1970 ‘怪談昇り竜’ Directed by Teruo Ishii
Akemi is a dragon tattooed leader of the Tachibana Yakuza clan. In a duel with a rival gang Akemi slashes the eyes of an opponent and a black cat appears, to lap the blood from the gushing wound. The cat along with the eye-victim go on to pursue Akemi’s gang in revenge, leaving a trail of dead Yakuza girls, their dragon tattoos skinned from their bodies.
Meiko Kaji Hoki Tokuda Makoto Satō Hideo Sunazuka Nobuko Aoki Shirō Ōtsuji Tōru Abe Yôko Takagi Tatsumi Hijikata Shirō Yanase Ryôhei Uchida Bumon Kahara Yūzō Harumi Yoshi Katō Akira Takahashi Shinzō Shibata Hiroshi Chō Toshizō Kudō Yoko Otaki Masami Maki Chieko Harada Nobuko Yamabe Yasue Nishihara Iwae Arai Kokan Katsura Yoshihiko Tabata Shirô Ôhama Ken Mizoguchi Hiroyuki Atami Show All…
The Tattooed Swordswoman, The Haunted Life of a Dragon-Tattooed Lass, Strange Tales of Dragon Tattoo, Kaidan nobori ryû, Проклятие слепой женщины, Hîchirimen bâkuto - Nôbarydu takahadâ, Black Cat's Revenge, The Blind Woman's Curse, Rising Dragon Ghost Story, The Blind Swordwoman's Revenge, Kaidan nobori ryū
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.........what a babe.
and the credit sequence with the tattooed dragon is just the coolest thing. what a fascinatingly gonzo hodgepodge of Fukasaku yakuza films, Masahiro Shinoda anarchy, Seijun Suzuki psychedelia, and... Kaneto Shindo early j-horror?
I'm surprised nobody tried to release this as Lady Snowblood vs. Daughter of Zatoichi. It would have worked better than that time they tried to market Way of the Dragon as a sequel to Enter the Dragon by calling it Return of the Dragon.
Chanbara action, yakuza schemes, and exploitation sleaze, seasoned with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe. That sounds like my kind of recipe. This opens feeling like it could just straight up be a lost Zatoichi film, before the more macabre elements start to creep in and we get something that feels almost like someone spliced clips from some old Amicus horror stuff into an unreleased Lady Snowblood sequel. This is only my second Teruo Ishii film,…
As if a movie about a sword-fighting lady yakuza leader with a dragon tattoo who is defending her turf against some rude underhanded jerks isn't enough to get me excited, this ALSO has totally wild paranormal elements, an ultra-badass blind swordswoman out for revenge, goofy side characters and subplots that don't go anywhere, rad black and white kimono fashion, gorgeous sets, a death carnival (?), a demon cat, historical mash-ups, plentiful spews of blood, and zombies. Basically things kept getting SUPER weird and I kept being SUPER INTO IT. Plus there are multiple occurrences of people flinging their shirts off to display their dragon-forming back tattoos, and it was wonderful.
My only gripe is that I wanted the blind swordswoman…
The camera was made for closeups of Meiko Kaji. She’s in this less than expected but there’s plenty of other weirdo stuff going on here like bloodthirsty flying cats and creepy hunchbacks that make this a unique experience. Climax + final duel rocks too.
I've mentioned it in other reviews, but I think it's essential for me to reiterate that Teruo Ishii laid the foundation from which the popular Pinky Violence films would later build off. Blind Woman's Curse stands out as his most influential work in that regard. It's a measured piece of filmmaking from the king of cult cinema and continues his streak of phenomenal opening and final acts. If you're a fan of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, or even Lady Snowblood, you should prioritize checking this out. Meiko Kaji is as good as ever, and Hoki Tokuda leaves quite the impression too. It simply doesn't get too much better than watching two badass women demolish a bunch of sleazy men, all while learning to respect each other and settle their differences along the way.
A delectable mix of chanbara, budding 70s exploitation thrills, the macabre, and has a surprising sense of humor in moments. Looks like a million bucks because of the care Teruo Ishii puts into composition and color. The kind of thing that must seem like wizardry to iPhone directors.
Whole lotta genres in this thing, but maybe the most surprising was the wacky comedy scenes with the unwashed thong droog. Come for the bloody swordplay, stay for the out of nowhere psychedelic funhouse sequence. If this were a 2019 movie, the blood licking black cat would 100% for sure have an Instagram account.
“I’m the angriest…and the saddest.”
“What’s this strange thing?” a young girl gang member asks after picking up a very obviously head-shaped package. An odd mix of the comic and the macabre. Stinky men, superhuman hunchbacks and flayed women. Meiko Kaji is...kind of the worst yakuza boss ever in this? Besides the beginning and end she’s mostly plaintive, feckless and in mourning. This movie just ended up not being what I expected it to be. Partly a fault of my own, maybe. Partly the fault of the badass poster art. I would have liked less men’s underpants and more cosmic samurai duels.
Including this in my ignoble pantheon of shrieking cat attack exploitation pictures, along with:
Death Smiles on a Murderer
The Black Cat (1981)
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
Two Evil Eyes
“I’ve been cursed by a cat.”
After killing a rival Boss and blinding his daughter in a raid, Akemi (Meiko Kaji), the head of the Tachibana Family, is cursed by a black cat. She spends a short time in prison and then returns to the Tachibana, only to find her territory under threat from both Aozora (Ryohei Uchida) and Dobashi (Toru Abe), who are scheming to take down her Family. Not only must Akemi deal with a curse and two rival gangs trying to take her spot, but the arrival of blind swordswoman , Aiko (Hoki Tokuda) and her hunchbacked companion (Tatsumi Hijikata) further complicate things when they team up with the Dobashi Family and begin hunting down Tachibana members, skinning them for their tattoos in…
Horror/yakuza genre mash up that has a little bit of everything: one of Meiko Kaji better roles, cool set, great colors, nasty violence, strange shifts and for all the bonkers action, and there's a lo of it, an earned sense of melancholia. Teruo Ishii doesn't always control his material, but he can dream of a remarkable image.
yaku cinema with no pretension — before she was lady snowblood, meiko kaji is akemi, a yakuza boss cursed by an unlucky lucky symbol, who tries to unravel and survive the supernatural revenge coming back to her and her clan
a row of slender shoulders, squeezed up against each other like friends standing on the edge of a pool, huddled in a straight line with a long dragon tattooed as a mural across their backs
unreal red blood sprays and sprays as skin is flayed and men are stabbed and heads roll and black cats yowl
a beautifully shot final scene, with a ghostly sky and swift choreography
and an absolute nightmare scene of a haunted house in a carnival; we see babies in baskets crying and naked bodies writhing as the technicolor gel lights show us an old man pulling body parts out of soup broth
i loved this
