If the little girl, Shion, dressed in the
tiny nuns uniform, who looks to be about six, wants to be a
Warrior of God, then she has to take the .45 that Blind Father
(Kozi Shimizu) has given her and simply pump the petrified man
chained in the chair full of hot lead. That's it.
I mean who doesn't want to be Warrior of God? The little
girl does this thing and while she's upset about it, a Warrior
of God is born. Or more accurately, if we want to roll
with the title, a 'Beautiful Hunter' is born.
Fast forward ten years, according to the movie, though I'd
guess it's more like twenty since Shion (Makiko Kuno) looks to
be about twenty eight, and no doubt she's beautiful and we
assume she hunts. She has just received her latest
assignment from the Holy Church of the Murdering Lunatics and
she jumps in the van to handle her business. Unbeknownst
to Shion and the other priests in the van is that they are
being followed by an investigative reporter named Ito (Johnny
Okura) and his best friend. Don't ask me how they got
the scoop on these psychos but they are on the trail.
Shion shows up at the gig, and we gotta admit she didn't do
much hunting since wasting these people was pretty much like
shooting fish in a barrel, but she did do it with a minimum of
bullets and that was some economy we can appreciate.
Somehow, however, a maid got away. Somehow she ended up
in the sedan being driven by Ito and his boy and Shion and her
crew are now on their trail. Ito, on his friend's
suggestion, leaps out of the car so he can live to tell the
tale, and he tragically witnesses Shion execute his friend as
well as the maid, but at least he made it.
Not for long though because Shion is
well aware of Ito's existence. Eventually Shion tracks
Ito down, gets the photos she needs and back at his place was
about to put him out of his
misery, but my man falls down crying and
screaming like a big old sissy, and just by chance, during
this pathetic begging session, his face falls in Shion's
crotch. And her left titty magically pops out when this
happens too. Apparently Shion has never had a face fall
in her crotch and this is having a strange effect on the young
woman. Hmmm… note to self, when faced with certain death
from an assassin, allow my face to fall into said assassins
crotch. Unless this assassin is a dude, in which case I
guess I'm a dead man.
Now we have a bit of situation. The Church of the
Murdering Lunatics really needs Ito dead, and Shion really
wants to do what the church wants… but it looks like she might
be falling in love with the guy. Maybe it's the white
suit or the Elvis side burns… I don't know… but she's got it
bad for Ito and he's got it bad for her. We know why
he's falling for her. If it wasn't for the fact that
she's a cold blooded insane killer, Shion would be just about
perfect.
Well, you know as well as I do that you just can't leave the
game, the game leaves you. Shion and Ito tried to run
for it, but they suck at that. The worst ever at
that. Shion is captured and while I would've advised
Father to just kill her and get it over with, he needs to make
an example out of her and puts his Mistress of Torture Mitsuko
(Maika Kazama) on the case. This lady likes her
job a little too much. I don't want to say much about
how she goes about her business, but just think 'electrified
billyclub' and its potential uses, and you have an idea of
what Shion is up against as she hangs from the ceiling soaking
wet.
Ito isn't going to let his girl go out like that
however. Well… he is kind of since Shion had to go
through the entire torture sequence before Ito finally made it
there to help out a little, but now Shion is free and she's
not happy. She's going to be way less happier in about
ten minutes. Remember what we told you about Ito and
Shion sucking at running away? The operative word in the
term in running away is 'away'. These kids never did
figure that out. Nonetheless, The Church of the
Murderous Lunatics is going to regret doing Shion wrong…
Praise the Lord.
Masaru Konuma's 'XX: Beautiful Hunter' is fairly typical fare
in the genre of the Hot Japanese chick Assassin flick, the
kind we've seen in those awful Zero Woman movies… but the good
thing for us here in this exploitation corner is that
'Beautiful Hunter', heck if we know what the 'XX' stand for,
isn't awful. I mean it's certainly no work of art, with
the probable exception of the existence of Makiko Kuno who is
tailor made for artistic appreciation, but the movie is kind
of fun to sit through.
In addition to Makiko Kuno, we can also attribute a majority
of the competence in this film to director Masaru Konuma who
has plenty of experience directing this type of controlled
nonsense, and believe me… 'Beautiful Hunter' is complete
nonsense… but at least it is self-aware nonsense in that it
takes itself serious enough not to be total camp, but fully
recognizes what kind of movie this is supposed to be.
There were times that movie did drag a little during the
middle sections while Ito and Shion were getting to know each
other and some of the torture scenes were somewhat difficult
to watch, but for some quality Japanese exploitation cinema,
'XX: Beautiful Hunter' isn't so bad.
