Underworld Beauty

Retrieving the diamonds he stashed before his arrest, thief Miyamoto (Michitar Mizushima,The Executioner) hopes to help his old partner Mihara (Tru Abe,Shogun), crippled during the heist. Their former boss, crime lord Oyane (Shinsuke Ashida,Stray Dog), offers to mediate with a foreign buyer, but secretly wants the stones for himself. The deal goes awry when gunmen appear on the scene. Mihara swallows the diamonds but dies in the chase, leaving a valuable corpse in the police morgue. Miyamoto forms an uneasy alliance with Mihara’s wildcat sister Akiko (Mari Shiraki,The Gambling Nun) to keep the gems away from gangsters, cops and even Akiko’s greedy boyfriend.

This wildly inventive early noir seesSeijun Suzuki(Branded to Kill, Tattooed Life) infectiously playing with genre rules and gender stereotypes.