THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Though the trio of films starring a character called (in the English dub) "Tina Long" are given the rubric "Sister Street Figher," there's no actual connection between this series and that of Sonny Chiba's STREET FIGHTER series. Chiba, who worked with star Etsuko Shihomi on several projects, does contribute a minor support-role, but he's in no way compared with his "Terry Tsurugi" character. There's also no attempt to give the Tina character any psychological depth; she's just a loose cannon that the authorities unleash upon a band of evil drug-smugglers.

Tina's a private citizen, renowned as a martial arts champion, and when her undercover cop brother Lee goes missing, the Hong Kong cops assign Tina to go find him, because I guess that's what HK police do in those situations. The thin thread of logic relates to the fact that drug-boss Kakuzaki keeps around a stable of killers with disparate kung-fu styles (the gangster considers it his hobby, the way other rich guys keep stables of horses). Thus Tina can use her fame to infiltrate various kung-fu haunts-- though, truth to tell, the bad guys obligingly come looking for her. By the way, though most drug-lords just kill off undercover cops, Kakuzaki keeps Lee a prisoner and pumps him full of heroin, just to be a sadist.

That's all the plot one gets, as the rest of the film is wall-to-wall action. All of the uncanny content comes from the gangsters. One group of female karate-killers dresses up with face-masks and jaguar-pelt costumes and weird devices include a spear-pistol, a blowgun, and a metal claw-hand that Kakuzaki wears in his final fight with Tina. The latter is almost certainly a callback to ENTER THE DRAGON, whose main villain sports a similar weapon. In essence, Kazuzaki is just a reprise of that character, switching his venue of operations from an island-tournament to the mean streets of a big city.

When SISTER was a hit, the company rushed out a sequel, subtitled HANGING BY A THREAD, and the new boss of Tina's enemies, Osone, is once again both a drug-smuggler and a collector of exotic killers. This time an official asks Tina to take on the smugglers to save the official's daughter, with whom Tina is also friends. However, in case a family friend doesn't seem like enough-- and since the cop-brother died in the first film-- this time Tina has a sister who gets mixed up in the drug trade. And though there's no Sonny Chiba this time, Tina gets help from another prominent male fighter, played by well regarded performer Yasuaki Kurata.

There aren't nearly as many wild gimmicks in this film, though there are enough to keep up the uncanny phenomenality. There's another spear-pistol and a woman who has poisoned fingernails, but they don't poise major threats. I thought I saw something like a shuriken that spurted acid demonstrated, but nothing like that was ever used against Tina. Osone doesn't seem as formidable a villain as Kakuzaki, though the script gives Osone a weird fetish for putting out the eyes of his enemies-- which almost guarantees the method of his demise.

The trilogy wrapped up with RETURN OF THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER the next year. Curiously, Tina is asked for help to find the missing sister of a cop named Cho (played by Sonny Chiba's brother Jiro), but he perishes early on. This leaves Tina to both go looking for the missing woman, one Shurei, while also playing nursemaid to Shurei's grade-schooler daughter Rika.

Again Tina encounters the inevitable gang with lots of martial artist thugs, though at least this time, they're smuggling gold instead of drugs. The main evildoer this time is the wheelchair-bound Mister Oh, and once again in deference to the model of evil Master Han of ENTER THE DRAGON, this villain stages a mini-tournament for eight prospective bodyguards, to whittle the applicants down to four. (This sequence is the only one to use really exotic costumes.) Once Oh has his four bodyguards, a late entry named Kurosaki (Yasuaki Kurata) horns in, kills one of the four, and claims he's the only one able to kill Tina.

Kurosaki comes close to doing so, but when he fails, Oh has Rika kidnapped to lure Tina into a trap, Supposedly the idea is to have Tina cornered by Kurosaki in a wooden building, but whether it's Oh's idea or that of the bodyguards, the henchmen fire the building, intending to trap Kurosaki, Tina and Rika inside. Kurosaki enables Tina and Rika to escape but seemingly perishes in the blaze. (However, he turns up at the climax with no explanation.) 

Oh proves himself the stupidest fiend in the series. After gratuitously shooting Shurei in front of her little daughter, Oh has Tina strung up by her heels from an A-frame that's just standing out in the open for some reason, and then-- leaves her behind to starve and be picked over by crows. Tina of course escapes and she and Kurosaki join forces to thrash all the villains. Incidentally, Kurosaki reveals some hard-to-follow info about Oh being a Japanese WWII officer who absconded with the gold somehow, but how he knew this, no one knows. This end-battle is the only decent fight in this, the least of the trilogy, and it also contains the only uncanny device. Calling out to Master Han AGAIN, Oh reveals that he's not only not crippled and doesn't need his wheelchair, one of his hands is solid gold and capable to crushing skulls. Of course he still loses and dies clutching at his illicitly-acquired gold bars. Kurosaki disappears, so his agenda remains up for grabs, while Tina ends her adventures by becoming a new mother to orphaned Rika. A fourth film with the "Sister" moniker came out but in it Shihomi played a different character.