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Description:
Filmed in delirious pop-art color and directed like a live-action comic book, this tongue-in-cheek Japanese spy thriller plays like a surreal cliffhanger serial dropped into swinging Tokyo and zipped through on fast-forward. Go-go-dancing female assassins in form-fitting black leather bedevil a globetrotting photographer as he battles the Yakuza thugs and American gangsters who keep kidnapping his stewardess girlfriend. The women, armed with ninja chewing gum bullets, razor-sharp phonograph records, and explosive golf balls, alternately flirt and fight it out with our suave hero (played with effortless charisma by Akika Kobayashi), while his doe-eyed innocent honey Chieko Matsubara is tied up and staked out in one kinky trap after another. Director Yasuharu Hasebe was a disciple of genre-busting legend Seijun Suzuki, and this debut film plays like a pulpier take on Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. The ostensible plot has something to do with a fortune in World War II gold and a super-secret treasure map, but it's merely an excuse for outrageous set pieces and high-energy fight scenes, edited with jackhammer rapidity and a giddy disdain for logic. Dig that crazy score of jangly surf rock and funky jazz, and have a ball with the typo-riddled subtitles--they become just another goofy element of this campy masterpiece. The sharp widescreen print is mildly worn but vivid and bright. The DVD also features a 20-minute video interview with the director, which for some reason is dubbed over in English rather than subtitled. --Sean Axmaker
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