Lady Terminator (Indonesia, 1988)
Pembalasan Ratu Pantai Selatan
Indonesia is a beautiful place. Because only Indonesia is capable of transforming a combination of anti-logic, haste and ambition into the miracle beyond miracles known as Lady Terminator. When a man steals a ghost snake from a sex-witch, she promises revenge on his great-great-granddaughter. 100 years later, an anthropologist is attacked by the same ghost snake and becomes a cyber-robotic master of death. Her purpose? SEX! MUTILATION! LAZER EYEZ! All in the interest of making life unbearable for a pop star who also happens to be a certain great-great granddaughter. Excessively perverted and mind-blowingly fun, Lady Terminator is a neon-soaked, fifty-uzi salute to plagiarism, explosions and crotch violence against men. This movie also features the first and only role from Adam Stardust, a half-man, half-mullet who will reinvigorate your attitude towards life.—Joseph A. Ziemba
35mm, color, 82 min. Director: Jalil Jackson. Screenwriter: Karr Kruinowz. Cast: Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart, Claudia Angelique Rademaker, Joseph P. McGlynn, Adam Stardust.
Sister Street Fighter (Japan, 1974)
After the massive success of The Street Fighter, Japanese studio Toei built a new karate series around a female lead, casting a young actress who had appeared in a cameo alongside her mentor Sonny Chiba in the origin film. Still a teenager at the time, Etsuko Shihomi exploded on screen and created a new character type: a tough fighter who was fierce, fearless, good-hearted and decidedly non-sexualised—a departure from Toei’s typical formula. Shihomi is the half-Chinese, half-Japanese Li Koryu, who travels to Yokohama to investigate the disappearance of her undercover cop brother. Li discovers a smuggling ring run by a drug lord with his own personal army of deadly fighters, and must penetrate his evil lair with the help of a fellow karate master (Sonny Chiba). Genre entertainment of the highest order, the Sister Street Fighter films are a wild ride through some of the best exploitation cinema Japan produced in the 1970s. Funky and over-the-top, filled with wall-to-wall action, and featuring some of the craziest villains ever depicted on screen, the series embodies female power in a male-dominated genre and is a magnificent showcase for the physical presence and martial arts skills of its lead star. —Arrow Video
DCP, color, in Japanese with English subtitles, 92 min. Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi. Screenwriters: Masahiro Kakefuda, Norifumi Suzuki. Cast: Etsuko Shihomi, Sonny Chiba, Asao Uchida, Sanae Ôhori, Bin Amatsu.