Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter 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.

A movie with a title like Sex Hunter would seem perfectly at home in any Al Adamson collection, and the fact that this entry returns at least relatively more consistently to the "girl gang" aspect that helped define Delinquent Girl Boss might also seem to be "Admason-ian" in its own way. Meiko Kaji is on hand as Mako, the leader of the Alleycats, with the girls having to deal with what are in essence the Japanese version of Skinheads. It's a fascinating basic premise, and if the film falls sway to the entire series' tendency to wander off into various detours, this outing has a certain electric energy that some of the others in the franchise only achieve in fits and starts.

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sex Hunter is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.48:1. 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. This is generally very much in line with the presentations of the first two films in the series, although to my eyes it looked like there was a slightly more purplish undertone to some of the proceedings in this presentation. Once again, some odd framings can offer things like out of focus elements in the foreground (see screenshot 1), which in turn can obviously affect detail levels (at least in that part of the frame). As with the first film, there are quite a few dark scenes as in some club material where an already pretty thick grain field spikes appreciably and clarity can ebb a bit. This film also offers some odd interstitials in a much narrower aspect ratio, as seen in screenshots 5 and 8.

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sex Hunter features an LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. Once again, if some of the effects work can sound a bit boxy, overall the track is nicely detailed and offers generally great fidelity. Both musical and spoken moments resonate with sufficient depth and clarity, and there are no age related issues of any note other than perhaps a bit of background hiss in the few quiet moments. Optional English subtitles are available.

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter 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: Sex Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sex Hunter probably reveals its lo-fi exploitation angle more clearly than its social critique side in terms of its presentation of what amounts to a racist gang, but the fact that there even is a racist gang in this film is rather interesting. Technical merits are generally solid, and the supplemental package for the entire release enjoyable. Recommended.