Three pretty young women work as grifters, taking advantage of visitors at the Kyoto International Exhibition. The girls hang out in a bar run by a self-made woman. This woman had come to town just a few years ago with nothing but her boyfriend and a dream. Her boyfriend became an assistant manager at a grocery store while she worked her way up to owning the bar.
The girls start trapping and pimping local girls to make money. This includes a rape scene in the back of a taxi that is played for laughs that is profoundly disturbing, but sadly, it's not all that out of the ordinary in Japanese exploitation films of this era -- I digress.
Alas, the girls run afoul of the gangsters in town, and need to flee. The girls discover that the barkeep's boyfriend has been two-timing her, and hijinks ensue.
You might call this a proto-pinky girl-gang movie. The filmmakers didn't quite know how to commit at least somewhat to serious drama, comedy, or to the sex and violence. This film fell short for me, but thankfully, the genre as a whole found its footing in the next couple years. Junko Natsu appears as one of the girls, but she bears little resemblance here to the adorable protagonist in the Girls' School (Joshi gakuen) series which came out right around the same time. This film is not without some charm, but don't make this one your first stop on a deep dive.
