SISTER STREET FIGHTER (1974)
Sister Street Fighter (1974) tells a story of a martial-arts champion who the police use as an undercover agent to infiltrate a drug ring responsible for importing heroin from Japan to Hong Kong. When he is identified and imprisoned, the police pressure his sister, Tina Long, to help them locate and free him. She gets the help of Lee’s martial-arts school, including the powerful Sonny Kawasaka, for the inevitable battle-royale with the drug gang, which includes masters of many different ‘schools’ of fighting.
This Japanese action film is the unofficial sequel to The Street Fighter from earlier in the same year, and is filled with much of the same type of frenetic and violent kung-fu fighting. Despite the title’s seeming connection to the wildly popular Street Fighter film series starring Sonny Chiba, Sister Street Fighter is more of a spiritual successor and carries on many of the themes and conventions of that series. Indeed, Chiba also plays a karate expert here, but also a different character. The film itself is fun and wild in the way only JAC films tend to be: crazy villains, wild deaths, a bit of sleaze, and lots of suspension of disbelief. Borrowing more than a few elements from the legendary Enter the Dragon, released just a year earlier, it’s a mishmash of ideas that somehow forms a narrative that while not always cohesive, lends itself well to mayhem on the screen. – filmsmash
Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Starring: Etsuko Shihomi, Emi Hayakawa, Sanae Ôhori
