In a brutal beach brawl between the Blood Red Cherry Blossom Gang and some violent Catholic schoolgirls, girl gang boss Kyoko Maki (Yuko Kano) bests treacherous Mina (Ryoko Ema) leaving her with a nasty scar. After two years in a juvenile detention centre, Kyoko returns to Osaka to find former gang member Mayumi (Rie Saotome) has gone straight, now happily married and expecting a baby. Shacking up with another friend, Yuki (Ritsuko Fujiyama), a taxi driver by day who turns tricks by night, Kyoko has a run-in with Mina and her gang. Now the kept woman of a rising yakuza, Mina uses her connections with the Tachibana mob to have Kyoko kidnapped and brutally tortured. Handsome thief Goro Saijo (Noboru Shiraishi) happens along and saves Kyoko's life after which in revenge she and the Blood Cherry Blossom girls muscle in on a blackmail scam Mina has going on involving sleazy businessmen. Things really hit the fan when Goro teams with Kyoko and the girls to rob diamonds from the mob.
'Pinky Violence' was the term coined by Japan's Toei studios to describe their unique line of groovy sexploitation-action-horror films. These encompassed ribald comedies, bawdy historical romps and surreal manga adaptations though most popular were the Sukeban films about delinquent schoolgirl gangs. As the seventh and final film in the series (rival studio Nikkatsu later co-opted the brand for a separate film series called Sukeban Mafia (1980), Crazy Ball Game has a smaller fan-base than earlier entries. Possibly because it features neither of the series regulars: Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto. In their place we have sultry Yuko Kano who played a supporting role in the previous film, Sukeban: Escape from Reform School (1973), and actually proves a worthy substitute, charismatic and fierce.
By this point the Sukeban series had clearly run its course given Crazy Ball Game not only recycles plot motifs from older entries but other pinky violence films too, notably the excellent Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess (1971). Even so it somehow develops its own distinct identity and emerges an especially grueling and downbeat entry. Past films were as much about the Sukeban doling out punishment as taking it but here the third act takes an especially harrowing turn as vengeful yakuza hunt down the girls, one by one and torture them to death. Though less gory than earlier films the girl-on-girl violence is even more brutal with punch-ups that go on forever and lingering torture scenes whose grimness even the fun disco dance sequences cannot dispel. To his credit, Ikuo Sekimoto stages the central rape sequence for maximum horror rather than titillation though the aftermath where Kyoko seeks solace in outdoor shower sex with Goro is tasteless.
Despite the exploitation angle the film has a positive sociopolitical agenda, illustrating how poverty breeds desperation and counterbalancing some of the girl gang's more extreme antics with a certain cockeyed morality. Sekimoto holds up corrupt corporations, crooked politicians, organized crime and even the odd hypocritical ordinary citizen as the real villains while casting the delinquent girls as appealing, anti-establishment heroines, small time crooks with big dreams (Goro yearns to visit Africa on safari). In one memorable sequence a seemingly innocent young mother abandons her baby with Kyoko and co. After using the infant in a blackmail scheme they leave him along with some money with a willing nursemaid. Throughout the film Kyoko is generous with her money to downtrodden folk while the ruthless yakuza cruelly exploit then abandon every one they meet. Mina and her gang are particularly vicious antagonists and the yakuza among the most scarily sadistic and amoral in the genre. The heroines are all gorgeous of course but also sport lively and engaging personalities making them easier to root for in the absence of conventional morality. Though not quite a top rank Pinky Violence effort, Crazy Ball Game moves like a bullet with some winning moments of pulp poetry and a brilliantly staged finale involving a hang-glider assault on the yakuza stronghold ("I'll show you how to fight like a girl!" Kyoko snarls winningly) and a thrilling speedboat chase before the poetic coda.
