This promo is for Jigoku no tenshi: Akai bakuon, aka Hells Angels: Crimson Roar, one of scores of girl gang movies that deluged Japanese cinema during the 1970s. This one is from Toei Company and concerns a gang member named Yoko, played by Yûko Iruka, who spends three years in prison for assault with a switchblade, and afterward emerges onto the mean, nightclub-lined streets of her coastal hometown. You know Japanese bars are sleazy when their names are English—Bar Lucky, The Apollo, The Happening, Club Ace, New York 3, et al. We especially liked the placard that read: Girls can get so excited and lustful sometimes, as shown in this picture. Why don’t you come in now? The girls working for me are so sexy. You can try to satisfy them. Yes, even sex club signage is polite in Japan.

These places are all geared toward American servicemen, of course, and the distaste for Western decadence, though subtle, is clear. But it isn’t Americans who are a problem for Yoko—it’s a group of pesky Yakuza who make their home at the Lonely Angel bar. After Yoko is drugged into paralysis and raped by two of the slimier specimens she hones that trusty switchblade of hers and goes on a revenge spree that, well, doesn’t end nicely for her enemies. She gets timely help from her boyfriend, and when he ends up on the point of a katana, that makes her even angrier. Turns out she’s deadly with a sniper rifle too. Standard stuff, but with an unusual and effective star in Iruka, and Reiko Ike’s 1973 hit song “Futen Gurashi Part 2” recurring throughout the soundtrack—a bonus.  Jigoku no tenshi: Akai bakuon premiered in Japan today in 1977.

Just in time to capitalize on the infamous 1969 Altamont killing that brought eternal notoriety to the Hells Angels and Rolling Stones came Hell’s Bloody Devils. Less than a month after the December killing this film hit theaters, but if audiences were hoping director Al Adamson had insights into biker culture they were disappointed. The promo copy promises all sorts of mayhem, but instead we get a disjointed thriller with neo-Nazi villains, and Kentucky’s own Colonel Sanders in a surprising cameo. Word was he got face time in exchange for feeding the production crew. He should have cried fowl, because he gave away his chicken only to end up in a turkey. If you see this one coming your way, be sure to duck. Hell’s Bloody Devils premiered today in 1970.

In Britain, seven defendants were sentenced to life in prison yesterday for the murder of 35 year-old Gerry Tobin. Tobin was a member of the Hells Angels biker gang, and his killers—who ranged in age from 41 to 57—were members of the rival Outlaws gang.

In August 2007, Tobin was riding home from a motorcycle festival called the Bulldog Bash. His route took him along highway M-40 through territory the Outlaws considered theirs. They gave chase in a car, overtook the unsuspecting Tobin, and shot him once through the back of the head as he traveled at 90 mph. Two other motorcyclists trailing the scene witnessed the shooting.

Authorities were shocked by the senseless nature of the killing—the gunmen had never met Tobin. As Queen’s prosecutor Timothy Raggatt explained to the jury: “This wasn’t a case of a man being killed for any personal motive or any personal reason. This was a man who was targeted not because of who he was, but because of what he was. In one sense, Gerry Tobin was a random victim.”