Dragon Princess (its original title translates to be Frenzied Woman Fist Fighter) is about what you’d expect a post-Bruce Lee, B-budget Japanese martial arts feature to be: not very good, for starters. It is a typical example of the cheap karate flicks that flourished throughout the 1970s – although this one came out as late as 1981.

Dragon Princess deals with a young girl raised by her stern karate-instructor father (Sonny Chiba himself) to be nothing less than a female killing machine. Years previous, the little girl had watched him betrayed, beaten, and humiliated by a gang of outlaws, the leader of which coveted the upcoming instructor title which Chiba’s character would have taken over. He was stabbed and had one eye poked out but was allowed to live; that was the villains’ mistake. As time passed, he raised his daughter to become the eventual instrument of his revenge. Upon his death, she goes out into the world to fulfill her destiny.

The revenge plot is so straightforward that we already know exactly what’s going to happen. Very few – if any – original twists are thrown in here. The fight sequences are decent, though, especially considering the semi-colorful triad of assassins that are the movie’s main villains. The wildest one is a blade-throwing, snow-haired chap, whom Chiba blinded in the first reel; how the dragon princess counteracts his super-keen hearing is fun to watch.

The star of this film is Etsuko ‘Sue’ Shihomi, who in real life was Chiba’s protégé and one of the star students of his Japan Action Club. Her acting abilities and personality are certainly enough to make her a martial-arts star, and in a few films, such as this one and Sister Street Fighter, she gained some international notoriety.

If this film is going to have any sort of legacy, however, we need a better transfer than the crappy pan-&-scan that’s currently available on R1 DVD. (I was surprised to find this film came out as late as 1981, given the poor picture and audio.) In fact, all of Sonny Chiba’s movies – and the films of the actors around him like Shihomi – deserve better treatment in the digital age. The Brentwood ‘Ten Faces of Sonny Chiba’ box set which I own may be affordable, but the poor film quality significantly detracts from its value. Still, they are almost certainly doing the best they can with what prints they have. So to the Japanese studios who still own the originals: how about some new prints?