Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970)

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970) shifts away from the all-girl gangs and youth-on-youth urban violence to weave an equally restless scenario of hedonistic living-in-the-moment friends who spend their days basking in the simple pleasures of riding their jeep, blasting experimental jazz fusion and goofing off from sunrise to sunset. Meiko Kaji's C-ko is a …

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970)

A denim clad biker races through city streets, alternating from a third person perspective of this cool driver and first-person pov showing off the sights of a growing industrialized urban Shinjuku cityscape. Ako (Akiko Wada) is tough, we can tell just by the way she presents herself. I would even call her a free spirit, …

The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge (1974)

The final film in The Street Fighter trilogy opens a little differently than the previous two. A brief scene in a phone line operators service station sees women telephone operators gush over the voice of a "Mr. Tsurugi"'. They're left wondering what sort of man he could possibly be. One woman seems to even be …

Return of the Street Fighter (1974)

The karate movie was one of several quick-and-cheap genres booming in the early and mid 1970s in Japan. In a period where the Japanese film industry was in dubious financial tatters - for reasons too numerous and complicated to get into here, but one among them being the massive popularity of Japanese television giving former …

The Street Fighter (1974)

A condemned killer (Tateki Shikenbaru) awaits his execution. While training in his cell, he receives a visitor. A Buddhist monk (Sonny Chiba), to pray for his sins and prepare him for the next life. The murderer and the monk share a long knowing stare. The monk clasps his hands together and prays for the condemned …