Tag: 1978

Little Hero

  By

★★½
“The calamari fights back…”

Although almost a decade earlier than Lin Hsiao Lan’s slew of fantasy kung-fu flicks, this shares a lot of the same elements – not least an approach to narrative coherence best described as “informal.” This starts at the beginning, where we don’t even get introduced to the participants, before the martial arts breaks out. As we learn a little later, it turns out this pits Chu-Kwok Su-Lan (Shang-Kuan) against three members of the Devil’s Gang, in defense of her two, largely useless sidekicks. This is just the first of numerous encounters between our hero – yes, it’s another unconvincing male impersonator out of Taiwan – against various members of the group, and eventually their leaders, Gold Mask (Lo) and Silver Mask (Wang).

There is a loose justification for all of these flying fisticuffs: literally flying, in the case of the Mask brothers. For they zoom about on their strap-on wings, accompanied by VTOL airplane sounds, more befitting a busy day on an aircraft carrier. Anyway, the excuse is the pursuit of a legendary artifact called the Phoenix Sword, which was being transported to Master Chen in Dragon City. Its couriers are ambushed, yet manage to hand off the case containing the weapon to a random orphan, conveniently bathing nearby.  The Devil’s Gang then kidnap Chen’s daughter, demanding another legendary item, the Dragon Sword in exchange for her safe return. Chen is having none of it, so recruits a bunch of his former students, including Su-Lan, to go after the kidnappers and rescue his daughter.

There is some other stuff. However, a) the above is all you need to know, and b) I’m not clear enough on much more, to be willing to commit fully to putting it on the Internet. In any case, this is definitely one of those films where, if you don’t like this fight sequence, just wait – because there will be another along in a few minutes. I suspect my rating might well be higher if there was a decent presentation of this film available. It only appears to be available in a severely cropped version, which half the time is zoomed in far too close to appreciate what’s going on, and in an English dub that leaves no molecule intact of the performances beneath it.

All that’s left after this scorched earth approach to the visual and audio elements, is to appreciate the berserk imagination on view. This reaches its peak at the end, where Su-Lan faced off on the beach against a pair of giant octopi. Their preferred method of attack is to squirt mini-octopi at him. While I can certainly appreciate the surprise value inherent in such an approach, it doesn’t seem very sustainable. As a finale, we then get Su-Lan against Gold Mask – who is no longer masked – on what looks like a children’s adventure playground. Again: none of this makes sense in the context of the story, something I felt tended to be aggravating rather than enjoyable. If you’re of a more relaxed attitude, you may well get more out of this than I did.

Dir: Hung-Min Chen
Star: Polly Shang-Kuan, Barry Chan, Lieh Lo, Hsieh Wang

Helga, She-wolf of Stilberg

  By

★★
“Great poster. Shame about the film.”

I guess this shows that the concept of the “mockbuster” is not something invented by The Asylum. This came out in 1978, the year after the Ilsa franchise had come to an end with Tigress of Siberia. But France apparently decided it wanted to get into the act, and created its own knock-off Ilsa, in the shape of Helga (Longo, who has a cameo early on in Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon, and was also in War Goddess). What this does, is mostly act as proof of just how damn good Dyanne Thorne was in her role. She may have been unable to pronounce “Reich” consistently, but she went at the part with gusto, and had an amazing amount of presence, essential to the job. Longo simply doesn’t, and as a result, this is largely pedestrian and dull.

Opening with a sprightly and thoroughly inappropriate intro tune, we find ourselves in a cabinet meeting in an unnamed dictatorship. Names like “Helga”, as well as the angular uniform patches, suggest somewhere Fascist, but the bearded, cigar-smoking leader and his #2 called Gomez indicate a Cuban influence. Whatever. Helga is assigned to run the castle turned political prison in Stilberg, which appears to contain… Oh, maybe a dozen female inmates, tops, who are occasionally shipped out to a nearby farm. Though what they do there, apart from getting sexually harassed by the farmer – called “Doc” for no apparent reason – is unclear. The latest prisoner is Elisabeth Vogel (Gori), daughter of a rebel leader. Helga is intent ob breaking her, but Elisabeth has her own plans, assisted by a guard (Allan) who is secretly on her side.

Let’s be clear: Helga would be chewed up and spat out by Ilsa, in about five seconds. To start with, there’s her fashion sense: we first see her in a floral dress more befitting a PTA meeting. Ok, it’s a cabinet meeting, but would Ilsa have cared about that? While Helga does eventually slide into a pair of tight leather pants and a red shirt, if you’re going to embrace the S/M aesthetic, you need to do so wholeheartedly. But the most embarrassing scene sees Helga break down in tears on her bed, just because a prisoner has said some mean things to her. C’mon. What self-respecting villainess would ever do that?

There is an underwhelming lack of imagination in the sadism here too. No medical experiments or hanging them on blocks of ice here, just some light whipping. The nudity is copious, with forest in Amazonian quantities, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. But it, too, is almost as tedious as the over-frequent shots of truck convoys, going from castle to farm – or, for a bit of variety, farm to castle. I will say, the production values are decent, and the castle is a better location than Ilsa managed (recycled sets from Hogan’s Heroes!). But the pretty sheen cannot conceal the boredom and lack of invention at its heart.

Dir: Patrice Rhomm
Star: Malisa Longo, Patrizia Gori, Richard Allan, Dominique Aveline

The Vengeful Beauty

  By

★★★½
“Beauty vs. the Beasts”

A court official is killed by the emperor’s minion, Jin Gang-feng (Lo), after discovering evidence linking the monarch to a recent slew of terrorist attacks involving the feared “flying guillotine”. His wife, Rong Qiu-yan (Ping), was out of the house at the time, and is forced to flee for her life. Jin knows that he can’t let the emperor know there was a survivor, and his hunt for her has to remain low-profile, so he sends his three children out after Qui-Yan. However, their target is a renowned martial artist in her own right, and is able to fend off their attacks, with the help of a student who learned under the same master,  Wang-jun (Yueh), and a former member of the flying guillotines, Ma Seng (Chu). Eventually, Jin decides that if a job’s worth doing, you need to do it yourself. Though there’s one further threat to Qiu-yan, coming from an unexpected quarter.

This all unfolds at a brisk pace over 80 minutes, with plenty of action – there’s a fight-scene about every 5-10 minutes. These are mostly pretty good, even if Chen is probably the least effective fighter on display here. Her background is more in adult fare than martial arts, and though she remains fully-dressed here, Jin’s daughter does do a bit of topless martial arts in pursuit of her target. So there’s that… The makers do a good job at disguising any shortcomings, and we also need to cut her character some slack, since she’s supposed to be several months pregnant! On that basis, any activity more energetic than sedately climbing a set of stairs should probably be admired.

Though despite the title, Qiu-yan is really not all that “vengeful”. Although she certainly kills a lot of people, they’re almost entirely dispatched in self-defense after they attack her, with Jin likely the only true qualifier in that category. The number and styles of weapons on view is impressive, each character having a favourite. Of course, the flying guillotine – which does what it sounds like it does – is a stand-out, but I also have to mention Ma’s ability with crockery, presumably a skill picked up during his time as an assassin for the emperor. I’m a bit surprised his character didn’t get a spin-off film, potentially entitled Master of the Flying Bowl Movement.

While there is at least one twist along the way, it ends up as you’d expect, with Qiu-yan facing off against the man responsible for the death of her husband. Though in another imaginative element, she has to find the right person to kill, first fighting her way through an army of doubles wearing Jin masks. This is the kind of element which sustains the film, even if the heroine’s fights are short of what the likes of Angela Mao were providing around the same time. It’s currently available on Amazon Prime in a nice, widescreen print that is definitely the way to go, and despite its age, offers a very acceptable amount of entertainment value.

Dir:  Meng Hua Ho
Star: Chen Ping, Norman Chui, Hua Yueh, Lieh Lo

Yoga and the Kungfu Girl

  By

★★½
“Your flexible friend.”

I’m trying to figure out if the “the” in the IMDb title used here is superfluous. “Yoga and Kung-fu Girl,” as on the DVD sleeve would make more sense, given the heroine’s martial arts are a combination of traditional skills with extreme flexibility. In some ways, it’s a slightly less exploitative version of things like The Crippled Masters, with its amputee-fu. The heroine here, Phoenix, could similarly make a living as a carnival exhibit, given her contortionist abilities, which are here shoe-horned into use to provide a style of fighting. To say this works with variable success would be an understatement. There are moments when her talents and flexibility are genuinely impressive. However, there are others where her limitations and lack of training are painfully apparent.

The story has Phoenix (Chan) as an orphan, taken in by the formidable Madame Kao, who brings Phoenix up as part of her troupe of martial artists, while providing herbal remedies to the local people [I must say, the transition that had her foster kids flipping across the meadow, to become adults at the far side, was kinda neat] Phoenix’s best friend is Ho Fei (Chi), but he has a bit of a gambling problem, stealing from Madame Kao to fund his habit. Trouble ensues, not helped by a jealous rival trying to frame Kao for bad medicine, and additionally, Ho ends up accused of a murder he didn’t commit. It’s up to Phoenix to lead the charge against the villains responsible.

This appears to have been made as a vehicle for Chen, but it doesn’t seem she ever appeared in anything else after this – whether due to commercial failure or a lack of personal interest. Perhaps wisely, the script makes her character mute, limiting the need for actual acting: she communicates in sign language instead. Her skill-set provides the movie with its sole gimmick, and apart from that, this is largely indistinguishable from any other genre entries of the time. The only area where it makes an impression is the final fight, where Phoenix, Ho Fei and another of Madame Kao’s orphans face off against the big boss.

That it requires three of them to take him down is quite understandable, and it’s about the only moment where Phoenix’s unusual and acrobatic style of kung-fu works, because it’s one ingredient in the recipe for the resulting fight, not the entire dish. When it (or she) tries to stand on its own merits, there just isn’t enough to sustain the interest for more than a few minutes of “Ooh: I didn’t realize spines could bend to such a shape”. It’s possible, had she persevered, that the rather homely leading lady might have eventually managed to go on to develop into someone capable of carrying a feature. However, you would be hard pushed to feel that the world of martial arts movies is a poorer place, because the sub-genre of contortionist-fu never apparently managed to establish a foothold past this singular entry.

Dir: Sun Yung
Star: Phoenix Chen, Chi Kuan Chun, Pai Ying

Revengeful Swordswoman

  By

★★½
“Can’t argue with the title, certainly.”

There’s no hanging around here. Virtually as we meet our heroine, Hsiang Ying (Lee), she’s getting tossed off a cliff by her kung-fu teacher, into a pack of wolves. Having survived that and made her way back – perhaps assuming this was all some terrible misunderstanding – her master then disavows her, announces he was the man responsible for killing her father, and locks her up in a cage. This all happens within, literally, three minutes of the film starting. Fortunately, a passing stranger sees fit to free her from the cage, and the ‘Heartless Lady’, as she becomes known, can go on her way, with the eventual aim of being exactly what the title suggests: revengeful.

Not much in the way of surprises either, although there’s no shortage of action, some of which might possibly be quite good. I am, unfortunately, not able to speak with authority, as there does not appear to be any version of this available which comes close to approximating the correct aspect ratio. This is “pan and scan” at its most annoying – and making matters worse, there’s no panning. You simply get the middle chunk of the screen, regardless of relevance. Which leads to a surreal moment later on, where there’s a discussion between two characters, both of whom have managed to be cropped out of the picture, leaving an entirely unoccupied frame. Antique still life: Chinese room, with conversation.

I might be inclined to give the film the benefit of the doubt, except for the hideous attempts at “comedy” – and, please, take the quotes there as necessary. For some reason, the script decides to give Hsiang a buffoon for a side-kick: he’s named “Clown” in the English dub, more in hope than an accurate reflection of any amusement gained from his presence. For virtually any scene in which he appears, will have you wishing the cropping of the print had been even more extreme. This reaches the pits in a scene at a brothel, where he and Hsiang are seeking information about their target, and is so painfully unfunny as to be borderline offensive. When one aspect of a film sucks so badly, it’s harder to believe it’s good anywhere else.

Yet, there are occasional moments – maybe no more than three or four consecutive seconds, when Lee is shot from far enough way that she fits completely on the screen – which are almost impressive enough to make you go. “I should try and track a good-quality copy of this.” Lee is fluid and graceful in motion, not dissimilar from her Hong Kong contemporary, Angela Mao, although the supporting cast here is more knock-off, and fails to make anything of an impression. In the end, this is all just too generic, from the title through the environment to, pretty much, the entire plot. As noted elsewhere, I watched this the same day as another film made in approximately the same time and place: the two have already merged into one Taiwanese blob of fu.

Dir: Artis Chow
Star: Judy Lee, Wen Chiang-lung, Man Kong Lung, Li Tung

Iron Swallow

  By

★★
“A bit hard to swallow.”

ironswallowGenerally, if someone is roaming the country, carrying out brutal attacks on apparently innocent citizens, blinding and disfiguring them, they’d be the villain of the piece, right? Not so here. For despite such distinctly non-heroic actions, Iron Swallow (Lee) is the heroine, disabling the men she holds responsible for killing her father years earlier. Needless to say, they’re not exactly impressed with the situation. To make matters worse, someone is flat-out killing her targets, intent on covering up something or other, and is trying to make it look like Swallow is responsible, by leaving her trademark darts behind at the scene. There are also two friends (Tao and Chung) rattling around, the son and pupil respectively of the region’s leading martial arts master Chu Hsiao Tien (Yuen), who get involved in the murky situation because Chu is one of Swallow’s targets and has hired a particularly loathsome assassin to bury the case.

Murky is, to be honest, putting it mildly, and the plot here appears to have been constructed from finest quality raw ore, taken from the Kung Fu Cliché mine. And I stress the word “raw”, since there doesn’t appear to have been much processing, in the way of logical thought, given to those ideas between their conception and the screen. It’s the kind of kung-fu film where you can’t be sure whether they made the story up as they went along – however, if they had, it would explain a lot of the tedious incoherence. I read another review which called this a martial arts version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and that’s a decent enough summary. At one point, Chris meandered in and wondered whether this was the source film for Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, based mostly on Swallow’s hair-style. Though she says that for about 40% of period kung-fu films, so it probably doesn’t mean much.

It’s certainly one of those cases where you might as well bring a book, and forget about trying to follow the indigestible lumps of plot between the action scenes. Fortunately, those are decent enough to sustain interest, and relatively copious, particularly in a final third which more or less abandons the plot, replacing it with multiple varieties of fisticuffs. Swallow’s skills are obvious, and given multiple opportunities to shine. It’s a shame that Lee was never allowed to showcase her own identity, in the way Angela Mao received, instead being the victim of a highly dubious marketing campaign which alleged she was Bruce Lee’s sister. Whatever the short-term benefit that brought, it did her career no good in the longer term, and she was all but gone from the screen by the end of the seventies. I have to wonder if whoever came up with that genius idea, was also responsible for the script here…

Dir: Judy Lee, Don Wong Tao, Ting Wa Chung, Yee Yuen
Star: Chang Pei-Cheng
a.k.a. Shaolin Iron Eagle

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong

  By

★★½
“The biggest strawberry jam factory in this area is the Catholic monastery over the hill.”

Cleopatra-Wong-poster-1978-1“Cleopatra Wong is Asian Interpol’s answer to James Bond, Flint, Cleopatra Jones and Stacey.” Well, less an answer, more like a repetition of the question, since this is firmly in “cheap Asian knock-off” market, though has some charm in its first half. Wong (Lee) is an agent, assigned to investigate a flood of near-undetectable counterfeit money which is flooding the markets in Hong Kong, the Philippines and elsewhere in the far East. It’s happening in such volume, there’s potential to destabilize the entire economies of the affected countries. She takes down the Singapore branch of the operation, and then discovers the money is being transported in shipments of strawberry jam, emanating from a monastery north of Manilla. After finding them to be not exactly a social order, Wong takes pictures by flying over their compound, which shows that these nuns have some nasty habits – specifically, they’re brothers rather than sisters, and concealing automatic weapons under their vestments. Time for Cleo to assemble and lead a team of crack agent in a raid on the convent, take out the bad guys, rescue the real nuns and save the world for free-market capitalism.

First point. No, they’re not mispronouncing “Asian” throughout the film. They are actually saying “ASEAN countries,” with ASEAN being the Association of South-East Asian Nations, which is a bit like the EU for that part of the world. Never say this site is not educational. Now we’ve got that out of the way, what of the film? It’s very much a mixed bag. Lee makes a pretty and solid action heroine, especially considering she was only 18 at the time. She demonstrates martial-arts skills that are better than many films of its era (which would be 1978), and it’s largely free from the two most frequent flaws of the era in action heroine films. obvious body-doubling and undercranking. There are some cute moments, such as Wong getting her own back on her boss, after he has interrupted her lovemaking at four in the morning, by interrupting his love-making at four in the morning.

However, the plot is extremely basic, with aspects that are cringeworthily naive. For instance, Cleopatra’s way of infiltrating the Singapore gang involves spending their fake money until she gets caught – which takes surprisingly little time, given the “near-undetectable” thing mentioned earlier. When this makes headlines news in the local paper (the local oligarchs must have paid for this encouraging depiction of low local crime rates), the real organizers of the fake money then bail her out and bring her back to their headquarters for interrogation. I dunno, maybe it was a simpler time for international supervillains. But the main problem is the horrendously over-extended attack on the convent, which is an apparently endless sequence of running, shooting and falling over. Part of the problem is that the heroine isn’t particularly heroic, becoming just one-fifth of the team, rather than standing out on her own terms, as was the basis for the first hour. While it does give us the iconic image below, which made the front cover of the iconic Mondo Macabro book, there is about 20 minutes of tedium to endure, until the final bit of sizzle, involving explosive-tipped arrows and a helicopter. This includes a long sequence, in which all five members climb up a wall, one by one, in what feels like real time. The lead character did appear in a couple more movies after her introduction here, and despite the failings of the finale here, I was entertained enough to add them to the “for future consideration” list.

Dir: Bobby A. Suarez (as “George Richardson”)
Star: Marrie Lee, Franco Guerrero, Dante Varonna, George Estregan

Cleopatra-Wong

The Lady Constables

  By

★★★½
“Crazy people have to be good fighters.”

lady constablesI first encountered this in a dreadful copy on Youtube: dubbed, cropped to 4:3 and apparently filmed off someone’s TV during a Force 10 storm at sea. However, what was left after that, was still impressive enough to make me track down a better copy. Well, somewhat better: it had subs, albeit burned in and incomplete, while the 16:9 ratio was at least a vague approximation to the original widescreen print. Still, you take what you get, and this is certainly enough fun to overcome the adversity of any flaws in the format.

The film starts with a robbery, in which five priceless pearls are snatched by the Black Wind Fortress gang under Coldstar Tiger (Chang). They split up to avoid detection, reckoning without the investigative – and, more importantly, interrogative – prowess of leading ladies Ti Yung Hing (Mao), who despite the title, is the only actual agent of law-enforcement here, and Tang Lin (Lee), whose uncle was killed during the robbery. Although they have similar goals, they refuse to team up, each preferring to work alone; adding an extra angle is Hung Yi (Wang), the bodyguard to the prince for whom the pearls were intended. Gradually, and not without some bickering on the way, they work their way up the Black Wind Fortress chain of command, and finally reach Coldstar Tiger. Though someone appears to be trying to cover the trail by offing their prisoners…

Yeah, as stories go, it’s pretty basic, and it’s clear the invention here was reserved for other aspects, such as the characters and the kung-fu. All three leads have their own quirks and foibles. One of the weapon’s in Ti’s arsenal is the ability to shoot scarves out of her sleeves, like a mad magician, and use them to encumber her opponent. Meanwhile, Tang keeps a plentiful supply of coffins on hand for her revenge, and isn’t a follower of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners, to put it mildly. And finally, Hung doesn’t speak – not because he’s mute, mind, he just doesn’t like to talk. He communicates instead with prewritten scrolls, which always have exactly the phrase he needs on them, and which he unfurls with a tinkly sound-effect.

The fight scenes are heavily wire-assisted, but that probably contributes to the action having stood the test of time better than many of its era (1978). They are no less imaginative than the characters, particularly at the end, with Mr. Tiger (Coldstar to his friends) wielding a mean umbrella/drone, on which one of our heroines hitches a ride. That previous sentence likely makes no sense if you haven’t seen the movie: if you do, then it will all become clear. Trust me on this, it provides a fitting climax to an entertaining piece of bare-bones action. With not one but two fighting ladies, this Taiwanese feature is deserving of a better presentation than it has received to date.

Dir: Cheung San Yee
Star: Angela Mao Ying, Judy Lee, Wang Kuan Hsiung, Chang Yi

Warrior Queen (1978)

  By

★½
“As dead as the ancient Britons.”

In the late seventies, British television was notable for series which generally kicked ass on the performance front, but suffered from woefully inadequate production values. The most well-known example is Doctor Who, but that was just the tip of a dramatic iceberg which included the likes of Blake’s 7 and this series: in some cases, you can look past or ignore the deficiencies, because the acting is good enough to counteract them. That, sadly, isn’t the case here, with Phillips (a compatriot of Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson at RADA) sadly adrift as Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni who takes on the occupying Roman forces after her daughters are assaulted. Having enjoyed the 2003 version, with Alex Kingston in the title role, I thought I’d give this one a chance, but when a supposed army of 6,000 is represented by four chariots and, maybe, ten guys in animal skins, it’s hard not to notice.

Phillips is fine as the queen, possessing a certain royal gravitas that’s fitting. But the “warrior” part of the equation is all but neglected, with her fight against another tribe’s chief, to prove herself capable of leading the revolt, among the least-convincing in television history. She is also burdened with two daughters who appear largely to have strayed in from a family sit-com of the era, and Gothard as a loony Druid priest, perpetually burbling about “angering the Gods.” Perhaps the only other decent performance is Hawthorne as the Roman bureaucrat who is the trigger for, and the first to face, Boudicca’s wrath. He would go on to comedic stardom, playing Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Minister, though is best known worldwide as Dr. Cocteau in Demolition Man, and brings much the same combination of world-weariness and snooty arrogance to this role.

However, the absolute poverty-row level of costumes, sets and (in particular) the battle scenes are easily what will leave the most lasting impression, and I don’t mean that in a good way: it’s hard to say how it might ever have past muster, even in the days of a less-sophisticated viewing audience (I was 12, and certainly less-sophisticated!). The net result is that this has all the impact of something made on the cheap for showing to schools, and given the trouble I had retaining consciousness, would likely not have enlivened even the dullest of history lessons.

Dir: Michael Custance and Neville Green
Star: Sian Phillips, Michael Gothard, Patti Love, Nigel Hawthorne