BODACIOUS BOOBS, DISTAFF DESTRUCTION AND BADASS BITCHES: THE CINEMA OF THE TOUGH CHICK

Let’s face it, ladies. You’re all familiar with the so-called “chick flick” genre of movies, willowy celluloid confections pandering to your perceived estrogenic desire to see nothing but endlessly repeated tales of weepy romance, makeovers where the wallflower protagonist is revealed to be hotter than a rod of uranium, “all men are scum” fare of the kind commonly infesting the Lifetime channel, and fantasies involving frumpy, neglected housewife types finding a hot and eager cock in a foreign country, usually someplace with a picturesque beach, and said turgid appendage usually provided by a tanned and tigerish guy in a Speedo that makes him look like he’s smuggling plums. That’s all well and good, but what about those times when you’re simply fed up with your life in general (and perhaps your significant other in particular), and you want to escape into a movie featuring smart, capable and tough women kicking, slicing, punching and blasting the motherfucking shit of anyone stupid enough to mess with them? Plenty of such movies do exist and while there are many such offerings, the majority of them are devoid of entertainment value by virtue of being nothing more than a display of nubile flesh and graphic violence concocted to appeal to a mostly male audience that’s satisfied with simply seeing lots of titties and showering blood filling the screen (which describes about half of the movies I love and own). So how does the discerning newbie viewer separate the wheat from the chaff and get straight to the gems the genre has to offer? Well, film fans, let this admittedly less than comprehensive handy guide serve as your beginner’s gateway into the glorious realm of the cinema of the Tough Chick.

Touch Chicks, or “broads” as they were known when embodied by Lauren Bacall and Mamie Van Doren back in the days of yore, are by no means a new phenomenon in the movies, but for all intents and purposes the Ground Zero of the genre would most likely be big-titty-maestro Russ Meyer’s seminal FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! from 1965.

The heroines (?) of the seminal FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (L-R) Lori Williams, Haji and Tura Satana.

This black and white potboiler tracks the homicidal escapades of a trio of bosomy go-go dancers who enjoy drag racing against one another in the desert when not shaking their ample dairies in front of greasy, drunken Joe Sixpacks.

Tura Satana in the iconic role of homicidal go-go-dancing dyke Varla.

During one of their forays into the Californian wastes, their de facto leader, the hot and uber-butch Varla (played to indelible effect by Japanese-Apache former real-life girl gang leader Tura Satana), savagely murders a “square” racer using her karate and wrasslin’ skills, after which she kidnaps his bikini-clad, whiny girlfriend (played by Susan Bernard, PLAYBOY's Miss March for 1966, and lookalike for my friend Matt's wife). The dancers flee an inevitable confrontation with the law and in doing so they stumble across a reclusive old man and his two sons and seek shelter at their remote homestead. Turns out the old fart is loaded after a settlement from the train company he sued after being relegated to a wheelchair following a run-in with a locomotive, and Varla has her epicanthic eyes set on the prize. The geezer is also a pervy old bastard and sets his vile sights on the petite kidnap victim, but what’s a wheelchair-bound cripple going to do? Simple: direct his retarded and hulking bodybuilder son — charmingly named “the Vegetable” — to rape the poor girl while he watches, but Varla’s wise to his game… Meanwhile, Varla’s accomplices also have their own issues to sort out. Blonde and bubbly Billie (Lori Williams) — by far the most likable of the trio — is hankering for a man and aims to experience the Vegetable’s presumed Herculean carnal prowess, while Varla’s girlfriend, Rosie (Haji), struggles to keep herself in check while witnessing Varla’s unabashedly lubricious attempts at seducing the old man’s other son in hope of wrangling the whereabouts of his dad’s fortune out of him. It’s a fully packed, ultra-sleazy 83-minute masterpiece of pulchritude and pernicious pugilism, and has since gone on to earn a well-deserved cult following as the Rosetta Stone of the onscreen tough chick/bad girl ethos.

As the 1970’s happened and the fallout from the turbulent 1960’s influenced Hollywood, the action genre doors were kicked open and downright pulled off their hinges with the genesis of “blaxploitation” and the martial arts movie boom. Blaxploitation can be traced back to Melvin Van Peebles’ pioneering and uncompromising SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (1971) and the major studio effort SHAFT (also 1971), and once it became apparent that “black is box office,” producers wasted no time in flooding the nascent market with all manner of melanin-based movies, most of which relied on the tried and true use of sex and violence to put butts in seats.

The one-of-a-kind sheer badassedness that is Miss Pam Grier.

Without question the central female figure of the blaxploitation era was Pam Grier, who started out in low budget, shot-in-the-Phillipines “women in prison” flicks, and later set the standard for what we now consider to be the black action heroine. One need look no further than the history of blacks in this country to determine that black women have put up with and survived through a lot of truly horrible situations, so their toughness was kind of a well known given, thus making the gun-toting, karate-fighting, and occasionally castrating aspect of such characters totally plausible to audiences, and Pam Grier was exactly the right actress to fill that role at the right time.

Grier’s output was considerable, but the film that perfectly sums up what her appeal was all about is 1973’s COFFY, a classic thriller that pits Grier’s titular nurse against the drug dealing vermin whose narcotics put her little sister into a coma from which she may never recover. Coffy proves just as violent and ruthless as her prey — blowing one dealer’s head off at point blank range with a sawed-off shotgun in the film’s first five minutes — and her trail of vengeance both compels and surprises as she does whatever it takes to achieve her goal. Memorable sequences include Coffy infiltrating the ranks of a pimp’s stable of whores and starting a brutal catfight in which she conceals utility razor blades in her planet-sized Afro, and a distinctly one-sided fight with a huge and enraged bull dyke who thinks Coffy’s been messing with her strung-out girlfriend. Badassed to the core, COFFY was a big hit on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit and cemented Grier’s place as the queen of the blaxploitation milieu.

The proto-Xena cheapie THE ARENA, in which we get Pam Grier (rocking an impressive '70's bush) as a gladiatrix. Nothing wrong with that scenario!

Special note should also be given to the shot-in-Italy THE ARENA (1974) for its proto-Xena tale of female gladiators during the days of the Roman Empire, a scenario that allowed Grier to strut her top-heavy stuff as captured African tribal dancer Mamawi while wielding a trident against all comers and eventually leading a successful slave revolt. It’s cheesy and horrendously dubbed, but it’s hard to beat as an entertaining way to kill eighty-three minutes.

Pam Grier and Margaret Markov — once paired in the far less interesting BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (guess who played who? — taking no shit in THE ARENA.

The aforementioned martial arts movie boom threw just about every conceivable Asian whupass scenario onto the screen in the wake of Bruce Lee and ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), and one of the most visceral films of the era was 1974’s THE STREET FIGHTER. Starring the brooding and intense Sonny Chiba as a modern day Japanese karate expert anti-hero whose skills bore none of Bruce Lee’s grace but contained all the lethal and gory effectiveness of a McCullogh chain saw, the film garnered an “X” rating for violence and gore when first released in the United States and was swiftly re-edited and re-released with sixteen minutes of gore excised, a move that effectively rendered the film nigh incomprehensible. Nonetheless the film earned a cult following and in no time Sonny Chiba was cranking out karate movies with gusto, often starring actors he’d groomed through Japan Action Club school. One such protégée was Etsuko “Sue” Shihomi, who played a memorable supporting character in THE STREET FIGHTER, and while that film did little to showcase her considerable martial arts acumen, that oversight was rectified with the release of SISTER STREET FIGHTER to U.S. theaters in 1976.

Japanese release poster for ONNA HISSATSU KEN ("Killing Fist Woman"), known to grindhouse attendees everywhere as SISTER STREET FIGHTER.

Contrary to popular belief, the film (and its sequels) have no connection to THE STREET FIGHTERother than sharing many of the same cast members, and being fine examples of wall-to-wall karate mayhem that the Japanese refined to a rather sanguinary art form. While not as outright bloody as The Street Fighter, Shihomi’s first starring vehicle is a highly entertaining — if illogical — story of a female martial arts expert searching for her cop brother who’s been captured by sadistic drug dealers. There’s really not much plot, but rather a launching pad/excuse for shattering fight scene after shattering fight scene, and god help anyone who gets in Etsuko’s way.

Etsuko Shihomi.

Every bit the badass Lee and Chiba were, Shihomi’s character is one of the Tough Chick genres most formidable fighters and is a pleasure to watch in action. (Just make sure to skip all of her other starring vehicles, with the exception of SONNY CHIBA'S DRAGON PRINCESS, since they more or less royally suck.)

Meiko Kaji classes up the place while administering razor-sharp ass-whuppings as LADY SNOWBLOOD.

Also hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun is 1973’s LADY SNOWBLOOD, based on the manga story written by Kazue Koike, the legendary author of the classic samurai saga Lone Wolf and Cub (which was also adapted into a series of classic films). Starring cult Tough Chick actress Meiko Kaji, this revenge tale focuses on Yuki, the visual epitome of classy and demure geisha beauty, and her quest to avenge the violent and unwarranted deaths of her school teacher father and brother and the unjust imprisonment of her mother. While behind bars, Yuki’s mother realizes she has no backup child to avenge her murdered loved ones, so she indiscriminately gives herself to any prison guard who will have her in hope of conceiving a son. She dies giving birth to Yuki, and the girl is raised by a kindly monk who molds her into a swordswoman of lethal skill and talent. When she’s around eighteen or so, Yuki embarks on the trail of the killers, some of whom have become powerful political figures, and her prim demeanor provides her with a perfect way of hiding in plain sight. Yuki’s odyssey is long, hard and painful, but her focus and determination make her an implacable foe to be reckoned with. Followed by an inferior sequel, LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE, LADY SNOWBLOOD is easily the most “artsy” film on this list thanks to its gorgeous cinematography and intriguing direction by Toshiya Fujita. That’s not to say that it rivals the work of Akira Kurosawa, but it is definitely one of the better and more unusual of the ‘70’s-era samurai flicks.

The 1970’s exploitation wave proved fertile ground for the Tough Chick movie, and perhaps no other effort of the era personifies the crazy, over-the-top potential of the genre like 1975’s THE JEZEBELS, later re-titled and better known as SWITCHBLADE SISTERS.

SWITCHBLADE SISTERS: the completely warped direct descendant of FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! and one of the most entertaining bad girl movies of all time.

Tellingly directed and co-written by Jack Hill, the writer and director of COFFY, SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is an unintentionally (?) hilarious and insane piece of work that could probably never get made today, and more’s the pity. The ludicrous story revolves around the adventures of the Dagger Debs (the distaff complement to the way-too-old-to-be-playing-teenagers Daggers gang) and their many run-ins with the law and other gangs, and the internal power struggle between chipmunk-faced leader Lace (the scenery-chewing Robbie lee) and tough newcomer Maggie (Joanne nail, whose costume makes her look like a superhero) , who has transferred to the Debs’ high school.

Lace (Robbie Lee) shows Donut who's boss. (BTW, Donut is played by Kitty Bruce, daughter of "sick" humor pioneer Lenny Bruce.)

When Maggie’s brief affair (more accurately described as a rape that changes gears) with pregnant Lace’s meathead boyfriend, Daggers leader Dominic, is discovered, it’s only a matter of time until Maggie and Lace must fight it out for supremacy. But Maggie’s already taken over the Debs by impressing them with her assorted criminal deeds, seceded them from the Daggers, and renamed the girl gang as the Jezebels, so when the inevitable set-to finally takes place, Lace is practically foaming at the mouth like a rabid squirrel. Featuring a staggeringly loony script that’s loaded with ridiculous dialog, black lesbian separatists who train as an urban guerilla army and build a homemade tank/assault vehicle,

rival gangs who wear outfits guaranteed to wilt the audience’s corneas, howlingly idiotic massacres in a roller rink and on the streets of the story’s unnamed city (presumably somewhere in California), Switchblade Sisters can not-inaccurately be described as a less literate take on A Clockwork Orange’s teen violence-ridden dystopia, and would make for the ideal second half of a double feature with FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

Following its heyday in the 1970’s the Tough Chick genre mellowed considerably. Although bright spots like ALIENS (1986) and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) re-defined the pre-existing characters Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor into icons of the form and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)shamelessly ripped off Modesty Blaise to fun effect, the Tough Chick films offered up by mainstream Hollywood studios simply didn’t pack the straight-to-the-guts punch held by their predecessors. That may be due to an unconscious (?) backlash against movies placing women in action hero roles usually dominated by the likes of the Stallone, Shwarzenegger and Van Damme stable of male fantasy fulfillers, or it may go hand in hand with the gradual extinction of grindhouses and drive-ins as multiplexes proliferated. Whatever the case, the halcyon days of Tough Chick cinema are now behind us, but thankfully preserved on DVD, there to serve as inspiration for a hoped-for resurgence.