Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970)

Meiko Kaji is the leader of a small group of female delinquents, whose boyfriend dreams of being a bigshot Yakuza and ropes his childhood friend into his scheme. When things go wrong he ends up in trouble with the Yakuza and the girls get dragged into it when they try to save him.

It's quite hard to keep track of all the "Girl Boss" films Japan produced in the early 1970's, but quite easy to remember that the Stray Cat Rock films are the ones with Meiko Kaji in. This is the first one, and is co-headlined by Akiko Wada, who probably gets the better character and story.

The film is quite staid compared to films that would come out in the following years such as Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion, but it has some groovy period style and colourful characters. The scenes where they are just hanging out in the nightclub while some geeky young bands play music are kind of the highlight.

Whilst the story is quite dramatic on paper, something about the execution means that the film itself is not - there isn't much tension, even in situations that seem like they ought to be tense. It's perhaps because it flits between characters, never letting the viewer fully bond with any of them, so we feel like detached observers as events spiral out of control.