Teruo Ishii's film The Blind Woman's Curse (aka The Tattooed Swordswoman) is a strange mix of elements from yakuza films, bakeneko ghost films, ero-guro, fun Asiansploitation trashiness and it even has a visual style reminiscent of Dario Argento at turns. The gorgeous Meiko Kaji (this is the first film she acted in under that name) is obviously the main selling point here, although she doesn't have as much runtime as in her later films.
The plot of this film is almost an inconsistent mess, mixing yakuza turf wars, a ghastly black cat able to fly at low altitudes, expressionistic set design, circus elements (with a performance by Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, who also appeared in Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men), some boobage and copious amounts of blood (especially for a film from 1970). The villains' headquarters are pretty wild, with plenty of slide screens and mirrors, booby traps and so on.
While this film is very entertaining, it suffers from bad editing and sometimes unconvincing special effects, especially if we're talking about the aforementioned cat. The dialogues could be better and there are some really lousy performances, not to mention the bad ending (even though it was cool how the two fighters just produce the swirling-cloud backdrop out of nowhere and decide to fight on that location as if it were a Mortal Kombat game). There are a few songs sung by Meiko Kaji, but they're not as memorable as the ones in Lady Snowblood. Overall it's a fun film, but there's not much to it besides that. Really cool poster, though.
The plot of this film is almost an inconsistent mess, mixing yakuza turf wars, a ghastly black cat able to fly at low altitudes, expressionistic set design, circus elements (with a performance by Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, who also appeared in Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men), some boobage and copious amounts of blood (especially for a film from 1970). The villains' headquarters are pretty wild, with plenty of slide screens and mirrors, booby traps and so on.
While this film is very entertaining, it suffers from bad editing and sometimes unconvincing special effects, especially if we're talking about the aforementioned cat. The dialogues could be better and there are some really lousy performances, not to mention the bad ending (even though it was cool how the two fighters just produce the swirling-cloud backdrop out of nowhere and decide to fight on that location as if it were a Mortal Kombat game). There are a few songs sung by Meiko Kaji, but they're not as memorable as the ones in Lady Snowblood. Overall it's a fun film, but there's not much to it besides that. Really cool poster, though.