Tatsuya Fuji

The Stray Cat Rock series stars Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Blind Woman’s Curse) who with these five films began her reign as the badass action queen of the era. In these five tales of rebellious youth she stars alongside the gorgeous Bunjaku Han (Love Letter) and Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses). In Machine Animal gang rivalry is once again the focus with two gangs pursuing some LSD pushers looking to move a big score. Directed by genre veterans Yasuharu Hasebe (Female Prisoner Scorpion 701’s Grudge Song) and Toshiya Fujita (Lady Snowblood) the films feature a psychedelic mix of girl gangs, bikers, sex, drugs, and rock and roll with plenty of ass-kicking to boot, all captured in a delirious mash up of pop aesthetics including split screens, freeze frames, injections of colour, frenetic editing and dizzying angles, making these films a riotous joy from beginning to end.

In 1969 future sexploitation specialist Yasuharu Hasebe (Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter) teamed up with the inimitable Jô Shishido (Branded to Kill, Youth of the Beast) for a follow up to their yakuza hit Massacre Gun. A tale of gang warfare that features a raft of the period’s most iconic stars, Akira Kobayashi (Battles Without Honor and Humanity, The Flowers and the Angry Waves) is a yakuza lieutenant who emerges from jail to find his gang dispersed and his ageing boss in his sickbed. Shishido is the rival waiting to kill him and a young Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood) is the girl caught in the crossfire. Gritty and cynical, Retaliation is a hardboiled precursor to Kinji Fukasaku’s revisionist yakuza pictures of the 1970s.

The Stray Cat Rock series stars Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Blind Woman’s Curse) who with these five films began her reign as the badass action queen of the era. In these five tales of rebellious youth she stars alongside the gorgeous Bunjaku Han (Love Letter) and Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses). In Wild Jumbo, Kaji and the gang get involved in a kidnapping and the robbery of a religious organisation. Directed by genre veterans Yasuharu Hasebe (Female Prisoner Scorpion 701’s Grudge Song) and Toshiya Fujita (Lady Snowblood) the films feature a psychedelic mix of girl gangs, bikers, sex, drugs and rock and roll with plenty of ass-kicking to boot, all captured in a delirious mash up of pop aesthetics including split screens, freeze frames, injections of colour, frenetic editing and dizzying angles, making these films a riotous joy from beginning to end.

The Stray Cat Rock series stars Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Blind Woman’s Curse) who with these five films began her reign as the badass action queen of the era. In these five tales of rebellious youth she stars alongside the gorgeous Bunjaku Han (Love Letter) and Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses).