Kiriko II Film Review

There were theCrimson Bat films produced in the 1960s featuring a blind swordswoman that was clearly influenced by Zatoichi and in the 1990s there was the Blind Cat aka Kiriko. This is the sequel to the 1993 The Blind Cat starring Megumi Takahashi and directed by Satoru Kobayashi. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find that film, but it appears she made an enemy of a Yakuza boss who wants revenge. Magumi returns as Kiriko but the directing duties were handed over to Takeshi Miyasaka, who was behind such fare as The High School Samurai Boy and six episodes of Cutie Honey.

This is clearly straight to video during that period in the 1990s when Japan was turning out a surplus of low budget female action films. Usually, Girls with Guns, but this is a Girl with Sword film. Kiriko is blind but as one guy says, her ears are as good as eyes. Maybe better. This is displayed right off the bat as a gang of hooligans is chasing a young woman and have shot her with an arrow in her thigh. They have the bad luck of running by Kiriko who slices and dices them into silence. And she just goes on her way like she picked up trash on the street and dropped in a garbage bin.

Like Zatoichi, she is a professional masseur and is called to another city for a massage. On the train, she meets Saki (Rie Kondo), a young girl who is looking for her father. The call is a trap for Kiriko and she is met by a gang of slashers playing loud sounds. She is saved though by a policewoman, Reiko (Saori Iwama) and she teams up with the cops to bring down Mr. Saito. It all gets very confusing with various parties entering the film, but it turns out the bad guys want Saki as pressure to force her father to produce a powerful drug. A long stretch of little happening leads to a nice suspenseful lengthy finale with some truly pervy bad guys trying to kill her. The crotch-grabbing villain is played by the Japanese director Sabu, but at this point he was only an actor. As best as I can tell, this was the end of the series.