Tag: 1972

The Escape

  By

★★
“Not so great…”

I’m just going to begin by quoting the opening credit titles. Spelling, grammar and punctuation as received. “At the early stage of Republic of China, Yuan Hsi Hai wanted to rebel the democratic government & be the king. But there were 300,000 soldiers at Yuan Wan under the command of General Tsai obstructed his desire, so he cheated General Tsai to Peking & confined his movements. So Yuan who lived in Chu Jen Hall could fulfil his ambition but…” I reproduce this because, to a large extent, that’s everything I’ve got in terms of the over-arching plot here. It’s all about Tsai (Kwan) getting out of the city, in order to lead his troops and, presumably, frustrate Yuan’s dictatorial ambitions.

Key to this is Peking Opera star Hsiao Yu (Lee), who is hired by Yuan’s men to keep an eye on the General. However, she’s not as loyal as her employer would hope, and she gradually becomes attached to and involved with Tsai. This eventually results in her helping him to escape the house arrest under which he has been placed. I believe this to be true with… let’s say 90% confidence. There does appear to be other stuff going on: none of it is able to make it through the terrible presentation, and out the other side, to provide details which I prepared to commit to the keyboard. It’s kinda clear why Lee’s Queen Boxer made it out in the West, and this didn’t, even though both were made around the same time.

This did rather well at Taiwan’s 1973 Golden Horse awards, winning Best Film, Leading Actor, Screenplay and a special award for “Outstanding Performance” going to Lee (she lost Best Leading Actress to Hsiao-Lao Lin in A Heroic Fight). All I can say is, it must have been a very slow year in cinema, for this largely plodding and uninteresting history-political drama to have triumphed. Though, again, the presentation does it no justice. For example, there’s one scene where Tsai is repeatedly writing something in large letters on paper. It’s clearly very important to him. Unfortunately, the subtitles – as ever, intended for a Chinese audience, not a Western one – don’t bother to translate it. So its significance is entirely lost.

Lee is about the only reason to watch this, and the film definitely goes up a gear whenever she’s on screen. Her background actually was in the Peking Opera, making this right in her wheel-house. The director – and some sources also credit both Kwan and Florence Yu Fung-Chi – wisely lets her talent shine through, and it’s a no-nonsense approach that works. Witness, for example, the casual way, she shoves a victim out of the way with her feet, after crushing his larynx. But one of the problems is, I honestly couldn’t tell you who’s she’s fighting at the end, or why, since the General has already escaped. It’s just another element lost in translation here, like so many others, and leaves this an underwhelming entity, in the only form available.

Dir: Min-Hsiung Wu
Star: Judy Lee, Peter Yang Kwan, Lee Hung, Cheung Kwong-Chiu 

Boxcar Bertha

  By

★★★
“Tracks of my tears.”

After the success of Bloody Mama, producer Roger Corman wanted to follow up with another film depicting lawlessness in the Depression. He found his source material in Sister of the Road, supposedly the autobiography of a thirties drifter called Boxcar Bertha. No such one person actually existed: it was assembled by the author, Dr. Ben L. Reitman, from multiple characters he met while helping women in trouble in Chicago (a fictionalized version of the doctor may appear in the movie). Corman hired the then almost unknown Martin Scorsese, who was directing his first commercial film; its predecessor, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, grossed only $16,085.  Scorsese was given a schedule of 24 days and a budget of $600,000.

It begins with Bertha Thompson (Hershey) hitting the road after her father is killed when his crop-dusting plane crashes. Accompanied by her father’s mechanic Von Morton (Casey), she falls in with union leader Big Bill Shelly (Carradine), who is rousing workers against railroad owners such as H. Buckram Sartoris (played by Carradine’s father John), as well as card sharp Rake Brown (Primus). Bertha becomes an outlaw after shooting a man who catches Rake cheating, and Bill’s union activities end up leaving him in prison. Bertha helps break him out, and the quartet take up a life of crime, robbing the rich industry barons, who are none too pleased by the gang’s activities. Inevitably – especially if you’re familiar with Scorsese’s better-known work – it ends in blood.

In that, as well as the era and the story of young love gone violently wrong, it feels not dissimilar to Bonnie and Clyde, made five years earlier. But Bertha is a considerably more independent character, who has to fend for herself on more than one occasion, after her three colleagues are arrested and sent to prison. Though violence is never her first choice, it always remains an option. That’s true right through the brutal finale where Bill is nailed to the side of a train, only for Von to show up with a shotgun. It is a scene that could have come from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (three years earlier), yet also feels like pure Scorsese.

The socialist and pro-union political leanings, turning Bertha and her crew into Depression-era Robin Hoods, is also interesting. Scorsese would not be a stranger to a sympathetic portrayal of the criminal classes, from Mean Streets through Casino to The Irishman. Yet it also remains a Corman film, clocking in at a brisk 88 minutes, in sharp contrast to Scorsese’s subsequent fondness for sprawling epics. Hershey, then at the beginning of her lengthy career, would provide the necessary nudity. Though it’s notable that even when working as a prostitute, she might allow the use of her body, but her heart always remained Bill’s. Despite the exploitation elements, it all feels a bit worthy, and it’s no wonder Scorsese would quickly go his own way, his interests not in line with Corman. For example, the crucifixion of Bill, with Bertha in the role of Mary Magdalene is a tad too on the nose. The heroine is an interesting enough creature on her own terms, not to need this kind of unsubtle embellishment.

Dir: Martin Scorsese
Star: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey

Kung Fu Girl Fighter

  By

★★½
“Could have been a contender.”

Yeah, I think if I’d seen this under the alternate title of On the Waterfront, I might well have passed it by. Though that is probably a slightly more accurate description of the contents here, even allowing for the complete absence of Marlon Brando. [At least we didn’t have to deal with the expectations set by the Italian title, which translates as “The merciless hand of Bruce Lee strikes again”!] It takes place around the Whampoa wharves in Shanghai, where various crime families are jostling for position and control, with varying degrees of morality e.g. whether or not they approve of drugs and/or sex trafficking as a means to make money. Particularly of note here are Red Rose (Tang) and Zhou (Chang), who eventually end up allies against their common enemy (Chen).

Key word: eventually, as we take a meandering route to that final 15-20 minutes, where things seriously kick off. Up until then, it has been fairly low-impact. During the first half, there’s only about one good fight, Rose (or Red? I’m not sure what to call her) fending off a slew of attackers seeking to return Zhou’s gambling winnings to the casino. At the half-way point, there’s also a restaging of a scene from the same year’s Fist of Fury, where Bruce took exception to a “No Chinese or dogs” sign in a park. Rose goes berserk on seeing park guards beating up Chinese kids. Otherwise though, it’s mostly plot-based shenanigans, before the admittedly somewhat impressive finale.

However, the print circling YouTube, Tubi and Amazon Prime is flat out wretched. While it’s okay in terms of cropping, it’s so badly faded that it looks more like a pastel watercolour than a portrait of a vibrant port. There are also appears to have been some censorship issues in this English dubbed version. Another review refers to “a superbly sensual bath-house murder scene,” which is entirely missing. The last fight may also have suffered, the villain’s dozen or so henchmen apparently evaporating into bodies on the dockside without any visible action from Rose and Zhou. I suspect a decent, uncut (and, ideally, subtitled) edition might well get at least a half-star more.

Tang’s approach is relatively static in comparison to her co-star. She seems to have been more a dramatic actress, who while still a teenager, won the Best Supporting Actress award at the first ever Golden Horse awards, Taiwan’s top film honour. This straightforward plateful of chop-socky would therefore appear a bit of an aberration, yet Hou shoots her moves well enough they pass muster. It may also explain why the dramatic elements are perhaps a little better than normal for the “straightforward chop-socky” genre, though of course are also impacted by the dubbing. Still, her passionate rage during the park scene does still come through, and it’s a bit of a shame she apparently did not pursue further endeavours in the same line as this.

Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Bao-Yun Tang, Yi Chang, Hung-Lieh Chen, Tien Yueh
a.k.a. On the Waterfront

The Dawns Here Are Quiet

  By

★★★½
“Can’t see the forest for the Nazis”

It’s the summer of 1942, and Soviet forces are facing the invading German Army. After Sergeant Major Vaskov (Martynov) requests soldiers for his anti-aircraft battalion who won’t get drunk and molest the local women, he gets what he wants. Except, the new arrivals are an all-female squad of soldiers, with whom Vaskov is initially singularly ill-equipped to deal. However, they prove their mettle, led by the efforts of Rita Osyanina (Shevchuk), and eventually win Vaskov’s respect. While returning to the barracks one night, Rita stumbles across two Nazi paratroopers; she, along with four colleagues and Vaskov, form a search party, and head deep into the surrounding forest to capture the Germans. However, they discover the real force is significantly bigger, and must begin a guerilla warfare campaign to disrupt the enemy’s mission, harrying them through the wooded and marshy terrain.

In contrast to larger epics, it’s a very small-scale, up close and personal approach to the war, taking place well away from the front lines. Released in two parts (though at 188 minutes, it’s less then twenty longer than Saving Private Ryan), the first section takes place at the anti-aircraft emplacement. The action there is mostly far overhead, and in the early going, it is a little tough to separate the rush of similar-looking women to whom we are suddenly introduced. Though I did like the stylistic approach of having the war take place in harsh black and white, while the soldiers in more peaceful times are depicted in colour, with an almost dreamlike version of reality.

When we get to the meat of the story, the film improves significantly. It’s fairly standard “small group taking on a larger force” stuff, a topic which has been mined frequently for war movies, from Zulu and The Alamo through Ryan to 300.  Yet it’s still effective to follow Vaskov and his handful of untested soldiers, as they go into battle with far more experienced warriors. Quite deliberately, the enemy are kept almost faceless, given no humanity at all: their speech is left unsubtitled, for instance. As the losses mount inexorably, there’s a genuine impact to them, and you’re left with an up-close and personal look at war and the human cost it has. Yet at the end, a radio broadcast casually dismisses the preceding three hours of heroic sacrifice with, “During the day of June 3rd, no major engagement took place on the front. However, some minor local fighting occurred in certain sectors.”

Based on Boris Vasilyev’s 1969 short novel of the same name, there was also a 2015 mini-series for Russian television (a review of that is coming soon); a Tamil-language Indian film (Peranmai); a Chinese TV series; and more unusually, the story was turned into not one but two operas, one in Russia and the other in China. However, this version was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, where it lost out to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. No death before dishonour there. 

Dir:  Stanislav Rostotsky
Star: Andrey Martynov, Irina Shevchuk, Yelena Drapeko, Yekaterina Markova

Okay, S.I.R.

  By

★★★
“Two Angels for Europol?”

“Brussels: home to many European authorities. This one is new. It’s an international combination of security forces from European countries: EUROPOL. For a long time the criminal underworld hasn’t respected borders, and continually develops new techniques. So crimes are often committed for which the usual police methods are not enough. In such cases, Europol has trained employees who are out of the ordinary. Unconventional cops, with unconventional methods, like us. Biggi. Conny. And our boss is a lady! Her name is S.I.R. – S for ‘Sicherheit’ (security), I as in ‘Information’, R for ‘Recht’ (justice).”

What sounds like a mid-60s promotion intro to The Avengers (John Steed + Emma Peel, not the other ones!) is indeed a spoken monologue. And it leads into one of the strangest oddities in the “girls with guns”-subgenre, which still can surprise me when I dig out something new. Now, I don’t want to summarize the whole of German film-making history, but I think a couple of words would actually be quite helpful in this case, before we get under way.

Early German movie-making had a very high interest in the fantastic film genre. Indeed, you could actually say the fantastic film was born in Germany with such early and successful cinematic efforts as Der Golem (1920), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), the Doctor Mabuse films, Metropolis (1927), Die Nibelungen (1924) and Nosferatu (1922). With the rise of the National Socialists in the 1930s such topics suddenly became problematic. No oppressive regime ever likes people to be able to dream. The fantastic genre is a kind of escape no dictatorship can control, and that’s why they hate these things. However, the mindset stayed prevalent for a long time in Germany after World War II.

As a result, things such as comics or science fiction literature were usually seen as suspicious in the 1950s. Germany only slowly rediscovered its ability to dream on film and TV in the 1960s, during that beautiful period that gave us Karl May westerns, the Spessart Ghost comedies, new Doctor Mabuse movies and the Edgar Wallace series. It was really a very productive time in the German film industry. Then, suddenly, in the late 60s – not just here but worldwide – films seemed to hit a roadblock due to a stronger focus on politics than on popular culture by the younger generation. In Germany the old movies were abandoned as “Papas Kintopp” (“father’s cinema”). The young generation which discovered the Nazi era was being glossed over in their history classes, rejected what that generation offered, and went on to create their own movies in the 70s, very often politicized and dealing with “real life issues”.

And while American cinema gradually got its mojo back, as film makers like Spielberg, Lucas and others fully reinvented the fantastic film, that never happened to Germany. It initially suffered from state-funded “author’s cinema”, resulting in very boring movies, mostly forgotten today. But it mainly degenerated into very average and (in my personal opinion, mostly lame) TV-crime shows. They lacked the wonderful mixture of over-the-top, unambiguous heroes and villains, uncanny horror-like atmosphere and outlandish plots of the Edgar Wallace movies of the 60s.

“Krimis” suddenly became some kind of social dramas, that were more about the depiction of society’s flaws and personal backgrounds of criminals then about the creation of suspense and imagination. The kind of crime drama the German public TV channels would usually co-produce, became as exciting as a visit to a tax office. They guaranteed “realism” and rejected as childish any depiction of outlandish things. When I look at today’s German TV programs, nothing has changed since then.

Given that, I was surprised to find this little campy gem of German TV-series. Produced between 1971-72, and shown on German TV between 1973 74, the series depicts two investigators Biggi (Anita Kupsch) and Conny (Monica Peitsch). [Quick aside: “Biggi” and “Conny” were also the names of two well-known German girl-comics in the 80s] They work for a mysterious lady (Anneliese Uhlig) who seems to have no real name and works under the alias of “S.I.R,” as discussed in the intro. She lives in a luxurious villa with candlesticks, a library and what we today would probably call a prototype version of a computer.

Upon closer inspection, I get the impression the makers of this show must have been inspired by shows from abroad. In the mid-60s, the Steed/Peel Avengers enjoyed great success on German TV screens. There was the similar themed Department S and I’m quite sure the original Mission Impossible series also ran on TV in the early 70s. Though, Okay, S.I.R. can’t for a moment compete with these much better shows, it is by German standards a miracle such a series was produced at all. The 70s in Germany still weren’t a time when anything fantastic would be embraced. Heck, when the first Star Wars came out, that movie was heavily lambasted by critics as “fascism in space” and “fantastical nonsense” that would spoil the youth.

In this TV series, the two good-looking girls usually get called to a new investigation by means of a beeping ring. They meet up with S.I.R., who comes across like a female “M”, 22 years before Judy Dench arrived on the scene. They’re then sent off to investigate strange occurrences. These usually turn out to be the machinations of criminals, using strange gadgets or methods that would make any John Steed-Emma Peel screenwriter happy.

Let me give you some examples. A computer which can hypnotize people; a club for people who enjoy stolen paintings; an artist who steals a woman’s hair; fake nuns that create fake relics, and so on. One episode features a female gang who use subliminal influence through television, in order to put women in top company positions. They do this to gain access to financial means and further feminism: I guess some things never get old! ;-)

The budget can’t have been high. Considering that these two investigators work for a European authority in Brussels, it’s strange how the series usually takes place in and around Munich – with the few exceptions when the show allowed them to look into a case in Italy! It has to be said, the girls don’t really go in with guns blazing. Usually they take weapons from the villains or their goons, to gain the upper-hand. Though it isn’t too difficult, since the villains in these 25-minute episodes are not so smart, and make mistakes that really make you shake your head. Mind you, the girls are not exactly subtle in their investigative technique either…

The series is mainly what we would call “camp” today. It’s a very odd TV relic from the early 70s, though I had a lot of fun watching the series. Just to see the hairstyles, fashion, cars or interior designs of that time is always a marvel to behold for me! The girls themselves… truth is, they both lack a bit charisma. One would wish for them to have some good banter, clever lines of dialogue, tongue-in-cheek humor – or at least some slightly believable fighting choreography, like Miss Peel in The Avengers.

But I can’t really judge such a series negatively on the basis of a comparison to British TV series, considering it essentially stands alone in German TV history [there were a couple of other series at the time that flirted with the fantastic, but as far as I know, this was the only one with female leads]. And as German TV of the time, they are sympathetic nevertheless, Biggi usually playing the decoy with her female charms. She’s a bit too confident of her appeal, but of course that’s entirely subjective.

I personally preferred Peitsch’s Conny, who sometimes also gets into a criminal group’s business, disguised and/or with an alias. Especially in the beginning, the stories unfold quickly, sometimes so quickly you wonder if they make much sense at all, or if some important explanations has been forgotten. It gets better as the series progresses. There is often a reward for the girls at the end of an episode, though for a number of reasons they aren’t allowed to take it, and S.I.R. invests it back into the organization.

Anita Kupsch, a Berlin theatre actress, would become more well-known at the end of the 80s when she played the secretary of Günther Pfitzmann in medical series Praxis Bülowbogen. I only know Monika Peitsch due to her damsel-in-distress role in Edgar Wallace movie The Hunchback of Soho (1966), which also featured Anneliese Uhlig, the S.I.R. of the series. The real famous name in the cast is music composer Klaus Doldinger, who would go on to compose soundtracks for movies such as Das Boot and The Neverending Story. There are also quite a number of well-known German actors guest-starring over the 32 episodes of the show, though none of international renown.

While today’s viewers may look, with some amusement, down on this strange German attempt at being different, at the time it was produced this was groundbreaking. The idea of women taking over the investigator’s job was absolutely unthinkable for Germany at that time. It would take five more years, until 1978, before the first female police inspector would appear in Tatort (an extremely long-running and realistic crime investigation series, still being made today). That would eventually help lead to a lot of TV-Krimi series of female police investigators in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, these two heroines very often worked “undercover”, used fake identities to get close to the baddies, had their own cars, flirted without marrying (yes, I know: scandalous!) and being… what we would call today a normal single woman. It’s easy to to forget how unusual such a life-style used to be, not that long ago. As ridiculous as this series may appear, it came out 3 years before Charlie’s Angels and 8 before Cagney & Lacey. At the time, it was quite unnatural for a “normal” TV show to feature women in this kind of position. Though, admittedly, British shows such as The Avengers, as well as American ones like The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and Honey West had been there before – albeit with a much higher budget and often not having to deal with a 30 minutes limit for every episode. 

Also, at the time of the series’ release (1973) the whole idea of “Europol” was indeed Science Fiction: In reality the decision to create this organization was made as late as 1992 and the authority didn’t became a reality until 1999. So, yes, one can actually call this series kind of prophetic! Overall, I give Okay, S.I.R. three stars. One for being ahead of its time, one for the wonderful weird campiness of the 70s style and one for trying to emulate the style of shows like The Avengers and Mission Impossible – even if they were, admittedly, better able to pull it off.

One Armed Swordswoman

  By

★★★
“Mostly armless…”

Official disclaimer. I watched two seventies Taiwanese kung-fu flicks the past weekend, this one and Revengeful Swordswoman, and I’m having serious difficulty keeping them separated. You are therefore warned that some plot elements discussed here, may actually have seeped over from Revengeful, or vice-versa…

When we first meet heroine Li Feng (Chang), her count of functioning limbs does actually surpass one – it’s after she is poisoned by a blade wielded by one of her numerous bandit enemies, that the title comes true. She’s rescued from death by the mysterious, masked Black Dragon, albeit at the cost of her infected arm, before he leaves. Li wants to locate both the Dragon, to thank him, and the bandit responsible for her limb-deficiency. She manages the former first, eventually having a one-night stand with him, only to be callously dumped the next day (he more or less insinuates she’s a whore, giving her a pearl which she crushes, bare-handed).

She vows revenge on the man who took her chastity, and to this end, begins going after anyone wandering the countryside in his trademark hat and cape (looking like a sword-wielding beekeeper). Which, it turns out, is a surprisingly large number of people, only adding to the number of those who hold a grudge against Li. Admittedly, in this case, I can see their grounds for grievance, since they were guilty of not much more than an unlucky choice of couture. It turns out, too, that Li’s desire for vengeance is greatly misplaced, with her seducer only having been pretending to be the Black Dragon, in order to gain her confidence.

This 1972 film comes five years after Jimmy Wang Yu played the male predecessor to Li Feng in Chang Cheh’s seminal Hong Kong film, One-Armed Swordsman, which created a new bloody genre of martial arts movies, populated by anti-heroes. However, a more direct ancestor here is probably the Japanese series which included 1969’s Lady Sazen and the Drenched Shallow Sword; the protagonist there was also 50% short in the ocular department. [Though the character of the disabled female warrior dates back even earlier, perhaps to 1937 and Onna Sazen, played by Hara Komako] As such, there isn’t much new, but I did like the idea that the heroine spends much of the film looking for revenge on an innocent party.

Chang does a decent job of fending for herself, despite the arm shortage, even if the surfeit of trampoline work in the action scenes is disappointing, especially given her occasionally impressive skills. At one point, it looked as though the Black Dragon was going to end up saving the day. Doesn’t quite happen like that, and Li ends up by a river, having to fight solo against, not only the main villain, but also his sidekicks and their spears that spray acid. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a traditional martial-arts weapon – indeed, it appears more likely to have strayed in from a sixties 007 knock-off – yet we’ll just about give it a pass. The same goes for this overall.

Dir: Sheng-En Chin
Star: Ching Ching Chang, Ming Chiang, Ming Tien, Ming Lei

Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2: She-Cat Gambler

  By

★★★
“Goddess of gamblers.”

wgb2Nami (Kaji) – or, to give her character’s full name here, Nami the Crimson Cherry Blossom – is still the same ice-cold, vengeful warrior as before. Though for this sequel, for some reason, she has switched to rather more traditional attire, in the shape of a kimono. She encounters Hanae, trying to escape a Yakuza sex-trafficking gang, to whom she has been sold by her father(!). Nami rescues her, subsequently wins Hanae’s freedom in a card game, and returns her to Dad. Turns out he can shed some light on Hoshiden, the man who killed Nami’s own father in a gambling spat, years earlier, and for whom she has been searching ever since. To find her target, Nami needs to embed herself deep in the murky, Ginza world of gambling and prostitution, helped by former friend Miyoko (Kagawa), now part of Hoshiden’s organization, and rival pimp, Ryu (Chiba).

This is slightly better than its predecessor, though is still hampered by too much reliance on gambling. It doesn’t help that the cards here are not the ones familiar in the West. As a result, we only know how the game is going by the reaction of the participants. Imagine watching Casino Royale with no idea of how poker works. It’s like that. When not actually gambling, things improve, and interesting to see Chiba play somewhat against type. Ryu is more stammering comic relief than the typical Chiba hero, though this dates from 1972, a couple of years before his star-making role in The Street Fighter.

As in its predecessor, this isn’t exactly action-packed. The opening confrontation, between Nami and the Yakuza gang on the bridge, looks like it’s about to explode… Right up until she pulls a gun. That’s not exactly very samurai (or geisha), is it, Ms. Kaji? From there until Nami and Ryu storm Hoshiden’s headquarters, it’s restrained, with more drama than swordplay. However, it is better at sustaining interest than part one, helped by aspects such as Ryu’s noble approach to prostitution. As he says, “We don’t force you or watch what you do. Our motto is clean, virtuous and classy,” prompting the sarcastic retort from one of his whores, “Well, you sound like Governor Minobe!” [The socialist governor of Tokyo at that time]

These elements help tide viewers over the card-playing scenes, until all sword-swinging hell finally breaks loose. This is rather at odds with some of the broad stabs at humour previously attempted. The “how to use a bidet demonstration” scene sticks in my mind there, and not exactly as an iconic sequence of comedy. It doesn’t sit easily in a storyline kicked off when a daughter is sold into sex slavery by her own father, and the ending of the series with this entry suggests the intended market was equally unimpressed.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Meiko Kaji, Sonny Chiba, Junzaburo Ban, Yukie Kagawa

The 14 Amazons

  By

★★★
“Never mind the quality, count the heroines!”

14amazonsYes, you certainly can’t argue about the quantity here, with four generations of a family being represented, from “Grand Dame” matriarch (Lu), through widow Mu Kuei-ying (Po) all the way down to her great-granddaughter. They are forced into action after the Mu’s husband is killed on the border of the Chinese empire, trying to repel an attack by Mongolian hordes. The government wants to sue for peace, but Mu and the rest of her family have vengeance on their mind, and march off to the front, in direct disobedience of official orders. The journey is fraught with danger, as they are ambushed going through a narrow pass and their supplies lost, forcing them to eat tree bark, but Mu and her forces press on, raiding their enemies’ camp to bring back food, as they battle their way towards the inevitable final showdown with the the leader of the Mongols, Wang Wen (Tien).

It’s more than a little confusing, not least because the “male” heir Yang Wen Kuang is played by Lily Ho, and they don’t make even the slightest effort to make her look other than female. That took me a while to work out. It’s also true that, with such a high number of characters, the great majority are severely under-developed, with less than a handful getting enough screen time that you give a damn when they are killed. Must confess, if they had worn jerseys with numbers on the back, it would have helped to differentiate them, because they all look kinda the same, especially when dressed in their military garb. The film’s plot also has moments of utter implausibility, with the “human bridge” sequence among the most “I’m so sure…” I’ve seen in some time. And last but not least, the Mongols’ uniforms looks unfortunately festive – red hats with white fur trim – giving the impression China is being invaded by a horde of Santa’s little helpers.

Yet despite the significant flaws, this is an entertaining epic, with a good sense of spectacle, and it’s nice to see a film from this era where the characters’ sex is virtually a non-factor (once they’ve escaped official jurisdiction, at least).  For the most part, everyone behaves with surprising smarts – even the Mongols aren’t portrayed as dumb barbarians, though their savagery is certainly not underplayed. Cheng delivers the battle sequences impressively enough, and you can see why this was one of the top box-office hits in Hong Kong for the year it was made, 1972. The same source material was mined again almost 40 years later, as Legendary Amazons  (from our review of which, I confess, I recycled the tagline above!), and I would just have to give the edge to the original, because of its intelligent approach to the story. Whatever the remake gains in whizzy CGI and arguably superior cast, the plot makes a good deal more sense here, and I’ll take that any day.

Dir: Cheng Gang + Charles Tung
Star: Ivy Ling Po, Lisa Lu, Lily Ho, Tien Feng

Unholy Rollers

  By

★★★½
“The Adventures of Grandmistress Karen on the Wheels of Steel”

unholyWinner of Most Unexpected Credit goes to this roller-derby exploitation flick, out of cheapie producers American International, because the opening credit proclaim, “Supervising Editor – Martin Scorsese.” Yep. THAT Scorsese, the year before anyone much noticed him with Mean Streets, worked on what would now be called a “mockbuster” – Scorsese later describing it in Scorsese on Scorsese as “the rip-off of the Racquel Welch movie about roller-derbys, Kansas City Bombers“. However, it ended up trailing in to cinemas in Bombers‘ wake and, according to its editor, “was destroyed.” That’s a shame, as there’s a nicely gritty feel to this, which rings true. It certainly acknowledges that the action and fights in roller-derby may be staged, but – as we’ve seen in the local roller-derby scene – the inter-personal dramas are entirely real. It also reminded me of the independent pro wrestling world, of which we’ve had some experience, promoter Mr. Stern (Quinn) harping on about showmanship, perpetually aware of the need to give his audience what they want.

And, what they want is Karen Walker (Jennings), who quits her job in a canning plant after one too many bouts of sexual harassment, and tries out for the Los Angeles Avengers. Making the team, her no-holds barred approach to competition wins over the fans, much to the disdain of current audience favourite, Mickey Martinez (Rees). Karen’s rise is, correctly, perceived as a threat by Mickey – though only has herself to blame, having led the rest of the team in humiliating the rookie at a bar, after she rebuffs Mickey’s sexual advances. Karen is rescued by the captain of the Avengers’ male squad, Nick (Warela), and they begin a torrid, hot-cold affair, in part due to Nick’s marital status. As the tension between Karen and Mickey grows, Stern senses an opportunity, and transfers the veteran to the Avengers’ hated rivals, the San Diego Demons. setting up a show-down between the two, which touches off Karen’s fuse, in no uncertain terms.

Roger Ebert called Jennings, “the hardest, most vicious female performance in a long time,” and you can see why: there’s not much effort here to make her likeable, and that’s a good part of the appeal. She’s all spiky, defiant attitude, and any attempts to make her conform simply result in greater rebellion. Meanwhile, the cheapskate nature of the whole operation is made clear before the opening credits, with a brutalized rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. Jennings is clearly doing a good bit of her own skating, with a lot less protection than Ellen Page had in Whip It, Throw in the funky retro-sounds of Louie and the Rockets, and you’ve got something which makes for an entertaining time, even if many of the supporting performances are basic at best, and the film doesn’t so much end, as crash headlong into the end-credits. Still, this is a case where lack of polish perhaps works for a film, as much as against it.

Dir: Vernon Zimmerman
Star: Claudia Jennings, Betty Anne Rees, Louis Quinn, Jay Warela