Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970) User Reviews

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss

[random_avenger · 7/10 · 16 November 2010]

The first part of the Nora-neko rokku ("Alley Cat Rock") series was originally Nikkatsu Studios' answer to the rivaling Toei Studios' Delinquent Boss series, but spawned four sequels thanks to its popularity. I haven't seen any of the entries in the Toei series, so I don't know how the Nora-nekos do in comparison, but in their own right all five of them are very entertaining bad girl movies.

Onna banchô, the first movie in the series, takes place in Shinjuku, Tokyo where rivaling youth gangs are constantly trying to one-up each other in toughness. An all-girl gang led by Mei (Meiko Kaji) gets involved in dangerous circles when Mei's boyfriend Michio (Kôji Wada), wants to join a powerful yakuza organization called Seiyu but inadvertently loses the gangsters' money in a fixed boxing match. Of course, Mei's gang is not going to leave him to the gangsters, especially when helped by an enigmatic and independent female biker called Ako (Akiko Wada).

The film is known for its visual look that captures the spirit of the era pretty neatly. Many scenes take place in a psychedelic rock club with colourful lights and bands performing psych-rock, soft schlagers and folky guitar ditties. The non-diegetic score is totally groovy too, as are Akiko Wada's song scenes, be they related to the plot or not – the movie was the film debut of the deep-voiced singer of Korean heritage, so I guess some singing was to be expected. The downside of the ultra-cool atmosphere is that at many points the screen looks way too dark, making it difficult to see what exactly is happening (or perhaps it was just my old television set). What I appreciated about Yasuharu Hasebe's direction is that he keeps camera trickery (weird angles, quick zooms, filters) under control, only using special techniques moderately and not in an overly distracting manner.

The plot itself takes place within less than two days and involves many fights, chase scenes and tough talking, staying quite entertaining for the shortish runtime. The street fighting may not look as tight as actual martial arts flicks, but does its part alright. Some of the torture scenes look a bit nasty, especially the blow torch part, but overall the mood stays pretty light compared to some real exploitation sleazies. One of the best scenes is definitely the big chase between Ako's motorcycle and the roofless "Fellow Buggy" of the yakuza underboss Katsuya (Tatsuya Fuji) that is not stopped by narrow tunnels, shopping malls or even staircases, either descending or ascending.

Looking behind the first-hand crime plot, there is a strong feminist undercurrent in the film and the portrayal of the girl gang members' friendship is one of the most important themes. I would not call the movie the strongest of character dramas out there, but at least the charismatic Akiko Wada carries her scenes at ease (too bad she doesn't appear in the sequels). I also liked the self-confident performance of Tatsuya Fuji who is probably best known for playing the lead part in Nagisa Ôshima's controversial sexual drama In the Realm of the Senses a few years later.

I am far from well-versed in Japanese youth gang movies, but I think Stray Cat Rock is certainly entertaining enough to be recommended to anyone who is interested in the genre. The sequels are worth seeing too if you like the first one, but Delinquent Girl Boss (or whatever its correct English title is) may be the best starting place to the series after all, even though the movies are not really connected in terms of plot. A fun flick, in any case.

Stray Cat Rock!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 17 March 2019]

Also known as Alleycat Rock: Female Boss, Female Juvenile Delinquent Leader: Alleycat Rock and Wildcat Rock, Yasuharu Hasebe directed this "violent pink" film, which is stylish yet grim, presenting a Japan that's been through hell and refuses to look back. Everyone dresses well. Everyone is ready to fight. Everyone is prepared to die.

Roger Corman's 1966 outlaw biker film The Wild Angels was a surprise hit in Japan. Toei cashed in with their film Delinquent Boss and the Nikkatsu studio went one further with this film, even aping the title of Toei's film. Despite starting as a ripoff, the Delinquent Girl Boss series lasted for two years and give films which are fondly remembered.

Tough girl biker Ako (pop singer Akiko Wada, who was also the Japanese voice of Marge Simpson) meets Mei (Meiko Kaji!) and the Alleycats as they're about to have a knife fight in Shinjuku with another gang of girls. Those girls have no honor and call in their men for help, but Ako helps the Alleycats to survive and becomes their leader.

Then, Mei's boyfriend wants to join the Seiyu Group, a gang of right-wing Yakuza nationalists. To prove he belongs, he must convince his friend Kelly to throw a boxing match. However, the girls change his mind and he wins the fight. That leads to the main conflict of this movie, where the girls are on the run from this powerful gang.

Mei was just a supporting character here, but in the subsequent movies, she became the cool lead that she was meant to be. This movie is all about violence with style, as well as a girl gang that saves men instead of being saved by them. Everything is loud rock and roll, but it doesn't feel like anyone is going to live forever.

Hasebe wanted to infuse his film with the culture of the time. He attended rock clubs and went to protests. The result was that Nikkatsu saw this movie as the new direction for their studio and moved toward more youth-oriented action films, including the sequel, Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo, which was released only three months later.

The Alleycat Rock series came to an end when Meiko Kaji left the Nikkatsu studio to join Toei and become the star in the Female Prisoner: Scorpion series and Lady Snowblood. Hasebe made his mark, such as it is, on Japanese cinema with his series of even more depraved violent pink films, such as Assault! Jack the Ripper.

Thematically interesting, but as a piece of entertainment it's often dull

[tomgillespie2002 · 6/10 · 30 June 2014]

In the first of what would become a successful five-film series, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss is a passable and sporadically entertaining introduction to the 'girl gang' genre and one of the key entries in a series of films known as 'pinky violence'. Anchored by a performance of undeniable presence by Akiko Wada, who plays a no- nonsense biker and who surprisingly didn't appear in any of the sequels, the film gets bogged down by a plodding series of events and set-pieces that are too free-spirited for it's own good, and lingers far too long on various pop performances from flavour-of-the-week bands.

Plot-wise, the film doesn't have much going for it. Ako (Wada) is a drifter who picks up Mei (Meiko Kaji - later to play the eponymous Lady Snowblood (1973)), who is caught up in a beef with a rival girl gang. A fight ensues, and Ako chases away the gang and the various yakuza that have gathered for the entertainment. It becomes apparent that Mei's boyfriend Michio (Koji Wada) is caught up in a plot with the Seiyu Group, a powerful Yakuza organisation, to throw a boxing match. Naturally, things don't go quite to plan and Michio is hunted by the Seiyu Group, but not if Ako has anything to say about it.

Visually, the film is often splendid, using ultra-chic locations, split- screens and obscure camera angles that give it a trippy aesthetic. It's colourful yet undeniably grim, encapsulating the rebellious hippy spirit that undoubtedly made it's way over from America in the late 1960's. Reversing the usual gender roles, the Stray Cat girls are a rather repulsive lot, even though they plays our heroes, and Ako especially berates men for being weak if they refuse to stand up and fight, even when one is beaten to a pulp during a boxing match. It's certainly interesting thematically, but as a piece of entertainment, it's often extremely dull, stretching out it's wafer-thin plot when it should be giving us girls kicking ass.

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Good, but the first two follow-ups are better

[zetes · 7/10 · 9 August 2015]

The first of the Stray Cat Rock films is not as good as its first two follow-ups, Wild Jumbo and Sex Hunter, but it's a solid girl gang flick. Meiko Kaji stars as the leader of the Stray Cats, as she will tend to do, but Akiko Wada probably has more screen presence in this one as the new girl on the scene, a motorcycle chick who is generally assumed to be a dude until she takes off her helmet (one particular extra has a great double take as she walks out of the women's bathroom). When Kaji's boyfriend (Koji Wada) double-crosses the yakuza, it's up to the Stray Cats to save him - which means now they have also double-crossed the yakuza. Tatsuya Fuji plays one of the main gangsters. There are plenty of cool musical performances and lots of great views of a swinging 1970 Tokyo. The film is shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras, which puts you right in the action. The film mostly takes place at night and indoors, so the film is a bit darker than the two follow-ups. It also moves a tad more slowly. Still very much worth seeing, though.

Gang sisters doing it for themselves.

[Yrmy · 27 October 2009]

This minor exploitation film about a gang of female delinquents struck a chord with young Japanese audience and spawned a rapid-fire string of sequels. Today it sticks out for two interesting reasons. The first one is certainly not the plot, a run of the mill twaddle about a fixed boxing match that simply serves as an excuse for generic car chases, fights, cheap sadism (e.g. a woman's breasts getting scorched with a blowtorch) and very brief flashes of female nudity.

Rather it is the way the women are given a much more central and active role than was usual at the time, certainly more so than in European or American productions. Initially their aggressiveness and fighting over turf just appear as copped attitudes to titillate the audience, amusing cat-fighting that the male villains watch with sneering delight. But the gang disrupt the expectations, refusing to be contained and holding their own even after the gloves have come off. Thus the final confrontation is between the female gang-leader and the now-disgraced head thug. Meanwhile, the fashionably pacifist males get scorned for being wimps who don't have the guts to help the women save their mate from trouble. The setting and attitudes are Neolithic, but the players are set up slightly different from what you would have expected in 1970.

The main focus of this tentative feminist reshuffling of roles is the biker character played by the tall, husky-voiced singer Akiko Wada. She rides in to the picture like a modern-day ronin on a motorbike, half-reluctantly ends up leading one female gang against the male criminal syndicate who back their rival gang and finally rides off in the good old Western tradition, without really revealing anything about herself. She takes the traditional active leader and fighter role, without having to rely on a boyfriend or another man in a tight spot (that's more the role reserved to Meiko Kaji's character). And yet left alone she gets to look longingly at a shop window full of frocks and sing a wistful ditty about how a woman is not a man but sometimes just has to put her life on the line! It's all so calculated, but also so earnest that you can't help liking it.

This brings us to the second reason for watching this: the soundtrack has plenty of charmingly dated musical action, from fuzz guitar-driven psychedelic rock to jazzy pop, usually performed in the club that serves as an oasis and a bolt-hole for the gang amidst all the action. In addition to Wada's gutsy performances, the film sets the precedent for the sequels by having some flavour-of-the-month performers strut their musical stuff for the camera, which captures everything with energetic flair.

It's this combination of somewhat humorous period pop-trashiness and the earnest grappling with the underlying norms of the day that makes this film a rather charming one-time watch, but doesn't really warrant more than that.

The charm is much thinner on the ground in the sequels. Wairudo janbo's semi-comical caper plot or Sekkusu hanta's racially and nationalistically motivated string of beatings, shootings and attempted rapes that pass for one, don't hold up on their own, the music gets more vapid by the film and the women are more and more relegated to objects for men to violate or to fight over. Touchy themes (e.g. racism and the generation gap) are again brought up and there is often delightful comedic interaction and rapport going on between various characters portrayed by the recurring cast (particularly in Bôsô shudan '71 where the merry gang of delinquents are portrayed as a violent hippy collective). Yet the films usually can't do much with their ideas. Instead they listlessly glide along the prefabricated exploitation groove and then collapse haphazardly into obligatory shootouts and downbeat auto-destruction, with perhaps only Mashin animaru hinting at some hope among the ruins.

Wada doesn't appear in the sequels (apart from a minute of recycled footage in Wairudo janbo). Instead the series became a breakthrough for Kaji, whose defiant poses and stoic independence remained the same from film to film, regardless of the character she was playing at the time.

Pale biker.

[Pjtaylor-96-138044 · 6/10 · 23 December 2020]

'Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970)' tells the story of a drifter who rolls into town and aligns herself with an all-girl gang, soon helping them overcome the threat of a male gang working with corrupt cops. Though Meiko Kaji would go on to star in all four of the flick's follow-ups, it's actually Akiko Wada who plays the title role here. She's an androgynous, no-nonsense biker with a strong singing voice and an equally strong loyalty to the new friends she has only just met. The plot plays out almost like an old western, with a mysterious stranger wandering into town and getting wrapped up in some sort of local trouble before wandering back out again. Filmed with an abundance of unmistakably seventies style, the movie carves its own unique place within its genre. It's typically an energetic and lively experience. However, despite its relatively fast pace, it often feels somewhat 'slow'; it meanders a little during its calmer moments and its actual plot takes a while to properly kick in. Having said that, it is enjoyable. Its low-budget doesn't dampen its effect, even if it is usually rather evident. It's a solid film with a refreshing focus on strong female characters. 6/10

A Rogue Lady Biker Joining a Female Street Gang

[Uriah43 · 6/10 · 30 July 2022]

This film begins with a young female motorcyclist named "Ako" (Akiko Wada) riding into an area of Tokyo known as Shenjuku. It's then, while stopping at a red light, that she encounters a group of motorcyclists who give her a hard time before riding off once she confronts them. Not long after that she gives a ride to a female hitchhiker named "Mei" (Meiko Kaji) who unexpectedly asks to get off in an obscure area not too far away. Curious as to why she would want to get off in such a desolate place, Ako watches from a distance as Mei joins several other young ladies and leads them into a fight against another female gang. At first, everything seems to be going fine for Mei's gang but then the tide of battle turns as the same men that harassed Ako suddenly appear and join Mei's opponents. Realizing that Mei and her gang are about to be seriously hurt, Ako rides into the fray and creates a diversion which allows everyone but Mei to scamper away. Then, with Mei on the back of her motorcycle, the two of them ride off as well. Not long after that, Ako learns that Mei's boyfriend "Michio Yagami" (Koji Wada) is in serious trouble with the same male gang that attacked Mei and gave Ako a hard time prior to that. So, once again, Ako gets involved--but this time the situation becomes even more dangerous than she could have imagined. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an entertaining action film which suffered somewhat from a couple of unrealistic scenes which would almost certainly never happen in a city as populated as Tokyo. But that's the motion-picture industry for you. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this film for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

Runaway Girls.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 23 August 2020]

Inspired by the rebellious counter culture movement of the day, and aimed squarely at the youth market, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss stars pop singer Akiko Wada as tough female biker Ako, who falls in with an all-girl Tokyo street gang, the Stray Cats, led by Mei (the gorgeous Meiko Kaji, of Lady Snowblood and Female Prisoner Scorpion fame). When Mei's boyfriend Michio (Kôji Wada) angers local gangsters the Seiyu Group by failing to convince boxer Kelly (Ken Sanders) to throw a fight, the girls step in to save him but find themselves on the run as a result.

Wild women, groovy pop music, tough talking, cool posturing, motor-bike riding and street fights are the order of the day, but despite an interesting visual style (director Yasuharu Hasebe employing plenty of handheld camerawork) and lots of easy-on-the-eye Japanese actresses, Delinquent Girl Boss is actually a lot less engaging than I had hoped for. On paper, this is precisely the type of cult '70s flick that Quentin Tarantino would have a boner for (indeed, boxer Kelly reminded me of Butch from Pulp Fiction), but in reality it's actually not as hip as it sounds: the fight scenes are poorly choreographed, and the girls don't look all that tough; the chase scenes fail to provide the intended adrenaline rush (watching the 'bike and buggy' scene gets really dull as the vehicles weave in and out of concrete columns and go up and down steps ad nauseum); and the plot is quite weak, causing the film to drag in places.

Those who like their Japanese exploitation gritty and brutal will no doubt lap up the part where a 'Stray Cat' is tortured by a woman with a blowtorch (the victim burnt on her chest), but the rest of the violence is relatively tame, making the action a lot less memorable than the film's groovy title suggests.

Here because I'm growing fond of Meiko Kaji especially as an amazing and talented singer, but

[TooKakkoiiforYou_321 · 3/10 · 1 May 2021]

This was utter boring, there's no other way to put it. She's beautiful as always albeit physically not very beliveable in the role of a street fighter, but the ending result is just yawn inducing, with no real story or characters to speak of. I'd rewatch Blind Woman's curse over this anyday, at least the campy parts of that were amusing.

The Stray Cat Rock series: Part 1: Delinquent Girl Boss.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 10/10 · 8 September 2019]

Picking up a old issue of UK film magazine Empire a few years ago,I read a review for what sounded like a cracking box set of Japanese films. Trying to buy them online,I was sad to find that the Arrow set has been out of print for a good while,and no other complete collection of the series was around. Earlier this year,I won a out of print Blu-Ray of the Michele Soavi Giallo flick StageFright (1987).Checking what else the seller was selling,I was shocked to spot the box set, which I won for £25 (a £5 per film!) This finally allowed me to let the stray cat rock.

View on the film:

Kicking off with a bang,Arrow present a fine transfer, with each note on the soundtrack roaring, and whist the picture has some moments when it is dark, (likely due to the makers using cheap film stock) Arrow keep the colours on the picture clean and vibrant.

Circling in on biker Ako driving into the camera, director Yasuharu Hasebe & cinematographer Muneo Ueda charge up with a blazing unique multi- genre criss-cross of a "Happening" hanging out 60's/70's flick, a rebellious teen group,a Musical (!), and all wrapped up in Film Noir double crossing. Facing all those different genres, Hasbe and Ueda astonishingly make them all fit together, thanks to splashing the streets in a Punk Rock atmosphere of blazing primary colours shimmering on the catchy songs performed at concerts and the animated tough chicks Ako and the Stray Cat gang.

Appearing to have sequences filmed guerrilla -style as a motorbike drives down the stairs of a subway station,Hasbe takes the Power-Pop appearance of the Stray Cats and punches the gritty underworld with Pop-Art ultra-stylisation,landing killer hits in a first-person filmed boxing match, Comic-Book panels placed round the characters, riding into the fights to eye-catching freeze-frames on the attacks,pulled across via whip-fast tracking shots following the gang fights.

For the first in the series, the screenplay by Hideichi Nagahara offers up a fantastic, velvety pulpy creation, springing from Ako's head-on confrontation with a all-male gang in the opening, leaping to the Film Noir thrill of Ako and Stray Cat leader Mei encouraging a boxer called Kelly to not follow demands from underworld gang Seiyu Group to lose the match,but instead win it, leading to Seiyu being down for the count,with an eye for revenge. Entering as a outsider, Akiko Wada gives a wicked turn as Ako,whose clipped lines of dialogue Wada delivers with a self-confidence of Ako being the toughest in town, whilst sexy Meiko Kaji brings a a fighter instinct out of Mei, who turns out to be far from the only stray cat.