unprecedented levels of on-screen sex and violence. The closest parallel would be the blaxploitation films of the U.S., which created a similarly heady mix of eroticism, action, and social justice. Similarly, the Pinky Violence films blur the line between empowerment and exploitation. Just as blaxploitation films were among the first to star strong African-American protagonists but simultaneously traded in the crudest stereotypes possible, the Pinky Violence films depicted strong, independent female characters, while subjecting them to intensely degrading situations, and filling the screen with gratuitous nudity.

Text: David Austin on cinemastrikesback.com

Panik House has selected four different movies from four different series, in an attempt to present the cream of Toei’s crop. The films are Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless To Confess, Girl Boss Guerrilla, Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom, and Criminal Woman: Killing Melody. All share certain characteristics – a gang of tough outlaw girls, who have only their camaraderie and their fists (knives, grenades) to protect them from a harsh male world of gangsters and officials. Within the confines of that basic premise, the four films run the gamut from biker gang roughies, to schoolgirl sadism, to revenge sagas. They also vary in tone from the relatively light-hearted and more traditional DGB, to the absolutely vicious TGHS, to the brutal but slapstick-filled GBG. The sleaze factor is considerable, though not overwhelming, ranging from the somewhat chaste DGB to soft-core content in TGHS, and most films feature an underlying S&M theme (which will come as no surprise to frequent viewers of Japanese genre cinema). Following is my comprehensive review of the set and all four movies included in it.

Before October, the only legitimate Region 1 options for this type of film were Meiko Kaji films: Shunya Ito’s maniacal Female Convict #701: Scorpion, his follow-up surrealist masterpiece, Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, the two Lady Snowblood films, and the goofy Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter. The anything-goes flavor of Japanese 1970s film industry can also be sampled in numerous Kinji Fukasaku yakuza films and Sonny Chiba vehicles released by Home Vision and Adness (of which Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Street Mobster are the best, and should be considered essential viewing). However, the last several months have seen a new accessibility of Pinky Violence films as new-kids-on-the-block Panik House and Discotek have emerged to feed the growing appetite for the genre. Panik House led off with the two Elder Sister period pieces, Sex and Fury and Female Yakuza Tale, both featuring Reiko Ike. Discotek has since followed up with the ultraviolent, gritty Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs starring Miki Sugimoto. Now, with Panik House’s Pinky Violence Collection, the floodgates have opened.

With this new set, Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto finally get their due. Along with Reiko Oshida, they dominated Toei’s bad girl cinema and starred in countless numbers of these films, often playing opposite each other. Reiko Ike often played a slightly older character, a figure with some gravitas and power. She has a sweet face, but usually a dark sad secret behind it. Ike is more beautiful than Sugimoto, but in a classic way that I think works better in her period Elder Sister films. Sugimoto on the other hand, is less conventionally attractive but channels an intensity and anger that Ike can’t match. Her strong, silent characters usually embrace the wild life, and she always seems more at home in the violent scenarios conjured by the films than Ike does. Three of these films feature both actresses, usually as rivals playing off their real-life competition. Reiko Oshida, featured only in Delinquent Girl Boss, gives off a different kind of energy altogether. Cute instead of sexy, cheery instead of brooding, and positive instead of negative, she is more of a charmer than a bombshell or a bad girl, and harks back to an earlier, more innocent age (it is no coincidence that she is the only one of the three not required to spend copious amounts of screen time in the buff).

In addition to the three protagonists, several other character actors make frequent appearances. Tsunehiko Watase plays a tough guy with a heart of gold, one of the rare positive male figures in the films. Nobuo Kaneko (the smarmy, oleaginous Boss Yamamori in the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series) stays true-to-form, playing a succession of sleazy, villainous authority figures. Yumiko Katayama (Horror of Malformed Men) and Yukie Kagawa also play members of the girl groups, but with a sadder, softer touch. Panik House has done a tremendous job on this release, from the packaging, to the extras, to the selection of films. While the movies are not all of the same quality, all are entertaining and the variations on the basic theme add interest.

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Girl Boss Guerrilla
AKA: Sukeban Gerira
Country and Year: Japan (1972)
Director: Norifumi Suzuki
Starring: Miki Sugimoto, Reiko Ike, Emi Jo, Toru Abe

Girl Boss Guerrilla is the weakest of the four movies for two reasons – an unfocused, meandering plot, and a surfeit of irritating slapstick and gross-out comedy. Moreover, director Norifumi Suzuki, with a few exceptions, skimps on his usual artistic flourishes. Despite these flaws, Miki Sugimoto turns in her best performance yet, as her character is given a bit more depth and range than in the past, and the action is by and large up to par with the rest of the Pinky Violence films.

GBG starts with the revving of engines, and moves straight into Easy Rider territory. Sachiko (Miki Sugimoto) and her Shinjuku Red Helmet motorcycle gang from Tokyo cruise into Kyoto looking for trouble. After roughing up a horny local male bosozoku motorcycle gang, they run into the local girl gangs, who aren’t interested in sharing their turf with out-of-towners. When they best local leader Rika in a one-on-one and she tries to renege on their deal , old boss Nami (Reiko Ike) steps in and enforces the code of honor. Now in control of the town, Sachiko must deal with a vengeful Rika and the local Tsutsui gang, who insist on their right to extort money from the girl gangs. The situation is complicated by the fact that one of the lead yakuza, Nakahara, is Nami’s estranged brother.
Ultimately, Sachiko is a lot less interested in running Kyoto than she is in pursuing Ichiro, a lean, handsome boxer who attracts her attention when he helps her out of a jam. When Ichiro and his gym crew move to a hot spring resort town to train, Sachiko is happy to leave Kyoto to its own devices and road-trip down to join him. Unfortunately, the Tsutsui gang also has an interest in Ichiro, an interest which leads to tragic consequences and a grudge match between Sachiko, Nami, and the Tsutsui gang.

Miki Sugimoto is quite a sight in her black jumpsuit, red helmet, gloves and scarf. When confronted, she zips her jumpsuit straight down the front, revealing a tattooed breast that demonstrates her allegiance to the criminal life. Sugimoto also has a great knock-down, drag-out fight with Reiko Ike that ranges from the land into a river. However, it is in her scenes with Ichiro that we get to see a different side of Sugimoto, as she plays an aggressive, ferocious lover, serious but playful, and, for once, happy. The rest of her gang, Kyoto-native Yuki, English-speaking Linda, and slutty but well-meaning Ukko, are similarly entertaining, and their different styles and skills are well-exhibited in an early scene where the girls split up to earn some money.

Unfortunately, Suzuki’s notoriously schizophrenic style really hurts this movie. Every now and then he pulls off a fantastic shot – for example, Reiko Ike’s first appearance is a stunner, using shocking blue tones and an extreme low angle shot to her standing atop an outdoor spiral staircase. Footage of the girls biking is also great, as Suzuki zooms in to extreme close-ups of the sunglass-wearing bikers looking about as cool as could be. On a few occasions, handheld camera is also used effectively, as during an extended circling close-up of lovers Sachiko and Ichiro. More often, though, Suzuki saddles us with lengthy scenes of atrocious slapstick and gross-out humor, as in an extended scene where the girls try to collect the … ahem … evidence of a Buddhist abbot’s illicit tryst, or Ukko’s contraction and passing-along of a nasty venereal disease. A new recruit for the gang - chunky, shaven-headed nun Okei - provides plenty of opportunity for low humor. There are also odd, sloppy touches, like a character who plays the guitar yet somehow produces the sounds of a piano! [For those Suzuki watchers out there keeping tabs on his obsession with Christian imagery, GBG also features a not-so-chaste priest being “defrocked” by one of the girls]. Also, unlike TGHS, GBG features sexual (as opposed to sexualized) violence, with scenes of the women being brutalized and assaulted by yakuza, which detract from the enjoyment of the film (kudos, by the way, to TGHS for having the closest thing possible to a tasteful rape scene - no nudity, quick cut-away, and clearly not intended to titillate - unlike what is on display in so many other Japanese and HK genre films).

Girl Boss Guerrilla, the third film in the Girl Boss series, certainly has its moments, and Sugimoto is genuinely great (in fact, this is my favorite of her performances that I have seen). However, the film does not really come together, and does not achieve the level of the other three.

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Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom
AKA: Kyoufu Joshi Koukou Boryoku Rinchi Kyoushitsu
Country and Year: Japan (1973)
Director: Norifumi Suzuki
Starring: Miki Sugimoto, Reiko Ike, Tsunehiko Watase, Kenji Imai, Yukie Kagawa, Nobuo Kaneko, Yuko Kanno

Lynch Law Classroom, the second film in the Terrifying Girls’ High School series, moves into very different territory than DGB from its opening shot. Without any context, the audience is dropped into a scene that would do any horror movie proud. A struggling terrified girl is trapped in a high school science laboratory by a group of sailor-suited girls with red surgical masks and gloves, wielding scalpels. They begin to fatally drain her of blood while director Suzuki films at skewed angles and intercuts the action with disturbing close-ups of stuffed animals from the lab (in a manner that evokes Norman Bates’s eerie taxidermy collection in Psycho), and long shots of other schoolgirls innocently studying and playing tennis. When the victim breaks free, she is pursued to the roof, attacked, and falls to her death. The entire scene is shot masterfully and raises the stakes for the rest of the film.

As it turns out, her tormenters are Disciplinary Committee, fascist enforcers for the cruel Assistant Principal Ishihara (Kenji Imai) who runs the School of Hope for troubled girls with an iron fist. Ishihara romances a rich teacher, conducts an affair with Yoko, leader of the Disciplinary Committee, dominates the weak-willed principal, and keeps the school’s founder, politician Shigeru Sato (Nobuo Kaneko), happy by supplying him with fresh, young girls.

All goes according to plan, until three new students stir things up. Miki Sugimoto plays Noriko the Cross, a hard-as-nails gang leader out to discover the truth behind the murder and to bring down the power structure at the school. She is joined by urban cowboy Razor-Blade Remi (Misuzu Ota), and sleazy but cheerful Kyoko Kubo (Seiko Saburi), known as the “Sappho of Osaka” for soon-to-be-obvious reasons. Sugimoto is also assisted by a rival gang boss (Reiko Ike) and by Tsunehiko Watase, playing a sleazy, blackmailing tabloid reporter who is happy to help the girls as long as it advances his own interests.

TGHS is a delightfully well-crafted, nasty, vicious little film. The schoolgirls are positively feral, and the atmosphere is poisonous. TGHS is also the most overtly political film in the series - equally attacking antiquated gender roles, politicians, and school authority figures. The delinquent girls are practically role models next to the people running the school and the government. Sex and violence in the set also reach a crescendo, with frequent nudity and vicious torture being common with the vast majority of the violence and unpleasantness taking place between the girls themselves (excepting the finale).

Reiko Ike has a small but fun role as Sugimoto’s mysterious rival and counterpart. She challenges Sugimoto to a knife fight and only backs off because she respects that Sugimoto has to finish the investigation that she has started. Their relationship here mirrors their respectful rivalries in Criminal Woman and Girl Boss Guerrilla.

While TGHS makes some missteps along the way, it surprisingly manages not only to match, but also to top, its excellent beginning. The film closes by evoking the student protests of the late ‘60s in an ambitiously conceived and wonderfully executed finale where Sugimoto and Ike lead a veritable army of schoolgirls against the forces of the state, represented by the school administration and an entire battalion of riot police. Students smash windows, light cars on fire, and defend barricades with hoses and kendo sticks, creating image after gorgeous image of anarchy and chaos, burning flags, and revolution.

The film’s main flaw is its gratuitously lengthy sex scenes, which drag on long enough to temporarily overshadow its other merits. It is too bad that such a great film also had to pander to studio requirements, but the anger, anarchic spirit, and flat-out artistic merit of TGHS more than make up for its weaknesses. The incredible opening and closing scenes alone are good enough to bump TGHS a notch above its fellow films.

Norifumi Suzuki (School of the Holy Beast, Sex and Fury) may have an unfortunate tendency towards sloppiness and sleaze, but he also clearly has a great artistic ability. TGHS is a minor masterpiece of the genre. For those fans following Suzuki’s obsession with Christian imagery, TGHS’s Noriko, the Boss with the Cross, carries a prominently displayed crucifix.