Kaette kita onna hissatsu ken

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

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.

Kung-Stu(pid)

I had some fun watching it though, and it's helped by being only 77 minutes long. It's the kind of barebones action movie where whenever someone's not fighting, they're talking about the fact that soon, they're going to start fighting.

This is never a bad thing. But I guess the thing with this third Sister Street Fighter movie is that the action, though plentiful, isn't of a particularly high quality. I know Shaw Brothers set a high bar for non-stop martial arts movies from the 60s and 70s, but the choreography and editing on offer here just isn't particularly great.

But there's still entertainment to be had. And frequent ho-hum action is much better than infrequent ho-hum action. Plus it's hilarious when a little girl gets involved with a fight early on, and she hits one bad guy with next-to-no force with a small bag or something, only for him to react like he's actually just been hit by a train.

Go in with low expectations, and expect something mindless, and I think it's possible to have a good time with this.

While in Hong Kong, the female martial arts expert, "Koryu" (Etsuko Shihomi), is informed by an undercover law enforcement agent named "Sho Tokki" (Xiang De-Ki) that his sister, "Shurei" (Akane Kawasaki), has been kidnapped by a criminal organization in Japan, and he requests her assistance in rescuing her. During their conversation, they are attacked by some goons from that very organization, and Sho is killed right in front of Shurei's young daughter, "Rika" (Chieko Onuki). With Rika by her side, Koryu travels to Yokohama and, after handing Rika over to Shurei's sister, "Reika" (Miwa Cho), she heads off to a nightclub to talk to a young lady named "Suzy Wong" (Izumi Shima) who might have more information on where Shurei is being held. What Koryu doesn't realize, however, is that the boss of the criminal organization knows all about her plans, and he has hired several assassins to resolve her meddling in his affairs. Permanently. Rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this third film in the "Sister Street Fighter" series pretty much follows the same general pattern as the other two, with only a few basic changes made to differentiate them. For example, all of them involve a criminal organization kidnapping someone, but their primary raison d'être varies. In the first film, it was illegal narcotics; in the second film, it was diamonds; and in this film, it is gold--different characters for the most part, but the same overall plot, more or less. That said, since it was somewhat more polished than the first film in the series, I have rated it slightly higher than the first one and on par with the second movie.

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.