Sonny Chiba's Dragon Princess (1976)
"Hissatsu onna kenshi" (original title)

Karate master Kazuma gets severely beaten and crippled by nefarious rival Nikaido. Kazuma trains his loyal daughter Yumi in the martial arts so she can exact a harsh revenge on Nikaido and his band of evil thugs.

Director:

Yutaka Kohira

Writer:

Hirô Matsuda

Stars:

Etsuko Shihomi, Sonny Chiba, Yasuaki Kurata

Cast

Credited cast:
Etsuko Shihomi	...	Yumi Higaki
Sonny Chiba	...	Kazuma Higaki (as Shinichi Chiba)
Yasuaki Kurata	...	Masahiko Okizaki
Jirô Chiba	...	Jiro Chinen
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bin Amatsu	...	Hironobu Nikaido
Masashi Ishibashi	...	Shiroge Oni
Tatsuya Kameyama	...	Baba
Shunsuke Kariya	...	Yokoi
Yoshi Katô	...	Kakuzen
Genji Kawai	...	Robert Okizaki
Hôsei Komatsu	...	Eisaku Ohba
Yûsuke Nagumo	...	Mashiko
Ryojiro Nishimoto	...	Nagashima
Kyôko Okada	...	Mrs. Chinen
Takeshi Omaeda	...	Yasuda

Storyline

Karate master Kazuma gets severely beaten and crippled by nefarious rival Nikaido. Kazuma trains his loyal daughter Yumi in the martial arts so she can exact a harsh revenge on Nikaido and his band of evil thugs.

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Plot Keywords:

martial arts | kung fu

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Taglines:

Her Mother Is Revenge!

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Genres:

Action

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

31 January 1976 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Sonny Chiba's Dragon Princess

Company Credits

Production Co:

Toei Tokyo

Technical Specs

Runtime:

81 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

User Reviews

Etsuko Shiomi and Yasuaki Kurata deserve better

I saw "Dragon Princess" on a double-feature DVD; the other movie was "The Bodyguard", starring Sonny Chiba, who appears only in the opening 10 minutes of this one. It's an appropriate pairing, not only because of the Chiba connection, but because the two movies share the same basic problems: a story that feels stretched even at 90- minutes, lots of pointless filler, and fight scenes that generally don't deliver the goods due to a combination of poor filming and poor DVD transferring. "Dragon Princess" is a little better than "The Bodyguard", if only because there are more and longer fights. And there are some memorable scenes, like Etsuko Shiomi using kung fu against vicious dogs (years before Milla Jovovich did it in "Resident Evil"), a bad guy going crazy when he hears bell noises, and Shiomi & Yasuaki Kurata jumping from the top of a high cliff and landing safely on their two feet. But I can't stop feeling that both Shiomi (who looks really beautiful here) and Kurata deserved a better showcase than this. (*1/2)