From Teruo Ishii “The King of Cult”, Blind Woman’s Curse (also known as Black Cat’s Revenge) is a thrilling Yakuza film featuring eye-popping visuals, sensational fight sequences and the gorgeous Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Stray Cat Rock), in her first major role. Akemi (Kaji) 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. A bizarre blend of the female Yakuza film and traditional Japanese ghost story, with a strong dash of grotesque-erotica (the same movement was a sensibility of Edogawa Rampo whose works were adapted by Ishii in Horrors of Malformed Men), Blind Woman’s Curse is a delirious mash-up of classic genre tropes, of which Ishii was no stranger, having directed everything from Super Giant films to Biker movies!
The first entry in Takashi Miike’s “Black Society Trilogy,” Shinjuku Triad Society burst into cinemas in Japan in 1995 - and announced the birth of a radical new artist in the world of genre filmmaking. Although he had made his debut in 1991, Miike had worked up to this point in the world of “V-c...
Genre icon Jô Shishido stars in this tense and violent yakuza yarn from genre stalwart and Seijun Suzuki’s former assistant, Yasuharu Hasebe (Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701’s Grudge Song). Shishido stars as Kuroda, a mob hitman who turns on his employers after being forced to execute his lover. J...
