Rating: *
Review Date: 10/9/99
Alternate Title: Zero Woman: The Accused (U.S. Title)
Cast: Mai Tachihara
I can't stand this series, so why do I keep watching these films? I think it's because I like the premise (top secret female government agents) so much, and even though the treatment and execution is always poor and tasteless, I keep hoping to find one that doesn't suck. Unfortunately, this one isn't the one. Again, we see a radically different kind of Zero Woman, in the form of a cute and spunky actress named Mai Tachihara. She's not as dark and moody as many of the other Zero Women, but her vice is that she likes to drink heavily, and engage in recreational sex and drug use. After her first hit, she goes to a gay bar, gets plastered, and desperately gets it on with a gay gigolo. Shortly thereafter, we see the gay gigolo get violently gang-banged by a bunch of guys, and Zero Woman drags his unconscious body back to her place where he becomes her live-in boyfriend. Are you following this? Everything is going along pretty well until we find out that the guy has a nasty habit of dressing up as a girl and luring unsuspecting men into dark alleys so he can suck them off and then murder them. Well, I suppose that's one way to do it. Zero Woman happens to stumble upon one of his victims and is wrongly accused of the murder by the local police. After a long and hard interrogation, she forcefully seduces the officer in charge and is released. Hmmm... Next we find out that Zero Woman's latest mission is to track down and assassinate a dangerous serial killer who lures unsuspecting men into dark alleys and kills them. Oh, the irony. Of course it turns out to be her boyfriend, and when she can't muster up the courage to kill him, she decides to make love to him and let him cut her hair instead. Bad move, because the next thing we know, psycho-boy has stolen Zero Woman's gun and is out killing dirty old men again. The film ends on a bizarre note, as Zero Woman and psycho-boy get holed up in an abandoned building with the police hot on their tails, and she uses her last bullet to kill her deranged lover. That's it. The end. What happens to Zero Woman?
Once again, this entry was shot on video and suffers from lame camera work, sloppy editing, and an ultra-corny soundtrack. The very few action sequences are laughably bad, but despite the material, Zero Woman does a decent job throughout. The obligatory sex scenes are surprisingly not all that gratuitous, although all of the homosexual action dramatically increases the smut and taboo factor. Another great B-movie element I've been noticing more and more with this series is that none of the silencers they use on their guns fit correctly. They're all awkwardly crooked and look really awful. I'd be scared to use something that looked like that.