Welcome to the Grindhouse: Dragon Princess / Karate Warriors
One of the nice bonuses of 2007’s Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez tribute to low-rent cinema, Grindhouse, was a flurry of DVD releases of exploitation movies. One notable set was a batch of “Welcome to the Grindhouse” double feature DVDs by BCI / Eclipse, which offered similarly themed genre pictures along with a “grindhouse experience” of titles and trailers.
Along with horror and women-in-prison flicks, “Welcome to the Grindhouse” offers up some old chop socky films, and what better than the public-domain exploits of badass extraordinaire Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba and his Japan Action Club, featuring the lovely, talented and deadly Etsuko “Sue” Shiomi. One such title features the 1976 films Dragon Princess (Hissatsu onna kenshi) and Karate Warriors (Kozure satsujin ken) (Another release features Chiba and Shiomi in The Bodyguard and Sister Street Fighter.)
Both films feature Chiba’s trademark brutal karate in tales of honor and revenge. Chiba often doesn’t get enough credit for promoting not only his own muscular talents but those of his Japan Action Club stable of stunt fighters. But these two flicks feature a number of notable performances – including an impressive lead role for Shiomi in Dragon Princess – although Chiba leaves an indelible impression on each.
That Chiba makes such an impression is especially impressive in Dragon Princess, as he’s only in the film for the first ten minutes or so. Chiba plays Kazuma Higaki, a karate master caught up in one of those school rivalries that form the fodder for so many chop socky flicks. He agrees to meet rival master Nikaido (Bin Amatsu, a Japanese cinema veteran with appearances in films like Blackmail Is My Life and Baby Cart at the River Styx, not to mention The Street Fighter, to his credit) in an abandoned church for a showdown to determine who will obtain a coveted karate instructor position. As a show of good faith, Higaki even brings his young daughter Yumi along with him.
But Nikaido isn’t about good faith – he brings three mercenary killers, each with their own karate specialty (sai, katana and throwing knives). Higaki does his best – he blinds the knife thrower, played by Japan Action Club regular Masashi Ishibashi (who appeared in several of the Street Fighter flicks, so it’s no surprise when he trades the kunai for a cane sword and reprises his blind-swordsman character from the first Street Fighter flick), with a vicious two-finger spear. But one of Ishibashi’s throwing knives ruins one of Higaki’s eyes as well.
Ultimately, numbers prevail, and Higaki is beaten. Nikaido agrees to spare his life if Higaki agrees to leave the country. Higaki then demands that Yumi remove the throwing knife from his eye (!). That’s only the beginning of Yumi’s ordeal, though – she’s brought up in a squalid New York tenement and forced to train in karate on the rooftop. On his deathbed, Higaki reveals that he trained her so she can avenge the family honor against Nikaido and his goons.
Yumi – now grown up and played by Etsuko Shiomi – returns to Japan and the shrine run by her grandfather. After burying her father’s ashes, she takes up the next order of business, striding boldly into Nikaido’s school to issue a challenge. She tangles with top student Masahiko (Yasuaki Kurata), who is close to Nikaido in skill himself.
Nikaido decides to hold a tournament, at which he plans to defeat Yumi once and for all. To even the odds, he calls in his three killers – who are apparently freelancing as hired assassins – to bump off some of the top competition. After Masahiko reveals that Nikaido killed his father, as well, and that he’d enrolled in the school to seek his own chance at revenge, Nikaido agrees to meet for a once-and-for-all duel. But Yumi’s arm has been broken in an earlier attack, and once again Nikaido stacks the deck, setting his students and three goons to ambush the fighters before they can challenge him.
Let’s face it – this plot is intended solely to carry the film from one karate fight to another. Fortunately, it succeeds admirably at that task. Dragon Princess is chock-full of great karate action, and in particular spotlights the talents of Shiomi and Kurata, who had a lengthy career in Hong Kong kung fu flicks like The Prodigal Boxer – aka Kung Fu: The Punch of Death – and Challenge of the Ninja. (One other grindhouse touch is the inclusion of a scene of topless dancing at a funky psychedelic nightclub that has nothing discernable to do with the plot.)
The second film, Karate Warriors, is another straightforward chop-socky actioner, this time with Chba rather than Shiomi as the central character. In a nod to Yojimbo, tough guy Chiba arrives in a town where two rival gangster factions are in conflict (a plot point helpfully explained by newscast footage in the opening), and switches loyalty between the two factions at various points in the movie.
Complicating matters are 1) the fact that the heads of the rival factions are brothers, 2) the two brothers – and eventually Chiba himself – are involved with the same bar hostess/madam, 3) the samurai (Isao Natsuyagi) who works for one of the two brothers, and in whom Chiba recognizes a fellow honorable practitioner of bushido, the martial way, 4) the samurai’s young son, whom Chiba comes to regard with affection, and 5) the suitcase full of heroin, supposedly left behind by another mob boss who has since disappeared, that absolutely everyone in the movie is after.
Chiba’s karate is on excellent display in this flick. Director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi uses lots of slow-motion shots of Chiba throwing crescent kicks upside some flunky’s head. Chiba takes it as well as dishing it out; at one point, one of the rival bosses hits a bound and helpless Chiba in the stomach with a stick. The blow knocks Chiba back in an obvious “that had to hurt!” moment. Chiba and Natsuyagi’s samurai each demonstrate the fighting power that comes with adherence to the martial way, as well as the dramatic tension that results when honorable warriors go to work for ruthless, cowardly scum.
The “Welcome to the Grindhouse” DVD offers these great Chiba flicks in an enjoyable double-feature packaged to exploit the interest in grindhouse cinema generated by Tarantino’s and Rodriguez’ homages. As befits a grindhouse-style cheapie release, DVD extras are limited, though picture and sound quality are a welcome high point compared to other cheapo DVDs of Chiba flicks. Both films are presented in English dub only, though in widescreen format.
DVD extras are represented by “the grindhouse experience,” which plays both films as a double feature, along with titles and trailers – simulating the low-rent feel by seeming to throw in any old exploitation film trailer they had lying around, although one for Chiba’s The Bodyguard – which features a hilarious chant of “Viva Chiba!” along with promises of bloody ultra-violence, Chiba style – is thematically appropriate.
My own introduction to chop-socky films was much more from Saturday morning TV than from disreputable double feature houses, but this DVD seems a more than adequate re-creation of the experience. And the two films are top-notch for straightforward karate brutality performed by a full cast of talented martial artists. Welcome to the Grindhouse: Dragon Princess / Karate Warriors would make an excellent addition to the DVD collection of any martial arts movie fan, and perhaps a decent introduction to the sometimes sleazy but always entertaining grindhouse experience.
Dragon Princess
Directed by: Yutaka Kohira
Starring: Etsuko “Sue” Shiomi, Sonny Chiba, Yasukai Kurata
Karate Warriors
Directed by: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Starring: Sonny Chiba,
Released by: Bci / Eclipse
Related links:
Welcome to the Grindhouse: Dragon Princess / Karate Warriors DVd at Amazon.com
Dragon Princess second opinion at Kung Fu Cinema
Dragon Princess second opinion at Bad Movie Planet
Karate Warriors second opinion at Kung Fu Cinema
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