Think this will be another month with three of these posts instead of four though with some good luck can make it a quartet. Am a bit behind in starting this post, what I usually do is to finish the TV series that will have a mini recap, after that will add in a movie a day which has worked out so well for me. But that didn't happen for today as after the TV series didn't begin this above section until I had viewed four movies(!) and will talk about all of them today. Have been viewing mainly movies I had never seen but after almost a year of those realized how much I was missing some of my favorite Japanese films so today will feature four of them and hadn't reviewed any of those classics until today. May keep that up for a while as far as Japanese films go as there's also many new ones I've obtained over the last few months which need to be viewed. When I revived this 'My Current Watches' series fourteen months ago it was to review movies from Japan and a few American shows or whatever, that's changed quite a bit in that period of time.
EDIT: Finally wrapped up this post which for some reason took longer than usual. The first two movie reviews were also longer than I usually do so will just have three reviews for today and the more I think about it that three is how many I should be having for all of these posts. That fourth film was "Blind Woman's Curse" from 1970 and it did star my #1 actress Meiko Kaji. Have thought about devoting a post to her so will save the review for that post if it ever happens.
I don't review everything I view such as on Halloween did watch two American horror flicks but won't have a section for those today. Those movies were "The Barn" and its sequel "The Barn 2" which were decent films and the gore level was off the charts!!!! The two pack of the movies was just $5 which ended up being a bargain as I enjoyed both, do recommend the two movies at that price and when I do a rewatch of it may do a mini review then. Speaking of rewatches today's American TV show is one of them which is "Fringe" that aired from 2008-13. About eight months ago viewed season one which I thought was so tremendous, talked about it in a post back then and promptly forgot about it which happens too often. So in one of the best decisions I've made in a while viewed season one again and it was better than the first time so will be talking about it a bit below. Will be starting on season two in about ten days but want to watch something before that and was leaning towards the fourth season of "Babylon 5" or a show I know very little about but is very similar, "Stargate SG-1". That's a sci-fi series that aired for ten seasons and that's a rarity for that genre, was at the store the other night and noticed the boxset which looked impressive. So on a whim scooped it up and it wasn't an expensive purchase considering how much bang you get for your buck so that may be in the next post of this series.... or then again, neither of those two mentioned! EDIT #2: Chose "Stargate SG-1" and this post took so long to finish have already completed the first season of 21 episodes!
In the intro mentioned that about eight months ago viewed and reviewed(?) the first season of "Fringe" and it's hard to put into words how much I loved that season! But rarely will watch two seasons of a show back to back so decided to take a brief break from it and then would view the second season which also appears to me a huge winner! However my memory at times is non-existent so forgot all about it and why does that keep happening to me?! So my best recent decision on what to watch next was deciding to once again view the first season of "Fringe" and so glad I did so for it somehow seemed even better this time around! Also in the intro said what may be on deck and after I watch whatever series next will dive back into this show and its second season. Like most American TV shows I went into this blind and knew ZERO about this series, it was a spur of the moment purchase. At the time it looked to be mainly a law enforcement/FBI show with some sci-fi thrown in, the price wasn't too high so thought to myself 'Nao, you only live once' so ran to the register before I changed my mind!
My 'spur of the moment purchases' have had many more hits than misses, this series is much better than just a Hit! For it isn't your usual FBI series as there's much more horror, sci-fi, mysteries and unexplainable events than I had imagined. Season one was set in Boston but most scenes were filmed in NYC as those two cities do look a bit similar. The main star of the series is FBI agent Olivia Dunham(Anna Torv) who after a few episodes also became a full time agent for Homeland Security and their new Fringe unit. Which dealt with many oddities that would bewilder most agents as many were supernatural or perhaps in future seasons alien in nature. Many viewers considered this to be heavily inspired by "The X-Files" and I can see how many would think that but this series brought that one to a new level. Like the X-Files as season one went on the Fringe team started to encounter many conspiracies and not just American government ones. Almost every episode has been a stand alone case but there are some storylines that have continued on for most of the season and will into the second. I try to keep reviews to four paragraphs and use this section to talk about a few other dramas or movies. But thought it'd make the review easier to understand with this intro but it would take about 500 paragraphs to explain what took place and even then would have to leave some details out. What's helped out the reviews is that I finally learned out to take screenshots from store bought DVD's on my laptop and didn't think it was possible so have plenty for every review which helps you understand things much better.
Third from the left is Peter Bishop who was played by Joshua Jackson, he's the only son of Walter Bishop who I will discuss in a bit. Peter has an IQ of 190 yet never graduated from college and for almost a decade had mainly just been a scammer, he's so smart he could get away with not attending college. He was recruited by Olivia to help her get Walter to work on a case in episode one, that soon turned out to be a FT honorary FBI gig for the duo and think Peter has found his calling. In the middle the blonde is the main star Olivia Dunham who was played by Anna Torv, I'll have a mini section for her after the review. It's hard to describe Olivia who seems to be good at everything yet is a master at none of them! In the beginning she had been seeing a fellow agent named John Scott who was killed in the pilot episode, as it turned out he may have been a traitor to the FBI but who was his true leader, Massive Dynamics? To Olivia's left is Walter Bishop(JohnNoble) who was a brilliant scientist and scholar but had spent the last seventeen years in a psych ward. That's because during an experiment a woman had died which was an accident but he was still responsible, instead of prison Walter was sent for treatment which would seemingly never have ended of it wasn't for Olivia and Peter springing him. Walter is too intelligent to describe but spending so much time locked away had made him quite neurotic though he has been improving. Final person above is Walter's lab assistant Astrid Farnsworth who was played by Jasika Nicole, she's also a newbie with the FBI. Astrid's role wasn't too large or important but think that'll be changing over the seasons as she appears to be such a competent young woman. One person not in the above pics is Kirk Acevedo who played the role of Charlie Francis, perhaps he wasn't in one of those photos because he left during season two? Charlie is Olivia's main partner and the only one on the Fringe team to be married, don't know how it'll play out but when he dies in season two the spirit of Charlie lives on for a while.
As their leader Broyles says below it oddly came from beneath the Earth's surface so it may not have been from outer space though that wasn't ruled out. The year is currently 2008, back in 1987 the cylinder had also made an appearance in Virginia but a few days later, after possibly killing a few humans, it retreated back into the ground. So the job for the elite Fringe team was to figure out where this mysterious object came from, what powers did it have and was it dangerous? But the unknown agency The Observer works for also wanted the cylinder and it appeared they were successful with their attempt but were foiled near the end by Olivia and Peter who do work well together. In another odd incident while Olivia and Peter were watching, along with a hidden Observer, the cylinder somehow burrowed itself back into the ground and back to its home? Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg with what happened and while this is far from an action packed series there's never a dull moment and the suspense keeps rising with each episode. This was the beginning of the conspiracies that the Fringe team had to deal with, not many bigwigs in Washington know about this team which may be a good thing for them but their bigger nemesis may end up being the Massive Dynamic company.
Final bit and Massive Dynamic was started by a man named William Bell, we only saw him in the final two minutes of this first season but he'll be seen or heard from more often in the second season. Bell is played by that Star Trek icon Leonard Nimoy and going in he said this would be his final regular role. In this series the above man Walter Bishop had once worked with Bell and the two were close but haven't seen each other for twenty years so I'm hoping the two will reunite and it could end up being a battle of their brains!!!! That wraps up this mini review and I have recommended most things I talk about in these posts. I have no idea how the other four seasons will be but to me this was the best first season I've seen of any American show as it just edged out "Person of Interest". In the intro talked about what series should be up next for I try not to watch back to back seasons of a show, my decision was to view both shows I mentioned. Which means I'll be picking this show back up in about 2 1/2 weeks, a week after that is when I'll review season two. After the screenshots from this fourth episode is a video of how it opened and you can see what a mysterious character The Observer is.
A huge plus to viewing these American shows, besides many of them being so terrific, is that it's introduced me to so many new actors/actresses. Such as Anna Torv who I had never heard of which I guess is understandable and glad i did discover her. She plays the lead role of Olivia Dunham in this series and she's an odd character to describe. She's a very skilled fighter yet isn't one who won all of her scraps against the bad guys, she's quite smart but so aren't many others on her Fringe team or at the Boston FBI office. But Olivia is the one you'd want backing you in a fight or being your partner on a case as she'll never give up which is quite common in law enforcement shows. I think she looked so darn fabulous too in season one yet not in a glamorous way which you can see in the screenshots above or in some below photos. Check out those above pics, I never knew Anna was so alluring(wow!) and where had she been hiding all these years? Australia is the answer to that and Anna only lived in America for a little over a decade, she's back to living in the country down under but still returns to the US for the occasional role in a movie or drama.
Don't think it'll be too easy but will try to obtain a few of her Australian dramas and Anna has the main female role in most of those. Back in June Anna hit the age of 47 and I really like her down to earth looks though as a few photos show she can be overly seductive too! Anna was married for only one year which happened in 2008/09, she's still single and has no children. In future posts will be including more photos of Anna, what could be needed are about twenty of them of her wearing the above reddish gown.... whew(!) to that a few million times and even that ten hour cold shower didn't work! What wasn't noticeable in "Fringe" was how tall Anna is which is 68 inches in height so guess that means most of the cast is also quite tall.
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On the left is Takachiho Hizuru who is the one main cast member I don't know well but soon will be viewing her 1958 movie "Stakeout", in that the main star was Hideko Takamine. In "Zero Focus" Takachiho played the part of Sachiko Murota aka Emmy, in real life she retired from acting in 1973 at the age of 43 and she too had a long life living until the age of 85. The woman in the middle was the main character in this film, she's Yoshiko Kuga and what is it about Japanese actresses living a long life???? Yoshiko passed away in June 2024 but she was 93 in age at the time, the average age of the three main stars was over ninety years!!!! Yoshiko played the semi-heroine Teiko Uhara, when the film began she had only been married to her husband Kenichi Uhara for a week, Teiko and Kenichi are right below. Kenichi was played by Koji Nambara who I've seen in many other things, I thought his best role was in the 1971 must watch movie "Wandering Ginza Butterfly". Playing Kenichi's older brother Sotaro was the very respected actor Ko Nishimura who I've seen in too many things to count. Finally for cast members is Yoshi Kato who portrayed Sachiko's husband Gisaku Murota in the film, he too I've seen in many other movies though he never had a lead role. Added in an extra paragraph which means I only have three to explain all that took place(three wasn't enough!), so much happened in 95 minutes and hopefully the screenshots will help you follow the story better if I can't get to every detail. One last trivia note was that this movie was adapted from a story that ran for nineteen issues from 1958-60 in the Hoseki magazine and the film did stay mainly true to the story. ****Oooops, have one other tidbit and in Japan the Blue Ribbon Awards are similar to the American Oscars. In 1961 Takachiho Hizuru won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Sachiko Murota.... where else can you find out such interesting facts other than here!!!!
There was one man Kenichi Uhara knew somewhat well in Kanazawa and that was Gisaku Murota(Yoshi Kato) who owned the largest brick making factory in the area, brick making was the area's biggest industry. Teiko paid a visit to Murota and was shocked to discover his wife was about twenty years younger, her name was Sachiko Murota(Takachiho Hizuru) aka Emmy. There was nothing outwardly suspicious about the woman but she seemed to arouse Teiko's curiosity, as it turned out she was right about some suspicions but in the end had the story a bit mixed up. With things still at a dead end Teiko returned to Tokyo and tried to meet up again with the older brother Sotaro. However he still hadn't returned home from Kanazawa and in such a shocker while Teiko was at his house Sotaro's wife Sadako received a telegram saying that her husband had been found dead at a Kanazawa inn!!!! That was quite unexpected for them and us viewers too, the pair of women dashed off to Kanazawa which back then took almost a day by train. There the main police inspector Oda said he had solved the case and that Sotaro had been murdered by a woman named Hisako Tanuma, we're a little past the halfway point of the film and it was the first time we heard of the woman. Oda surmised that Hisako had poisoned the whiskey Sotaro was drinking and that part of how he died was true but it wasn't Hisako who had done the deed but at the time Teiko had thought so too, sound a bit confusing? Have one more segment coming up after the screenshots and so much took place need some extra space to explain what happened yet still can't get to everything. This scene when Oda was telling Teiko and the wife Sadako about how Sotaro was killed was when we learned how much Teiko had discovered up until this point doing her own investigation.
Last bit and since I revived this series fourteen months ago this has turned out to be the longest of the eighty movies or so I've reviewed. The last 35-40 minutes jumped back and forth in time and we also saw some different scenarios as no one until the end was quite sure of what happened to Kenichi Uhara until Sachiko in the bottom screenshot below said to Teiko and her husband 'I've finished my story'. The inspector Oda was half right with telling Sotaro's wife that Hisako Tanuma had poisoned her husband but it was actually Sachiko in disguise! When you combine the investigations of Oda and Teiko along with Sachiko's confession they add to be what took place and how there were two deaths but only one man was involved! Who was Kenichi Uhara and for eighteen months had also lived under the alias of Masuzaburo Sone when not at his ad agency office. Sone had a common wife who was Hisako Tamuna and in one of his trips back to Tokyo Uhara/Sone had fallen for Teiko, they didn't know each other long before marrying. Of course Uhara couldn't keep up that double identity for much longer but was clueless on what to do but knowing he would soon be working FT in Tokyo made Uhara's decision easier. Sachiko came up with the plan on faking Sone's suicide, then Uhara could quietly escape from Kanazawa to Tokyo. Before marrying the rich brick factory owner Murota Sachiko had been a streetwalker under the name of Emmy, she had gotten to know Uhara a bit at the time for be was a patrolman.
But he had never recognized Sachiko/Emmy until she blurted out how they had known each other, because of that Sachiko knew what had to be done. Which was to kill off Uhara/Sone to protect her secret past and while he was setting up his fake suicide at Noto Cliff which overlooked the sea Sachiko pushed the man off the cliff which is near the bottom of the screenshots. So now both Uhara and Sone were dead so that's what made the case so difficult to solve for the police and Teiko. Who returned to Tokyo and began to work in an office but still kept investigating her husband's death. That final scene took place a year later and Teiko revealed all she knew to Sachiko who eventually confessed to what truly took place, her husband Murota was also present. Sachiko confessed to killing Uhara/Sone and also the common-in-law wife Hisako as she too knew the secret of Sachiko being Emmy. But of all things the husband Murota had discovered that fact and even with that shady past would have stayed with Sachiko so the deaths of Uhara and Hisako weren't needed to protect her past. In the final minute Sachiko ran from the pair who were standing on Noto Cliff, jumped in her car and shortly after went off a cliff so there was no happy ending with this story. And what a story it was and though this was a longish review I still couldn't get to everything that happened but then again that's not needed. There may be a few better films from Japan but not many and this is the best I've reviewed to date from the country. So if you're into intrigue, mystery, noir and twists in the plot then this is a movie you need to see ASAP! Have many screenshots to help you follow the story a bit better and there's also a superb trailer for the movie after them.
The main reason I've been able to make reviews much shorter is to give an overall view of the movie's action, the above review with so many details was how I used to do these which is why it was so much longer. Did start this recap of "Take Aim at the Police Van" with too many details so let me give the highlights of the film's second half as by now we were already close to the halfway point as it was just a 79 minute movie. Tamon was wasting his time as a prison guard for he would have made for a fine detective, he has the intuitive/deductive skills to be one, could use a revolver rather well and could put people at ease to they would open up to Tamon. Slowly but surely he was able to discover some key facts about why his prison van had been shot at, Yuko helped a bit too for it did involve her family's Yakuza clan. One of the men had been shot in that van incident by accident as the target had been an ex-Hamaju thug named Nagahiro. We learned in this scene one of the Hamaju's main sources of income was the smuggling of women, they would make many of them from their strip clubs prisoners and then quickly turn them into drug addicts. Soon the women were shipped off to SE Asia and the police had no clue that was being done. Nagahiro had his own ideas about going solo and stealing some of the Hamaju gang's 'prisoners', that was one reason for him being targeted and the other was that he may spill the beans to the authorities. In this second half of the film we also discovered there's actually a much higher leader than Yuko's father Hamajima at the Hamaju gang, no one has seen his face and this man is supposed to be quite ruthless. His identity was revealed right at the end and by if you were viewing the movie you had a strong inkling on who it was.
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That first picture above is from a five movie boxset this next film is from which is my favorite movie boxset, I have viewed these films too many times too count and will never get tired of them. But had only viewed one this year as I was concentrating on watching many movies I had never seen and that total ended up being at least a hundred. So it's time to do some rewatches of my favorites such as these first two films, this second is titled "Take Aim at the Police Van" which was released in 1960. The above review was much longer than usual and so much happened there was no getting around that but this and the next movie's reviews will be much shorter.... they better be! Seijun Suzuki was the director of this film and he was still early in his career, I've seen many of him films and have talked about two in prior posts. Michitaro Mizushima is an actor I like quite a bit, he had the lead role playing a suspended prison guard named Daijiro Tamon and will be using his last name. The woman above with the pistol and in many more screenshots is Misako Watanabe, she had such a unique look about her in this film which I thought looked super duper and I know very little about her. In the first review said how old those three main actresses were, so isn't Misako as three weeks ago she celebrated her 94th birthday!!!! She was in one of those "Rambling Guitarist" movies that I reviewed but can't recall her in anything else. An actress who I do know well is Mari Shiraki who I've seen in at least eight other films though her role as Tsunako Ando in this film wasn't large enough.
Below is how the film opened up with a prison/police van heading into Tokyo and it was the middle of the night, the four prisoners were scheduled to be released in the upcoming days. As viewers we saw a lot of the action through a telescope attached to a sniper's rifle, to throw off the driver and prison guard Tamon the pair of thugs sent an unoccupied truck hurtling into the van's path! With Tamon and the driver distracted the sniper began to fire, he killed two and one was his main target though for a long time no one knew why? The man on the left in the first screenshot was named Goro Kashima who Tamon did like, he wasn't hurt and claimed not to know why the van was attacked which was true. But he did end up working for a Yakuza gang run by a very mysterious man and who this person was remained unknown until the final few minutes. None of what took place was the guard Tamon's fault but he was still suspended for six months because of the incident. That didn't bother Tamon all that much as he had plenty of savings plus it allowed him time to solve this attack on the van case. The only slight negative for Tamon was that he had to turn in his revolver but he didn't seem like the kind of man who used it often and relied more on his wits. Which were needed as his best friend at the local Tokyo precinct detective Takamura was even more stumped than Tamon about the van attack so it ended up being a one man operation to solve the case.
You can see Tamon's frustration above but he never did quit, he thought his best chance to find some clues would be to tail Goro who is below in the top screenshot. He had been bailed out by his girlfriend Tsunako(Mari Shiraki) and Tamon began to tail Goro who had been bragging to Tsunako about making a huge score soon money wise. While in the van Goro had scribbled the name of Aki often on the window as it was so fogged up, Aki is a woman's name and Tamon began to wonder who was this mysterious woman? As it turns out Aki wasn't a woman but a man named Akabori who was located in Atami, he was portrayed by Toru Abe who had playing a devilish thug in older movies down to a science. Akabori's aim was to be the leader of his Hamaju gang, he was third in charge and the main boss was named Hamajima who we only saw twice in the film. Who we did see much of was his daughter Yuko Hamajima(Misako Watanabe) whose goal was to thwart Akabori's rise to rule the gang and don't think her father wanted to see that happen either but leading a Yakuza gang was no place for a refined woman! That's Yuko below shooting an arrow, she was a master at Archery and bet she was also quite adept at shooting a pistol. Yuko and Tamon hit it off quite well which was a surprise, especially for Tamon as Yuko was such a impossible woman to read! One minute she would be your worst enemy, the next your best friend or lover so Tamon wasn't quite sure what to think of her but by the end of the film they were allies, though the daughter of a Yakuza leader Yuko did want justice.
Soon Akabori lit the trail of gas on fire and and it was just a matter of time until it caught up to the truck which would have blown Tamon and Yuko to Kingdom Come! But Yuko had a lighter in her pocket and burned through her ropes, with only seconds to spare the pair jumped to safety. There was no time to recover as they knew that in the evening Akabori would be meeting with the mysterious Mr. Big of the Hamaju gang, would he be handing the leadership of the gang to this overly devilish creep? Yes but arriving on the scene to reveal this leader's identity was Tamon and Yuko, she had the face to face encounter with him. As we viewers thought it was Yuko's father Hamajima who was the gang's secret leader and the lowlife who had thought up the women smuggling scheme. With sirens blaring Hamajima tried to flee the area which was at a railroad yard, his foot got caught in a railing which is in the bottom screenshot and with a train barreling down on guess you can figure out how the movie ended! This (un)mini review ended up being longer than expected, that happens when I start one and don't finish it until the next day. Of course this is a film I highly recommend and it's hard to classify what kind of movie it was. There was a bit of action but not overly so, thrown in was a bit of noir, suspense and a few storylines which merge into one and you end up with a fine movie though I am biased with these older B&W films from Japan. Below are more screenshots to help you follow the story a bit better and because there was no trailer the video is how the movie opened up which did have some fine music. Think in the next post will be looking at the 1958 movie "Underworld Beauty" which also had Michitaro Mizushima as the lead, Mari Shiraki and Toru Abe from this film also had key roles in that and that film too was directed by Seijun Suzuki.
For the second time a Sister Streetfighter movie opened in Hong Kong for the heroine Etsuko plays is both Chinese and Japanese, her names are different and will be using Koryu which is what 99% of the cast calls her. In every film someone close to Koryu has been taken hostage, in one movie it was her sister. In this third movie it was Koryu's close friend Shurei who had been kidnapped in Hong Kong and taken to Yokohama, all three films are mainly set there. Above who can see the man Cho who was a Hong Kong detective on the hunt for the missing Shurei, his face was well known in Yokohama so he asked Koryu to travel to Nihon to look for her friend, also to look after her bratty daughter Rika. In that above photo Cho had been stabbed to death while meeting with Koryu who now became Rika's 'guardian' and it was off to Japan to look for her close friend, she couldn't understand why Shurei would have been kidnapped?
There's a few reasons why Shurei was kidnapped, one was that she was very attractive and became the mistress of a demon man named Oh Ryu Mei. The bigger reason Shurei was taken is in the second screenshot below, she had been in training to be a scientist and knew how to disguise gold to fool the authorities and Oh had been smuggling billions into Japan. Oh is the older man with a goatee in a wheelchair who does look Chinese but as we learn at the end that wasn't his true identity. He's learned that Cho sent Koryu to Yokohama to free Shurei which would also end his lucrative gold smuggling business, that could never happen and he's assembled a vicious team of fighters to eliminate Koryu. But all of them would be no match for the female master of martial arts, that's according to the above man Takeshi Kurosaki(Kurata) and isn't he one cool looking dude?! But exceeding that was Kurosaki's fighting skills and as excellent as Koryu is she was no match for Kurosaki when they had a brutal one on one match. She held her own for a while against Kurosaki but in the end he kicked her from a bridge into a fast moving river, for that the pleased Oh gave Kurosaki a 20 million yen bonus and was that the end of the movie already?
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Was going to review four films for today but this post is long enough. Let me try to zip through this in about ten minutes, if not won't be able to finish this post until tomorrow. Earlier this year finally broke down and viewed the action packed "Streetfighter" trilogy that starred Sonny Chiba, reviewed all three films which I did enjoy. However I may be in the minority as I think the Sister Streetfighter series is better, for this post will review the third in the series "The Return of the Sister Streetfighter". Above is the four movie boxset I have, the fourth film isn't an official part of the series but was close enough and added into the set. The first three movies are all recommended to the Nth degree as I've viewed them close to fifteen times each, they're all so superb with this third being my favorite. That boxset with an informative twelve page booklet was such a bargain at $15 and bought it ten years ago. This series featured Etsuko Shihomi as the heroine Koryu, she didn't need a stunt double as she was a master at various kinds of martial arts. The man she's with in the above screenshot was also in the second film but played a different character. His name is Yasuaki Kurata and of the thousands of male actors I've seen he's by far the coolest of all time!!!! Kuruta is still alive and kicking, in four months he'll be hitting the age of 81 and he too never needed a stunt double for he has black belts in three different forms of martial arts plus has opened training centers in Tokyo, Osaka and Hong Kong.
No, for Koryu has more than nine lives(!) and washed up downstream in the river, badly hurt but alive. Soon Koryu was about to use another of those lives as she was discovered to be living, that shocked Kurosaki who of course presumed she was being eaten up by sharks(!) and vowed to eliminate Koryu once and for all. Along with Rika the still hurt Koryu was trapped in a mine by Kurosaki but he had been double crossed as his bitter rival Tokki locked the entrance and set it on fire!!!! Which of course infuriated Kurosaki to no end, he was able to open the door for a few seconds to allow Koryu and Rika to escape but the place then collapsed with Kurosaki inside and seemingly dead. Outside the mine Koryu was captured and hung upside down, that was after witnessing her friend Shuhei being gun down by Oh's thugs and all of the movies had nonstop action, whew! Instead of shooting Koryu right then and there Oh said to let her dangle and have the crows gobble her up for dinner, what a blunder that was! For as you can see above Koryu made her return to Oh's HQ and wanted revenge, she is a skilled fighter but even Koryu can't take out twenty men! But two against twenty could for arriving right then was the presumed dead Kurosaki who had some unknown information, Oh Ryu Mei wasn't his real name nor was he from China and didn't need a wheelchair, instead the man's name was Yamamoto and had been a high ranking officer in WWII. Much of that smuggled gold was what he had stolen at the end of the war in China, now that it's been forgotten about he's slowly been bringing it back to Japan.
When anyone has Kurosaki on their side your chances of winning are greatly increased, with Koryu the pair took out most of Oh/Yamamoto's fighters and chased the disgraced leader to his underground vault. Which is where the movie ended, Koryu was so stunned when she entered the vault as there were billions of Yen in gold bars hidden there. But taking out Yamamoto won't be easy, he had a fake left hand and the one he uses was a disguised dangerous hook plus he was also skilled at martial arts. But once again arriving in the nick of time was Kurosaki and as you can see in the bottom screenshot Yamamoto met his makers, appropriately he ended up dying on a stack of his gold bars! Did rush through this review much quicker which I wish happened more often and needed to after making the first two much longer than planned. Though the other two movies were better bet this is a film you readers would enjoy much more, actually all of the Sister Streetfighter movies are highly recommended. It's not easy to tell by the screenshots but it's hard to believe how much action takes place in these movies and there's rarely a dull moment, sadly it seemed after 1975 martial arts films such as these lost their popularity. Below are more screenshots from the film and at the very bottom is this movie's trailer. Should be back in about ten days with the next post in this series but hope its before that, did mention above one Japanese film I will have for that post but for now no clue on what the others will be but will try to make them more recent movies.
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