Who needs eyes when you have hate?
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.
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.
1960—Gary Cooper Dies
American film actor Gary Cooper, who harnessed an understated, often stoic style in numerous adventure films and westerns, including Sergeant York, For Whom the Bell Tolls, High Noon, and Alias Jesse James, dies of prostate, intestinal, lung and bone cancer. For his contributions to American cinema Cooper received a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is considered one of top movie stars of all time.
1957—Von Stroheim Dies
German film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, who as an actor was noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts which led him to become a renowned cinematic villain with the nickname “The Man You Love to Hate”, dies in Maurepas, France at the age of 71.
1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.
2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies
Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne.
1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director
In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.
1977—Joan Crawford Dies
American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer.
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Art by Kirk Wilson for Harlan Ellison's juvenile delinquent collection The Deadly Streets.
Art by Sam Peffer, aka Peff, for Louis Charbonneau's 1963 novel The Trapped Ones.
Paul Rader art for Nympho Librarian by Les Tucker.
Horwitz Books out of Australia used many celebrities on its covers. This one has Belgian actress Dominique Wilms.
Assorted James Bond hardback dust jackets from British publisher Jonathan Cape with art by Richard Chopping.
