Year: 1970
Director: Yasuharu Hasebe
Stars: Meiko Kaji, Tatsuya Fuji, Bunjaku Han
Two years prior to her career-defining work in Shunya Ito’s inimitable Female Prisoner Scorpion series, Meiko Kaji’s star was already in ascendance, as itemised across the youth-in-revolt anthology series Stray Cat Rock, which pumped out 5 chapters within a period of a little over one year (Japan at this time was truly unrivaled for its mass-production of youth-orientated cinema).
Nikkatsu Studios was reacting to changing attitudes among the country’s citizens. Re-engaging with a young crowd was one prong of their approach (the other significant one being the rise in production of ‘roman porno’ pictures). Stray Cat Rock promised visceral and hip thrills to young audiences, throwing back at them depictions of rebellious girl gangs. In this capacity one can chart Kaji’s rise to stardom among her co-stars. In the first film, Delinquent Girl Boss, she is prominent, but Akiko Wada remains the lead. In each subsequent movie, however, Kaji is the top-billed actor, the draw, the face of the series. Watching them back, it’s clear to see why. Her presence – not quite as fierce as it would become later – is still uniquely commanding.
The Female Prisoner Scorpion films to come were Ito’s creative darlings, and only came unstuck when enterprising journeyman Yasuharu Hasebe took the reigns for the off-focus fourth entry. With Stray Cat Rock, however, Hasebe is the lynchpin who seems to determine whether an episode in the series is worthwhile or not. His Delinquent Girl Boss, (misleadingly titled) Sex Hunter and Machine Animal are by far the best, whereas Toshiya Fujita’s Wild Jumbo and Beat ’71 struggle to maintain cohesion (or even audience interest). Fujita’s time with Meiko Kaji would come, however, with the iconic Lady Snowblood films… but that’s another story…
Of Hasebe’s SCR entries, it’s a toss-up for the top-spot between Sex Hunter and Machine Animal, and this essay could easily have been about either one of them. In the end it’s Machine Animal because, well, that’s the one I most recently watched. While sticking ostensibly to the feel-good vibes already established (biking, joy-rides, hanging out at psychedelic hipster spots), these two entries particularly become heightened thanks to a pulpier edge (knife fights; genuine stakes) and more ambitious social commentary.
Sex Hunter is a surprisingly sober investigation of racism in (then) contemporary Japan, while the machinations of Machine Animal place an adjoining focus on immigration front and centre as an offshoot of the main plot about a drug stash gone awry.
Maya (Kaji) and her dolls have come into possession of a batch of LSD that they intend to sell for profit. The only problem is, the stash ‘rightfully’ belongs to Nobo (Tatsuya Fuji), who needs the acid to help pay for an American Vietnam vet, Charlie (Toshiya Yamano), to desert the deeply unpopular war. When Maya hears the story she immediately hands over what remains of the stash, reflecting a sense of compassion and support for the cause that no doubt struck a cord with the movie’s intended audience. From there, the gangs of girls and boys coalesce as a single, ungainly unit, retreating to a hide out for an amiable piss up. What the hell, they drop some of the acid, too.
While their trip is presented in a mixed manner that suggests a lasting/damaging impact (images of blood flash among the montage ‘experiences’, adding a sense of foreboding), they also wryly include members of Maya’s gang carving a scorpion on a wooden beam, bizarrely prefiguring Kaji’s future sensational role as Nami in the FPS films. In the aftermath, Maya and Nobo bond over their shared experiences and ideologies, presenting a potentially romantic but more overtly spiritual connection and Hasebe inserts a kind of pause in the movie to let this feeling settle. Kaji, also a burgeoning pop star, breaks into song, briefly but remarkably reconfiguring Machine Animal into a potential musical with a marketable single for the Japanese charts.
Things take a turn for a disastrous, however, when an undisciplined Charlie comes out of hiding to party with the girls and the stash is pilfered at a bowling alley by unseen opportunists. This precipitates drama on several fronts. Firstly jeopardising Charlie’s prospects of getting out of the country, but also straining tensions within Maya’s group when she discovers their part in the incident (gang rivalry is a staple of these films). The stage is set for a series of efficiently mounted confrontations and action sequences, which make up the back end of this tight 82 minute picture.
If Machine Animal doesn’t sound revolutionary… well, it isn’t. But it does represent something of a high water mark during a hyper specific and incredibly prolific period of Japanese cinema typified by a persistent state of flux. The Western influence on the movie is pointed. There’s the rock music which reflects (albeit indirectly) Japan’s lasting affinity with Beatlemania and the ensuing wave of psychedelia (what are these tales of gangs getting into scrapes but colourful x-rays of the Fab Four’s cinematic shenanigans of the decade prior?). But there’s also the sense of comic-book tinged genre cinema that was rolling out of both America and Italy around this time. Everything from Roger Corman’s hell-raising biker movies to Mario Bava’s playful Danger: Diabolik. It all exists in a global continuum which the Stray Cat Rock series has a place in. Rejecting, stealing, remixing and adding. Even wheelchair-bound girlboss Yuri (Bunjaku Han) feels like a precursor to the madams and villainesses that would come to populate AIP pictures like Foxy Brown or later entries in Kaji’s own FPS series.
Looking back at old Letterboxd reviews written when I previously watched the movie, I found this neat, brief summation of why Machine Animal appeals so…: “this nails what it’s supposed to be. It feels like youth and freedom.” In spite of the troubles encountered, the persistent threat of violence and failure, Machine Animal seems to take place in a Tokyo (mostly) free of cops; a lawless city where the youth gangs are left to run riot, do battle, have unlimited adventures with one another and express themselves. Hasebe expertly achieves the mandate set to him by Nikkatsu. On it’s own terms, Machine Animal is a total success.
Only the underlying tension of whether Charlie will get to leave the country hints at the authorities waiting in the wings to curb unbridled youth and idealism with a set of unified boundaries and consequential violence. While rarely given face, that sense of offscreen oppression is vital to the mixture. What’s the point of rebelling to feel alive if there’s nothing to rebel against? But Hasebe and Machine Animal keep the focus tightly on Kaji’s band of up-for-anything rabble rousers. Even with a bittersweet, actually-rather-downbeat ending, the result is a perky little movie totally free of fat that still has capacity to feel like it’s saying something about the world it inhabits.
The Lost Highway Hotel 