The fourth entry of the series changes its focus from racism to drugs, while retaining the same, music promoting (the film also features Meiko Kaji's sister Tomoko Arisawa giving a performance), exploitation/action premises that characterizes the whole series. At the same time though, it becomes obvious that the peak of the collection, had already been met in “Sex Hunter”, and there was nowhere but down to go from there.
Buy This Title
Maya is the leader of a gang of girls who have teamed up with a motorcycle gang of men, the Dragons, led by Sakura, in order to have fun doing drugs and listening to music in clubs but also to terrorize the area they spend their time in. One day, they encounter two “country bumpkins”, Nobo and Sabu, and they proceed on harassing them for no reason, particularly for not being from Tokyo. A bit later, however, the two of them are revealed to be in town in order to search for a boat to take them to Sweden, and have 500 hits of LSD with them to achieve their goal. With them is an ex-American soldier named Charlie, who has deserted the army and has the MP on his heels, making their will to leave even more eminent.
The girls stumble upon them in the club they frequent, learn of their plans, and proceed on stealing the drugs from them. The three fugitives, however, tracks them down, plead their case, and actually convince Maya to help them. In order to do so, she brings in the Dragons to the case, but they, and particularly their handicapped leader, Yuri, have other plans for the drugs.
As usual in the series, Yasuharu Hasebe has included a social comment, about the blights of drugs and the network that was circulating them at the time. However, his approach is not exactly serious, and the concept is only used to further the story, since the actual consequences of dropping acid are just presented in one scene. This scene, on the other hand, with its trippy setting and the ways all the users lose their grip to reality while listening to psychedelic rock, is probably the most impressive in the movie, the one where Hasebe, DP Yoshihiro Yamazaki and editor Mitsuo Tanji really went full throttle in both conception and implementation.
The second memorable scene, and the one that highlights the action aspect of the movie is the motorcycle chase, which is also the source of the most funny scene in the movie, as Maya shouts “Shit! We need Hondas” before the movie cuts in a Honda dealership where the gang members proceed on “borrowing” the vehicles. Probably one of the greatest placement ads of all time.
At the same time, and in a rather personal note as a Greek, I found the concept of the Greek bar that serves as the “center” of illegal transportation outside the country, hilarious, even more so when a number of Japanese and foreigners dance something that looks like a traditional Greek dance, yelling “opa” all the time.
The acting aspect here finds one of its highest points in the series. Although Meiko Kaji as Maya is not as impressive as in the previous entry, she still dominates the screen with her presence on a number of occasions. At the same time, Bunjaku Han as Yuri, the villain behind the shadows gives a rather cult performance. The ones who still the show, though, are the male characters, with Tatsuya Fuji as Nobo and Jiro Okazaki as Sabu giving great performances, with the latter having a more dramatic role he presents rather convincingly. Lastly, Eiji Go as Sakura provides a great, quite despicable villain.
“Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal” had all the prerequisites to become a great film, but in the end, this is only achieved in a few scenes, with the majority of the movie remaining unfulfilled, episodic and disconnected, and the rush Hasebe was forced to shoot it with, taking a rather significant toll.
