Tag: 1977

Broken Oath

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★★★★
“Lady Snowblood, Hong Kong edition”

I guess, the old saying “just there for Godzilla” definitely applies to me. This movie is far from perfect, but as long as I see some skilled fighters in fancy costumes battling it out, I’m in. Additional points are given if the respective dub is at least tolerable. Broken Oath is actually an interesting movie. It is kind of a remake of Japanese classic Lady Snowblood with Meiko Kaji from 1973. The difference is that this Golden Harvest production, from producer Raymond Chow, stars Angela Mao.

She was probably the biggest female martial arts star at the time in Asian movies and had the status of a female Bruce Lee. She had starred with Lee in Enter the Dragon and one-time James Bond George Lazenby in two other movies, and also worked with classic directors like Chang Cheh and King Hu. Some of her famous films include Lady Whirlwind, When Taekwondo Strikes, Hapkido, The Fate of Lee Khan and many others. In the seventies. she could hardly walk down a street without being instantly recognized.

Broken Oath was to be her last movie for Golden Harvest which is quite inexplicable because she was a major star – did they let her go or was that her own decision? After that, she began working in Taiwanese movies with obviously lesser budgets. She lasted in movies for quite some time until the early 90s when she retired from film business. In a way it’s a pity that her golden era more or less ended in the 1970s, considering the success stars such as Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Donnie Yen would later enjoy – and continue to do so – in the West.

Broken Oath follows the story beats of Lady Snowblood quite closely – until it slowly becomes its own thing. It’s comparable to how Temptress of a Thousand Faces freely emulated the French Fantomas movies of the sixties. Like the Japanese original, it starts with a woman sent to prison where she gives birth to a child. On her death-bed she reveals her story of how her husband, General Liu, was killed by a gang of hoodlums; after resisting a rape attempt by one of them, she was sent to prison because the police didn’t believe her. 

She gives birth to a girl and asks her “sisters” (inmates) to take care of the child, and to raise it to take revenge for the death of her parents. Instead, one of them, subsequently referred to as the girl’s godmother, gives her to a Buddhist nunnery with the blessings of the abbess who doesn’t think that the cycle of violence should continue. In the English dub, the little girl is called “Lotus”; the subtitles call her Jie Lian, though her original name was Xiao Mei. In any case, she has violent tendencies, though for some unspecified reason these Buddhist scholars are constantly fighting when not listening to the wisdom of Buddha. Lotus ends up killing three drifters in the wood when they try to rape her.

As she has “broken her oath” (to Buddha, I guess), she has to leave the nunnery and goes to live with her godmother, from whom she learns how to become a pickpocket and gets to know her friend and colleague Ah Shu. From there on, the movie loses connection to the original movie which I see as a good thing. Jie Lian finds the murderers, though the plot is essentially hardly more than the bones of a story, rather than a fully fleshed-out narrative. It unnecessarily complicates itself with the introduction of new characters and side-stories, but in the end the overall simplicity is indeed for the better of the movie.

For some time, I wondered if this movie was really worth my attention: I just wanted to see Angela Mao show me how hard and high she could kick. Fortunately, the film didn’t let me down. But it has to be said, it needed more than half of the movie until the whole martial arts machinery kicked – as it were! – into high gear. After being saved by an old, wise man named Qi Feng from the poisonous dust of one opponent. and his subsequent death at the hands of uber-villain Zhao Cai (both took part in the raid on Jie Lian’s parents, with Qi Feng now getting redemption by saving Lotus), things escalated quite quickly.

I have to say, I personally still prefer the melancholic elegiac beauty of Lady Snowblood and Meiko Kaji’s unmistakable charisma (I’m aware that Jim gave that movie a low rating, but for me that Japanese chanbara movie is an absolute high-ranking classic. To each their own, as they say), but the sheer number of ideas that this movie here bombards you with is remarkable. Let’s see… Steel claws as weapons; a liquid, one villain uses to spit fire and burn his victims to death; blades on a string used like a yo-yo. by an opponent played by Sammo Hung; a hat that goes over the whole head of Master Yun (later revealed to be Zhao Cai); sword fights; butterfly needles; group attacks, attack scorpions; and secret passages through stone caves hidden behind book shelves.

Really, the last 30-40 minutes of this go like gangbusters! I only wish the first half of the movie would have been like that, too. Granted, a story needs time to be built up, but let’s be honest: there is not much of a story here. Just the outspoken will for revenge, and that only happens after the godmother tells Lotus about her past. It is revealed at the end that the villains had planned to overthrow the government 20 years ago; General Liu discovered their treachery and was therefore killed. Better a good reason late than never, I guess. These things can’t quite disguise some carelessness in the story-development.

For example, Ah Shu seemed to be built up as a love interest. But he is killed off in a way, as well as the heroine’s reaction to it, which is so casual I wondered why he was even in the story. There is another character supposedly killed – silly me, believing that – who is suddenly back there to support the combatants in their fight again. The whole “she is poisoned and has to be cured” episode feels like a pointless story element, with no good reason except for extending the movie’s run time (admittedly I saw the theatrical version at 98 minutes; there is an extended version around 5 minutes longer), and giving Mao the chance to lay down and take a short break.

The actors here… well, they are Chinese actors in seventies wuxia and act accordingly. One shouldn’t expect Oscar-worthy performances here. The evil villains are evil and the rest of the actors hardly make much of an impression. Angela Mao is adequate as expected, though of course I’m more interested in her fighting skills than her acting talents. She moves elegantly and swiftly and I do believe she can fight off and kill more than half a dozen men, attacking her all at once. She is great “hero material”, and I applaud every action of hers. But I can hardly detect any burning pain underneath, or an insatiably hot appetite for revenge. Comparing that with the painful, tragic, almost longing for death portrayal of Kaji might be unjust. But it is also inevitable.

Of course, the dubbing doesn’t help. Yes, one should see movies like this in the original language version with subtitles, but I prefer a dub when I can get one. I don’t know from when this one comes (possibly the movie’s release in 1977), but the performances aren’t Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster acting, to say the least. I’m just happy to get lip-synched dialogue. It mostly plays inside buildings, temples or halls, giving the impression this is first and foremost a studio production. There are only a few scenes on location, though these are nice to look at. While I don’t rank the movie lower for it, I liked the beautiful, natural surroundings of Lady Snowblood much more. It’s just a matter of taste.

That said, as a whole I liked the production design, which makes you feel that the movie’s budget went into it, along with the historical Chinese costumes and some effects. It’s in contrast to Mao’s later Taiwanese films, where I can confirm she was working on a notably lower quality standard. This movie definitely has its qualities. As an old saying (incorrectly attributed to Oscar Wilde) goes: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. This might be true not only for Lady Snowblood, which Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to in Kill Bill – Vol. 1,  but also for Broken Oath, as the fight between Sammo Hung and Angela Mao is definitely mirrored in the one between Chiaki Kuriyama and Uma Thurman.

Dir: Chang-hwa Jeong
Star: Angela Mao, Michael Wai-Man Chan, Siu-Lung Leung, Shan Kwan

Fight for Survival

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★★
“Suffering from a bit of an identity crisis.”

This Taiwanese kung-fu potboiler just about manages to sustain interest for an hour, before losing the plot (literally, and such as it was to begin with) down the stretch. It begins with ten martial arts masters stealing an omnibus edition of fighting manuals from the local Shaolin temple. Trying to get entry, and failing, because they won’t admit women, is Shi Fu Chun (Kwan). With the help of former head priest Lin Chiu (Chan), who still lives nearby, she is taught a slew of skills, and ends up assigned the task of recovering the purloined books, and restoring the temple’s honour. Oh, except the “positive kung-fu” learned is causing Shi Fu to transition into a man. So she/he (inexplicably, the 1977 film does not provide us with preferred pronouns…) needs to find and learn some “negative kung-fu” stat, to counter the process. 

This is mostly standard stuff, with the novice being trained by the master, before going out into the world and putting her skills to the test. Except it feels like the movie was edited down from a four-hour version, as the story jumps from Shi having about three of the ten parts, to her heading back to the temple with them all. The heads of the ten clans then show up, and it all becomes almost incomprehensible. About the only part that I am certain about, had them forming what looked disturbingly like a kung-fu version of the Human Centipede [now, that’s a movie I would… if not perhaps pay to see, certainly consider downloading from a dodgy website]. I think one of the clan leaders tries to fight his way into the temple, defeating various occupants in different styles, leading up to a fight again Lin. He faked his own death to get Shi accepted, and since then, has apparently been sitting around the temple, covered in gold paint, because that’s what they do to dead ex-leaders.

There are a couple of bits which are kinda cool, such as Shi having to accept the branding of the temple, carried out through her carrying the red-hot cauldron depicted on the poster. One of her skills involves the ability to extend her arms and legs to remarkable length, which leads to some interesting fights. However, the old gender re-assignment plot may well reach new depths of implausibility. Somehow, this is repeatedly mistaken for a man. Another weirdness (at least, to contemporary Western viewers) is the good luck symbol on the clothing worn by the heroine and her allies. Yep, it’s the ol’ Buddhist swastika. Beyond such trivial concerns, the main problem though, is that most of the fights are pedestrian and uninteresting. The makers even bring Judy Lee in, and don’t allow her to get into action. This shows a severe misunderstanding of how things should be done, and if you pass on this, you’ll not be missing much.

Dir: Cheng Hou
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Chan Wai-Lau, Che Chi-Sang, Judy Lee
a.k.a. Lady Wu Tang or Shaolin Tamo Systique

Too Hot to Handle

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★★★
“If you can’t stand the heat…”

Director Schain had already worked with his wife Caffaro on the Ginger trilogy, in which she played (per Wikipedia), “a tough and resourceful bed-hopping private-eye and spy.” Here, the character isn’t too different, though her day job is rather more morally questionable, being a professional killer. “Samantha Fox” (Caffaro) is the identity she has adopted, as she works on a series of hits in the Philippines. On her trail is the local chief of detectives, Domingo De La Torres (Ipalé), who first views Samantha as a suspect, but their relationship quickly becomes more intimate. It feels almost like a precursor to Basic Instinct, in that there’s a cop obsessed with someone he’s supposed to be investigating, and really doesn’t care whether or not she’s a murderer.

The film does aim to make Samantha quite a sympathetic character, in that all the people we see her kill, as ones without whom society is better off. But there are a couple of moments where she seems clearly psychopathic, to Villanelle-esque levels. For example, she takes pleasure in sitting and watching her first victim slowly suffocate to death. This is not by accident. When Domingo takes her on a shooting trip, she states, “It’s much more of a turn on to watch something die slowly. Even then, the greater the distance, the less the fun.” It’s an attitude we see in action, at a cock-fighting event which is apparently her idea of a date night (I’m pleased to report Chris is perfectly happy with dinner and a movie). While watching animals fight to the death, she is simultaneously dreaming about having sex. This seems… not exactly normal.

Yet, Samantha is still depicted as nicer than her victims: it’s not as if her twisted fantasies hurt anyone else. Well, except for her victims, anyway. I did like the way she rarely used physical means to take them down, outside of a duel against an operative De La Torres sends to the boat where she lives. Mind you, that scene is functional rather than impressive, and so it makes sense for the film-makers to script it so that she relies on her smarts. She’s fond of disguises, whether it’s pretending to be an art journalist, or going full brownface as she pretends to be a local maid. Caffaro clearly also has no inhibitions about shedding her clothes, though her figure is on the lighter side for my tastes.

Less effective in general is Ipalé, who became well-knows twenty years later, as Pharaoh Seti in The Mummy and its sequel. It feels as if he learned his lines phonetically, and he makes little overall impression here. I was more excited to see veteran Philippino actor Diaz as De La Torres’s lieutenant, for once getting to play a good guy. Overall, while nothing particularly special, this is reasonably entertaining, and considerably more twisted than I expected in terms of its protagonist and her psyche.

Dir: Don Schain
Star:  Cheri Caffaro, Aharon Ipalé, Vic Diaz, Corinne Calvet

The Woman Prisoner No. 407 series

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★★½
“Cat’s entertainment.”

An apparent knock-off of Japan’s Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion and its sequels, there’s some uncertainty about the origins of this. I’ve seen it called Korean, Taiwanese or even from Hong Kong. While the cast suggest Taiwan, the director is from Korea, so that’s where I’m going to tag it. Indeed, it’s not quite clear how connected the two entries are: while they share a director and two leads, the plots don’t seem to connect up. Even the IMDb synopsis go to different countries. For the first, it says: “Kang-hie recalls from her cell how she was used by Japanese detectives to track down and destroy the Korean independence fighters. She manages to escape from prison during a break and proceeds to hunt down her former lover who was a Japanese agent.” The second? “Japan conquers China just before WW2 starts. Chinese women are captured and placed in concentration camps, where they are tortured and humiliated. Some try to escape incurring enormous risks, and death if they fail.” Insert shrug emoticon here.

Disentangling the plot for part one required me to deal with subtitles that barely even approach English, and were frequently vanishing off the side of the screen. I’m still not sure whether Don Wen Yue and Dwarn Tien Yu were the names of two different characters, or just sloppy mis-spellings of the same person’s name. Either way, the IMDb synopsis above seems rather inaccurate, unless you squint considerably. Don is an inmate at a Japanese prison-camp, where she is being harshly treated with the aim of making her give up a microfilm which her captors want to obtain. Her status as the daughter of a diplomat is of no help, apparently. However, help is on the way, as it turns out a newly arrived inmate has actually been inserted into the camp into order to assist Don in busting out – along with quite a few friends. Though escaping is only the beginning of their struggle for freedom.

The first chunk of this is painfully prosaic, with sadistic guards (though for a while I wondered if one of them was Yukari Oshima; certainly looks like her, but the era of the movie makes it unlikely). foiled escapes and generally the kind of shenanigans you would expect from the genre. There’s not much invention, and it’s hardly more than PG-rated. Things actually improve a bit once they escape, and it becomes a wilderness survival film. The women have to avoid the threats, not just of the guards in pursuit, but also crocodiles (or alligators, not that it matters) and even a killer plant which tries to wrap its tentacles around them. I’m a sucker for a good killer plant moment, and have to admit that this scene is likely responsible for about half a star of the rating above. There’s eventually an energetic battle on the beach after some betrayal, though it all feels too little, too late.

Moving onto part two, things have… changed. Part one ended with its sole survivor sailing off in a boat. This opens with its two heroines, Kuan Mou-Hua (Yip) and Kao Chuan Tze (Heo), back running through the jungle, apparently escaping from… something. I actually watched this part first, and initially presumed the specifics were all explained in the previous installment. I can now confidently state: nope. Like so much here, even down to the location, it’s unclear. Perhaps the untranslated captions shed light on this; the dubbing (the version I saw was in German with English subs!) certainly doesn’t.

Their bid for freedom is foiled, and they’re returned to captivity under their Japanese masters. Kuan is a bit of a flight risk, and the warden, Kato (Chen), decides the best thing to do is bump her off. However, rather than direct action, which would presumably cause too much paperwork, he’d rather she be killed in an “accident”. When plans to drop the pair off a cliff during their transfer fail, he tries to entrap them into escaping, drown them in a water tank, and finally burn them alive. [I guess the latter does at least prove somewhat successful, in that multiple prisoners are killed. Just not the ones they want]

With the aid of sympathetic guard , Kuan escapes – albeit without her friend, who commits suicide rather than going through further Japanese torture. Sorry: that probably merits a spoiler warning, I guess. Harried by their pursuers, Kuan and Lee make their way through the countryside – including probably the longest handcar chase in the history of cinema. So there’s that… Rather than slide into obscurity, her burning obsession is to take revenge on Kato. For he is about to escape punishment for all his crimes, including the death of Kao, being in cahoots with the judges. This burning quest to carry out vengeance, while relatively minor (it only plays a significant role in the last 15 minutes), is another element which echoes Prisoner Scorpion.

It’s all blandly forgettable: I watched it on Saturday, and by Monday, I’d forgotten so much, I couldn’t remember enough to write about it, until a swift re-view at 8x speed. This second screening largely confirmed its mediocrity, and the movie is in significant need of more, across the board. In particular, more energy: especially in its central performances, which wants someone like Meiko Kaji, around whom the plot can be anchored. Though I won’t lie, more sex and violence might have been no bad thing either, as it’s almost impressively tame. It has plenty of opportunities for nudity, right from an opening gratuitous swimming scene – it just chooses to pass them by. Viewers would likely be best off doing the same to this movie – and to be honest, perhaps the entire series.

Dir: Shin Sang-Ok
Star: Karen Yip, Heo Jin, Bong-jin Jin, Chen Hung-Lieh
a.k.a. Girl in the Tiger Cage and Revenge in the Tiger Cage

The Angel of Vengeance: The Female Hamlet

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★★★
“To be or not to be… NOT to be…”

Okay, the above is shamelessly lifted from The Last Action Hero, in which there’s a spoof trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hamlet. But it applies just as much to this, which is remarkably progressive considering its origins; 1977 Turkey was not exactly in the forefront of women’s liberation. Yet here we are, with a modernized and severely truncated version of Shakespeare’s story. This runs 86 minutes, compared to 242 minutes for, say, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. But it hits the main spots, even if only in passing: for instance, Hamlet’s soliloquy shows up, though “Alas, poor Yorick” gets short shrift.

In case you’d forgotten: Hamlet (Girik) returns home from drama school in America, after the cold-blooded assassination of her father by her uncle (Yurdakul), who has married Hamlet’s mother (Ferdag). After seeing her father’s ghost, Hamlet decides to feign insanity, in order to get to the truth. When she stages a play, The Murder of Gonzago, depicting what she believes to be the true events, and her uncle’s rapid, guilty exit, it’s time for Hamlet to take her bloody revenge, and consign her uncle to the same end to which he sent her father.

It all takes place against a strange soundtrack, which includes both Shostakovich’s score to the 1964 version of Hamlet made in Russia (officially sanctioned or not), and Silver Convention’s disco hit from a couple of years earlier, Fly Robin Fly. It has its share of surreal or even avant-garde imagery too, particularly when Hamlet is playing at being mad, such as conducting an imaginary orchestra – the instruments are there, just not anyone to play them – in the middle of a field. The play, meanwhile, comes over as a bizarre cross between A Clockwork Orange, Manos, Hands of Fate and an early Kate Bush video.

The above makes it sounds rather less interesting than it is, even for someone like me, whose knowledge of Shakespeare is fairly limited. The main thing which it has working in its favor, is Girik, who was the veteran of literally hundreds of Turkish films in the sixties and seventies, before becoming the mayor of a district in Istanbul towards the end of the eighties. Even when the acting required here is nothing more than pulling faces (as quite often), she has sufficient charisma and delivers her (frequently ludicrous) lines with enough intensity to sustain the viewer’s interest.

The other tweaks resulting from the gender reversal have their moments too. For instance, Ophelia’s descent into madness takes on a rather different tone when she’s no longer a loony young girl. The same goes for Hamlet’s relationship with Rezzan and Gul, the female versions of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, which feels something akin to a Turkish version of Sex and the City. In the end, I’m probably glad Erksan – best known in the West for Seytan, his knock-off of The Exorcist – opted for a brisk adaptation of the bard. While decent at its length, I strongly suspect that 242 minutes of this approach would have seemed considerably less rather than more.

Dir: Metin Erksan
Star: Fatma Girik, Sevda Ferdag, Reha Yurdakul, Orçun Sonat
a.k.a. Intikam Melegi/Kadin Hamlet

The Invincible Swordswoman

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★★★½
“Women are vicious. This is very true.”

We’ve previously written about Pearl Ling Chang’s mad Wolf Devil Woman: this is considerably more straightforward, yet is perhaps the better for it. The villain is General Ma Tang, who is imposing a brutal reign of terror on the region under his control, largely through his masked band of kung-fu masters. He ruthlessly takes out all those who oppose him, leaving the country in a state of fear. There remains a small band of rebels, who have evidence of Tang’s misconduct, but need someone who can take it to the authorities. The leading candidate is Pai Yu Song (Chang), a woman whose father was one of Tang’s victims, so has every reason to help, and whose martial arts skills are legendary.

Unfortunately, Pai has vanished, so before anything else can happen, she has to be located. There are quite a few people keen to do so, on both sides and even for entirely separate reasons. Leading them is the one-eyed Tu Yueh Pian, who still holds a candle for Pai, despite an unfortunate rape accusation which led to the loss of his eye. [Hey, it happens] Fortunately, there is an upcoming kung-fu tournament, to which everyone knows Pai is going to show up. The resulting sequence occupies a good chunk of the middle, and is impressive for its sheer scale, since the battleground is a gigantic set of spears and bamboo spikes, on which the participants must balance. Impalements ensue, for obvious reasons.

Finding Pai is just the first step. Even after she’s convinced to work with them, and is given the evidence, the journey is not without incident, shall we say. Indeed, the entire plot is more or less a saga of deception, impersonation and hidden agendas, right up to the final battle. There, we discover that Tang’s own martial arts skills are not be sniffed at. He proves capable of just about beating his opponents without even needing to get up from his throne, which whizzes around the palace courtyard like a kung-fu Dalek. This final battle is where everyone gets to show off their skills to best effect, and is embedded below.

Chang is largely notable by her absence over the first half, yet even when not on screen her presence is still a driving force, and when she shows up, there’s no denying her skills (there’s another heroine here, who is also good, and whose fighting triggers the quote at the top. I haven’t been able to locate her name for sure. It may be Frances Fong). That was something of a surprise, since Wolf Devil Woman didn’t exactly showcase them. Here, there’s no doubt, Chang is capable of holding her own, and makes it even more of a shame we don’t get more chances to appreciate them – there’s likely almost as much fighting screen-time for Tu. Still, one of the more impressive Taiwanese productions I’ve seen. The original title translates as “Cold Moon Orphan Star Needle Not Love“, and yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Dir: Chen Ming-Hua
Star: Ling Chang, Yuen Hua, Zung Hua, Chin Meng

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Tigresses

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★★★
“A woman’s grudge can make the snow fall in summer!”

After their parents are killed by Ji-Gyeum Yoon (Kim Y-i), who wants to take over their father Sung’s position, sisters Su-Yung and An-Yung are split up and sent off for their safely, each owning half of a jade pendant. Fifteen years later, An-Yung (Shang Kwan) begins to take her vengeance on the usurper – not just physically, but also waging psychological warfare, sending him notes to ensure he knows he is being targeted, although not initially why or who. Though I’m a little surprised Yoon doesn’t figure it out immediately, given he’s still so paranoid about Sung’s daughters coming out, he freaks out when left alone with a maid, stating the position given in the tag-line above.

Yoon responds to An-Yung’s requests for a meeting by sending his bodyguards out to take her down. She defeats them, despite their interesting range of special powers – one can hypnotize with his gaze, another turns invisible, and a third can shoot an apparently endless jet of flame from his mouth. He must be popular at barbecues: I guess this either inspired Dhalsim’s special power in Street Fighter II or, probably more likely, shares a common origin with it. Fortunately, An-Yung’s talents include being a human fire extinguisher. Eventually, having run out of minions, Yoon hires a nomadic fighter (Kim J-N) to replace them, a black-clad warrioress, whose skills are the equal of An-Yung’s. If you can’t figure out who this mysterious anti-heroine is, you clearly have not seen enough kung-fu films. Particularly, ones about separated sisters… Similarly, you won’t be surprise to learn that, once the truth comes out (remember that jade pendant?), Yoon’s new employee switches sides.

The film focuses mostly on An-Yung, which makes it somewhat strange that she isn’t the one who gets to take the final revenge. Perhaps this is to make up for her getting the lion’s share of the fighting over the first 75 minutes? It’s mostly in the latter stages that we really get to see Shang Kwan to best effect; for earlier on, it seems that most of her action scenes seem to involve her wearing a hood, a mask or a really large hat. All of which – while concealing her character’s identity, so making sense in the story – also potentially conceal the actress being doubled, leaving it difficult to be sure exactly whose skills are on display.

Still, there’s just about enough going on with her face on display to be worthy of credit. The pace is quick enough to be entertaining, although the structure is wonky, with a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand until I read a YouTube synopsis, such as that Yoon is a local magistrate. Not that this matters, since the film works competently enough as a straightforward revenge pic, even if the two sisters subplot is similarly forgotten for much of the time, and is arguably little more significant than Yoon being a magistrate. A decent showcase for one of the second tier of seventies action heroines from the Far East. Just not to be confused with another Polly Shang Kwan film, A Girl Called Tigress.

Dir: Lee Hyeok-Su
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Kim Jeong-Nan, Choe Bong, Kim Young-in

The Naked Killers

  By

★★½
“Because ‘Topless killers’ wouldn’t sell quite as well, I guess.”

naked killersNot to be confused with the Hong Kong exploitation classic Naked Killer, this 1977 Spanish film is set mostly on a Pacific island inhabited solely by a veteran Japanese soldier, Yamato, who thinks World War 2 is still going on, and three women, whom he rescued from a plane crash when they were small children. He has raised them in military style, to defend the island against any “invaders”, and it’s not long before these show up. They come in the form of a boatload of treasure-hunters, who have heard that a Japanese freighter carrying gold wrecked itself on the island’s shoals. Adding an additional layer of complexity, the crew, a collection of ne’er-do-wells apparently chosen at random from the dockside, are planning a mutiny, unhappy with captain Paul, and old salt Walter, who knows the island’s location. This leads to a rather unusual alliance between Yamato and his adopted daughters with Paul and Walter, as they fight for survival against the latter’s former employees.

It’s more than a little bizarre, not least because the actor playing the soldier is very obviously not Japanese at all. I was thoroughly confused when he called himself a Japanese officer, until I realized this was made not long after the last Imperial Army holdout. Teruo Nakamura, having surrendered in December 1974. The other unusual aspect is making him more than somewhat sympathetic: perhaps this is due to Spain’s position in the war, which leaned toward the Germany-Japan Axis under General Franco, who had died not long before this was made. He’s shown very much as a father figure, loyal to a fault (which is why he stuck to his post for 30 years after everyone else gave up) and utterly honourable. Witness his face as one of the mutineers tells him the Japanese emperor is now shining the shoes of the American president every morning, or his embarrassment as he tries to breach the subject of s-e-x with his nubile foster family. It’s kinda endearing, despite this still being the worst case of yellow-face I’ve seen since Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The film’s original title translates as The Island of Burning Virgins, which is one of the most awesome titles in exploitation history. Naturally, they spend an impressively hygienic amount of time frolicking in natural pools – though I do have to wonder, where the hell did they get their thoroughly modern bikini costumes? And they’re naturally delighted when the handsome captain shows up, happy to demonstrate to them what this s-e-x thing is actually about. However, they are not mere puppets, laying some rather nasty jungle traps for the “invaders”, and with hand-to-hand skills that are occasionally surprising. It is, of course, extremely silly, very dated and questionable in a whole number of ways. However, it certainly isn’t boring, and compared to certain jungle girl films I’ve seen, can only be appreciated for that.

Dir: Miguel Iglesias
Star: Sita Sadafi, Roxana Dupre, Inca Maris, Alejandro del Enciso

Bruce Kung Fu Girls

  By

★★½
“Bruce rolls over from beyond the grave.”

brucekungfugirlsFour years after Bruce Lee’s death, and film-makers were still trying to fool moviegoers into believing their product had some connection to kung-fu’s first global star. Not sure where the deception occurred, as the print here simply overlays the new title over the (still-legible) Hong Kong one, Five Pretty Young Ladies. You really need to combine the two for any genuine accuracy: Five Pretty Kung Fu Girls, would be about right. The five are visiting Hong Kong, where their “uncle” (it’s not clear if this is a genuine relation, or just an honorific title) is a police superintendent. While at a swimming pool, they bump into a guy being pursued by a gang, and take care of the pursuers. Turns out they wanted to get their hands on a formula he had developed. Might there be some connection between this and the invisible thief who is wreaking havoc in the colony? And could the unseen one be planning to steal a moon rock, newly arrived as the centerpiece of an exhibition?

Oh, who am I trying to kid. The answer is, of course, yes to both, and the film doesn’t have any surprises to speak of. What it does have – and this is close to falling into the “only saving grace” category – is Polly Kwan as the head of the group. She’s easily the most talented in terms of fighting, and the makers know it, giving her the bulk of the action. This she handles with grace and flexibility, kicking her way out of trouble, regardless of the number of opponents. Beyond these scenes, there’s a lot of other stuff which drag proceedings to a grinding halt, such as the camping trip, climaxing with what’s probably the worst fake guitar-playing in cinema history. However, there is some entertainment value to be had from things like the matching black hot-pant uniforms worn by the girls on moon-rock guard duty, and the film’s ending teaches us a valuable lesson: when you have strapped a belt of dynamite around your waist, it’s probably best if you try not to fall over.

It is all, clearly, nonsense, with little or no effort made to differentiate the four pretty young ladies that aren’t Polly – one of them has pigtails and pouts a bit, that’s about the extent of it. But I’ve seen less entertaining nonsense, and when Kwan goes into action, becomes worth watching to a high enough degree, as to justify its existence. Unfortunately, all available prints are horribly cropped, which certainly affects the experience: truly a case where seeing more of the lead actress would be a help.

Dir: Shut Dik
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Lui Ming, Wong Lan, Yeung San-San
a.k.a. Five Pretty Young Ladies

New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Special Cellblock X

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★★★½
“And we bid a fond farewell to Nami, and a third different actress.”

The comparisons of Takigawa to Lazenby above proved appropriate in another way, both being canned after one entry playing the iconic title character, which is probably just as symptomatic of something. The replacement here as Nami Matsushima is Natsuki, who seems to go back toward a more taciturn heroine, closer to the original. But it’s, effectively, another reboot, with not even a nod to the previous entry. In this case, the heroine is a nurse, framed for her involvement in the hospital murder of a politician who was threatening to expose corrupt practices.

The film starts with her being sent back to jail after a failed escape attempt: that resulted in the rest of the inmates being punished, and they’re none too pleased to see her brought back. There’s also a pragmatic guard who is happy to keep the inmates supplied with cigs and chocolate in exchange for peace, but his position is threated by the arrival of a new head of “security”, with a much tougher stance. After trying to expose the abuse to a visiting dignitary, he ends up in hot water, and teams up with Nami, the pair going on the lam through the mountains, chained to each other – it’s a bit like Black Mama, White Mama, with characters forced to work together for their mutual benefit.

In some ways, this feels like a combination of the first two movies: it has the “woman wronged by the man she loves” theme of the original, and then the “escape through a blasted landscape” plotline from its immediate sequel. There’s also the usual helpings of abuse, though the sexual content here is significantly toned-down, with Natsuki barely showing a nipple. On the other hand, the S&M seems more intense, most notably a scene where multiple prisoners are bound and hung up, to be brutally beaten. By this point, I’ll confess that my interest in that aspect, never exactly great, was all but non-existent. Things did perk up post-escape, with some excellent cinematography, as the pair struggle through the deserted landscape [it’s easy to forget how concentrated the Japanese population is, leaving some areas almost desolate]. Of course, it ends with another vengeful confrontation for Nami – not for the first time, on a roof.

The paucity of original ideas to be found here likely indicates why the series went into dormancy thereafter. As a way to wrap up, however, it works fairly well, particularly if you consider it as a “greatest hits compilation” from the preceding entries. While Natsuki still falls short of the intensity brought to the role by Kaji, she is an improvement on Takigawa, and this moves at a brisk enough pace to sustain interest, even in a viewer looking for less prurient aspects.

Dir: Yutaka Kohira
Star: Yoko Natsuki, Masashi Ishibashi, Hiroshi Tachi, Takeo Chii