Without
further ado, #ChibaCheckUp Vol. 2 marches on with Shihomi Etsuko in…
Sister Street Fighter: Koryu (Shihomi Etsuko ‘Sue,’ frequent Chiba
collaborator along side Sanada Hiroyuki from the Japan Action Club) gets tasked
by the Hong Kong police to recover her brother from a deadly undercover
mission. He was last seen in Yokohama infiltrating Central Trader. Kakuzaki
Shigetomi (Amatsu Bin, The Bad News Bears
Go To Japan and The Secret of the Urn),
the head of the snake, smuggles heroin via powder sprinkled onto wigs. Koryu is
not alone on this journey. There’s Hayakawa Emi (as herself), Hibiki (Chiba),
Gyukudo (Kondo Hiroshi), and Fujita (Uchida Asao) to help out when needed.
Shigetomi also has a gang of weird martial artists from the Amazon Seven - a
gang of female Thai Kickboxers, to Tettoso - a blow gun assassin with an old
school shield, to Eva Parrish - the Southern Hemisphere Karate Champion. Bloody
battles and vaulting violence ensue.
Following
the success of The Street Fighter (directed
by Ozawa Shigehiro, released February 2, 1974), Chiba with Yamaguchi Kazuhikon
continued this ‘series’ with 2 more films in 1974. Reuniting the same cast and
crew as much as possible to crank out more of the same thing that made it work
to begin with. This approach was common with other B Movie schlock from Toei
and Nikkatsu (but more so with Toei), the Girl
Boss, Delinquent Girl Boss, Female Prisoner Scorpion, and Stray Cat Rock, and Hot Springs Geisha franchises produced a bunch of films in a short
burst of creativity, cheap budgets, and
sleazy subversive yet entertainment. Adding to that sensibility, exploitation
icon Suzuki Norifumi wrote the screenplay. A true mark of quality to brag about.
Yamaguchi
and Chiba would team up several times in future (and had so before) from the
later Street Fighter films to the Mas
Oyama trilogy - Karate Bullfighter, Karate Bearfighter, and Karate For Life. Sister Street Fighter was their 2nd collaboration. However, this
doesn’t really count as a Chiba film in full honesty. He’s a minor player in the
explosive violence on display. Ms. Shihomi Etsuko ‘Sue’ kicks ass with the same
professional ease of her more famous JAC clubmate. She like her colleagues made
their film debuts with the Chiba vehicle, Bodigaado
Kiba (1973). Only 2 films later, she ended up headlining her own film
and showing off her deadly skill. Shihomi’s earnest charm puts you in a
headlock until the credits. She carries the film with the greatest of ease. From the first frame
to the last, you can’t help but to immediately fall under her spell.
Sister Street Fighter is a sleazy, violent excuse for crazy action
sequences. With that said, this goes above and beyond. In the previous #ChibaCheckUp review Shogun’s Ninja, I mentioned that every fight scene added a new
element randomly to up the stakes and tension. It rarely worked there but here
the sheer creativity in each fight is astounding. In the first ten minutes, the
setup and who Koryu is as a fighter and a person are firmly established. When
she arrives in Japan, she stops to get food. While there a gang of knuckleheads
try to pick her up. Instead of immediately kicking ass, she toys with them.
Flies buzz around them. Her reflexes are so strong that she spears the bugs
with toothpicks…then flicks the bugs into the mouths of the 2 creeps talking
her up. Now, she gets into action. From the her first steps in that bar, it was
clear what was going to happen. Further on, once we’re properly introduced to
the bad guy, the stakes are clear. His gang of martial artists will fight our
heroes at the end. Each villain brings their own gimmick. One of those henchmen was seen
earlier (Koryu threw his blade back at him directly in the eye). Again, the
tension is established for a longer payoff now. We’ve seen the one-eyed
bladesman earlier and know there will be a fight later. The tension
exponentially builds with the Game of
Death (the Bruce Lee one) setup, minus Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Koryu and her pals have to adapt to each fight as it happens. This is a prime example how to make an action movie memorable. Yamaguchi makes it look effortless.
If
you aren’t too familiar with Chiba’s movies of this era, they aren’t the
graceful Shaw Brothers kung fu exchanges. He specialized with a rougher, more
violent, and bloodier aesthetic in the martial arts film. Sister Street Fighter delivers some brilliant bursts of creative
brutality but the crowned champions of kills are at the end. Koryu is on a
rampage but has to get through a few more henchmen. She twists a white suited man's head around 180 degrees. He lives long enough to spit out blood and walk away until he
collapses. Then Hibiki goes one on one against the rapist in villain’s crew. In
an ironic twist, Hibiki penetrates the rapist with a piercing hand strike into the stomach
and pulls out intestines on the way out. Needless to say, each is pulled off with the appropriate amount of goofiness and gore.
This
year’s #ChibaCheckUp batch so far has been a mixed bag but this, this, is a special little film. Thank god for the people at Arrow
Video for restoring genre treasure like Sister
Street Fighter. Shihomi Etsuko should be as big a name like her mentor,
Chiba. In her brief career, she crafted a powerful image. She wasn’t just a
female action star. She was a legitimate action star that could go toe to toe
with anyone.
#ChibaCheckUp
Vol. 2 will concludes with Yamaguchi’s Wolf
Guy.
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