Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Also, some bloody photographs, which were too hilarious to exclude. But they are hidden.
"Japanese blind swordswoman revenge" is apparently a genre. I define "genre" as "at least two movies".
This movie is kosher
Well, this gets straight to the point. Two sides are swordfighting with gratuitious slow-mo.
Thank you, Tachibana Akemi. Now I don't have to call you "the woman" for half the review. She also says she has come to claim the life of the other side's leader.
The men all take their shirts off. I have a feeling that this will be less plot-heavy than Crimson Bat.
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| Is this a battle or a piñata party? |
Someone yells as her to not kill her brother. Instead, Akemi slashes her sword at the girl's eyes, blinding her. A cat licks at her wound.(?) Then the cat leaps at Tachibana Akemi.
She wakes up. Going for the "it was all a dream" ending at the beginning?
Tachibana is not in a battle, that just a nightmare. She is in a much worse nightmare: a low-budget episode of Orange is the New Black,
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| More like Orange is the New Black Cat |
She tells them that she is cursed by a cat that licked at a dead man's face.
Tachibana Akemi has a dragon head tattoo. She starts talking about how she is second in line for the Tachibana blood line.
Three Years Later?
A gang comes through town and pops balloons. Oh, and they also assault people. Someone tells them that the Tachibana will never let them get away. A fight breaks out.
Good. then I'll have something to write about.
The gang leader yells to pull back. Then he releases two balloons.
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| They float, Georgie. Is that reference too lazy. |
I got to say I love how easy this movie is to write about. People just spout exposition. The "good guys" say they are no match against Aozora's gang.
I hope there is a blind woman as promised because this movie is pretty bad.
Another man comes in and asks to sleep with a woman .
The girls agree to train together under Ane-san. Their backs all have tattoos that form a dragon when they stand together in a certain order. Why is this gang's method of identification so blatant?
Chie-chann is the head of the gang and gives advice. Her advice is to wait. okay.
Chie-chann goes to pull a blanket over one of the men who helped in the fight. She offers a reward, but he is offended.
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| Sexual assauk is comedy. right/ |
There is a song telling me how to feel. Laziness in creating mood: now 46 years before Me Before You.
Ane-san invites the man who helped back to eat dinner. He says the meal is great, and Ane-san's father says he is a decent man. This movie has a strange sense of morality. "Yeah, you were part of a gang that terrorized villages, but you like my cooking."
His name is Tani-san, and he is an orphan because of course he is. Two people from the evil gang take care of two moles because they have the dragon tattoo. So the people with the dragon tattoos are working for the Tachibana? Seems a very poor choice of people to send as moles.
The Aozora(evil) clan send back the coffins with the moles. Ane-san says she is the most upset because she vowed that she would die with them. This movie's dialogue is so awful:
I miss the subtlety of Crimson Bat.
A deranged person comes into the Tachibana's meeting place. His name is Koji. he has blood all over his face. He crashes through the window and blinds himself.
Then she sees the black cat.
This is the first movie I've watched for this blog where I thought "What am I doing with my life?"
The Aozora vow to stop the Tachibana family. Suddenly, the title character comes in and and says "I wonder whether it will be that easy"
They ask "Who the hell are you?" I would be more concerned with how she got in. You know, considering the whole "gang war" going on.
She says she has come to help their boss, Dobashi. She had to "quiet" his subordinates.
One of the members of the Aozoras family swings his fist at her. She ducks, and he hits another man instead. If you want people to take this seriously, you should elevate your fight scenes above The Three Stooges.
We cut to to someone summarizing the plot:
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The bad guy with the glasses assaults Chie-Chan. She leads him to the back room where another member of the family attacks him.
Carnival because why not? There is a freak show. Someone is exhibiting human limbs in a basket. This movie escalated quickly.
The Blind Woman is a knife-thrower at the carnival. I'm all for inclusiveness in sports, but there is a limit.
She asks for a volunteer and one of the gang members with a dragon tattto goes up. She removes her jacket to reveal the tattoo. I would question the logic of revealing that you have the mark of a gang in front of a group of spectators at a carnival, but I question the logic of volunteering to be the target of a blind knife-thrower more.
She misses each time by less than an inch. Not sure if it was skill or blind luck.
A hunchback is under the same affliction as the deranged person earlier. We hear a meow.
There are things i can get through life without seeing. This is an example:
Four people walk outside. A man tries to urinate, but the black cat jumps down. He looks up and sees a corpse hanging. It's Noboku, the woman who volunteered. Four people walked outside, waited twenty-nine seconds, and it took a cat jumping down for them to notice a hanging corpse To be fair, three of them were drunk,
On the body is a note threatening to kill everyone with the dragon tattoo. This is the first and probably last time in my life I regret not having read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Because I can't make a reference.
Someone tears off the note and reveals her back is bloody and there is no dragon tattoo.
Akemi "confesses" that she has had a recurring dream of a black cat. she says that someone cursed her and everyone else with a dragon tattoo. Don't get tattoos, kids. Or else you might get cursed by a black cat and die.
The Tachibana find the skin of the woman with the dragon tattoo.
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| Hey, a relatable character |
One of the Tachibana goes to a graveyard and finds the black cat. Then he follows it to the carnival. The carnival is right next to the graveyard? Is that for convenience or for marketing?
He walks around the carnival and finds some heads.
This guy is alive. He's alive. He's alive, You don't have to keep the suspense up. We saw him a few scenes ago.
Oh look, he's alive.
The Tachibana man finds the skin with the dragon tattoo and the deranged man attacks him. Luckily, the titular blind woman shows up. She uses her stick to break up the fight.
The blind woman starts stroking the cat and asks "Why did you do this?" I thought she was asking the cat at first, but the deranged man answers. He says he thought she would like it, but she says she doesn't want any help. You know, it is really inspirational when movies depict people with disabilities rejecting the help of other and doing things like assassinating key members of a gang who have a specific marking, skinning the backs of them, and putting the skins up as warning signs all by themselves. Independence is important.
I agree that there is a problem with people registering pets as service animals under "emotional support animals". It's a shame because there are legitimate roles for emotional support animals. But, I believe that there a far more pressing concerns with service animal law loopholes. Where is this woman's documentation for the cat, and what purpose does that cat serve? Is "infecting people of a rival gang to attack people so that I can skin the tattoos of specific people in said gang off and send them as warning signals" a legitimate function of a service animal? Remember, this was released in 1970 in Japan.
Akemi find another corpse of a woman who had a dragon tattoo. At least The Crimson Bat had some plot twists, instead of "I'm going to kill all these people with the dragon tattoo." The note says "I will claim the dragon head soon." I hate it when movies spoil themselves.
At a market, there is tension between Akemi and an Aozora woman. We learn this from subtle dialogue,
The Aozora woman slips illegal drugs into the Tachibana clan's market and then calls headquarters, who alerts the police. The police come and arrest them.
At the Tachibana headquarters, Akemi wants to leave because she brings bad luck.
I would classify a rival gang planting drugs as "Intentional Sabatoge", not "Bad Luck", but whatever. One of the members wishes her good fortune, which is pretty inconsiderate given the situaton.
The Aozora ride in a van and brag about how the Tachibana have no hope. Thanks for the exposition. The guy from the beginning at the carnival confronts them, saying that they are using his name under false pretenses to get back at the Tachibana. I missed that, but I don't really care about the plot right now. There is a fight, and the blind woman offers to join forces. They accept
The Aozora gang enter a bar at the market. The bartender (Chei-chan's father) ignores them, and that offends the leader, Tatsu. They threaten to force him out of business
Chei-chans' father says he knew Tatsu used to be in the Tachibana clan before he went off.
I didn't realize the first time I watched this that Tatsu was in the early scene with the Tachibana. So there was a betrayal at some point, I just missed it. The plot is really confusing.
A fight ensues. Tani-san (from the beginning fo the movie) now works at this bar and joins the fight.
Okay, if you want me to take your movie seriously, don't choreograph your fights like this:
Chei-chan comes and declares that she figured out who slipped the drugs into the Tachibana's merchant's bags. Chei-chan and Tani-san find the culprit and accost her. Tani-san asks whether she works for Dobashi. She says "Why bother asking if you know the answer?" That seems good enough for a confession.
As they go away, a flying knife hits her. This is why you don't hire blind knife-throwers,
Two Aozora police officers confront Chei-chan and take her away. Tatsu goes to her father and tells him that they took his daughter and he should come with them. He agrees and gets ambushed. Effective plan.
The father calls Tatsu a bastard. Tatsu calls the father a bastard for humiliating him in public. Fair is fair.
The hunchback from before comes in to lick up the blood. Interesting.
This is supposed to be a torture scene, but I can''t take it seriously because she is half-laughing, half-crying
This had better be better than the Crimson Bat gambling scene, Spoiler: it isn't.
Tani-san accuses them of cheating. Then a fight breaks out.
The blind swordswoman comes out and fights Dobashi's soldiers. Because she doesn't like foul play.
Tani-san walks through a cell of half-naked slave women. He says this:
Thank you for point out that the villain is the villain. I couldn't have connected "half-naked women right outside the crime boss's lair" with "sex trafficking" without that piece of dialogue.
So this fight should be pretty great, right? It's the head of the Aozora gang against the guy who infiltrated the headquarters. Actually, it's all over in seven seconds and we see the fight through the bars.
Tani-san asks for a confession. Dobashi says he wanted to let the Aozora and the Tachibana fight each other and get them both killed, but the Tachibana didn't want to fight.
I would think that the crime boss would be better guarded.
Aozora gang members come in and capture Tani-san. Unfortunate.
Now a torture scene. Lovely. the Aozora dunk Tani-san and Chei-chan in water alternatively.
Chei-chan's father enters the headquarters, and the men exclaim he is a ghost. The father/ghost chops off someone head. Then the deranged man appears. What is this movie?
Dobashi decides that ghosts chopping off heads and deranged men appearing in the gang's headquarters aren't urgent matters and prepares to rape Chei-chan instead. He goes to rape her, but turns over the blind woman instead. Then they go back to the torture well and find the torturer in the well and a note "I took the girl."
The gang members chase after the deranged man, who is named Tsuyoshi
A woman brings back an unconscious Chei-chan from Dobashi's headquarters.
They also bring back the dead father. Who is not a ghost.
Tsyuoshi jumps around Dobashi's headquarters and gets stabbed.
Turns out the blind woman is a traitor to Dobachi. So she gets trapped
The blind woman stabs some soldier through the bars and causes them to fall into the water (?). Tatsu pulls a lever and the floor drops out, causing the blind woman fall and become entangled in a net.
This seems like a good plan, except one problem.
Seriously, don't trap swordswomen in nets.
The Tachibana hold a service for Chie-chan's father. they call for Ane-san to let them lead a charge against the Aozora. but Ane-san says no, she has to do it alone. Something, something, heroine's journey, dramatic conclusion, whatever. Ten more minutes.
The Tachibana give Ane-san a weapon. Then they pour her some tea and the music tells me this should be dramatic.
What makes it more dramatic? How about a song that comes out of nowhere with the Tachibana marching like this?
I can't take this seriously.
Remember the whole "I have to do this by myself?" thing? Well, forget that, because all the Tachibana go to battle. Also, the Aozora headquarters must be pretty well-guarded, right? I mean, Dobashi was in the dungeon when they weren't expecting an attack. The Tachibana just rescued two prisoners and killed off some of the Aozora men.
I must not be good with gang warfare strategy, because the Aozora are all casually on the top floor of their headquarters. We don't even see the break-in, it just cuts to the battle.
Ane-san challenges Dobashi to a one-on-one, but that doesn't really pan out as both gangs battle. And some of the shots are hilarious. Here are my three favorites: (2 and 1 are bloody)
3.
2.
I gave up on this movie a long time ago. But if I hadn't, this "final battle" would push me over the edge.
The blind woman comes out and says this:
What a coincidence. I've been waiting the entire movie as well. Which feels endless.
They decide to to move to a more cinematic location for the final showdown.
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| What a beautiful fake background |
Less than four minutes to go.
The showdown consists of them swinging their swords at each other while post-production "swish" sound effects tell you that they have missed. Finally, they lock blades
The blind woman listens to to her sword (?) and it drips water into a bucket.
With three minutes remaining, you might have realized something. Remember the black cat? That was an important plot point that never went anywhere. Well, the cat jumps out at Ane-san out of nowhere and she slashes it in half. Plot point resolved.
Unfortunately, this causes Ane-san to stumble and the blind woman thrust her sword at her back. Ane-san surrenders and tells the blind woman to avenge her brother. But the blind woman says she can't kill someone with a beautiful heart.
The blind woman walks away. Movie over.
If you want to sample the vast genre of Japanese blind swordfighting female revenge films, watch Crimson Bat, the Blind Swordwoman. here's why:
Crimson Bat's script is like if someone took a stack of unrelated scripts, cut out the melodramatic subplots from each, and pasted them together.
Blind Woman's Curse's script is like if someone took a stack of unrelated scripts, put them through a paper shredder, picked up a handful of pieces, and pasted them back together in a random order.
Then they set the script on fire and ad-libbed everything.
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