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Pulp International - The+Tattooed+Swordswoman
Vintage Pulp Oct 4 2020
A SIGHT INCONVENIENCE
Who needs eyes when you have hate?


Above, a rare black and white promo for Teruo Ishii's bizarro thriller Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, et al, starring Meiko Kaji, and released today in 1970. See more on this film here, here, and here

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Vintage Pulp Oct 4 2016
CAT WOMAN
She'll give you more than just a scratch if you aren't careful.

Above, an alternate promo poster for Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, et al, with imagery slightly different from the others we showed you, which can see here

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Musiquarium Mar 1 2013
GEISHA SONGS
She doesn’t just hack people to death—there's a sensitive side.

When we saw this 7-inch gatefold over at Harakiri Chamber scanned and posted in two pieces we couldn’t resist Photoshopping it into one. It’s got Meiko Kaji, and if you’ve watched her movies you know it was her enemies who wound up in two pieces, not her. Anyway, Kaji is attired here for her role as Akemi Tachibana in Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Tattooed Swordswoman. We took a close look at that movie back in October. You get two Kaji songs here—the a-side “Jingi Komoriuta,” which was featured on the soundtracks of Kaidan nobori ryu as well as 1971’s Ginchô wataridori, and the b-side, which is entitled “Koi ni Inochi wo.” This 1970 pressing is very rare and costs the equivalent of $100, which is quite a sum to drop on two tunes. But if you’re curious you can listen to the first one here and the second one here.

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Vintage Pulp Oct 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.

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History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 28
1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight
Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or "the duck."
1953—Jim Thorpe Dies
American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack.
March 27
1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier
Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971.
March 26
1997—Heaven's Gate Cult Members Found Dead
In San Diego, thirty-nine members of a cult called Heaven's Gate are found dead after committing suicide in the belief that a UFO hidden in tail of the Hale-Bopp comet was a signal that it was time to leave Earth for a higher plane of existence. The cult members killed themselves by ingesting pudding and applesauce laced with poison.
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