Black Cat's Revenge
(Kaidan nobori ryu, 1970)

Ishii Teruo

Japan

85 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

The film's title is doubly confusing. First, despite the Japanese original claiming it to be a kaidan, it is nothing of the sort unless one chooses to interpret the heroine psychosis in terms of the vengeful bakeneko spirit, the cat demon from traditional Japanese folklore. There are no supernatural elements here, at least nothing that cannot be readily explained without the resort to the other worlds. Second, the English translation on this DVD also emphasizes the misleading ghost element. Even the alternative titles, e.g. Tattooed Swordswoman or The Blind Woman's Curse, while being much closer in spirit to the actual content also fail miserably. I don't have an appropriate replacement in mind, I am just pointing out that those coming to the film expecting to see a ghost story will be seriously disappointed.

Obligatory gratuitous shot of Kaji Meiko	Sunazuka Hideo admires the... artwork

On the other hand, those coming to the film expecting to see an essentially yakuza tale with some unusual elements will be treated at least to half satisfaction. Why half? Because even as a yakuza film this one fails in more than one department. Imagine a Zatoichi film without the good fight choreography, a Shinoda penchant for the odd angle without the master's aesthetic touch, and finally have Kaji Meiko play the Lady Snowblood without the latter's efficiency with weapons, mix up some Fukasaku oddities and you have this Ishii film.

My man helps the poor pull their carts	The dreamy Tokuda Hoki

Meiko is Akemi of the Tachibana gang and the film opens with her coming to avenge the death of her dad at the hands of the rival Goda formation. During the fight she accidentally blinds Goda's sister Aiko (played by the dreamy Tokuda Hoki who looks unsettlingly like Kyo Machiko and who many in the West probably know as the three-hundred-seventy-fifth wife of that old goat Henry Miller). When a black cat shows up to lick the latter's wound (yes, it's as gross as it sounds), Akemi takes it into her head that the vengeful cat is going to torment her because the accident has put a curse on her. Never mind the fact that someone has to die for these spirits to show up and molest the living (Aiko is quite alive).

This dragon tattoo is exquisite... oh wait, I am blind and I am not supposed to be able to see it	My vengeance is to lick your ear until you pee in your pants

After serving some time in prison, Akemi returns to her gang's turf to run it... not at all obviously how. Hers is still a gang but apparently a "good" one since they don't do opium and one finds it hard to reconcile the thuggery of the yakuza with the inactive enforcement of territorial "rights" the Tachibana seem to engage in. The more active rival group under Boss Dobashi (Abe Toru) is scheming to take over that turf and Akemi is simply not up to the task of defending it. Presumably, she is tormented by her guilt or at least by being pursued by a meowing feline in her dreams.

The things Sato Makoto would do to get into Takagi Yoko's graces	This is how true artists film a dialogue scene

As befits any group worth joining, this one has a traitor, the oddly nerdly Tatsu (Otsuji Shiro), who plots with Dobashi a very complicated game that would involve the Tachibana in a bloody fight with the Aozora gang. Evidently, the goal is to have them slaughter each other until Dobashi waltzes in to grab the vacant turf. The plan has two weaknesses. First, Aozora (Uchida Ryohei who should have known better) is a comical figure who prances around in a loin cloth, is more comical than threatening, and is content with knocking a few heads rather than detaching them from their bodies. This guy is no fighter unless one counts his formidable stinking skills which are referenced on numerous occasions. (In fact, Ishii delights in satirizing the camera positioning so characteristic of the new wave of directors like Shinoda or Oshima who managed to achieve some very physically challenging shots just to be different and artsy: see, for example, his placing the camera behind Aozora's ass such that we are treated to a full view of his cheeks during his dialogues... heck, even his buttocks are expressive as he shakes them in acknowledgment of a point someone makes!)

What do you not approve of this woodwork?	This hunchback is Rasputin reincarnated

The second problem is that Akemi herself does not want to fight. Ostensibly, she wants to figure out just why the Aozora have turned so murderous but since she does nothing apart from waiting for more victims to turn up, I fail to see how she intends to do that. More likely, she is a very bad yakuza boss. She is torn between abandoning the yakuza life for something more respectable, like her uncle urges her to do (note that in this case more respectable does not necessarily imply a longer life-span as his gruesome death amply demonstrates), and maintaining the integrity of the gang which not only provides with livelihood all its members but also protects the other citizens from the depredations of the unwholesome rivals. Whatever her Hamlet-like dilemma, it has paralyzed her completely and she just waits, helplessly mourning the ever increasing toll of murder and mayhem supposedly perpetrated by the Aozora but in fact done by Dobashi.

Split-screen gone crazy from opium fumes	Do you like my new dentures?

Before one reaches for the conclusion that Ishii thinks women are just incompetent yakuza, I should mention Akemi's nemesis, the blind Aiko, who has mastered all sorts of implausible skills with the sword and has spent the last five years training to inflict bloody vengeance on Akemi. This is where the "curse of the black cat" loses its meaning as a supernatural element despite said cat making various appearances, licking blood off tattooed skins from flayed Tachibana women, and just menacingly cuddling with Aiko. Since Aiko is quite alive, there's no way for her spirit to be exacting otherworldly revenge. And since there's no bakeneko, it follows that Akemi's problems are the result of a psychosis, probably coming out of a sense of guilt, but more likely out of a realization that she cannot continue with the yakuza life and do what it demands of her. She will not be freed until the end from this curse of inactivity that has simply paralyzed her while her world is falling apart around.

Boss, your skin is so smooth, and I am saying this in a totally non-homoerotic way	Honey, I am fresh from the bath and ready to rape you

Far from endorsing Aiko's single-minded pursuit of training to effect her vendetta, Ishii mocks what a normal genre film would treat as noble (e.g. the various interpretations of Miyamoto Musashi's story or the 47 Ronin). He does not even bother going to the other extreme to show how devastating the pursuit of revenge can be. Instead, he makes it meaningless. When Aiko finally confronts Akemi and defeats her, she refuses the administer the decapitating blow. She realizes the Akemi has essentially given in by not fighting with her full skill, and that she's done so because she feels guilty for what she'd done. This means that Akemi is fundamentally a decent person (it's ok to slaughter yakuza), and as such should not be punished for the accident. The symbolic slashing through the eyes of the dragon tattoo on her back serves a dual purpose: it sort of "makes things even" by taking the yakuza sight in exchange for Aiko's eyes but it also shows that Akemi is now free from the demands of the life she did not life. With Dobashi destroyed and the Tachibana disbanded, the raison d'etre of her gang is gone and she can dissolve into normal life. Aiko's sad realization that she has wasted her life dreaming of revenge completely misses that fact: without Aiko and that duel Akemi would never have become what she does in the end. Thus, the pursuit of revenge, while utterly meaningless for the one engaged in it, has achieved something worthy for its object, a new, if unsettling, idea.

Yakuza Mourning: so many have died, so let's go kill some more	That guy's breasts pinched by tight wrap

The film itself does not quite get boring, mostly because it's quite short. The story itself does not take much to tell, so Ishii has to spend considerable time on other things, most of them squarely in the useless exploitation category. A prime example is the demented hunchback who performs in what has to be the most bizarre theater committed to celluloid. One could interpret him as the deformed essence of Aiko's intentions and he does enact gruesomely things that are implied by her quest for vengeance even though she tries to keep it "pure" and pretend that her goal is nobler than it is. She is quite disgusted with his antics but somehow never sends him away, perhaps because she cannot. Then there's the opium den at Dobashi's lair where semi-naked women wreathe in smoke in artfully contrived red light with nary a purpose in sight. All very 1970s, of course, but no more than filler.

Overexcited with bucked teeth overextended	Fog and painted sky at the final duel

The true flashes come at the very end with the duel between the two heroines, amid desolate ruins beneath a fantastic night sky, with spiral clouds swirling above and dust enveloping them from below. This can easily be mistaken for a Kobayashi sequence in Kwaidan and is very effective. The moody lighting at the very end which illuminates only part of the faces works very well in suggesting the revelation that both experience. Akemi kneeling and supporting herself with her right arm on her sword, helpless with her back against Aiko looming overhead seems like a chiaroscuro painting by Caravaggio: a single source of light (coming from nowhere) shows her profile, with everything else fading into meaningless darkness. Superb cinematography, quite surprising for such a film.

The futility of vengeance dawns on Aiko	The painterly shot of Kaji Meiko

The DVD I have is a bootleg from KurotoKagi with a transfer from what looks at best to be a TV broadcast but may equally well be an old VHS tape. The video is letterboxed at the OAR of 2.35:1 but the colors are unstable and there's lots of visible artifacts from the compression. The subtitles by the ubiquitous Cannibal King are actually very good, and since this is the only way we, the Japanese non-speakers, can enjoy this film for now, I should not be too picky. While this Kaji Meiko vehicle will not be anything more than a footnote in just about any film history, it is worth watching for the inspired cinematography and the message that I discerned which is subversive even if I made up the entire interpretation.

December 29, 2006