Movie titles are very important.  Sure, most audiences know something about the plot or the actors involved in a movie before they start getting interested; but, there are some titles that just grab an audience before they know anything else, like : Yo-Yo Girl Cop. Even if you do not enjoy the not-so-subtle art of playing with a yo-yo, you have to admit that it’s a catchy title.  Which is important since the movie has little else going for it.

Released in 2006, Yo-Yo Girl Cop is the third in a series of films based on a television series based on a manga series called Sukeban Deka (“Delinquent Girl Detective”).  Each version features a young girl fighting crime undercover in Japanese high schools armed with only a metal yo-yo and congenital badassery.

The latest installment is no different as we follow Saki Asamiya (or Asamiya Saki, if you want to be formal), the next generation’s delinquent, as she is recruited by the Japanese police to infiltrate a high school which is the focus of an ongoing movement for teenage immolation.  Which, for the folks playing at home, brings our “Stolen Ideas from Better Movies” count to 3: La Femme Nikita , 21 Jump Street and Blood: the Last Vampire.

When it comes to teenage suicide (and now for the requisite “don’t do it”….Damn you, Heathers !), pills and razors are for wimps. These guys strap bomb-vests to themselves and go running for the nearest populated area!  Apparently, it’s also a group activity.  Taught how by the resident villain’s website, “Enola Gay.”  While watching the teenagers working their chemistry sets to create the explosives and wiring together the timers and vests, I was struck by how, even in the arena of juvenile delinquency, Japanese teens are still more educated and innovative than Americans.  There has to be some way we can close this gap, America!

Remember that awesome title I mentioned in the beginning?  You’d think there’d be wall-to-wall yo-yo action.  In fact, there are only about 4 real scenes of intense yo-yo violence.  The bulk of the movie is devoted to Japanese teenagers crying about bullying in their high school and deciding that blowing themselves up is the only answer.  Well, that and robbing a bank.  It turns out that the bombing movement was a smokescreen to rob a bank, which brings us to 4: Die Hard!  However, towards the end, there is a sequence when Asamiya fights the “evil” Yo-Yo Girl and it, as a much more prolific internet commentator named Chris Sims has pointed out, “is the entire reason this movie was made.”  In some movies(Casshern ), one scene of exquisite violence is more than enough to justify its existence, Yo-Yo Girl Cop is not one of those movies.

There are some fun points: a girl explodes in the first 3 minutes; the “shaky-cam” technique is used to demonstrate some incredible sandwich-eating choreography; goofy yo-yo fighting; and, Tak Sakaguchi.  However, the story is too bogged down in teen melodrama to be exciting.  Maybe if they’d try to bring Tom Smothers out of retirement…

Have you ever wanted to watch a stage play, an action movie,  and a sapphic romance-all with a progressive jazz and reggae sound track? Congratulations! Pistol Opera is the movie for you!

The movie starts with an Asian version of Andy Warhol (Nagase) taking out another guy who was trying peg someone with a hunting rifle.

Cut to our protagonist, Stray Cat (Esumi), practicing gun-fu behind a rice paper wall.

Apparently there’s some sort of ranking and competition for best shootist in Japan and Stray Cat is ranked third so says her handler, who is dressed like a Jedi at Mardi Gras.

I think one of the best parts of this movie is it is so willfully abstract and obtuse that everything comes as across as silly. Weapons are delivered via courier and jobs are accepted via breast groping.

“Kill this dude” :: honk honk :: “I will kill that dude” :: honk honk::

Speaking of the weird sexual things going on, our Stray Cat is also a chronic masturbator, and in addition to having a weird relationship with her handler, she also has another strange sort of tense mentorship with a school girl. It reminds of Léon (The Professional in the US), except the young apprentice is much more blunt, to the discomfort of most audience members.

Stray Cat met her apprentice/bath mate during weird chase scene that felt like Scooby Doo if Jon Woo directed it. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t inspired, I mean, I certainly didn’t know a dude in a wheelchair could move like that.

So apparently Stray Cat has to run around Japan killing other assassins . . so that she can remain number 3. Or be number 1. I’m not sure. Her next opponent is a very obviously Caucasian man (Jan Woudstra ), whose Japanese is actually quite good. It’s really disquieting to hear this guy get most of the words right when he dresses a cattle driver and has a beard like Rob Zombie. Also, he doesn’t feel pain-so he calls himself the “Painless Surgeon,”  and it’s at that point I realize all the assassin’s names in this movie would sound really cool if I was 14 and reading an online forum about Anime.

Turns out, Andy Warhol isn’t actually much of a threat at all, as Stray Cat drops him like third period French with almost 30 minutes left. Her her opponent is the Mardi Gras Jedi, who is Japan’s number one assassin, Thousand Eyes.

The climatic battle of the film takes place in at a Terror Expo, a Grand Guignol fun-house with actors sets and great lighting for Stray Cat to face off against Thousand Eyes. This is after Thousand Eyes has swiped Stray Cats apprentice, shouted at said apprentice in English, and then smacked her around a bit. Then going on to shout at Stray Cat in English and smack her around with a swagger stick, culminating an entire movie of weird antagonism mixed  with sexual tension….during a pistol vs. sub-machine gun battle.

You get the idea. This movie is solidly strange in an entertaining way.

Couple this with Miike’s Hazard City (City of Lost Souls) or Levinson’s Toys and you have a fine combination of gleefully strange movies.

The Setup

As the second year of the Cavalcade winds to a close, we are rocking straight through our second 1-off theme month of the year with our November selection of “Girls with Guns”. Being bracketed by the Halloween and Holiday events, we have no worries of bridging or continuity, making it that much easier to simply grab some flicks and have a blast!

The idea is a simple one. Take a standard action movie script that nobody wants to film. Change the protagonist’s gender from male to female (and if you can somehow make it work, a prostitute). BOOYA: Box-Office Gold. Frank Miller would later turn this into a religion in almost all of his creative work. Despite the name, the genre does not require the protagonist to carry an arsenal of firearms or be a card-carrying member of the NRA. Rather, the only requirement is that said protagonist be of the XX chromosomal variety, and kick some serious ass.

Getting its start in the 1960s with the Shaw Brothers flick Come Drink with Me, the first Hong Kong action movie with a female lead. Nowadays, with more movies being based off of video games and comics (where a female protagonist is much more common), a number of action franchises have been built around ass-kicking-mavens-of-pain. Resident Evil, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, and Underworld-just to name a few.

The Formula

Being that the genre crosses all kinds of action flicks, there are very few elements that are formulaic to every one of them. However, there are a few:

• The heroine has something to prove. It doesn’t matter if the bad guys are gangsters or a horde of bio-infected-flaming-radioactive-zombies, on some level its more important to her that she prove she can kick their asses than it is to achieve whatever goal for which said ass-kicking is required (like say-survival)

To be fair, it’s very likely that this is because of the next trope:

• Nobody takes her seriously. Did she walk in out of the desert carrying the severed head of a mutant acid-farting-dragon, or did she single-handedly build a post-apocalyptic death machine out of Detroit steel and gardening implements of destruction? Doesn’t matter. At some point, some idiot will dismiss her for bein’ a girl…and promptly get his misogynistic ass beaten like a jelly-filled piñata.

Seriously guys. If a chick walks in toting an M61 Vulcan Gatling Gun, I don’t care if she’s a playboy model wearing nothing but soap bubbles and a g-string: I am going to fucking listen to what she has to say.

The Menu

The Booze

To be honest, we have no idea. Our first instinct is to go with traditionally girlie drinks, like Cosmopolitans and Coors Light -But we did Martinis last month, and we already stock a supply of bottled water.

The Food

Aside from Lady Fingers, we figure we’ll throw down some hummus and crackers. Yeah we said it, hummus is for girls.

The Movies

Depending on the writers, this genre skews widely from being about empowerment (Frank Miller) to being all about exploitation and misogynistic-boy-fantasy (Frank Miller).  In our primary selections, we decided to hit a bit of both.

Yes Madam! (1985): Michelle Yeoh’s 3rd film, and the first that put her on the map. Co-starring Cynthia Rothrock, who would later go on to be a direct-to-video action maven. Plot involves a microfilm, kicking people in the face, and oh…shooting them.

Angel (1984): High school student by day, hooker by night! What did we tell you? Yeah. They made 3 of these, the continuing plot being she turns out to be a vice-cop or something. Did we mention hookers?

Fully expecting Angel to get voted off the island, we’ll also have a selection from the Suggested Alternatives section.

Suggested Alternatives

Doomsday (2008): We mentioned this one back in the Post-Apocalyptic event, and even had it on hand to screen at one of our earliest parties. This is because it is just so rock-sauce awesome. Zombies, Apocalypto-punks, and jousting knights in shining armor round out a flick where Rhona Mitra kills EVERYONE.

Barb Wire (1996): Because we have no sense of pride (or shame), we can completely recommend this cyberpunk bad-girl picture featuring the “talents” of Pamela Anderson.

Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006): Why? Because it’s such a weird idea. In the future, the fight for justice will be fought with high-tech YO-YO’s. Seriously, this sounds awesome.

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