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Continuing a mini-exploration of Japanese Pop-Art films of the '60s (I also watched Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter (1966) again), I return to this minor gem of cool style and killer female ninjas, Black Tight Killers. I've watched it two-and-a-half times now, and I still don't really know what the plot is. A war photographer named Hondo gets involved with a stewardess and all hell breaks loose when she's kidnapped by the female ninjas, who are the titular black tight killers. This movie just explodes with artificial color and crazy camera angles and go go dancing. The theme song is a corker. These '60s Pop-Art movies always have the greatest theme songs and credit sequences (see also Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik (1968).) Everything is about the style, with swank furniture and cars with fins and, oooh, the colors! There's a great dream sequence where the female lead is chased by the ninjas through lurid colorscapes that keep tearing away like a paper backdrop and revealing a new saturated colorscape behind. Everything looks extremely artificial, like it's all an off-shoot of the "Broadway Melody Ballet" from Singin' in the Rain (1952). To the extent that there's a plot, it seems to be yet another spoof on the spy craze of the era, with various agents and counteragents chasing after some lost Okinawan gold or something.
The director, Yasuharu Hasebe, worked with Seijun Suzuki, and the cinematographer, Kazue Nagatsuka, also worked on a number of Suzuki's films, so that could be why it feels similar to something like Tokyo Drifter, although this movie is even campier in its spoofing. Hasebe went on to make violent sexual exploitation movies in the '70s, which isn't my cuppa, but the Stray Cat Rock series sounds interesting. The one that's available on Region 1 DVD, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter apparently also involves a girl gang and explores racial issues. I'm very curious about the latter, as Kinji Fukasaku also touches on the issue, particularly in the semi-Pop-Art Blackmail Is My Life (1968), which features a character whose father was a Black American soldier. The same actor plays a tragic mulatto of sorts in Fukasaku's Black Rose Mansion. Seems that Japanese cinema was beginning to delve into the troubled waters of Japanese racial attitudes around this time.
Well, I'm certainly developing a taste for '60s Pop-Art films. I like the heavily stylized lysergic hyper-artificiality of them. More please! (Just ordered the Stray Cat Rock DVD.)
The director, Yasuharu Hasebe, worked with Seijun Suzuki, and the cinematographer, Kazue Nagatsuka, also worked on a number of Suzuki's films, so that could be why it feels similar to something like Tokyo Drifter, although this movie is even campier in its spoofing. Hasebe went on to make violent sexual exploitation movies in the '70s, which isn't my cuppa, but the Stray Cat Rock series sounds interesting. The one that's available on Region 1 DVD, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter apparently also involves a girl gang and explores racial issues. I'm very curious about the latter, as Kinji Fukasaku also touches on the issue, particularly in the semi-Pop-Art Blackmail Is My Life (1968), which features a character whose father was a Black American soldier. The same actor plays a tragic mulatto of sorts in Fukasaku's Black Rose Mansion. Seems that Japanese cinema was beginning to delve into the troubled waters of Japanese racial attitudes around this time.
Well, I'm certainly developing a taste for '60s Pop-Art films. I like the heavily stylized lysergic hyper-artificiality of them. More please! (Just ordered the Stray Cat Rock DVD.)