Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo 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.

Some Asian cinema enthusiasts might understandably associate the names of star Meiko Kaji and director Toshiya Fujita with 1973’s Lady Snowblood, but three years before that venerable franchise debuted, Fujita was helping to further establish Nikkatsu’s Stray Cat Rock series with this sophomore effort. This is another odd, arguably even more gonzo, outing that is both like and unlike Delinquent Girl Boss. This film actually doesn’t feature a girl gang as prominently, and in fact it’s a kind of co-ed gang who kidnaps a woman named Asako (Bunjaku Han) in what would seem to be the major plot focus of the film. However, much as with Delinquent Girl Boss, there are some really odd sidebars stuffed into the proceedings, including a religious cult and a caper aspect.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wild Jumbo is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.45:1. 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. I'm scoring this at the same level as Delinquent Girl Boss, but this is arguably a bit more variable in some aspects, including clarity, grain structure and damage. There are some noticeable signs of age related wear and tear that are perhaps a bit more prevalent in this film than in the first, and the glut of outdoor location footage can also mean there's a great variability in detail levels. When this presentation is firing on all (or most) cylinders, the palette is nicely suffused and detail levels can be quite inviting. Some outdoor material can look relatively hazy and ill defined by comparison. Grain tends to ebb and flow, not necessarily related to lighting conditions, but is more often than not on the gritty side, as befits this series' low budget look.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Wild Jumbo features an LPCM Mono track in the original Japanese. There's some of the same boxiness I mentioned in the Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss Blu- ray review in terms of some of the sound effects (like the rumbling Jeep the kids ride in), but once again the music is rather nicely vibrant and clear. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo 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: Wild Jumbo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This film's at least partial turn away from the "girl gang" side of things may be just one way that it seems like a kind of odd follow up to Delinquent Girl Boss. Fujita attempts to invest this film with some style, succeeding quite a bit of the time, but the story here is pretty muddled and unconvincing. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplements for the entire package enjoyable.