Self-consciously but straight-facedly campy thriller (dug up from the heyday of psychedelia -- and the color is garishly magnificent) about the duel of wits between "Japan's number one detective" and a female master criminal who'll stop at nothing to get hold of a South African diamond called Star of Egypt. (The woman is played by an obvious man -- female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama -- and the anticipated revelation of sexual duplicity, as in Spillane's Vengeance Is Mine, never comes.) The Saturday-matinee-serial quality frequently takes wing in flights of authentic poetry and perversity, courtesy (most probably) of Yukio Mishima, who wrote the original stage play and who makes here a cameo appearance as a taxidermized human. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku. (1968) — Duncan Shepherd
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