★★★½
The Inspector Wears Skirts
Spun off from the popular Lucky Stars series, this takes Madam Wu (Hu), who had first appeared in Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, and branches out into its own saga. After an unfortunate incident involving a sheik’s wife, the local police decide to set up a special group of women officers, who can handle similarly sensitive missions. Wu is given the task of licking the candidates into shape, with the help of Interpol’s Madam Law (Rothrock), and despite the disdain of Inspector Kan (Fung), who is training a similar group of men. Needless to say, the male and female squad members compete, both for success and each other’s attentions, but both are called in to provide security for a showcase featuring priceless jewels. Will the ladies finally be able to prove they are worthy of serving alongside their gentleman colleagues?
If you want an example of the “kitchen sink” school of Hong Kong cinema, look no further, because Chin hurls everything he can think of at the camera. As well as the action – largely concentrated around whenever Madame Law is present – there’s drama (the inevitable cocky bitch among the women learns it’s a team job, misanthropy (two of the recruits discover they share the same boyfriend, and give him a brutal beating) and even a musical number. Oh, yes: and large slabs of broad comedy, particularly in the middle, with a lengthy sequence resulting after the two teams go on a mutual outing to a roller-skating rink. This isn’t subtle, but I’ll admit, I did laugh out loud on at least one occasion. The shifting between these approaches is rarely less than jerky, leaving the viewer with the vague impression they’re channel surfing HK television.
Still, the action, whenever it shows up, is as good as you’d expect from a film produced by Jackie Chan, and on which his world-famous Stunt Team was involved. Rothrock and Hu do much of the heavy lifting, but the rest of the cast don’t seem to get off lightly, Hui in particular. Bizarrely memorable, is the training sequence where Law encourages the recruits to run faster by having them chased by blazing trails of gasoline. [The Chan-esque out-takes at the end show you they clearly needed a couple of takes to get that right…] The final battle, against Western jewel thief Jeffrey Falcon is particularly impressive, and is embedded at the end of this review for your viewing pleasure. If only there’d been rather more of this – rather than, say, quite as much roller-skating – this could have been a classic. Instead, it’s excellent in short bursts, and merely acceptable for long spells.
Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Sibelle Hu, Kara Hui, Shui-Fan Fung, Cynthia Rothrock
a.k.a. Top Squad
★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts II
For the first hour, this is among the most miserable of action heroine sequels ever to come out of Hong Kong. It’s right down there with Naked Killer II: Raped by an Angel, in terms of the gulf in quality and entertainment value separating it from the original. While Hu and Fung return, as leaders of the male and female squads respectively, outside of a minor battle in the lunch-room, there is almost no significant action to speak of, until the final 20 minutes. It’s almost as if the makers forgot entirely about this side of things until the last week of shooting, and were forced to make up for lost time. It’s certainly brisk and not badly put-together. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be ramming your head into the wall and praying for unconsciousness, long before all that shows up.
The main thing you’ll take away is an appreciation for the delicate balance between action and comedy managed in the first film. Where that juggled those two balls with some adroitness, the balance here is tilted heavily towards the latter, and I’m strongly inclined to put comedy in quotes. For the laughs are largely the product of things like new recruit Amy Yip’s large breasts – she cuts holes in her bullet-proof vest, because she doesn’t want it flattening her figure. There’s even a scene which makes heavy use of flaming excrement for comedic effect. Oh, hold my aching sides for I fear they may split. As in the original, there’s a lengthy “date night” sequence, set at a birthday party for Madame Wu, rather than a roller-skating rink, but still complete with a musical number. It manages to be even worse-staged than the original.
Things do improve somewhat in the second half. There’s a contest on an obstacle course, which emphasizes teamwork over individual success, then another rehash from part one, a “best out of three” martial arts match between the Banshee and Tiger squads. These could have been the most badly choreographed fights in the history of kung fu, and they would still have come as a blessed relief from comedic Peeping Tom-foolery and people smearing tofu on their own face. Have to say, the poster above (Vietnamese?) probably had rather more effort put into its creation, than most of the scenes in the actual movie. There’s an almost overpowering feeling this was little more than a hurriedly concocted cash-in on the success of its predecessor.
Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Sibelle Hu, Sandra Ng, Shui-Fan Fung, Billy Lau
★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts III
Just about any effort at meaningful action is abandoned here, in favour of comedy which spoofs other movies, including Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Chinese Ghost Story series and, in the second half, Hong Kong classic, God of Gamblers. Actually, as a fan (to varying degrees) of all those, I didn’t mind too much: it’s a damn sight more successful than the dire attempts at humour which sank part II before it had left the harbour. Those boat metaphors are also appropriate, given this carries the sub- or alternative title, Raid On Royal Casino Marine. The main mission here sees the Banshee Squad going undercover on a boat, where Amy (Ng) has to take over as a syndicate’s top gambler, after the real person is unceremoniously dumped overboard. However, robbers have designs on the $200 million pot, and hijack the ship, so it’s up to Madam Wu (Hu) to parachute in to the rescue of Inspector Kan (Fung).
Takes a while to get to that point, as it starts with We and Kan now married, and Wu apparently largely happy to be a home-maker. Kan is tasked with reviving the Banshee Squad, though his training methods are… somewhat different, shall we say. Yay for electrocuting tied-up women! They gain revenge by donning the hockey mask and knife gloves of Jason and Freddy Krueger, to terrorize him, then restaging an entire Chinese Ghost Story sequence. It’s all such a product of its time (1990) – but since that was when I was heavily into both schlock horror and Hong Kong fantasy, I can’t complain too much, and just wallowed in shameless nostalgia for a bit. However, whatever it may have gained on the comedy side, is entirely handed back in a lack of competent or interesting action. Jackie Chan and his team had clearly severed all connections with the series for this entry, and the results are entirely pedestrian, with hardly a single moment, let alone sequence, of note.
While it likely made more sense at the time, I can safely say it certainly hasn’t stood the test of time very well. I think it’s probably best to say no more and move on to the final entry. Otherwise, I’ll probably have spent longer writing this review, than they spent on creating the entire movie…
Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Shui-Fan Fung, Sandra Ng, Billy Lau, Sibelle Hu
a.k.a. Raid On Royal Casino Marine
★★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts IV
While still packed with crappy humour, this was at least crappy humour that occasionally made me laugh, rather than roll my eyes. The fourth and final installment went out on a relative high. It demonstrates that it helps when making an action-comedy, to have actors who know their way round the action part. Here, that’s Lee and Khan, both of whom were veterans in the Hong Kong GWG field, and the martial arts here are pretty close to the quality we saw in the first installment.
Madam Lee (Lee) is struggling with the latest bunch of female recruits in the Banshee Squad, to the point where her boss Supt. Hu (Fung Woo), might have to close down the group entirely. For another officer, Madam Yang (Khan), has founded a “gilt-edged” women’s task force, which has been getting glowing reports. To try and recover, Lee and her assistant, Ann (Tse) go in search of some of the former members, now in civilian life, to see if they will come back and help restore the Banshee Squad to its former glories. Which is how we get the return of Amy (Ng) and May (Kara Hui), who have become a single mother and nuttier than a fruitcake respectively.
It’s certainly not elevating the wit: mental illness and date-rape jokes, toilet humour and crotch whacks are very much the order of the day here, right up to the final shot, the film freeze-framing on an excrement gag (perhaps literally!). But there are occasions where it works, such as the misfiring of a pair of jet-propelled shoes, which feels like it could have come out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Someone even gets fired from a cannon. There are also things parodying the bus chase from Police Story [remember, Jackie Chan was a producer on the first Skirts film], Once Upon a Time in China, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff which has gone under the bridge of memory over the past 28 years.
Eventually, we get to the action-oriented main course, which sees the bad guys taking the commissioner’s son hostage in his school. Naturally, Madams Lee and Yang have to team up with each other, as part of the anti-terrorist forces. Even though the fights seem more than a little sped-up, they’re entertaining and well-staged, especially the final battle against a superkicker, whom I’ve seen identified as Chui Jing Yat, which goes on for what seems like ever, in and around the school. It likely makes me view this slightly more kindly than it deserves, and this is not going to be a film in either Khan or Lee filmographies that will be ranked near the top. But if you’re going to go out, go out on a high note, I say.
Dir: Wellson Chin
Star:Moon Lee, Wan-Yee Tse, Cynthia Khan, Sandra Ng