I awoke this morning to the news that Sonny Chiba has died due to Covid related complications. He was 82, which seems too young. I can't find any news site that says whether he was vaccinated or not. Vaccines have been rolling out slowly here in Japan, prioritising the elderly. I'm 42 but as a teacher I'm considered an essential worker. Even so, I wasn't able to make an appointment until a couple weeks ago and the earliest day I was able to get was September 20 (I made an appointment for the 25th, a Saturday).
Western fans probably know him best through his association with Quentin Tarantino--clips from his films were shown in True Romance and Christian Slater's cinephile character heaped praise on the Japanese actor. Chiba later appeared as Hatori Hanzo in Kill Bill.
If you've seen some of his movies from the '70s, it's not hard to see why Tarantino is such a fan. Chiba's films not only feature terrific martial arts, they're also very light on sentimentality or moralising. They're not only violent, they're creatively violent, and Chiba's sparkling, understated charisma sells that humour terrifically. Whether he's inexplicably carrying a live pig through Tokyo in Doberman Cop or tearing out a throat in The Street Fighter. If you're looking for action, you should look for Sonny Chiba.
Somewhere in the Philippines, where blonde mafiosos run a death match martial arts tournament, a pretty blonde black belt seeks her missing sister in 1981's Firecracker. Released through Roger Corman's New World Pictures, it's about as schlocky as it gets, but maybe with a higher level of competence than you might expect.
Jillian Kesner stars as Susanne, an undefeated karate champion from the U.S. who has surprising difficulty beating up random thugs on the streets of the Philippines. Two guys manage to tear off almost all her clothes before she finally finishes them off.
According to the trivia page on imdb: "The fight scene where Jillian Kesner's bra was sliced off was a legitimate accident while filming. Director Cirio Santiago decided to leave it in the movie while editing."
This so clearly not true it's pretty hilarious. Yeah, he accidentally had the camera zoomed right in on her chest when the sickle passed right over it. The information is even more suspicious when you consider that on the same trivia page is a paragraph describing how Roger Corman mandated this and another scene specifically to work more nudity into the film.
The other scene is a sex scene between Susanne and the mob's top cage fighter, Chuck (Darby Hinton), a man whose tidy 'stache already marked out "gratuitous sex scene" in his destiny.
But that's not all, oh, no. When Chuck gently places the distraught Susanne in his bed, he turns off the lights and turns on a special pink light he has for such occasions.
All while dreamy piano music sweeps over the soundtrack. This is maximum cheese.
Actually most of the score is pretty interesting, a genuinely exciting, funky electronic beat. Though I later learned it was recycled from New World's Shogun Assassin, a heavily modified version of two of the Kozure Okami movies.
The locations in Firecracker are pretty decent and apparently authentic and there's some real creativity in the action scenes. There's an ambush in a river where some mobsters get their cars stuck before being shot at from both river banks.
The thugs chase Susanne through a pretty interesting factory with many bladed farming and carpentry implements put to gratuitously bloody use. Some poor security guard gets it right through the sternum with a scythe.
Kesner's stunt double is pretty easy to identify because the long blonde hair is suddenly swapped out for a wig that looks like a glittery white pom pom. But that means it's clear to see when Kesner is doing her own fighting and that's actually for a good 95% of the time. She's not bad--she clearly did some real training. Even better are a number of the supporting characters, including a Bruce Lee wannabe in the climax.
The Tokyo police are stumped by a string of murders. Fortunately, Sonny Chiba, carrying a live pig, arrives from Okinawa to help out in 1977's Doberman Cop (ドーベルマン刑事). This is a fast paced, brutal, and delightfully oddball film with well edited action sequences and a surprisingly haunting story.
The victims are women, always burned to death. Joji Kano (Chiba) arrives just in time to save a fifth victim, a singer named Miki Harukaze (Janet Hatta), by swinging into her apartment through the window while she's being held hostage. The media quickly dub him "Tarzan".
Except Kano doesn't think Miki is really Miki at all but a missing woman, Yuna, from his small rural hometown. But the city police have little patience for his use of superstitious technique--like his bag of cowries he likes to consult or references to dreams and the weather. And no one wants his pig though he kindly offers it to any potential friend. "It's food!" he explains.
Finally a stripper eagerly reaches out for the animal during her act. This incident somehow culminates with her apparently having sex with a restrained Kano onstage.
Though judging from his martial arts prowess elsewhere in the film, I'm pretty sure Kano could break free if he wanted to. Chiba, of course, is a legendary martial artist but the editing helps him a lot, too. In one particularly effective shot, he leaps from the fifth or sixth floor of a building then hops on a motorcycle to chase a suspect.
This is obviously done with editing but it's done at a pace that really makes you buy it.
It turns out Miki is mixed up with a yakuza manager (Hiroki Matsukata) and it's unclear if she has the freedom to break free or even acknowledge to Kano that she's the girl he's looking for. But the cowries say Yuna is still alive so Kano doesn't quit. He fights through a series of wonderfully stylish sequences with his feet, fists, and a magnum. Doberman Cop is available on Amazon Prime.
