Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 27, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of Stray Cat Rock: The Collection.

If you're a fan of "happened on this day" trivia, here's a little example, though I'm just a few days late as this review is going live. There was a (very) little remembered musical that opened almost exactly 53 years ago to the day on October 23, 1967, called Henry, Sweet Henry, which was based on the charming Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient. Though it only ran for 80 official performances, it was ironically one of the more successful musicals in a disastrous year on Broadway which was documented in William Goldman’s book The Season. Goldman spends an entire chapter on Henry, Sweet Henry, and while he lays the blame of the failure of the show on critics (one in particular), he also brings up an interesting datapoint which is perhaps directly relevant to the Stray Cat Rock series of films. The creative staff behind Henry, Sweet Henry fashioned the show to highlight the talents of a young singer-actress named Robin Wilson, but when the show opened it was a featured player named Alice Playten who attracted all the attention and who ultimately received the musical’s only Tony nomination in a performance category. (Trivia fans will recognize Playten as the less than successful wife whose cooking creates digestive problems for her husband in some old Alka Seltzer commercials). At least somewhat similarly, the creative staff at Nikkatsu, reeling (with the rest of the Japanese film industry) from financial issues, attempted to “guarantee” box office for a planned series of films by fashioning them around singing star Akiko Wada. However, when the first Stray Cat Rock film opened, it was actually supporting player Meiko Kaji who attracted a lot of the attention and who in fact went on to arguably become the “face” of the franchise. The quintet of films attempted to cater to the so-called "youth market", and have a number of cinematic progenitors, but which might be compared at least somewhat to some of Roger Corman's biker films or even some of the Al Adamson "gang" efforts from more or less the same period. This is a re-release of an earlier Arrow release which also included DVD copies as well as a booklet, neither of which are included in this version.

Among the “other” antecedents alluded to in the above paragraph would have to be the 1968 Toie effort Furyô banchô , which got translated as Delinquent Boss, the first of an insanely successful so-called Bōsōzoku films for that studio and one which must have caught the eye of some Nikkatsu employee who thought, "Hey, we could do that". This film’s title is an obvious play on the former film’s, and the film itself is kind of like a distaff version, featuring Akiko Wada as a biker girl named Ako. There are some fitful attempts to work in some sociopolitical angles, but this is probably best appreciated as more or less pure exploitation fare, albeit through a Japanese filter. Considering the fact that Meiko Kaji went on to appear in the subsequent Stray Cat Rock films, her character's arc in this film is a little ironic.

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Delinquent Girl Boss is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Since this release does not include an insert booklet, I'm not privy to any verbiage Arrow may have included about the transfer in its prior release of this title. When lighting conditions allow, this transfer offers a nice accounting of the palette, while preserving generally excellent detail levels, albeit within the context of some often askew framings and techniques like the frequent employ of fisheye lenses. The whole series is filled with optical effects, including split screens, and that's the case here, with some resultant degradation in the image. There are noticeable signs of age related wear and tear along the way, but mostly in the form of minor nicks or white flecks. Grain resolves a bit more tightly in the well lit material, but is still often pretty gritty looking, especially in the many dark scenes.

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Delinquent Girl Boss features a rather robust sounding LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. While there is a somewhat narrow, boxy sound to some of the effects (notably some of the roaring motorcycles), the music in particular resonates very well, with nice fidelity and appealing dynamic range. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Arrow has packaged this with Delinquent Girl Boss, Wild Jumbo, and Sex Hunter on Disc One and Machine Animal and Beat '71 on Disc Two.

Disc One

• Wild Jumbo Trailer (1080p; 2:42)


• Sex Hunter Trailer (1080p; 3:16)

Disc Two

• Interviews are in Japanese with English subtitles:

  Yasuharu Hasebe (1080i; 28:37)

  
  

  Tatsuya Fuji (1080i; 30:06)

  
  

  Yoshio Harada (1080i; 33:06)

• Trailers

  Machine Animal (1080p; 2:48)

  
  

  Beat '71 (1080p; 2:37)

Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Delinquent Girl Boss is an intentionally psychedelic, gonzo outing, and if it never seems to know exactly where it's going, there's often a lot happening on the way to getting there. Technical merits are generally solid, and the supplements, while not bounteous, are enjoyable. Recommended.