Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Meiko Kaji's "Wandering Ginza Butterfly" makes her way to DVD from Synapse

by Chris MaGee

Outcast Cinema's Marc Walkow has posted an in depth article about the latest DVD projects his company's been involved in producing. From interview segments for upcoming releases of Yoshihiro Nishimura's "Tokyo Gore Police" and Tak Sakaguchi's "Be a Man: Samurai School" to Synapse's release of a trio of Minoru Kawasaki's films he and the Outcast Cinema crew have been busy with a capital "B".

In amongst all the news though he does have word of two particularly exciting releases from Synapse. The distributor who brought us such exploitation, horror and contemporary classics as Teruo Ishii’s “Horrors of Malformed Men”, Nobuo Nakagawa’s “Snake Woman’s Curse” and Tetsuo Shinohara’s “Karaoke Terror” will be releasing Kazuhiko Yamaguchi’s 1971 action film “Gincho wataridori (Wandering Ginza Butterfly)” starring Meiko Kaji and Sonny Chiba, plus its 1972 sequel “Gincho nagaremono mesuneko bakuchi (Wandering Ginza: She-cat Rambler)”.

Kaji stars as Nami, the Crimson Cherry Blossom, a woman just released from prison after having served a sentence for killing a gangster she now works in a hostess bar, but gets pulled back into the world of murder and mayhem of yakuza life. Tese two films might not have the high profile of Kaji’s legendary “Lady Snowblood” and “Female Convict Scorpion” films, but any fans of those films as well as Reiko Ike’s “Sex and Fury” or the “Female Demon Ohyaku” films should get a real kick out of these.

Don’t believe me? Check out this clip:


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