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Srigala (1981)
Srigala
The Friday the 13th connection to this film is wildly overstated. This movie takes place at a lake, there's a cabin, and people die. Other than that, there's only really one plot point and one camera shot patterned off of Friday the 13th -- it's pretty far from a remake or a ripoff as a whole. That said, the purported connection got my attention, and that's probably the point. The movie was worth my time, and I fully forgive the marketing ruse.
We follow three bad guys diving for treasure in a remote lake. Barry Prima is one of the strapping young lads -- he was pretty new to film here, but went on to become a ubiquitous presence in Indonesian action cinema. Two lovely young women and a nerdy guy show up to camp out at the lake. The head bad guy tries to nudge them away, but they stay. Stormy weather and mutual attraction draw the two camps together suggestively, but still chaste (to keep the Indonesian censors at bay).
A mysterious third party shows up to complicate matters with a speed boat chase and violence. For good measure, there are campy zombies on hand that made me think of Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake in the best possible way. It's not all schlock, and it's not all serious, either. I enjoyed the tone.
The 2023 release from Terror Vision is a top-notch restoration with excellent cast and crew interviews. Old, badly-cropped VHS of this can finally be retired. It's almost certainly never looked better, excepting (maybe) the premiere.
Divorce Law (1993)
Silly and enjoyable if you find the unedited episodes
This appears to have been a brief Skinemax-style series starring Monique Parent and Jay Richardson as partners in a law firm focused on litigating divorce proceedings. Six half-hour episodes (I'm guessing the whole run of the series) have been repackaged as two feature-length movies as:
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Illegal Affairs (85 min)
*An American She-Wolf In Tokyo
An American woman is a rock star who is splitting from her rich, Japanese businessman husband. He wants her to quit the band, and he has a group sex tape of her from before their marriage that he is holding over her. Meanwhile, a 20-year old woman shows up purporting to be Jay Richardson's daughter from a fling long ago.
*Slam Dunk
Monique Parent handles the palimony suit between a lesbian couple who split up when one woman cheated on the other with Monique's identical twin sister.
*Emeralds of the Amazon.
A woman is divorcing her husband after discovering he has been selling their homemade cuckold videos all over South America making her an unwitting Argentinian porn star. Meanwhile, two junior partners handle the divorce of a homeless couple pro bono.
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Brief Affairs / A Brief Affair (79 min)
*Pardon My French
A woman convinces a junior partner to marry her French roommate in order to secure the woman's permanent residence. A menage a trois takes place in their Vegas hotel room, and both women report that they are pregnant.
*The Spy Who Came in the Cold
A Russian spy worked over an American scientist. Meanwhile, a man is suing for alienation of affection when his once sexually adventurous wife (the stunning Veronica Carothers) turned frigid.
*Sheik Yurbotti
Three wives of a sheik file for political asylum in US. Throwaway B-stories about VR sex toy makers and a cheating husband.
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It's a silly softcore series -- no more, no less. Worth a viewing if you enjoy these particular actors and you find a cheap DVD set with the full cuts of the episodes. Be sure to verify the runtimes and don't bother watching the edited cuts currently available on streaming platforms.
Sanbiki no mesubachi (1970)
Three Pretty Devils
Three pretty young women work as grifters, taking advantage of visitors at the Kyoto International Exhibition. The girls hang out in a bar run by a self-made woman. This woman had come to town just a few years ago with nothing but her boyfriend and a dream. Her boyfriend became an assistant manager at a grocery store while she worked her way up to owning the bar.
The girls start trapping and pimping local girls to make money. This includes a rape scene in the back of a taxi that is played for laughs that is profoundly disturbing, but sadly, it's not all that out of the ordinary in Japanese exploitation films of this era -- I digress.
Alas, the girls run afoul of the gangsters in town, and need to flee. The girls discover that the barkeep's boyfriend has been two-timing her, and hijinks ensue.
You might call this a proto-pinky girl-gang movie. The filmmakers didn't quite know how to commit at least somewhat to serious drama, comedy, or to the sex and violence. This film fell short for me, but thankfully, the genre as a whole found its footing in the next couple years. Junko Natsu appears as one of the girls, but she bears little resemblance here to the adorable protagonist in the Girls' School (Joshi gakuen) series which came out right around the same time. This film is not without some charm, but don't make this one your first stop on a deep dive.
Las últimas de Filipinas (1986)
Franco's Lagoon
A shipwreck leaves a pair of Spanish sisters and their schoolteacher alone on a remote island in the Philippines. The schoolteacher (Miss Muro) is played by a deliberately frumpy looking Lina Romay (with glasses, stockings, and bloomers to let you know she's playing against her sex-symbol type). While the three bathe in a lagoon, they find out they are not alone when their clothes are stolen. Lina keeps her bloomers and blouse, but the girls spend the rest of the movie clad in necklaces which sometimes cover them up top and island-fashioned thongs. The nudity isn't as creepy as it looks on paper -- the young sister (10-ish years old) is not sexualized, and the actress playing the older sister is clearly much older than her character (stated to be 14 in a flashback, but clearly closer to 24 in real life). They come to find that they share the island with a crazy old man who lives the bachelor life in a cave with the spoils of shipwrecks to keep him company.
The young sister is the clever one of the bunch (reading Kant for pleasure). The older sister experiences her first period and a sexual awakening that is aided by the appearance of a young fisherman from a nearby island. Upon witnessing the older girl's transformation, Lina begins to realize what she's missed out on through her solitary lifestyle.
Without giving too much away, a bit of an action plot does unfold at the end, giving this a little more substance than your standard Blue Lagoon knockoff of the era. It's no masterpiece, but it's certainly a cut above most of the throwaways Franco was producing in this era.
Kyôfu joshi kôkô: Animal dôkyôsei (1973)
Terrifying Girls' High School: Animal Courage
This series of films was just so damn enjoyable. In this installment, five new girls have just transferred into a private Catholic high school famous for its study-abroad program in the US. Four of the girls are easy targets for the dominant girl gang in school, but the fifth girl is badass Reiko Ike. The hazing is pretty typical high school hazing -- selling the girls as prostitutes and the like. Well, typical for this genre of film, at least. Reiko impresses the other dominant gang in school, the athletes who field a top-notch fencing club. Reiko joins the fencing team, but refuses to join either gang outright. Instead, she is on a mission to discover what happened to her older sister, a former model student who disappeared after traveling on the study-abroad program.
If you know the genre, I don't need to tell you that the school officials are corrupt, the girl gangs fight, and 20 minutes don't pass without topless women on screen. The plot is predictable, but it's not the point. The point is to show a group of beautiful young women being badass, fighting each other, and ultimately fighting a corrupt system.
This whole series is long overdue for an official English-subtitled release, I have to believe the English-speaking world would eat these up if they got a similar release to Arrow's Female Prisoner Scorpion (Sasori) box set. I only wish there had been more than four films in this series. I strongly recommend watching this entire series.
Amadera bakutô (1971)
The Gambling Nun
Yumiko Nogawa's character is a dealer in her father's gambling den. After a cheater tries to frame them as a crooked gambling house, a knife fight ensues in which her father kills three men. He is sent to prison and she enters a Buddhist convent to atone for his sins. Her boyfriend has a falling out with the yakuza, and dirty dealings put the convent in financial distress. From his hospital bed, her father shares a vision with her that arms her in a gambling showdown after circumstances release her from her vows.
Contains some relatively mild Pinky film elements, but the content is more generally in the vein of traveling gambler series of the era. A very solid, enjoyable drama.
Kyôfu joshikôkô: Onna bôryoku kyôshitsu (1972)
Terrifying Girls' High School: Women's Violent Classroom
Terrifying Girls' High School is my favorite Pinky Violence series. The elements are all here: tough girl Miki Sugimoto leads a girl gang at her private high school. Clashes with another girl gang spilling into street fights. New girl in school Reiko Ike thumbs her nose at the gang. Corrupt school officials and politicians provide the machine for the girls to rage against. Shocking violence. A serious dramatic undertone that contextualizes the girls' rebellion. And gratuitous nudity, including my all-time favorite final film shot.
Joshi gakuen: Yabai sotsugyô (1970)
Girls Junior High School: Trouble at Graduation
Junko Natsu stars again in this spiritual (though not strict) sequel to Girl Junior High School: Dangerous Games (1970). Here she is the head of her Junior class girl gang who find themselves at odds with their teachers and administrators. One issue between them is the administration's insistence on abstinence-only sex education. The girls decide to experiment and study the matter on their own. It's played way more innocently than it sounds -- at its most salacious point, a couple girls strip to their bras and panties and try to see (obscured) if they can get a guy in his skivvies to pop a chub. The girls are suspended, and spend their time off spying on their teachers, only to discover that the teachers are a bunch of lechers who have been involved in dirty political deals. The upcoming graduation ceremony promises to be eventful. The goofy wannabe yakuza from the first film is here, too, and his character is about the same as before, though the teachers and the girls' backstories have changed from the first.
Again, this is actually pretty innocent, good, clean fun with a lovely, charming female lead. Not as enjoyable as the first film in the series, but it's all good.