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Like some kind of strange all-female film noir, Ten Dark Women begins in a dark alley, with the convergence of the ten women of the title (one of whom is now a ghost, there to observe the proceedings unseen by the others, and comment on them for the benefit of the audience). The meeting is more like an ambush. One of the women has angered the others by double-crossing them somehow, and she's talking her way out of it. From this mysterious, tongue-in-cheek opening, the film proceeds, by way of an extended flashback, to relate the events leading up to this nighttime encounter. Shifting away from noir mode, it becomes a sophisticated battle of the sexes, in which the loutish, self-absorbed hero doesn't stand a chance. With its liberated, independent heroines and ahead-of-it's-time treatment of male-female relationships, Ten Dark Women has become something of a cult classic in Japan, and enjoyed a successful re-release nearly 40 years after its initial release.