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Released by: Arrow Video
Released on: March 24th, 2015.
Director: Teruo Ishii
Cast: Meiko Kaji, Toru Abe, Makoto Sato, Hideo Sunazuka, Yoshi Kato
Year: 1970
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The Movie:
After coming to the attention of the Japanese movie going public of the early seventies through a few entries in the Stray Cat Rock series, Meiko Kaji went on to star in Teruo Ishii's bizarre genre hybrid, Blind Woman's Curse proving once and for all that she was more than just another pretty face. While the actress will always be best known for the two Lady Snowblood features and the four Female Convict Scorpion films, Ishii's 1970 effort had to have helped her land those roles. Her impressive performance here would certainly seem to be a precursor for what would come later in her career and in hindsight it's easy to draw some parallels here to her later, better known and more iconic work.
The film introduces us to a female gangster named Akemi Tachibana (Meiko Kaji) who has taken over leadership of her clan since her father passed away. She swears vengeance against a rival gang lead by Gada and in her attempt to murder him, she inadvertently blinds his sister, Aiko Gouda (Hoki Tokuda), by slashing her across the face with her sword. A black cat shows up, licks up the arterial spray, and Akemi interprets this as a curse and is plagued by nightmares from here on out.
Akemi then goes to prison where, after some initial tensions, she and her cell mates become friends. When they're let out, she allows them to join her clan. Shortly thereafter, a strange blind woman shows up in Akemi's town, right around the time her gang winds up going to war with Aozora (Ryí´hei Uchida) and his clan. After her arrival, Akemi's companions start getting killed off, the tattoos sliced off of their backs in gory fashion, leading her to wonder if all of this ties in to her past with Aiko. While the members of Akemi's gang want swift vengeance, Tatsu (Shirí´ í”tsuji) in particular, but when that black cat shows up again, Akemi realizes there's more to this than meets the eye.
A genuinely weird mix of the Yakuza and horror genres with a dose of 'pinky violence' exploitation thrown in for good measure and elements from the popular Zatoichi series intertwined, Blind Woman's Curse is a lot of fun even if it isn't the pinnacle of Kaji's output or likely to be the film that Ishii is best remembered for. The two things that really work in the film's favor are the visuals and Kaji's intoxicating screen presence. The film is shot in such a way that at times it almost feels like it's borrowing from the painterly visuals of Italian stylists like Mario Bava or Dario Argento, with its swirling primary colors and distinct attention to morbid detail. At times the film almost looks like it's taking place on another planet, things feel very alien and intentionally cold in spots. The most obvious example of this is a scene where a hunchbacked dancer (Tatsumi Hijikata, who Ishii also used in his infamous Horrors Of Malformed Men a year prior) performs against a macabre backdrop of swirling colors and mirrored sheets of metal shortly after a man makes a soup out of human body parts standing near a table littered with decapitated human heads. Here Ishii's penchant for the grotesque is obvious, but so too is his knack for keen compositions and strange, unearthly lighting techniques.
As far as the performances go, Meiko Kaji has the seemingly magical ability to be simultaneously cold as ice and hotter than Hell and essentially what you're left with is a dangerous hot chick running around an incredibly bizarre location with a sword avoiding random bursts of strangeness. It might not have won Ishii and co-writer Chusei Sone a Best Screenplay award, but it works well in the context of what the director and cinematographer were obviously going for in this production. Kaji plays all of this deliciously straight. Her steely stare as intense here as any of her other films and her body language, frequently poised like a cat ready to strike, telegraphing just how capable of violence her character is. We see this manifest itself in some scenes of bloody swordplay highlighted by the inevitable dual that takes place in the film. Once again, in this scene, we get Ishii's tastes for the bizarre working their way in by way of swirling black clouds in the distance as our two combatants square off against one another in the darkest night.
Blind Woman's Curse is a strange film to be sure, but it's really well put together. The compositions are unorthodox, the plot is full of surprises and the cast are all quite good. The score is also solid, highlighted by Keiji's crooning over the end credits. Anyone with an interest in Japanese cinema of the 1970s should consider this essential.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Blind Woman's Curse debuts on Blu-ray in the US from Arrow after being released by them last year in the UK. The movie is presented on a 25GB disc framed at 2.35.1 widescreen in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Though there is minor print damage and a few vertical scratches throughout, the image, for the most part, is pretty clean. If some scenes look better than others this would appear to stem back to the original photography and lighting as detail is typically pretty solid here. Texture is also good, you can get a feel for the icky red blood as the cat laps away at the carnage early in the film, while clothing looks reasonably lush. Color reproduction is generally quite nice here as well, with some outdoor scenes looking slightly over lit notwithstanding. Isn't that what we said about the UK release? Yes it is, but there are some differences. The subtitles are placed differently and the contrast and black levels look a noticeably improved here making the UK disc look a little greyer by comparison. Aside from that, however, the transfers are very similar.
The only audio option on the disc is an LPCM 1.0 Mono track in Japanese with English subtitles. The track is clean, well balanced and free of any hiss or distortion. The clanging of swords has some power behind it as do a few of the other sound effects used in the picture while dialogue stays up in the front and easy to follow. The subtitles are crisp, clean looking, easy to read and free of any obvious typographical errors. No complaints here. For an older Mono mix, there's some welcome depth and range.
The best extra on the disc is a commentary with Jasper Sharp, the author of Behind The Pink Curtain. Sharp knows his stuff and delivers an impressive track that covers not only Ishii's directorial style as shown off in this film but how his early work led up to this point in his career and many of the themes and styles that are mainstays throughout his filmography. The track also details how Nikkastu would soon move away from traditional films such as this and head full on into the production of their infamous Roman Porno films, the importance of Tatsumi Hijikata's dancing hunchback character, and how Meiko Kaji rose to fame and prominence at this point in her career after some early supporting roles. He also notes the influence of the Red Peony Gambler series and the Zatoichi films, particularly on the last scene in the movie. It's a thoughtful and well-paced track worth taking the time to listen to.
Outside of that we get a trailer for the feature, trailers for the four Stray Cat Rock films that Meiko Kaji also headlined (and which Arrow has slated for release soon), animated menus and chapter selection. There's also an insert booklet included with the release that includes an essay on the picture from Tom Mes.
The Final Word:
Blind Woman's Curse is a fantastically bizarre blend of horror, action and intrigue shot with a skillful eye and loaded with memorably strange set piece and excellent performances. Arrow's Blu-ray offers up the movie in very nice condition with fine audio and a few choice supplements as well. Great stuff.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
