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Sukeban
Girl Boss Revenge
Sukeban Onna Bancho / Girl Boss
Japan 1973
produced by Kanji Amao for Toei
directed by Norifumi Suzuki
starring Miki Sugimoto, Reiko Ike, Misuzu Oota, Hiromi Sairaiji, Rena Ichinose, Jun Midorikawa, Rika Sudo, Midori Hiro, Emi Jo, Shinobu, Micchi, Yuuko, Hiroshi Miyauchi, Tadashi Naruse, Satoru Nabe, Bin Amatsu, Katsumasa Uchida, Akira Shioji, Tatsuo Endo, Yoko Mihara, Akira Nitta, Hiroshi Nawa, Yukio Yano, Isao Takanami, Yasuo Matsumoto, Akira Oizumi, Nobuo Kaneko, Ichiro Araki, Ryoko Ema, Sen Okaji, Naomi Oka
written by Takayuki Minagawa, Kiyohide Ohara, Norifumi Suzuki, music by Masao Yagi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Komasa (Miki Sugimoto) is one of the young girls taken to a prison at
the beginning of the movie to spend the next few years behind bars - but
then her prisoner transport is attacked by a gang breaking free one of her
co-convicts, and since none of the other passengers of the transport are
eager to miss out on a good opportunity, they all make a getaway as well
... and all of a sudden Komasa finds herself being the leader of a small
group of escapees, whom she brings to Osaka for a bit of thieving to make
a living. Unfortunately though, the territory they have picked is the turf
of the Black Dragon Gang, and they don't like any competition - and time
and again, Komasa and her girls have to painfully be remembered of this. Komasa
however is not a girl to be defeated that easily, so she soon hooks up
with Tatsuo, a Black Dragon Gang underling who isn't too pleased with the
gang's leadership and tries to instrumentalize him in her revenge against
the gang - with the result that she and her girls are captured and while
her girls are sold into prostitution, she is brutally tortured and raped.
But Tatsuo proves to be a trusted accomplice when he frees her from the
clutches of his own gang. Komasa soon starts an affair with him, too ...
oh, and she frees her girls from the prostitution ring they are held by. There
is one problem concerning Tatsuo, and that's Maya (Reiko Ike), his
girlfriend who only now has returned from hiding (she has stabbed one of
the leaders of the Black Dragon Gang who has humiliated Tatsuo) and who
doesn't like Komasa taking over her turf and her lover. She's in undyingly
in love with Tatsuo by the way because he saved her from a rape even if
that meant swacrificing his promising basebal career. The Maya-problem
seems to resolve itself though when Tatsuo is ordered to bring Maya to
Black Dragon HQ, where she's supposed to be killed - and he does follow
his orders too, the rat. However, when Komasa learns that, she breaks Maya
free, out of sisterhood. Maya next prepares to kill Tatsuo, but when she
has the chance and Tatsuo promises to not even put up resistance, she
can't - and then he's shot by his own gang, because he has long been a
sort-of problem child. That does it for Maya and Komasa, and with the
rest of Komasa's gang (just two girls), they visit Black Dragon HQ and
turn it into a slaughterhouse in an extended battle which they blow up at
the climax. Then Maya, Komasa and Komasa's girl go on a thieving tour
around Japan ... Girl Boss Revenge is hip, is
fast-paced, flashy, sexy, fetishistic and whatnot ... but it simply isn't
one of the better examples of the delinquent girls genre that made
a splash on Japanese cinema screens in the early 1970's, and the reason is
probably its script that seems horribly disjointed, as it seems to throw
subplots and characters into its story without rhyme or reason, just to
keep things going, is short on character motivations and character
development, and frequently losesw sight of its main story thread. that
all said, the film isn't too bad, it has still got plenty of likeable and
at times genre-typical enjoyably sleazy scenes, it just fails to be
totally convincing.
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