Vintage Pulp

October 4 2012

BLACK CAT RUN

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting Meiko Kaji.

We thought the last Meiko Kaji poster we found featured the creepiest black cat of all time. We stand corrected. The above poster is for Teruo Ishii’s 1970 blood splatterer Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Tattooed Swordswoman, aka Black Cat’s Revenge, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, aka Strange Tales of Dragon Tattoo, aka we’ll just stop there and tell you what it’s about. It’s about… well, we aren’t completely sure what it’s about, because we had to watch it without subtitles. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, but this movie is a bit abstract so the plot was hard to follow. Actually, even the actors seemed confused at times. But even if we can’t tell you exactly what it’s about, we can tell you what it has.

It has Meiko Kaji in the starring role. So that’s good.

She’s the leader of a gang that has a dragon collectively tattooed on its back. Which is visually interesting and a nice symbol of togetherness in these divisive times.

But she’s a bit divisive herself, especially when it comes to dividing people from their body parts. She kills lots of people who deserve it, but accidentally blinds a little girl who doesn’t. That’s the girl in the second panel on the right, being blinded. We didn’t need subtitles there. Pretty sure she shrieked, “My eyes!“

And then there’s the cat. It’s on the poster, so we were expecting it. What we didn’t expect is that it eats blood. Which is weird, because cats are normally quite finicky.

There might be more than one black cat, now that we think about it, because it keeps popping up. Near as we can tell, Kaji thinks she’s cursed by this creature, and that it was sent by the little girl she blinded.

There’s something for the ladies here—ass. Prime male ass. That’s only fair, considering how much female skin is usually on display in these old Japanese flicks, but apparently he smells really bad. Leave it to male filmmakers to slip a little beefcake into a movie but then put some passive aggressive twist on it. The women in the movie don’t smell bad. You can be sure of that. But the one guy who shows his ass smells bad. Pretty good ass, though.

But ironically, from the front he’s butt ugly. Double disappointment for female viewers, and doubly passive aggressive from the filmmakers.

There’s a lot of horror movie stuff going on as well, including a guy wokking some severed body parts. Did they ever do hands on the original Iron Chef? They definitely did sea cucumber, but hands, can’t be sure. Probably should have, though.

The black cat inevitably returns, but disturbingly, it’s hanging from a wire. We’re not supposed to notice the wire, but thanks to the wonders of pause technology, we got a clear shot of it. Apparently, the filmmakers couldn’t get a live cat to jump at the camera on cue, so they used this dead one hanging from piano wire. It isn’t a puppet, as far as we can tell. Best not to think about it.

There are some flayings. Members of Kaji’s gang have the dragon tattoos forcibly removed from their backs. It’s fatal, in case you’re wondering. One of the flayed victims ends up pressed against a pane of glass like a Delta Zeta kissing her jock boyfriend. No idea what that was about.

All of this leads to a climactic bloodbath. And we really mean bloodbath. Bad guys end up snorkeling in their own bodily fluids as Kaji pretty much juliennes everyone that crosses her path.

Such massacres are often the prelude to a final showdown in these movies. No exception here. Kaji has to fight the girl she blinded, who’s all grown up now and not in a forgiving mood at all. At all. Teruo Ishii uses an amazing matte backdrop to frame this scene and impart a sense of both turbulence and being sucked into an unavoidable conclusion.

How can the blind swordswoman fight, being blind and all? We missed that explanation, if there was one, but she can definitely hear really well. So that helps. Also, we haven’t seen the last of that cat. Somehow kitty seems to have something to do with helping the blind chick, but this time Kaji is intent on fixing its little red wagon for good.

And that’s all we’ve got, because with virtually zero command of Japanese the plot nuances are beyond us, especially the whole haunting and evil spirit thing. But when a movie looks this good, it’s easy to enjoy even without total (or even partial) comprehension. Hopefully we’ll find a subtitled version somewhere and get a chance to screen this epic again. But even if we don’t, it was time well spent.

Check out poster number two below.

Japan, Kaidan nobori ryu, The Tattooed Swordswoman, Black Cat’s Revenge, Blind Woman’s Curse, Strange Tales of Dragon Tattoo, Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda, Teruo Ishii, movie review, poster art, cinema

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 8

1980—John Lennon Killed

Ex-Beatle John Lennon is shot four times in the back and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City. Chapman had been stalking Lennon since October, and earlier that evening Lennon had autographed a copy of his album Double Fantasy for him.

December 7

1941—Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor

The Imperial Japanese Navy sends aircraft to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its defending air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While the U.S. lost battleships and other vessels, its aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor and survived intact, robbing the Japanese of the total destruction of the Pacific Fleet they had hoped to achieve.

December 6

1989—Anti-Feminist Gunman Kills 14

In Montreal, Canada, at the École Polytechnique, a gunman shoots twenty-eight young women with a semi-automatic rifle, killing fourteen. The gunman claimed to be fighting feminism, which he believed had ruined his life. After the killings he turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.

December 5

1933—Prohibition Ends in United States

Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to overturn the 18th Amendment which had made the sale of alcohol illegal. But the criminal gangs that had gained power during Prohibition are now firmly established, and maintain an influence that continues unabated for decades.

December 5

1945—Flight 19 Vanishes without a Trace

During an overwater navigation training flight from Fort Lauderdale, five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo-bombers lose radio contact with their base and vanish. The disappearance takes place in what is popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle.