Can I see hands up if you like the following plot devices in your movies; hot women, outlandish villainy, gratuitous nudity, martial arts mayhem, funky soundtracks, and a total disregard for narrative flow and cohesiveness? If you hand is up for all or any of these then may I highly recommend that you pick up The Sister Street Fighter Collection and let the karate goodness wash over you. Etsuko Shihomi is Koryu Lee, an expert in Shorinji Kempo, and she has come to drink sake and kick some ass. And she is all out of sake.
Presentation: Ronin Entertainment gets big points for the presentation of this package. The gatefold DVD sleeve design has all four original theatrical posters in it. Each DVD is in its own tray for easy access. No popping out one disc to get at another. The 20 page booklet has overviews of each film, interviews with director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi and actor Ken Wallace, who had a supporting role in the final film, Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist: Onna hissatsu godan ken, and a profile of Etsuko Shihomi, the actress who rose to prominence after Sonny Chiba recommended her for the role of Koryu Lee/Sister Street Fighter.
Each film has been digitally remastered and the picture is near flawless, save for a couple threads here and there. The first film, Sister Street Fighter, is available in both Japanese with English subtitles and an English dub. The other three only come in Japanese with English subtitles- if you can’t read, tough. All four films are presented in Anamorphic Widescreen so nothing of the original print has been lost to cropping.
The Films: So shut up already and talk about the movies! Sister Street Fighter starts the ball rolling. Koryu travels to Japan from Hong Kong after she finds out that her brother, an undercover cop, has gone missing. Soon she is entangled in a drug trafficking ring which she must take down. Sister Street Fighter set the bar high and its success was so huge that Yamaguchi and his crew were ordered back into the studio two weeks after wrapping up Sister Street Fighter to make another for the Christmas season. Sonny Chiba has a supporting role in the film, which could be interpreted as a move to make the transition to a female action hero a lot more comfortable for the viewing audience. A familiar face makes it easier to accept the new transition. He would not return to the series again, having seven films of his own to make during 1974.
In Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread Koryu is asked to go back to Japan once again, this time to find the daughter of a powerful man. What Koryu discovers is that the daughter, Birei, and other girls like her have been kidnapped and are being used as carriers for a diamond smuggling ring. Let’s just say that the method of smuggling is very ‘cheeky’. You’ll have to find out what I mean by that when you watch the movie. Action star icon Yasuaki Kurata, whom most would recognize now from his role in Fist of Legend as Uncle Funakochi Fumio, plays a lone wolf fighter who hires himself on into the smuggling ring. But for what purpose?
In Return of Sister Street Fighter things begin to wane a bit. Almost an exact duplicate of the plotline of Hanging by a Thread, Return feels like a retread and the structure of the film is all too familiar. Travel to Tokyo. Meet up with the bad guys. Kick the bad guys’ collective asses. Again, Yasuaki Kurata plays the lone wolf who infiltrates the local gang. It was a year after Hanging by a Thread so it is puzzling that a year in between films and yet it is almost an exact duplicate, especially as studios were contending for audience attention with television. It is still entertaining. It is still bloody. It is still sexy. It’s just that we’ve seen it already.
Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist bears hardly any relation to its three predecessors except only in name. Gone is the gratuitous nudity, the exploitation of women, the outrageous villains. The fourth movie was handed over to a new director, Higehiro Ozawa, and it is clearly evident that the franchise has lost its steam by this point. The only relation to the other three films is in the title only as Etsuko Shihomi now plays the daughter of a kimono salesman, Kiku. Kiku sets out to help her friend, Michi, avenge the death of her brother after he is killed by a drug smuggling ring, which is localized out of a movie studio. Sadly, the series would end on a low note. Fifth Level Fist is a mess.
All in all though despite any misgivings I may have had about the final two films in the series versus the first two, on a whole Sister Street Fighter is bloody fantastic. Though the action is furious Yamaguchi and Ozawa fell into the trap of letting the camera do the fighting. It may have been to hide the limitations of the actors, or not given that so many martial art icons had roles in the series, but it would have been nice to have seen more of action in the frame. Western audiences may or may not have a problem with the objectification of women in these films. I make no excuses for Japanese culture then and now but if you have a tough time watching women being abused physically and sexually then this is not a series for you. This is, after all, exploitation cinema. If you can bear it for a few minutes here and there you’ll be okay and if you go looking for it then may I suggest a decent therapist? Nudity is guaranteed throughout the first three films. You are also guaranteed that the flow of blood will only happen during the climactic battle and it will defy the laws of human anatomy when it gushes out of the body [the heart does PUMP the blood after all]. It’s fatal and funky. Lovers of karate and exploitation cinema will be pleased to know that that empty space in your collection can be filled with the blood, violence and titillation of Sister Street Fighter.
Pick up your copy of The Sister Street Fighter Collection