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A police van is attacked, and two of the prisoners it was carrying are
shot dead by a gang of attackers. Then the attackers take off again
without leaving a clue who they were. Prison guard Tamon (Michitaro
Mizushima), who was responsible for the van, is suspended for six months
for that, time he decides to use to find out what really has happened. His
investigations first lead Tamon to the girlfriends of the two dead men,
but when he tries to question them, one is shot dead by an arrow while the
other makes a getaway. However, they both seem to have links to stripper
Tsunako (Mari Shiraki), who in turn is the girlfriend of Goro (Shoichi
Ozawa), one of the prisoners in the fatal police van, but one who survived
and was since paroled. Tsunako soon leads Tamon to the stripper agency
owned by Hamashima (Shinsuke Ashida), which is presently run by his
daughter Yuko (Misako Watanabe) and his sleazy right-hand man Akahori
(Toru Abe), who are constantly arguing about everything. Thing is, the
agency is also threatened by a mysterious criminal, Akiba, a mysterious
man whose identity nobody knows who snatches strippers to turn them into
prostitutes and ship them off to foreign countries. Yuko falls in love
with Tamon before long, but that doesn't stop him from suspecting her to
be Akiba, and only when Tamon confronts her with these suspicions does she
give him the vital clues leading to Akiba - but then the two are captured
by Akiba's men and tied up in a free-racing gastruck. They can free
themselves though and free a busload of Akiba's strippers-turned-whores -
also thanks to Goro, who had been working for Akiba but had a sudden
change of heart. When Tamon, aided by the police, is too good at closing
in on Akiba, he and his men try to make a getaway by freight train, but
utlimately this turns into a shootout by the traintracks. Only Akiba seems
to succeed to make a getaway, but then he runs into Yuko - and it turns
out she is her own father, cannibalizing his own business for quick
profits. As these stories go, Akiba/Hamashima ultimately gets caught in
the traintracks making his further getaway and is run over by a train ... Nice
and stylish murder mystery, and also an early film by Seijun Suzuki, who
in this one still very much plays along genre rules and doesn't yet let
his imagination run amok yet - but he already shows a very distinct visual
flair that would come to fruitition in his later films and would put him
into a league all of his own. As a genre film (as opposed to a Seijun
Suzuki film) though this one could have profited from a better, less
convoluted script, but Suzuki keeps things moving at a steady pace and
keeps the whole thing interesting enough (not only on a visual level) to
grant 80 minutes of good entertainment at least.
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