Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs
Director: Yukio Noda
Actors: Miki Sugimoto, Eiji Go, Tetsuro Tanba
Year Released: 1974
Genre: Exploitation
See Also: Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, Girl Boss Guerilla
By the time Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs was released in 1974, the Japanese film industry had reached its nadir. Things were already rolling swiftly downhill in the late '60s when movie goers began abandoning theaters for their home television sets. The studio system responded by appealing strictly to prurience. Exploitation films began pouring out of the studios, with Nikkatsu completely abandoning any and all redeeming genres in favor of roman porno, short for "romantic pornography." The moniker is ironic—there's absolutely nothing romantic about rape, which is what these films boiled down to.
Over at Toei, things weren't quite so bad as at Nikkatsu, though if you had a problem with nudity as a female star you were pretty much relegated to TV work. Miki Sugimoto obviously didn't have a problem with nudity. Often paired with fellow exploitation queen Reiko Ike (and inexplicably considered her inferior amongst exploitation aficionados), Miki Sugimoto's career in Toei "pinky violence" films peaked with Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, perhaps the last artistically redeeming exploitation film of the '70s.
(Before I go any further, I have to get this off my chest: Miki Sugimoto kicks Reiko Ike's ass. I like Reiko Ike just fine. She's hot, undoubtedly. But if both women are on-screen at the same time, as in Girl Boss Guerilla, there's no way I'll be able to even glance at Reiko. Miki just commands my eyeballs' attention. It's that hard-as-nails stare. Reiko, well, Reiko has compassion. Miki looks set to kick ass at any moment, no exceptions given. This she shares with Meiko Kaji, my other favorite Toei screen queen. But I digress.)
Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs begins strongly. Rei (Miki Sugimoto) is a cop in the Dirty Harry vein, more concerned with justice than procedure. When an arrest ends with a creepy gaijin spurting blood from his nethers, Rei is sent to jail, only to be sprung with the caveat that she'll clandestinely assist the police in getting the kidnapped daughter of a high-ranking politician back to safety. While the opening scenes are incredible, with Miki playing the passive Japanese stereotype to the hilt, only to suddenly react and take down the gaijin (who sounds oddly like Arnold Schwarzenegger), the film soon devolves into a series of (albeitly well-photographed) gang rapes and other assorted opportunities to degrade women.
I realize the precarious position I'm in here. I'm condemning an exploitation film for degrading women. But don't the Scorpion films both fulfill and transcend the exploitation genre? Because of its breath-taking cinematography, doesn't Norifumi Suzuki's notorious nunsploitaion film School of the Holy Beast pass beyond mere exploitation and enter the realm of art? Isn't that what makes these films so amazing, that they're not afraid to push up against the walls of their genre and break through?
That Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs doesn't break through, that it remains within the boundaries of its proscribed limitations, is ultimately disappointing. Yet it has the means to do so. Director Yukio Noda would go on to direct Sonny Chiba in the chop sockey cross-over Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon, a film with few discreet genre boundaries, and screenwriter Fumio Konami would continue to provide bedrock for such excitement as Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor, Sogo Ishii's Panic High School, and Norifumi Suzuki's Shogun's Ninja. There's no reason that Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs shouldn’t be as transcendentally emotive as Jailhouse 41, and yet it's not. For all its colored gels and Dutch tilts, it's just another exploitation flick.
Really, how many gang rapes can you witness before you become desensitized to the whole thing? Until it becomes boring, another accepted plot point in a genre formula? If the whole point is for it to be titillating, at what point does it become unnecessary? Apparently at the moment when film died and video arose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the studio system. At which point eight new straight-to-video Zero Woman films were born.
Exploitation is dead. Long live exploitation.
Otaku Alert: Miki Sugimoto put her film career behind her at the age of 25 to become a nursery school teacher. Lucky kids.
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