ROKKU STARS

Yamauchi and Shibata are back for an encore.

Several years ago we shared a rare tateken sized poster for Bankaku Rokku, aka Bankaku Rock, aka Ranking Boss Rock, and today, above, we’re circling back to the film with the hansai sized poster, which we usually just call standard sized. We didn’t share this in the earlier post because we didn’t have it then. It just wasn’t available at the time. That omission is now rectified. Something else that wasn’t available back then was the movie. Well, we found that too. Our efforts are unceasing.

Bankaku Rokku is a juvie delinquent pinky violence flick in which the Akabane 100 Club and Ikebukuro Cavalry battle for supremacy. Emiko Yamauchi plays Yukiko, the “bankaku,” or chief bodyguard of the Akabane 100. When she’s released from reform school she decides to settle an old score with the Cavalry gang’s leader Taka, played by Etsuko Shibata. But Yukiko’s revenge gets complicated when she’s accused of a murder that was actually the work of Johuku Clan, a male gang of pimps and thieves.

This flick is all alienation and disaffection. When the police come looking for Yukiko her authoritarian father even urges them to give her the death penalty. Will Yukiko dodge the cops and get her sweet revenge? It wouldn’t be pinky violence if she didn’t at least get the chance. Broken bottles, supersharp scissors, and razor blades are the order of the day, along with numerous boobs and climactic bloodspray. There may not be much of a point to it all, but for pinky violence fans it should hit the spot. Bankaku Rokku premiered in Japan today in 1973.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1920—Terrorists Bomb Wall Street

At 12:01 p.m. a bomb loaded into a horse-drawn wagon explodes in front of the J.P.Morgan building in New York City. 38 people are killed and 400 injured. Italian anarchists are thought to be the perpetrators, but after years of investigation no one is ever brought to justice.

1959—Khrushchev Visits U.S.

Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. The two week stay includes talks with U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as a visit to a farm and a Hollywood movie set, and a tour of a “typical” American neighborhood, upper middle class Granada Hills, California.

1959—Soviets Send Object to Moon

The Soviet probe Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to reach the Moon when it crashes in Mare Serenitatis. The probe was designed to crash, but first it took readings in Earth’s Van Allen Radiation Belt, and also confirmed the existence of solar wind.

1987—Radiation Accident in Brazil

Two squatters find a container of radioactive cesium chloride in an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil. When the shielding window is opened, the bright blue cesium becomes visible, which lures many people to handle the object. In the end forty-six people are contaminated, resulting in illnesses, amputations, and deaths, including that of a 6-year-old girl whose body is so toxic it is buried in a lead coffin sealed in concrete.

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.
Pulp style book covers made the literary-minded George Orwell look sexy and adventurous.

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