d6a2afd33b The head of a yakuza gang is being trailed by a mysterious, vengeful blind woman. Akemi and the man of her clan confront their opponents; Akemi delivers a sword thrust to kill the opponents&#39; leader, and Aiko, his daughter, tries to interpose herself, suffering a glancing blow to her eyes, thus cutting her badly, and blinding her. Amid the ensuing fight, no one notices that a black cat laps the young woman&#39;s wound. Years later, revenge between the two clans continue, plus added dissension amongst Akemi&#39;s people, leading to more deaths. A new member comes to help them, but she is a strange woman - and blind. The curse of the blind woman is about to fell on the dragon-lady. Like France&#39;s Jean Rollin, Japan&#39;s Teruo Ishii stands for something. His films have a blazing signature. His obsessions are up there on the screen. The plots are coat hangers to hang his fetishes on. &quot;Blind Woman&#39;s Curse&quot; is a mixed genre extravaganza that is one part yakuza melodrama, one part sword opera, and one part horror film. Although it doesn&#39;t hold together dramatically, it is still a fantastic piece of fantasy cinema. Meiko &quot;Scorpion&quot; Kaji, one of the sexiest women ever to have graced the silver screen, is the head honcho of a gang who have been marked for extinction by a strange, blind swordwoman (Hoki Tokuda) and her hunchback servant (is there any other?) At the same time, another clan has it in for Meiko and her feisty, fighting girls. Ishii slathers on the macabre and bizarre in this wonderful, malformed romp. A grotesque night carnival is one of the film&#39;s highlights,is a flesh-carrying, blood-drinking black cat that makes a strong impression. The activities of the hunchback are always fun to watch,are the scenes of human skinning, tattoo removal, and sexual coercion. Like every Ishii film, except the execrable &quot;Blind Beast Versus Killer Dwarf&quot;, this is a colorful, lurid compendium of cinematic delights. Meiko Kaji spends 3 years in jail for avenging her Yakuza father, and on her release she inherits the leadership of the Tachibana gang. They&#39;re quite a nice bunch, for Yakuza, but a nasty rival gang are bent on taking over their territory. As if that wasn&#39;t bad enough, she appears to be under the curse of a black cat that got a taste of her victim&#39;s blood…<br/><br/>The film takes a broadly familiar period-Yakuza story and mixes it up with elements of horror and… strangeness, making for an intriguing cocktail of styles, moods and ideas. Teruo Ishii was one of the premier visual stylists of the Japanese exploitation wave, and this film shares the style even though it&#39;s relatively light on the exploitation. The plot is straightforward but the details make it interesting, and having Meiko Kajithe lead actress certainly helps there too.<br/><br/>Good stuff!
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