Kyôfu joshikôkô: Bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu

This is a great little movie: it's one of the most far-out and over-the-top movies I've seen, yet at its core it tells a fairly heartfelt story of underdog misfit high school girls bucking a corrupt and at times downright evil school system. Over-the-top though it is, you sometimes can't help but wonder if what you're seeing is a more-or-less true depiction of actual events that took place in a Japanese high school some where, some time, not terribly long ago...

Anyway, I thought I'd include here the Production Notes as they appear on the Special Features portion of the DVD:

PRODUCTION NOTES:

The "Terrifying Girls' High School" pictures were a kind of spin-off to the "Girl Boss" series. Reiko Ike stars in all four. Miki Sugimoto co-stars in the first two, and the outrageousness factor is in just as full flower. However, here the girls are not former reform school inmates, they're high school girls – albeit emotionally warped, perverse, violent, sexually precocious high school girls. The tone of the entire quartet is pretty dark, even compared to most of the "Girl Boss" sagas, with less of the goofy, adolescent humor that sometimes overstayed its welcome in that series.

The second episode, "Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom (Kyofu Joshikoku: Boko Rinchi Kyoshitsu, 1973)" is the best – a lunatic erotic/grotesque sleaze fest that remains one of director (Norifumi) Suzuki's wildest movies. Sugimoto is the leader of a trio of underdog delinquents at a super-strict girls' school. Independent yakuza biker chick and all-around free spirit Reiko Ike arrives midway to assist Sugimoto and her pals in fighting a homicidally fascist band of schoolgirls whom the principal (Kenji Imai) has recruited to keep the rowdier misfits cowed. These neo-nazi types are merciless sadists who love to drain their victims' blood, burn them with hot light bulbs, and generally make their lives miserable enough that they'll commit suicide! Ike, in turn, is helped by her yakuza pal, the suave but somewhat klutzy Tsunehiko Watase. Watase engineers blackmail scenarios by setting up sex stings on various hypocritical school staff and a corrupt member of the Diet (Nobuo Kaneko), a bunch unable to put the brakes on their voracious appetite for underage poontang.

The climax sees a full-scale riot at the school, with the girls keeping the hordes of cops at bay with rocks and fire hoses. Supremely anarchic entertainment. This film is really the strongest of all of Miki Sugimoto's performances and the first time she ever really carried a film without Reiko Ike. Ike's presence was greatly scaled down, in order for the producers to build a more antagonistic relationship between the two leads. It also allowed an opportunity to build stars out of the other supporting cast members like Misuzu Ota, Yuko Kano, Ryoko Ema, and Rena Ichinose. The fact that none of them ever reached the heights that Ike or Sugimoto attained is more a tribute to Reiko and Miki than criticism of the others.

While "Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu" aka. "Terrifying Girls' Highschool: Lynch Law Classroom" of 1973 may be one of the weaker Pinky violence flicks by director Norifumi Suzuki ("Sex And Fury"), it is still a highly entertaining exploitation flick that fans of Japanese Cult-Cineam should not miss out on. More precisely, out of all Pinky Violence flicks I've seen, this is actually among the weaker films, but I am talking about an awesome exploitation sub-genre that includes awesome films such as Suzuki's own "Sex And Fury", "Female Yakuza Tale", "Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs" or, especially, the brilliant "Joshuu Sasori" (aka. "Female Prisoner Scorpion") films with Meiko Kaji.

What makes "Terrifying Girls' Highschool" especially worth watching is the casting of Japanese exploitation dream-team Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike, basically THE two ravishing goddesses of Pinky Violence cinema. The reason why this is one of the weaker Pinky flicks is the fact that the story is occasionally pretty damn silly. However, it does make up for this fault with an enormous amount of sleaze and perversions. The film actually starts out very disturbingly, with an opening sequence that I will not describe any further, as I don't wanna spoil anything. The film is about a High school for delinquent girls, in which a sardonic vice-principal and his henchgirls rule with unorthodoxly brutal methods. When three young female delinquents, one of them the ravishing girl-gang boss Noriko (played by sexy Miki Sugimoto), are brought to the school, however, they are not willing to just put up with the abuse like their fellow students...

The tons of explicit sleaze should be reason enough for an exploitation fan to find the film worthwhile, and the film has several other qualities. "Terrifying Girls' Highschool" has a weird (and very sleazy) sense of humor, that is, at some points, ingenious. The main reason to watch this, however, are its ravishing stars Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike. Reiko's character is actually not introduced until about half way into the film, but Miki is the leading character, and she's once again both incredibly cool and incredibly sexy. The film's plot may be a bit messy (in the middle, it sometimes even drags a little), but that is not to say that it isn't highly entertaining. Overall "Terrifying Girl's Highschool" isn't as quite as good as the comparable "Girl Boss Guerilla" (also starring Reiko and Miki), and certainly no highlight of Pinky Violence cinema, but it is nonetheless an immensely entertaining film that I highly recommend to my fellow lovers of Japanese Exploitation!

This lacks a little of the style of the other movies gathered within the Pinky Violence collection but if it's missing some of the street cool, it is certainly sexy action all the way. More of less restricted to within the confines of an all girl school we get one set of girls put in charge of another, with extreme torture considered a reasonable discipline. Then we get the 'baddies' released from detention to be improved at the school and they immediately take against the other girls. Even with all this there is more because the teachers are for ever being seduced or deciding to rape various girls who also now and again make sexual advances upon one another. The film begins with a murder, includes a hanging and ends in delirious mayhem. Not as story bound as some and containing more sex and violence than would seem possible. Well shot and with decent score too.

This movie takes place at the "School of Hope", apparently a school for overly mature and improbably attractive delinquent Japanese high school girls. In the the opening scene a girl is being tortured by a group of her fellow students called the "disciplinary committee". They have her hooked up to a machine that is slowly draining the blood from her body (for some reason, this requires her to be topless). The victim escapes but dies from falling off a building. The action then shifts to three girls who have just been committed to the school. They team up to help one of them, "Noriko the Cross" (Miki Sugimoto) take revenge on the "disciplinary committee". But then to complicate matters a rival gangleader (Reiko Ikke) also shows up to challenge "Noriko" (she rides her motorcycle right into the school, which you would think would get HER thrown into reform school, but apparently not in Japan). Eventually though the girls all realize who their REAL enemies are and team up against the corrupt male lechers running the school.

This "pinky violence" film has all the hallmarks of the genre--lesbianism, gratuitous shower scenes, girl-on-girl torture and violence. The sex and nudity is always appreciated, but the torture scenes are pretty unpleasant (albeit imaginative). Fortunately, the violence is not as graphic as it could be. The treatment of the male characters is pretty cynical--they're almost all lecherous perverts with "uniform" fetishes except for the vice principal, who's just plain evil. and a mercenary tabloid journalist who is the only male protagonist. Miki Sugimoto would go to appear in "Zero Woman--Red Handcuffs" and Reiko Ikke would go on to appear in "Sex and Fury", both of which would have a big influence years later on Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill". Both are pretty appealing (if not particularly believable as teenage delinquents).

This is a actually pretty big-budget and well-made film (according to genre expert Jaspar Sharp the "pinky violence" series differs from other Japanese "pink" sex films in that they were made by a big studio and had much bigger production values). These kind of films obviously aren't everybody's cup of sake, but if you like them in general, you'll probably enjoy this one.

Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom is slightly messy and at times doesn't make any sense at all; but all this is made up for with a constant stream of action, nudity and torture scenes - and while this is not the best that Pinky Violence genre has to offer, director Norifumi Suzuki (who also has the likes of School of the Holy Beast and Sex and Fury to his credit) has united two of the genre's biggest stars in Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto and created a very entertaining - and violent - genre entry. The film focuses on the 'School of Hope' - a school for female juvenile delinquents. In order to deal with the more unruly pupils, the school authorities have set up a 'discipline squad', consisting of some of the most ruthless girls at the school. The latest crop of new recruits to the school is none too happy with the way things are being ran; especially since the girl killed at the start of the film was the right hand of one of the new girls. Plans are soon set into place to bring down the entire school...

The pace of the film is really fast - which while ensuring constant entertainment, also means that the film has a tendency to go off the rails with too many plot threads. Indeed, the final third of the film is rather disappointing compared to the first two because of this. The film is rather perverse; even more so than the majority of other Pinky Violence films and the director makes full use of the fact that the film features a bunch of schoolgirls. There's plenty of interaction between the girls and the torture scenes also have a rather perverse edge to them. Miki Sugimoto is the biggest name to have a lead role in the film; while the other star, Reiko Ike, doesn't appear for too long; which is a bit of a shame. The film becomes more and more manic as it moves along; and this all culminates in a riot at the end; which provides a fitting climax to the film. This film was released as a part of a Pinky Violence box set in the USA; but it's actually one of four 'Terrifying Girls' High School' films...so here's to hoping some DVD company releases the rest of the series in the near future.