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Rica's (Rika Aoki) life was doomed from an early age: she was conceived
when her mother (Kazuko Imai) was raped by a GI back in the 1950's, and
now she's not even 18 years old and her mother's lover Hirose (Satoshi
Moritsuka) tries to rape her ...
Soon enough, Rica becomes the leader of a girlgang, and soon enough she
makes her first killing, a member of the Tachibana gang who has
impregnated and then dumped one of her girls. Subsequently, Rica is sent
to reform school, where she almost immediately makes an enemy of Reiko
(Kazuko Nagamoto), the Queen Dragon, and she would fight it out with her
as well wasn't she all that desperate to get out to save her girls who
have since been sold off to Vietnam as whores for the GIs by the Tachibana
gang. But Reiko doesn't arrive at the scene in time to save them anymore,
on the contrary, she agrees to let the boss of the Tachibana gang turn her
into a stripper, just to save the girlfriend of Tetsu (Fuminori Sato), a
man who has saved her life repeatedly.
Eventually though, she falls out of favour with the Tachibanas when she
becomes witness to one of their crimes, and suddenly she's on their
hitlist - and when she defends herself, it's not long before she is sent
back to the slammer ...
Now it's time for a showdown between Rica and Reiko, but during this,
Reiko kills a guard by accident and the reform school is set on fire -
which gives Rica and Reiko plenty of opportunity to escape, but for some
reason Rica is blamed for the murder of the guard, and now she's
desperately trying to track down Reiko to set the record straight - but
instead she stumbles upon her mother, who is now a heroin addict and a bum
whore ...
Eventually, Rica tracks down Reiko to the Ozaka gang, and she asks the
gang's boss to set up a duel between herself and Reiko, to which he agrees
- but the whole duel is a mere trap, the Ozaka boss only wants to capture
Rica, Reiko and Reiko's gang to sell her to Vietnam as GI prostitutes ...
Fortunately Tetsu has kept an eye on Rica and he frees her in the nick
of time, and ultimately the two make up a plan to save the other girls
from the Vietnam-bound ship, even Reiko, who Rica now decides isn't so bad
after all - but during their rescue mission, both Tetsu and Reiko are
killed, only Rica is left the last woman standing, and she drifts away on
her Harley in the end ...
In early 1970's Japan, bad girl (or sukeban) films -
mainly blends of crime drama, gang movie and a bit of erotica - were
almost surefire hits, with studios like Nikkatsu
and Toei
leading the way - and many of their films were flashy and elegant enough
they still seem fresh even today. Rica was Toho's attempt to cash
in on the trend, with (at least artistically) only limited success: The
story of this film lacks the stringency needed for this kind of movie,
instead it's all over the place, neither the action nor the sex even
attempt to be anything special to set this film apart from others of its
kind, and last but not least, Rika Aoki just lacks both the charisma and
the looks to carry a movie of this kind.
That said, the film's not all bad and at times actually rather
entertaining, there just are so much similar but better films around.
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