Girl Boss Revenge: Sukeban (1973)

Sachiko (Miki Sugimoto – Criminal Woman: Killing Melody) – the leader of the Red Brigades Slam, women gang of motocyclists from Shinjuku, Tokyo. They accept an offer to join a local women’s gang. Gang of Sachiko is making progress in the management of the streets, but Sachiko and her team encounter with the local yakuza, then returns Nami, a former leader of the all-female gangs and the sister of one of the best mafia in Kyoto.

With the tight funk and cool jazz only the best in exploitation in show up with this came to me as a surprise this early and that far from the land of tomato sauce and olive oil, even considering the early exploits of Suzuki Seijun and Imamura Shohei.

Firstly this is 70s sleaze and mob cinema of the highest order and secondly girls this tough and impolite, Sugimoto's sukeban is in fact comparable to Tura Satana if not even badder(!), a girl this strong cant be hurt by anything. Still, even if the sequence with chains and beatings are sexist sleaze of a very perverted kind the way (at least) the invulnerable Sugimoto is "unmanhandlable" is equally feminist.

The storyline is about some girls escaping a from a prisoner transport and four of them make the gang "gypsies", of course the mob life is hard and the competing gangs are hard to beat. Its the girls against the boys, who'll win ?