The Return of the Sister Street Fighter (1975) October 16, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Action, 1970s films, Exploitation , trackbackDirector: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi Main cast: Etsuko Shihomi; Yasuaki Kurata; Masashi Ishibashi Territory: Japan Production Company: Toei
Koryu (Etsuko Shihomi) investigates a criminal organisation headed by Oh, a wheelchair-bound crime lord who has kidnapped a young girl’s mother. Koryu uncovers a den of the usual freaks in her search for justice.
Immediately upon putting this into the DVD player, I scrambled for the box – I had inadvertently put the previous film Sister Street Fighter: Hanging By a Thread on instead. However, after a close look, it turns out I had put the right disc in after all. The Return of the Sister Street Fighter is the worst case of movie deja vu I’ve ever experienced.
Starting in Hong Kong, just like the previous films, the action soon shifts to Japan – again, just like the previous two films. Again, the whole plot of the film is explained in a few lines of dialogue right at the beginning and we’re then thrust in at the deep end.
Again, we get an evil crime lord who seems closely related to both Dr No and Han from Enter the Dragon, and again his henchmen are an utterly bizarre bunch of freaks. The best includes a man who appears to be Bruce Lee’s evil twin and Masashi Ishibashi as a killer pimp. One wonders how crime could have got a foothold in Japan in the seventies – if the police simply rounded up everyone who looked abnormal, crime would have been obliterated overnight. Once again, Yasuaki Kurata shows up to audition for the bad guys and turns out to be quite a nice bloke in the end.
There’s a bit about gold smuggling just to give some semblance of story, but most of the time it’s just a series of fights and outlandish characters. The inclusion of a little girl for Koryu to look after while her mother’s being held by Oh is meant to lend some heart to the film, but it’s all too franticly paced you couldn’t connect on an emotional level even if you wanted to.
The evil Oh is quite funny, though, and so is his sideshow of freaks. As an evil genius, he’s never going to make it to the big league though: he sends six men to kidnap a small girl but only one man to kill Koryu. As you might expect, he doesn’t live long enough to work on his people-management techniques.
The fight scenes are pretty typical for the series, although again Yasuaki Kurata’s presence improves the film considerably. There’s also a nice wall-climbing stunt from Shihomi, who gives a fair account of herself again.
But on the whole, The Return of the Sister Street Fighter is just too familiar to be enjoyable, even though the brisk 77-minute running time means you’ll have plenty of time to fit another, more substantial movie into your evening should you wish to. Maybe that’s the best way to serve this film: as an appetiser.
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