The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 8-14
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970)
Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
The third entry in a five-film series, Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter makes hash out of sub-plots involving a girl gang falling in with an all-male one that goes by the name of the Eagles and is lead by an impotent boss named Barron; a blink-and-you-miss-it plan to expel mixed-race people from the region; an outsider coming to town to find his estranged sister; and a romance with a half-black man that the Eagles nix.
What really matters in Sex Hunter is Meiko Kaji, striking in a wide-brim black hat and matching black vest and pants. Stylishly dressed, Kaji leads the girl gang. She’s stoic, fierce, and, when in a knife fight, lethally nimble. Hasebe captures Kaji and her gang in bold and cartoonish shots that are illuminated with psychedelic purples, greens, and yellows. Sex Hunter is like a Roger Corman AIP film from the late 1960s. Tanner Tafelski (February 11, 7pm at Japan Society’s Meiko Kaji weekend)
