Sister Street Fighter (1974)

I only watched it because of the martial arts genre, otherwise I wouldn't even have bothered. I wasn't expecting much and frankly speaking there wasn't really any plot, but the fights were some of the best I've come to see in such movies starring women. I think that Shihomi Etsuko is clearly one of the best woman fighter I've yet come to see. I even dare to say that I prefer her skills better than Mao Angela-Ying. Indeed Shihomi-san attacks were remarkably quick, powerful and flawless that when she was fighting I wasn't even thinking it was fake, nor that they had to adjust her scenes with the men opponents because she was a woman, on the contrary. I even put some of her scenes in slow motions in order to better capture her superbe techniques.

I must say that japanese fictions have my respect, because for a movie produced in the 70s, it show a certain amount of equality, with women training with men first. And second, we don't only see 1 woman but 3 women fighting, even if the others two were supporting roles. And last, but certainly not least, you also see other women battlers in some scenes. This movie almost made my day!! In other martial art fictions of that decade, you'll rarely see more that one woman fighting and be glad that there's even one. Writing like that, I sound like a real feminist, that's funny...

I also loved how rough she become when kicking butts, while looking so harmless and charming the rest of the time, that was a nice contrast. What I also like is that you see her sweating during the movie, which made the battles even more believable, whereas in other fictions even when the woman fight, her make-up and hairstyle remain almost flawless, that it's just ridiculous...
Now for Shiba Shin'ichi, it was my first time seeing him and I was thinking that he and our héroïne were forming a dynamic duo!! The man was truly amazing, he only has a minor role but his fights were spectacular. It's like the woman protagonist was the woman version of him in fighting skills.

Now the bad parts were some two scenes where you see women showing their breasts. Scantily dressed dolls are already bad enough for me, they don't need to push it further... Another scene where a girl is raped in front of... I won't spoiled who and of course they had to rip her shirt. Like it was the trend back in the day, to viciously tear the clothes and have the girl be raped by a group of wild beasts. I obviously fast forward that useless part, we all know how shameless and awful a rape is, no need to show us such nastiness.
And lastly, I didn't like how the fights tear the end became more and more like butchery killing, with blood spilling eveywhere like a mad leaky faucet and organs showing, it escalated to the bad side of gore for the faint-hearted me...
So as much as I enjoyed the fights, I wouldn't want to watch it again because of the bad parts.

To finish, I wonder what the heck they did choose such a wallpaper to advertise the movie!? Our protagonist wear trousers all through the movie, so she never shows her legs. But I notice that no matter the era, a woman who fights has to be represented sensual or sexy to balance, it is!? That's why I applaud chinese or HK actions movies starring women, because they tend to do it very little.

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