In this "free-jazz gangster film," "Phoenix" Tetsu drifts around Japan awaiting his own extinction until he's called back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Equal parts Russ Meyer, Nagisa Oshima, and Frank Tashlin, this "barrage of aesthetic violence, visual gags, [and] mind-warping color effects," once again put Suzuki in trouble with Nikkatsu studio heads, who had ordered him to "play it straight this time."