Kaette kita onna hissatsu ken

If your cup of tea is martial arts action, then this film is for you. It has lots of action, female nudity, more fighting, some ridiculous Japanese character in black-face, fighting on the rooftops, drugs, burning houses, more nudity, more fights; it just goes on and on.

Somehow there is a point to all of this, but it just seems like Sister Street Fighter's Greatest Hits. A thin story about using chemicals to smuggle gold and a friend forced to be the mistress of the kingpin is just an excuse to have fights. Many of the fights are pretty lame, with the loser going down quickly. But, hey, it's great 70s grind-house fun and the hokeyness is just part of that.

The third installment of "Sister Street Fighter" is hardly surprising at first sight. Koryu (Etsuko Shihomi) comes to Yokohama to bring a young girl to her mother and soon gets to fight lots of gangsters. Of course they use the child as a hostage, or rather a bait to get hold of Koryu. Of course they believe Koryu defeated, but then she returns alive and kicking. And of course there is a mysterious stranger again... But after 50 minutes or so I realized this is not a bad sequel, it might even be the best one. Etsuko Shihomi, with the experience gained meanwhile, is a much more confident star of the show. "Return of the Sister Street Fighter" shows some of the best locations and even adds something new. The killer with the poor card trick is an obvious homage to Lee Van Cleef in Leone's westerns (the hanging scene on the hill continues that perfectly), while his boss reminds me of an eccentric Bond villain - even making the same mistakes, such as letting the hero escape when he easily could have killed him, or her in this case. I voted 8/6/8/7 for the 4 "Sister Street Fighter" movies.

Our girl does her forms demonstrations over the opening credits. The story starts on the streets of Hong Kong. Our girl is sent to Yokohama to investigate a person's disappearance. First, there is a street fight. On arrival in Japan there is another street fight.

These opening fights are choreographed to appear as what the audience would expect a street fight to resemble. However, most real fights end up on the ground. Ground fighting was rare to see in early 1970s movies. Otherwise the fights looked good. Another thing, if I arrived at a fight on a motorcycle I would keep my helmet on. In the movies, though, you want to show your face.

Yasuaki Kurata also appears in this movie. He seems to have replaced Sonny Chiba, He offers his service to the bad guys to kill our girl, similar to the last movie. Things get complicated and he ends up stealing the show. He was the best part of this movie.

The third of this series and it is starting to get thin. I still rate it above average for the year and genre.

I had never watched the 1975 movie "Kaette Kita Onna Hissatsu Ken" (aka "Return of the Sister Street Fighter") prior to my first time watching it here in 2025. I had just earlier today watched the 1974 second movie "Onna Hissatsu Ken: Kiki Ippatsu" in the franchise and enjoyed it, so of course I opted to watch the third movie as well.

Writers Masahiro Kakefuda and Takeo Kaneko put together a script and storyline that was a bit vague and bland, especially in comparison to the second movie in the franchise. Don't get me wrong here, because it wasn't a hands down bad movie, not at all, it just wasn't as good as the previous movie. The narrative was a bit too simplistic and lacking elements to make it a more entertaining movie to watch.

The only familiar face on the cast list, for me at least, was leading actress Etsuko Shihomi, as she had been in the first two movies as well. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

The fight scenes in the movie were nicely choreographed and executed. Though I loved the fact that the goons were considerate enough to always jump at Li Hong-Long one goon at a time instead of swarming her.

Watchable, sure, but not as enjoyable as the second movie in the franchise.

My rating of director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi's 1975 movie "Kaette Kita Onna Hissatsu Ken" lands on a four out of ten stars.

So while the sister (street fighter) is still going strong (no pun intended), we give her a sidekick here (again with the puns), that is morally ambigious to say the least. The enemy of my enemy ... is my friend I guess? Who knows? The screenwriter I reckon should. But in a movie with beatings, nudity and general mayhem, is morality really that necessary? Of course it is, we want to root for good guys/gals.

But the viewers should able to forgive and forget. And the charismatic addition might just be able to pull that off. More insanity ensues, lots of murder and blood, a lot of crazy stuff happening and the sister in peril. She's quite gullible come to think of it (easy to trap her with a phone call that is). Ah well it is what it is