Sister Street Fighter
AGFA Selects • Action, Adventure
1974 • Japan • Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
After the massive success of 'The Street Fighter', Toei decided to build a new karate series around a female lead and cast a young actress who had appeared in a cameo role alongside her mentor Sonny Chiba. Still a teenager at the time, Etsuko Shihomi exploded onscreen in her first leading role and created a new character type: a tough fighter who was fierce, fearless, good-hearted, and decidedly non-sexualized, a departure from Toei's typical formula. The film was another huge hit for the studio and Shihomi and director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, who had previously launched Meiko Kaji's career at Toei, made two additional films based on the same character, with a final unrelated follow-up appearing a year later. In 1974's 'Sister Street Fighter', Shihomi is the half-Chinese, half-Japanese Koryu Lee, who travels to Yokohama to investigate the disappearance of her brother, an undercover cop. When she discovers a smuggling ring run by a drug lord with his own personal army of deadly fighters, she must penetrate his evil lair and defeat not only his champion (Masashi Ishibashi from the Street Fighter films) but also a group of female Thai kickboxers called The Amazon Seven. Chiba appears in a cameo as a fellow karate master who helps Koryu in her mission.
Up Next in AGFA Selects
-
The Wizard of Gore
Behold, the great Montag the Magnificent! His fiendish magic tricks will make you shiver with fear and recoil in disgust. But are his gruesome on-stage antics - which entail the graphic slicing-and-dicing of nubile young woman with various implements - really just simple sleight-of-hand, or is so...
-
Malatesta's Carnival of Blood
You'll Shriek With Horror! Roll up, roll up! Step right up for Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood – the grisliest, freakiest show in town! Virtually impossible to find until its revival on DVD in the early 2000’s, this 1973 cult oddity, from one-time director Christopher Speeth, is a cinematic experie...
-
Mary Jane's Not A Virgin Anymore
Sarah Jacobson's punk-spirited DIY films from the 1990s combine B-movie aesthetics and riot grrrl feminism, standing as a testament to the vision, determination, and raw talent of the Queen of Underground Cinema. MARY JANE'S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE, Jacobson's only feature film, is a vibrant and vit...
