Tag: 1979

One Foot Crane

  By

★★½
“As the crane flies.”

We begin with the murder of a family, with the sole (apparent) survivor being a small child, Fung Lin-yi (Li), who is able to escape. Rescued by – and stop me if you’ve heard this one before – a kung-fu master, she is rigourously trained in the titular style of martial arts. It’s fairly nifty, not least for the dagger hidden in the tip of her shoe which she uses to administer the coup de grace, Rosa Klebb style. Fifteen years later, she’s ready to seek revenge on the quartet of outlaws responsible for killing her family, who unlike our heroine, appear not to have aged a day over the decade and a half since they participated in the slaughter. Matters are complicated by a few factors. Her first victim is the father of one of the outlaws, who then starts tracking down the mysterious “One Foot Crane” responsible. There’s also a police official investigating the situation (Sze), and it turns out Lin-yi may not be the only survivor after all (Wei).

Plenty going on here, for sure, though not much of it is particularly of interest. Indeed, from an action heroine point of view, it leads to a dilution of focus, with the movie’s attention being pulled in too many different directions. It ends up doing none of them justice and sidelining Lin-yi, just as things should be getting going. Li isn’t bad, either in performance or with her fists and feet; there’s just nothing particularly special about either facet of her character. It does form an interesting contrast to the recently reviewed Eight Strikes of the Wildcat in one area. That had the heroine taking on three villains for the film’s climax, and this approach makes for a much stronger and more impressive finale than the one here, where she needs the help of two others (using eagle and mantis techniques) in order to take on the final boss. You never saw Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan requiring assistance.

Veteran Hong Kong star Lo Lieh shows up, though despite his high presence in the movie’s opening credits, his contribution should probably be more in the “with…” or “and…” categories, if the makers were being honest. He appears only briefly as a villain, swinging a blade on a chain around. I did appreciate the way the film didn’t subject us to the almost contractually required training montage: one second, Lin-yi is a little girl doing kung-fu, and a cut later, she’s all grown-up and doing kung-fu. However, there is almost nothing else which sticks in my mind, and I finished watching it a scant few hours ago. Still, Li clearly must have had some skills, enjoying a long career in both film and television, appearing as recently as 2020. She was the lead in a 1978 TV series of The Bride with White Hair, and received a “Long-term Service and Outstanding Employee Honour Award” from TVB for thirty years’ service in 2018. This, however, doesn’t merit any further discussion.

Dir: Wu Min-hsiung
Star: Lily Li, Wei Tzu-Yun, Tsai Hung, Sze Ma Lung

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers

  By

★★½
“Hard to give a truck.”

After her truck-driving husband is injured in an attempted hijack, Sweetiepie (Darby) finds herself in a bind. They’re way behind on payments for the truck, to the point that it’s about to be repossessed by C.W. Douglas (Stanton) of Vehicle Retrievals Incorporated. In desperation, she hires experienced driver Flatbed Annie (Potts) to partner with her, working the necessary delivery routes to pay off their debt. However, Douglas is not the only threat the pair face on the highway. The failed hijack was intended to recover a package which has surreptitiously been placed in the truck during a run to Mexico, and its owners remain very keen to recover their merchandise from the new operators,

It’s a TV movie, so you know that means it’s going to be well short of the necessary wallop, especially considering the late seventies era from which this dates. In reality, the mob would have no hesitation in using more direct methods to take their property back, with Annie and Sweetiepie lucky to escape with their lives. Here, the criminals are bumbling, comedic figures who pose no threat and, in fact, are all but forgotten during the middle stages. It’s also remarkable how Sweetiepie picks up the ability to drive a 16-wheeler in only a few hours, considering she was previously a county clerk. Training. It’s clearly vastly over-rated… Mind you, if you’re looking for vehicular mayhem, you’re in the wrong place anyway: an unnecessary citrus avalanche is about as close as this gets.

On the positive side, the case here is better than you’d expect. You may remember Darby from the original True Grit, and Potts would go on to Ghostbusters. The chief delight though is Stanton, playing a repo man a full five years before his iconic turn as a repo man in… um, Repo Man. His character here is an affable sort, considering his profession, who rarely lets anything faze him, playing the guitar as he drives. Indeed, he’s quite the musical talent, at one point whipping out his harmonica to deliver an impromptu rendition of Scotland the Brave, for no apparent reason. The film comes to life any time he’s on-screen, and if this had spun off into a series (as the ending implies was hoped), I’d have watched.

As a stand-alone entity, however, it only barely passes muster as entertainment. The initial set-up is fine, the problem is a script which has no idea what to do with the scenario beyond reaching its end point. Questions such as how the package came to be in the truck, for example, are glossed over in little more than a single sentence, and that entire subplot is not so much resolved as discarded. There are nods to the brotherhood of the road, with other truckers helping out our heroines, an idea likely borrowed from the previous year’s hit movie, Convoy. Like most other elements here, nothing of more than marginal significance results.

Dir: Robert Greenwald
Star: Kim Darby, Annie Potts, Harry Dean Stanton, Arthur Godfrey

Scorching Sun, Fierce Wind, Wild Fire

  By

★★
“May the fierce be with you.”

The first thing which will hit you about this 1979 Taiwanese co-production is the utterly shameless way it hijacks John Williams’s soundtrack to Star Wars. 93 minutes later, as the end credits roll, accompanied by more unauthorized liftage… That’s probably still going to be the main element of this you will remember. For the rest is largely a confusingly-plotted and not very well executed bit of chop socky. Despite Angela Mao’s presence, second on the list of participants, she is a long way behind the main character, in terms of both screen time and action.

It’s supposed to be set in the 1920’s, though at least one of the vehicles on display looks extremely post-war. At the time, it appears China was divided into a lot of territories, ruled over in a feudal fashion by warlords. One such man is having a problem with a rebel who goes by the nomme de guerre of “Violet”, and he is desperate to find out who is disrupting his operations. In particular, his plan to acquire some heavy weaponry from Japan, that will end all rebellions. Seems Violet had stolen the guns’ firing-pins, rendering them useless. The cause of his angst is a great deal closer to home than he things, because Violent is actually his daughter (Mao), in a hat and veil. Other plot elements include a pair of escaped convicts, a treasure map which has been split into two halves, and the warlord’s right-hand man, Second Master (Yi), who is plotting a coup.

Unfortunately, it’s much more  the movie of Pai Tien Hsing  (Peng), whose character has an ambivalence a little like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. He initially appears to be on the side of the warlord, and insists on Violet putting her skills to the test against him. However, the further into proceedings we get, the more aligned he is with her, until the final battle, where they both go up against Second Master and his poisoned knives. I must say, they have a very gnarly effect on the victim, though it’s likely no spoiler to say, the film operates in line with the kung-fu version of the old pro wrestling adage: “He who sets the table, gets the table…”

The fights are only occasionally up to much, and mostly feel like they date from a picture made a decade or more previously. Mao is her usual, reliable self, and shines in the moments she has; there just are not enough of them, and they don’t last for long. There’s a horribly cropped and dubbed version on Amazon Prime, as Dragon Connection, which I got three minutes into before discovering the letterboxed, subbed version on YouTube. Mind you, that had its issues too, not least referring to a mute character on multiple occasions as “a dump.” One for the Mao completists only. Having checked it off the list, let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Sheng-Yuan Sun
Star: Peng Tien, Angela Mao, Yi Chang, Tao-Liang Tan
a.k.a. Dragon Connection or Any Which Way You Punch

The Golden Lady

  By

★★½
“The Gun With the Golden Girl”

This British film occupies an odd middle ground between Ian Fleming and Jackie Collins – with a garnish of… The Village People? Yeah, there were points where I genuinely wondered what I’d strayed into. The titular female is Julia Hemingway (Skriver, under the rather laughable screen name of “Christina World”, which seems more like a dubious theme-park), who is a corporate espionage specialist. She accepts a commission to infiltrate the bidding for oil rights in a Middle Eastern country, on behalf of one of the four participants.

With the auction about to take place in London, Hemingway brings in three agents (Danielle, Chadwick and Pavel), and tasks each with working on one of the other candidates – not least with their sexual wiles. However, as an increasing number of dead bodies start to show up, it becomes clear that this is not straightforward business. More than one government intelligence agency is highly interested in the outcome, and is prepared to stop at nothing to get the right outcome.

Director Larraz is best known for the cult horror movie Vampyres, and certainly seems out of his element here. There is probably a decent spy thriller in here – there’s a reason Desmond Llewellyn, the long-term Q in the Bond films, shows up in a minor role. Hemingway and her “angels” are all perfectly smart and capable too. Except, just when some momentum builds up, it keeps going off the rails, in a variety of directions. Some of those aren’t so bad: Ava Cadell, later to be a sexy radio host for Andy Sidaris, plays a modestly-priced hooker.

But then there’s the terrible soundtrack, book-ended with songs by The Three Degrees and (gack!) Charles Aznavour. And don’t get me started on the entirely gratuitous nightclub performances by Blonde On Blonde (a pop combo made up of two Page 3 models) and Hot Gossip, a “naughty” dance troupe, who at one point included future Mrs. Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Sarah Breitman, in their ranks. The kindest thing about them I can say is, there may be an alternate universe where these sequences made sense.

The action quotient is about as limited as you’d expect from a seventies British film, even if the ladies occasionally do get to engage in some brief fisticuffs of the limited kind. The best sequence is probably towards the end, when Dahlia (Danielle) is in a low-flying helicopter, blasting away at her target on the ground as they swoop back and forth; it looks rather risky, not least because it appears to be the actress herself present in the cockpit. I was also at least somewhat amused by the use of technology here. I imagine it was quite advanced for the late seventies, though they may want to recalibrate their database. Given the context of their work, I’m not certain that “nymphomanic” really deserves to be classified as a weakness for an agent. But generally, it’s boring stuff.

Dir: José Ramón Larraz
Star: Ina Skriver, Suzanne Danielle, June Chadwick, Anika Pavel

No One Can Touch Her

  By

★★★½
“Don’t drink and fu.”

In this late era Judy Lee film, she stars as the confusingly-named Brother Blind, a name which scores only 50% for accuracy. She is indeed, largely unable to see, the result of a confrontation with the motley group of bandits who killed her father (Sit). Though even here, there is some confusion as to whether there are 13 of them, as an alternate title suggest, or 14 as the English dub mentions on several occasions. They’re certainly a random bunch, some of who are missing limbs or fingers, as well as two “giants” who aren’t very tall, and a “poison dwarf” who wields a blow-gun, responsible for Brother Blind losing her sight.

She becomes a nomadic alcoholic, roaming the country with her kid brother and stealing wine wherever she can – not that this impacts her kung-fu skills [the most common date for this, 1979, would put it one year after Jackie Chan’s classic Drunken Master, which inspired a host of imitators]. It turns out she’s not the only one to have suffered at the hands of the gang, who are out for revenge on Wang, the official who jailed their leader, Wolf Fang. To cut a long story short – and the film certainly doesn’t – Brother Blind teams up with Wang’s daughter, Mei Gwan (Sun), his long-lost son, Brother Mallet (Kam), who works as a carpenter, and a imperial bureaucrat with a fondness for pipe-fu, to stop the bandits after they have infiltrated a wedding.

This is almost completely mad, right from the opening credits which tells us the martial arts director was “King Kong.” Yet there’s a lot here to admire, with both Lee and Sun kicking butt in a variety of styles, for a director who knows how to show off the talents of everyone involved. The characterizations here are interesting too, with Brother Blind largely grumpy and irascible, rather than being heroic. The bureaucrat (who is never named) is worse still: basically an entitled and arrogant dick. Yet, when the chips are down, he doesn’t back off, and demonstrates his arrogance is not unjustified.

The film does contain the typical unfortunate stabs at comedy, which would have been much better left to Jackie Chan. Even if we allow for everything amusing in the dialogue having been lost in the dubbing, the physical stuff is no more entertaining. Fortunately, the martial arts on view, more than makes up for it. There are a huge range of different styles, courtesy of the dozen or more bandits and their various abilities, and the same goes on the side of the good guys, whose varying talents all get showcased. It even does an unexpectedly good job of dealing with firearms, their firing pins being surreptitiously removed by the bureaucrat. The prints floating round are desperately in need of restoration, however: a letterboxed and subtitled version might merit our seal of approval, especially if the plot then made more sense. This pan ‘n’ scanned, dubbed atrocity? Not so much.

Dir: Ting Shan-Hsi
Star: Judy Lee, Sun Chia-Lin, Kam Kong, Sit Hon
a.k.a. Against the Drunken Cat’s Paws, 13 Evil Bandits, Revenge of the Lady Warrior or Flying Claw Fights 14 Demons

Goldengirl

  By

★★
“Run Goldine Run”

goldengirlAnd Frankenstein Created Woman? That might have been an alternate title, with German scientist Dr. Serafin (Jurgens) in the role of the creator – he’s a man with a dubious past, and whispers of involvement in Nazi experimentation. Now “rehabilitated” to the US, in what may be a medical version of Operation Paper Clip, he uses an unholy mix of pharmaceuticals and extreme training methods to convert his own daughter, Goldine, into a 6’2″ athletic superwoman, with the aim of completing an unheard of triple crown at the upcoming Moscow Olympics, winning the 100, 200 and 400 metre gold medals. To fund this work, he brings in a consortium of businessmen who aim to capitalize on Goldine’s success with advertising, merchandising, etc. Brought in to advise them, as Goldine is prepared for her first public events, is agent Jack Dryden (Coburn), who gradually realizes the one person not wholeheartedly committed to the entire proceedings, is the runner herself.

This is a curious period piece, which almost feels like it’s set in an alternate universe – as history turned out, Russia invaded Afghanistan and the United States ended up boycotting those 1980 Olympics entirely. This does have some interesting things to say about parents who force their own ambitions onto their offspring, without considering their childrens’ desires, or even best interests, and also about the “shamateurism” of the Olympics. However, this is countered by some odd aspects such as Goldine’s vibrator-based press conference training, whose mere description appears to have strayed in from an entirely different movie. The film would also have benefited from a greater focus on the heroine, and what she wants out of life; that’s an area left almost entirely unexplored, with Goldine left more as a palimpsest for the demands of others.

Even if a couple of inches short of the necessary height at 5’11”, Anton, a former Miss California, certainly makes a striking figure, and the film wastes no opportunity to show off her… er., striking figure. Though when you see her competing, many of those against whom she races were actual athletes, and the difference between their, much more heavily muscled physiques, and her wispy frame is obvious. Bill Conti’s score occasionally threatens to overpower everything, most notably during the musical training montage number, also sung by Anton. However, even if its more of a “Good effort!” than an Olympic champion, it remains one of the few sports movies with a focus on the women’s side of the stadium.

Dir: Joseph Sargent
Star: Susan Anton, James Coburn, Curt Jurgens, Leslie Caron

Super Gun Lady

  By

★★
“Heroin with guns. No, that’s not a typo.”

Super_Gun_Lady_Police_Branch_82Based on a popular manga series by Tõru Shinohara, who gave us Sasori, I’m guessing this was also the inspiration for Police Branch 82, not least because the heroines in both work for a department by that number. I mean, what are the odds? Here, it’s described as “A secret department that investigates civil service crime,” and one of its detectives is 24-year-old Maki (Yokoyama), who has a reputation for not caring about the carnage she causes in getting her man. In an apparent effort to rope her in, she is assigned a new partner, Rin Kakura (Kaoru), who is rather less feminine, shall we say. This happens after Tajma, the executive Maki is supposed to be watching, ends up falling from a balcony in what looks like a suicide, but clearly isn’t. That turns out just to be the start, as the executive’s gay lover is trying to blackmail Takebe, an army buddy of Tajima who is now the chairman of their company. Adding even more complexity to a plot that was already groaning under the weight of all these threads, when the lover is stabbed on a city street, his killers are trailed by our heroines, back to a right-wing paramilitary organization. That’s when the trouble really starts, as Maki is kidnapped and pumped full of heroin…

It’s an extremely unsatisfactory script, which seems to rely too much on coincidence and doesn’t bother to explain itself at any point. For instance, Rin just happens to be hanging around outside a car-park when the kidnappers leave, intending to dump Maki’s body; similarly, one of the gang, just happens to find the car in which they are holding a suspect. And the second half of this diverts itself off into mostly being about a staged “false flag” operation, a bank robbery intended to distract the media from the blossoming political scandal. The villains liberate a trio of convicted killers from prison, with the hope of luring Department 82 into action – even though, as Rin herself says, it’s way outside their normal scope of investigation. The purpose and point of this is never adequately covered, and it seems as if the writers maybe had 30 pages of an unfinished script for another movie, and figured they might as well use it here.

For positives, I have to say, I liked Rin as a heroine, because she is not the willowy archetype often seen in this kind of film, whose top falls off at the slightest provocation. Instead, Kaoru genuinely looks like she could kick your arse, and would enjoy doing it; I haven’t been able to find any supporting evidence, but it would not surprise me if she was a pro wrestler – that’s the kind of look she possesses. The final shoot-out, as Rin and (the suddenly much better – I guess nothing kicks a heroin habit quicker than a good ol’ hostage situation) Maki storm the bank, is also fairly well-staged. However, I’ll be honest: it took me two attempts to get that far, the first having ended in an afternoon snooze on the couch instead. Never a good sign.

Dir: Chusei Sone
Star: Emi Yokoyama, Jumbo Kaoru, Kishida Mori, Yamatani Hatsuo