SISTER STREET FIGHTER: FIFTH LEVEL FIST (1976)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Possibly Toei Studios thought the Tina Long character (called two different names in different releases) was played out, for though they used the SISTER STREET FIGHTER rubric for this movie, star Etsuko Shihomi played a new character, name of Kiku, There's also a move away from the wild pulp fantasy of the trilogy, with a heroine taking on a variety of disparate kung fu practitioners. 

Kiku exists in a fairly ordinary world, practicing kung fu while her parents pester her to get married. She has some sort of job, the nature of which I couldn't figure out, but somehow she's assigned to be a translator for an American bigwig coming to Japan. In this way she unwittingly meets a group of criminals who will become her enemies, and a Japanese cop, Takagi, with whom she shares some possible romantic sentiments. 

The villains are drug smugglers again, but this time they operate in a Japanese movie studio, where it seems like the majority of employees are in on the illicit practice. One of their minor employees, a half-Black, half-Japanese guy named Jim, is made by Takagi's anti-drug unit. So the gangsters just kill Jim so he can't roll on them.

However, the late Jim's half-sister Michi (Mitchi Love, who appeared as a different character in the first and third Tina films) is also a member of Kiku's martial arts class. Michi seeks to avenge Jim and gets captured. Takagi can't find her, so Kiku decides to launch her own investigation. She takes the role of an extra on a current studio movie, finds Michi, and then it's action, action, action for the film's last half hour. Only two elements reflect the pulpiness of the earlier films. Instead of warriors dressed up in archaic garb, some of the actors in the gang remain dressed in traditional Japanese garb, and one particular guy, wielding a real katana, looks to me like a ringer for LONE WOLF AND CUB's Tomisaburo Wakayama. The second element is that when Kiku is captured, the villains tie her to a fully functioning sawmill, implicitly a prop, yet as capable of slicing a heroine in half as any sawmill from ancient "mellerdramas." Sadly, no one makes any knowing comments on the hoariness of this death-trap.

There are a few liberal political touches here. One is Jim's alienation from his mother's people because he looks Black. Another is a scene in which Takagi urges Kiku to be more traditionally feminine. He's not seen to complain when the two of them join to take down the movie-gangsters. But Kiku doesn't get a chance to crow, because strangely the film ends on a freeze-frame, implying that Takagi may die of gunshot wounds. And so on this curious note the SISTER STREET FIGHTER franchise came to an unequivocal conclusion.