Review for Teruo Ishii's 'Blind Woman's' Curse' (1970).
Discotek give another early taster for English-speaking fans of Teruo Ishii and Meiko Kaji, with 1970's Nikkatsu Production, 'Blind Woman's Curse'; the third of a series seemingly connected by theme but not by director or main star. Although firmly from the less is more school of applying oddly grotesque elements -- familiar to fans of Ishii and of Japanese Cinema, though unmistakably Ishii -- to a rather dialogue-heavy tale of yakuza wrangling featuring a larger-than-usual female/male ratio and with a more lighthearted central atmosphere more akin to female gang movies to contrast agains the splashes of horror. We also have Meiko Kaji giving an early leading role performance that's rather functional by comparison to the enigmatic and memorable performances recent adopters will be familiar with from popular outings in the 'Lady Snowblood' and 'Female Convict Scorpion' films, but together there's enough interest to warrant a look into another slice of the kind of 70s exploitation films many would love to keep seeing more of, it seems.
This film comes, then, at the beginning of Meiko Kaji's groomed leading-lady roles, before the now-familiar films in the 'Female Convict Scorpion' series, before the two 'Lady Snowblood' films, and in between the lengthy-but-unfamiliar 'Stray Cat Rock' girl-gang movies. In 'Blind Woman's Curse' you'll find a different aspect to Meiko Kaji's work if you're like me in still not having seen the large majority outside those that have been seen by the core of those picking up these films as they gradually appear on DVD. Despite the largely silent, posed, dramatically shot visuals of the afformentioned very manga-like films we've grown to know her by in recent times, she's part of a movie which is a hybrid between the male-dominated yakuza genre, as well as also consequently in something familiarly dynamic for a Japanese movie (particularly these 70's ones) but which also gives a more frenetic pace and then there's the wonderfully odd horror elements clashing into the mix of a relatively plain core.
Story-wise, Meiko Kaji is Akemi Tachibana, daughter and newfound leader of the Tachibana gang (family, clan...), a woman suffering from visions resulting from an in-battle mistake that lead to an encounter with an unsettling black cat with a taste for human blood. Within their mixed male-female numbers, they seem to have directly adopted a multi-backed form of tattoo which, when groups stand in order side-by-side, constructs a dragon; a central visual to the story, and key to certain happenings, the tattoos play an interesting role. Together they stand, divided they fall it would seem; they pull together during battle and standoff with more disparate rival gang members, and are gradually shown to be easy to pick-off when isolated from one another, inexperienced in gang life as the initially seem to be. The typically wordy yakuza movie scripting involves it's own brand of wrangling between rival gangs over all those various things gangs seem to want to control, mixes some comedy and light sex farce, and it's quite plain apart from the dominance of female characters and the relationships between male and female counterparts / rivals until Ishii lets rip with his own brand of stiking imagination; all too infrequently for me. Issues of loyalty and morality come into too, typically, battles ensue, and you kind of get what you expect to a very large extent.
More unusually, the film's locale of a small town find us with a visiting theatre troupe which is playing a central attraction within a street market and busy town center, and makes for a mix of familiar locations with unfamiliar faces, a slight unease bubbles under the surface. The theatre troupe, its performers, specialise in grotesque theatrics and daring displays of knife-throwing at the hands of the eponymous blind woman of the title. If you want a description of what to expect from Ishii, then a theatre troupe that revolves around unsettling events and visuals is the ideal way to imagine it -- there's a similarity to the kind of sights westerners will have experienced at a funfare as a child, in ghost trains and the like; you can relate to the horror of it, but it's equally as obviously unreal to the extent you feel simultaneously unsettled and reassured by it, and it's a good technique which adds to the initial horror but also makes it easy to understand it's something you've chosen to subject yourself too and not something you're going to find reminders of at every turn. It's real, and yet so obviously unreal, perhaps all the more effective for it -- at least, it's a thing you'll see pop-up in Ishii's work very frequently across the decades.
Within the yakuza wrangling comes the central pitch of a blind woman seeking to gain revenge for her situation, and she manages to position herself within the existing inter-gang warfare of the local families. Partly we can assume she travels in order to find the woman she is seeking, partly this is one of many elements not quite clearly explained, or at least hidden in the mass of happenings, as it all feels a little contrived and unclear at times. The grotesque elements of the theatrics spill out into the town and the performers, including the wonderfully odd hunchback -- essentially a bearded lady in style, and something of a simpleton -- and a series of crimes that would either revolve around strangers or rivals play out. The locals and the travelling performers allow Ishii the chance to transport elements shown more intensely in the theatre intentionally out of context to create a wonderfully odd clash of yakuza and horror genres, and it's these brief moments that stand out, for which the film is recognised and remembered. There's also some heavy swordplay at times, some wonderful gore, so don't be disappointed if you think this leans towards horror or yakuza politics -- it doesn't, it just works better at these points than it does elsewhere, and it's more likely Ishii working more for the studio that for his own ends, or within his own complete freedom.
You may think you know what you're going to get, and that may well be the case, but Meiko Kaji's wordy central performance and the typically unpredictable clashes of styles which come from an inherently (yet still postively) cynical expert Japanese studio system that loves throwing in unusual things for the sake of finding new financial routes, variations on themes, in order to help to give something at once open to pigeonholing, easy to relate to on the surface, but desperately impossible to pin down in actuality.
Technically, from the perspective the DVD itself, I find myself in familiar territory with trying to pin down if it's a good DVD or not. I can't find a really good way to express it, but here's another example of the eternal quandary which tries to explain there's a hugely variable relationship between potential production values (in the film) and potential presentation values (in the DVD) which never quite resolved themselves in my mind. The film seems shot, at least in part, with a vaseline lense. Close-ups work reasonably well as a result, long-distance shots and those involving busier visuals looked enhanced to the point of almost being oddly harsh, and they're hard to take in. It all seems to lack information, lacks depth and true detail in a way 'Female Yakuza Tale' never seemed to, and conversely in a way which was far more obviously limited by production values in much later films from the same director and the same company as that film, 'Screwed', which looked soft, shot on video.
Subtitles-wise, the translation is second only to my faith in the detail shown in AnimEigo's releases of Japanese films, in that there's lots of words to scan over on a very regular basis, removing doubts that things have been truncated, edited and generally adapted beyond recognition in relation to what's actually being said on screen -- don't like subs straying over the central image, into the credits or across titles though, thankfully that's rare here compared to earlier Discotek releases. Additional content is minimal at first (some trailers, filmographies, relatively disposable stuff); I like Chris D's writings which give a researched edge to what would likely be (as this review is) one persons reaction which little cement stuff to go on to give it context, and I would love print-based equivalents to his commentary as they're simply something I've never found much joy in for the way it distracts from the film. Worth seeing, if it is a flawed presentation, because it's another example of the kind of film Japan does so well -- it mashes things together and gives something you know you'll like from previous examples, but it gives something different quite frequently.
'Blind Woman's Curse' Trailer at YouTube.
Order 'Blind Woman's Curse' at Amazon.com, released May 8th 2007 on R1 USA DVD from Discotek.
