Two companies, same release date, but we’ve confirmed it with our Japanese sources, so don’t blame us if it’s wrong. Onna mekura hana to kiba, aka Blind Woman: Flower and Fangs also premiered today in 1968, starring Koreharu Hisatomi, Isao Yamagata, Ken Sanders, and Chizuko Arai, who you see fronting the poster in a killer silk cheongsam. For the boys out there, that’s a traditional dress of Chinese origin also known as a qipao. Hope that enriched your day.
Arai plays a woman who returns to Japan from Hong Kong to find the truth behind the death of the father-figure Yaukza gangster who took her in as an orphan, raised her, taught her to shoot, gamble, and generally be a badass, but went over a cliff when his plan to attack a U.S. military transport along with four henchmen went wrong. Arai finds unexpected assistance in her search for answers, and learns that there was an unknown sixth person on the raid who may have stolen the money and betrayed the others.
As you’d expect, the answers get even more complicated from that point, and danger mounts as someone resolves to stop her investigation in its tracks. In general the movie follows the basic blueprint of numerous other Yakuza crime thrillers, complete to the romantic subplot. We aren’t sure if you’d call this entry a classic of the genre, but it’s one of the better films of Arai’s brief career. It’s probably hard to find in the U.S., but if you can locate it we think it’s certainly worth a watch, as are her other efforts. Onna mekura hana to kiba premiered in Japan today in 1968.
