Ruthless Women: Criminal Woman...Killing Melody (1973)

Maki's ready to kill Oba.

    
      A year's passed and I have yet to cover a Sugimoto Miki or Ike Reiko vehicle. That is criminal to put it lightly. Yes, Reiko has a bit part in Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Proxy War (1973) but she’s not in it nearly enough. Sugimoto on the other hand, has been painfully absent. I mean truly painfully, what is Jailhouse 701: Japanese Cult Cinema without 2 of the reigning queens of not only Japanese cult cinema but international cult cinema. This may sound hyperbolic but Ike and Sugimoto were dominant forces in the realm of Japanese film for a brief glorious moment.

Starting in the 1920s film became a booming business for Japan. There were Ozu, Mizoguchi, Gosho, Shimizu, Kinugasa, and countless working from the start. As it became a cultural mainstay, people continued to flock to the movie theatre until…television stepped in. By the late 1960s the major studios (Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Toho, Daiei, Toei, Etc.) were in trouble, primetime TV stole the flocks of adoring fans and kept them hostage at home. Things needed a shift. Movies were getting more dangerous but the Japanese New Wave movement didn’t necessary mean more money. So there was a desperate scramble to give the viewer something you can’t see on television. Toei and Nikkatsu dominated with gratuitous sex and violence. Nikkatsu abandoned the Yakuza flicks in favor for softcore exploitation fare with inane and ridiculous plots in their Roman Pornos. Toei took the other road. Girl gangs were a ‘new (Mizoguchi’s Women of the Night is a proto girl gang film that sets the foundation for films like this)’ thing that the nation was facing. So naturally, they bit and profited profusely from it, with the Pinky Violence films. These were unabashedly exploitation films but still fun and managed to be smart, clever and gritty. They get dismissed as sleaze and nothing else by some but those people are missing out. 

Kaoru (Katayama Yumiko)

Ike Reiko and Sugimoto Miki’s careers were brief but explosive. Toei discovered both of them in the early 1970s. Each of them started their film careers in 1971. Ike’s first film, Girl Boss Blues: Queen Bee’s Counterstrike (Sukeban Burusu: Mesubachi No Gyakushu), which kicked off the wildly popular 6 movie series Girl Boss Blues/Girl Boss (not to be confused with the Delinquent Girl Boss series, that only has 4 movies and starred the equally great Oshida Reiko). Sugimoto made her debut with Ike, a few months after Queen Bee’s Counterstrike in the softcore sex comedy Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha. This was the first of many collaborations between them in the space of a few years, concluding with Criminal Woman: Killing Melody (Zenka Onna: Koroshi-Bushi).

Director Mihori Atsushi’s first film, Criminal Woman showed a lot of potential. He flipped the already well-established genre trappings of the girl gangs films. His directing resume like Ike and Sugimoto is brief. By 1979, each of them was out of the business. Mihori was a minor figure and not much is known about him. Ike and Sugimoto have seemingly disappeared from public life or chose to live private lives after the heyday of Pinky Violence and Pinku films died out.

Criminal Woman: Killing Melody - Maki (Ike) waits at a packed nightclub for Oba of Oba industries to walk with his posse. Once he shows, she slashes and stabs but gets caught and then gangraped (not shown). Even though, she stabbed a few men, it’s only 2 years and change. While there,befriends a few women - Yukie (Portrayed by Masami Soda), Kaoru (Portrayed by Katayama Yumiko), and Natsuko (Portrayed by Chiyoko Kazama). Oh, and there’s some woman there that might be Oba’s woman, Masayo (Sugimoto). She and Maki agree to a duel, it’s a draw. A few years later, the gang reunite. Maki wants revenge for what Oba did to her father. The girls play Oba against his rival, Hamayasu. The yakuza families destroy each other, Maki gets her revenge (before that gets tortured and there’s a chainsaw involved) but Masayo needs to settle the score. They fight again, it’s a draw. Masayo joins the girls. They walk off to scam more yakuza and fuck shit up.

Keeping with the general vibe of the girl gang genre, the central women - Yukie, Kaoru, Natsuko, Maki, and Masayo, are ruthless and actively go after what they want and who they want. They come from the lower class. Money and access to opportunities to move up socially are limited at best. Maki was trapped in the cycle of poverty. Unlike several other protagonists in these films, we get a succinct and clear back-story. Her mother isn’t there. She has no siblings. Her dad was an addict reduced to selling drugs for Oba. They gave him an overdose as punishment. He was in his own daughter’s words, “a good-for-nothing,” but still the only family she had left. What little we know about him and their situation, is telling of how and why Maki is the way she is. Abandoned by society, by her own family, there was no other choice other than kill the man responsible for her father’s death. 

Maki (Ike Reiko) counting money from her client

However, her circumstances change in prison. Seemingly for the first time, other people want to get to know her. This is the first instance of a complete genre inversion. The first appearance of the other girls is presented in the typical fashion, one sitting on a pile of mats and others sitting on the floor around them. Instead of immediately challenging the new girl, they chat about why they’re in prison this time with a flashback. In this section, Maki is merely a background player. Masayo sensed something off about Maki from the start. There’s heat between but neither is sure why until Masayo reveals that she was a yakuza’s kept woman. Then they duel, but this is a special duel. They are tethered together via biting onto a  knotted rope whilst using glass shards. Maki gets slashed, loses her blade, and gets beaten down but keeps fighting. In shock, Masayo rules it a draw despite barely breaking a sweat. This new girl means business. After this display, Kaoru and her crew bring Maki into the fold. 

 

Natsuko, Yukie, and Kaoru

 You’d think this is a Female Prisoner Scorpion knockoff at this point but there’s a time leap to the end of her sentence once we're settled into prison life. Her friends agree to help with revenge without a struggle. This will be more than murder. She wants to destroy his career and livelihood first. They discover the identities of Oba’s underbosses and his rivals - the Hamayasus. In a Kill Bill turn, start knocking off the underbosses. In a wide variety of ways from stabbing to sniper shot into a car (similar to the Kill Bill anime sequence) to a Giallo throat cut with a straight razor (the body falls next to a mannequin another Giallo element). Among the chaos the rival gangs clash and get into ever escalating firefights. All the while, the girls sell contraband weapons to the Hamayasus and intercept a massive 300 million yen drug deal. Much like Sanjuro in Yojimbo, she waits in the rafters until the right moment to strike.  

Ike sets up the shot.

She fires.

When that moment presented itself, Maki stands proud atop a hill with a full-volume lady mullet on display and briefcase of dope in hand. Confidence, domination, and power all embodied in a single shot. She’s not the same Maki from the assault in the go-go club. Brilliantly, this is flips the gender and character roles from the intro. Oba is alone, in a suit, surrounded by armed women, and helpless. The women are in control, dressed casually, and a strong unit. Maki shoots the arms, knees, and then the head. She did not reach this point all on her own, other women from a similar situation understand her and nourished her. It was impossible alone. No one else would even consider helping them, they only have each other. This is the common thread of girl gang films. Uniting to fight the common enemy - men. Dismantling the local patriarchy is always a fun pass time. 

Maki rocking her lady mullet ready for revenge.

 The primary element that keeps everything together is the tension between Ike and Sugimoto. From the first moment that they see each other, you know shit will go down. Ike and Sugimoto had a history of playing rivals turned allies. The shared history is palpable. The chemistry is magnetic, the Japanese Pinku version of Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill. The first duel sets up the journey. Maki is like a weakened animal ready to attack anything in her way. Masayo is strong, self-assured, and knows her strengths. With ease, she slashes Maki’s clothes stripping her and dragging her down to her basic self. By the end, she’s exhausted everything she has. Mid-fight, they knock over a chalk liner. Each have white stain covering their clothes. The only way is up. Masayo disappears and stagnates for awhile but Maki surpasses her ruthlessness. 

Ike’s transformation from pathetic to powerful is sublimely subtle. After the murder of Oba, the second duel begins. There is no tether to contain them. The beats are strikingly similar except they’re equals. In place of chalk coating their brawl, it’s a briefcase of cocaine. Losing Oba freed Masayo, she never needed him. Every scene with them together, she’s subservient and traditional. Sugimoto’s icy exterior hardly hides her disappointment with life. That ere of sadness erodes when she realizes that both she and Maki are ruthless women. There’s no reason they should fight. So, she joins the crew.

In only 83 minutes, we see the build-up of victimized and discarded women and the slow destruction of powerful men. All the while shifting from a prison to heist to yakuza to girl gang genre and cleanly maintaining the revenge thread with an expert's ease. The leaps in genre are done with great dexterity, you don’t even realize how cleverly they’re tied together until the end sequence. Compared to other Pinky Violence films, it’s light. The sex is off-screen, the violence is a bit more stylish and cleaner, and the content and vibe is more accessible. It’s a blast but be warned if you aren’t familiar with the genre, it will get uncomfortable.