Review

Reiko Ike is back as Inoshika Ocho, the ruthless female gangster who fought her way to bloody vengeance in Sex and Fury. For the sequel, Teruo Ishii takes over the reigns as director from the original’s Norifumi Suzuki, and manages to outdo even Suzuki for wildly perverse exploitation. While Suzuki showcased Ike in a nude fight scene, Ishii stages another such sequence during the opening credits! What follows is an even more lurid and pulpy pop-art journey through the brothels and drug gangs of 1905 Kobe. Ocho is joined by a dashing mobster and a sexy gang leader dressed as a nun (a stylistic nod to the popular Female Convict Scorpion series) to track down the villains in a twisty tale full of outrageous and gratuitous sidesteps into debauchery and torture. Ishii makes up for an obvious lower budget with style – a legion of hoods waiting to ambush the heroes outside a meeting is represented by shadows at the windows – but he manages to top his opening sequence with a big battle between the grotesque bad guys and roughly two dozen naked women! Japanese exploitation cinema at its psychotronic best.

 -- Brian Thomas