Another rare Japanese one-sheet, this advertises Rashamen oman: ame no Oranda-zaka, aka, Woman Gambler with Blue Eyes. The eyes in question belong to Sally May, who in addition to acting put together a singing career in Japan. We have another rare Japanese promo involving gambling geishas here. Rashamen oman: ame no Oranda-zaka premiered in Tokyo today in 1972. 

Way back in 2009 two promos for Seijû gakuen were the first pinku posters we ever shared on Pulp Intl. Ah, the good old days. We got the title wrong and misspelled the name of the star, but other than that, what a glorious memory. When we located that pair of posters we also found two others, and now, years later, we’re getting around to sharing those too. Seijû gakuen was known in the West as School of the Holy Beast, and above you see a rare two panel horizontal poster. At that orientation it renders a little small here, so we’ve posted the panels seperately below:

Although many directors and performers were involved in the Girl Boss movies, on some level Nikkatsu Studios was behind most of them as either producers or distributors. This one is an exception. The movie was called Soft-Shelled Turtle Girl Boss, it was made by Dai Nippon Eiga Seisaku Kabushiki Kaisha, which was known as Daiei Film for short, and it had Taro Yuge in the director’s chair and Eiko Yanami in the lead. We don’t know anything about the plot, but it’s a pinku girl boss flick, so she probably seeks and achieves revenge against a bunch of gangster types. We’ll look for more info, if not a copy of the movie. In the meantime, we’ll just enjoy the poster, which is absolutely killer. Soft-Shelled Turtle Girl Boss premiered in Japan today in 1971. 

Above, a poster for Tadashi Yoyogi’s Semi-dokyumento: Sukeban yôjimbô, aka Girl Boss Document. A less known Girl Boss movie, this starred Noriko Igarashi, who you see brazenly flashing her tighty whities on the poster. It premiered in Japan today in 1974.

Furyô banchô: Inoshika Ochô, aka Wolves of the City, aka Wolves of the City: Ocho the She-Wolf was a significant hole in our Japanese actioner viewing résumé, but we solved that by watching the film a few days ago. In short, you get an amoral motorcycle gang in Nazi regalia pitted against evil Yakuza, with the tide eventually turning when the legendary hellion Ocho the She-Wolf teams up with the gang. The movie looks great. Yukio Noda’s direction—for the most part—is a marvel. He frames shots with six, seven, sometimes even a dozen interacting characters spread across the screen, yet it all seems effortless. Modern directors don’t seem remotely interested in using shots like these anymore, which is a shame, but it may also be a function of today’s screenwriters choosing to limit the number of characters who interact simultaneously. In any case, this is one thing we loved about the movie and we’ve shared some images of this technique below.

But Wolves of the City is a mixed bag. It relies upon numerous violent set pieces, but where the dialogue sequences feel so carefully thought out, the action is pure Keystone Kops. Because Noda continues framing large numbers of actors in single shots, his performers seem more intent uponhitting their stage marks than making these confrontations look realistic. They reach their required positions in the scenes, but these hardened gangsters handle pistols and machine guns as if they were rubber snakes, dealing a major blow to what should be the visceral thrill of such moments. By packing the screen during the gunfights Noda forces the audience to accept that nobody can successfully shoot anyone from five feet away. It feels very bang-bang-you’re-dead amateurish, complete with wounded gangsters clutching their chests, spinning around, and falling to the floor.

In the end the plot ushers us through various deals, deceptions, and shootouts, and you finally get the inevitable throwdown between the bikers and the Yakuza. This is the most unlikely sequence of all, with bikers motoring around none too swiftly inside a confined warehouse while still miraculously being missed by a hailstorm of screaming lead. But by now we know what we’re going to get and we just have to go with it. At one point Ocho puts out a gangster’s eyes and archly informs him (as if he can hear through the head-splitting pain), “You’re the seventeenth victim of Ocho of Inoshika’s eye attack!” This movie does attack the eyes rather beautifully, and if you look past the Vaudeville antics of the action scenes you may enjoy it. The panel length poster at top is rare, and as far as we know it’s the only one of its kind to be seen online. Furyô banchô: Inoshika Ochô premiered in Japan today in 1969.

Above, an excellent pinku poster of a recalcitrant tough guy having a knife held to his eye by an even tougher woman. It’s for a movie entitled Girl Boss: Dirty Fellows, but as usual we have to add the disclaimer that the translation here may be a bit off. Definitely the text says “girl/lady/woman” and “gang leader” which can be interpreted as “girl boss” or maybe “lady boss.” The rest, well, we’ve done our best. Also, it looks like Teruyo Hasegawa was in this movie, and we were told the release year was 1969, but that seems a bit late for Hasegawa, who was in films as early as 1954. Anyway, that’s all we got. If we mess up something we’re usually emailed about it, so we’ll just wait and see on this one.

When pondering which femme fatale to post today, looking toward Japan seemed fitting. Japan’s Cinema Caravan will have its finale in San Sebastian tonight with several short films, plus live music from Cro-Magnon, DJ Mitsu the Beats, and more. The above image has never appeared on the internet before, as far as we can tell, and shows legendary actress Meiko Kaji. The year on this is 1969, back when she was still quite well known as Masako Ôta, having acted in four movies using that name. We’ll tell you all about Cinema Caravan’s finale tomorrow, and next week we’ll get back to our usual books, tabloids, and general pulp weirdness.

San Sebastian in general and Cinema Caravan in particular are keeping us busy, but we have time for a quick post, so here we go. Last night we attended a screening of Hiroyuki Nakano’s 1998 adventure/comedy SF: Episode One, also known as Samurai Fiction. It’s a quirky movie, imaginatively shot mostly in black and white, and involves a young samurai on a mission to both avenge a friend’s death and retrieve a priceless sword. He encounters an ex-samurai who tries to teach him the wisdom of non-violence, with limited success. The movie is set in 1689 and looks a bit like Kurosawa’s great period pieces, but subverts that similarity with its humor and modern rock 'n’ roll soundtrack. Since it was in Japanese with English subtitles, the mostly Basque audience was perhaps a bit baffled, but even those with language difficulties could enjoy the film’s visual creativity, and ultimately everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Watching Samurai Fiction got us thinking about our many Japanese posters, and because we actually have access to that stuff wherever we go, we decided to share five of the nicer pieces in our collection. In terms of  information on these, time is a little tight to research them carefully, but here’s what we know: poster one—nothing; poster two—Nawa Hada Jigoku: Rope Skin Hell, with Naomi Tani, 1979; poster three—we’re unsure on that one, but that’s definitely Kayoko Honoo in the art; poster four—Kapone no shatei, yamato damashi, aka A Boss with a Samurai Spirit, with Tomisaburô Wakayama, 1971; poster five—nothing. But check back in a week or so and we’ll have added everything we can find out to this post. See ya later.

Doubling up on the movie posters today, we also have this great Japanese sheet for Konketsuji Rika: Hamagure komoriuta, released in English as Rika 3: Juvenile’s Lullaby. Directed by Kôzaburô Yoshimura, Rika 3 caps off the Rika the Amerasian trilogy by following the heroine’s exploits as she tries to save her friend from sexual predators intent on making her the lead in a porno film. These pinku plots are never simple, but that’s the main thrust here. There’s some expounding upon racial matters. For instance, we see that, like in America, in Japan being half black biologically makes you 100% black as far as the prevailing racist culture is concerned, but that’s nothing we didn’t already know. We were more interested in the action, but much of it is played for laughs, like when we see Rika beat the shit out of some guys with what must be the world’s sturdiest baguette. They’re in good company. Virtually every man in the movie ends up laid out like a stunned carp (see below), but they all have it coming for being so mean and rapey. Rika 3 isn’t a great pinku, but it’s worth a look for fans of the genre. The women are smart and tough, and the heroine comes out on top. Which is the whole point, as far as we’re concerned. Konketsuji Rika: Hamagure komoriuta premiered in Japan today in 1973. You can check a trailer here.