Tag: 1988

The Glorious Asuka Gang!

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★★★
“Red Nose Day?”

Dir: Yôichi Sai
Star: Miho Tsumiki, Yôko Kikuchi, Kumiko Takeda, Mikari

This is based on a 34-volume manga series by Satosumi Takaguchi, which began publication in 1985. It is far from the only adaptation. There have also been two OVAs, a live-action drama series, a different feature version made in 2009, and even a pair of drama CDs. This feature, however, is the only one available in the West to date with subtitles. It takes place at an indeterminate point in the future – the year is given as 199X – when “the streets are overflowing with drugs and violence”. There’s a battle for control, which conveniently seems to be along gender lines. The unfortunately naned male “Red Nose Gods”, under boss Toki Masamune, are going up against the all-girl Hibari Group. They are named after their leader (Mikari), who speaks only through her lieutenant, or with the aid of an artificial voice-box.

Out heroine, Asuka (Tsumiki), has just peeled off from Hibari, along with her best friend Miko (Kikuchi), seeking to make their own way on the streets. They quickly gain the enmity of the Red Nose Gods, but more troubling, is that Hibari has ordered Yoko (Takeda) to kill them both. For Yoko is Miko’s sister. This is established quite quickly, and the rest of the movie is various shenanigans as the two groups struggle for power, while the local corrupt police run interference on their own agenda. Will there be betrayal, plotting and heavy use of a Rolling Stones song? The answer is yes, to all three elements.

This feels like it ought to be a straight-to-video title, of which there was no shortage around the time this came out (1988). But the production values are considerably better than normally present in that kind of thing. The cost of merely licensing the Stones’s Satisfaction would have exceeded the entire budget of many V-cinema entries. There are also some quite spectacular sets built to represent “New Kabuki Town”, after the apparent near-collapse of normal society, and the photography is positively theatrical in quality. If you’d told me this was a Japanese remake of Streets of Fire, I would have believed you. Elements like Hibari’s voice-box indicate there was a decent amount of thought put into the various elements too.

So why is it… kinda dull? Or at least, it seems like it should be considerably more exciting. While there are occasional upticks in energy, it feels considerably more chatty than I wanted. Yoko, in particular, seems to act in ways that defy any kind of internal logic, yet are necessary to propel the narrative forward. What is her motivation? What, indeed, is anyone trying to accomplish? For a time, it looks as if Asuka is seeking to take over from Hibari, or replace Toki. This all goes away quite quickly, left by the wayside, and leaving a vacuum in terms of character goals. It ends instead in a straightforward duel between Asuka and Yoko, and there’s a definite sense that, once the dust settles, nothing much will have changed. Maybe that’s the point.

Lady Mobster

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★★★
“Because ‘Lady Accountant’ wouldn’t have sold as well…”

The salacious sleeve promises considerably more than this can deliver. For we are actually talking a TV movie from the eighties here, with all the limitations that imposes on content and execution. Yet, if sold a lot more on sizzle than steak, and it did come very close to not qualifying here – likely the last scene being when it finally reached the finish line – I can say I was never bored.

Long-time soap opera queen Lucci plays Laurel, the young daughter of a mob family, who witnesses her parents being killed as part of a war between Mafia groups, over whether or not to go legitimate. She’s then taken in by one of her father’s allies, Victor Castle (Wiseman), and grows up as part of his family, becoming a lawyer and eventually marrying his son, Robert (Born). Castle has never given up the dream of getting out of the mob world, and with Laurel’s help is working towards that goal. However, the more traditional families are no less reluctant than they were decades previously, and the resulting feud comes once again to Laurel’s house and loved ones. She ends up taking over as the head of the family, and is now determined to find both those who killed her parents, and those intent on perpetuating the beef now.

It does play like a low-rent version of The Godfather, with Lucci playing the Michael Corleone role of someone who doesn’t really want to get involved in the criminal enterprise, yet finds herself increasingly drawn into it. As such, she’s good in the role, exuding the necessary confidence to make her facing down a room of Mafia dons at least plausible, if still somewhat unlikely. There’s an effective scene early on, when she has a meeting with a prospective partner of the Castles, and rips him a new one for false accounting and fraud. This establishes her character as at least a financial bad-ass, even if there’s precious little gun-play for her to do over the first 85 or so minutes.

Still, director Moxey has been doing this kind of thing for what seems like forever – he directed the original Charlie’s Angels pilot – and keeps the story-line progressing consistently. Certainly, Lauren’s resulting character arc is the best thing the film has going for it, as we see her develop over the course of the film. If this does resemble a pilot episode for a series that never happened, the way it finishes makes it one I would be more than slightly interested in watching. It feels a bit like an eighties version of La Reina Del Sur, with its story of a woman whose family ties to organized crime prove eventually to be a critical formative influence in her life. At the time, that was positively radical, and even if the treatment here is undeniably milder than I’d have preferred, I wasn’t left feeling like I’d been too badly deceived by the cover.

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Star: Susan Lucci, Michael Nader, Roscoe Born, Joseph Wiseman

Savage Justice

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★★½
“Justice: yes. Savage? Not so much.”

In an unnamed third-world country, which looks suspiciously like the Philippines, unexpected turmoil catches American diplomats by surprise. Trying to flee the country, the Howard family are caught by the rebel force run by Sanchez (Vernal). Mom and Dad are killed, while daughter Sarah (Montgomery) is abducted by the rebel leader. Fast-forward a year, and it looks like Sarah has gone more or less full Patty Hearst. She has joined the revolution and become Sanchez’s main squeeze – much to the unhappiness of the previous incumbent. But, it turns out, Sarah was only playing a (very) long game, and waiting for the appropriate opportunity. When she goes along on a raid of a nearby town, she jumps ship, instead teaming up with local guy Rick (Memel) to defend the locals against Sanchez and his gang, intent on extracting revenge for her year of abuse. And she knows the location of the perfect arms cache which will help them. Though getting to it might be another matter.

There’s certainly no shortage of action here. The problem is that most of it – in particular, the bits involving our heroine – isn’t very good. She’s not exactly Cynthia Rothrock shall we say. Her fighting skills are more on a par with… oh, let’s say, someone whose main (and, arguably, only) claim to fame is being in Revenge of the Nerds. Oh, she seems game enough, and the enthusiastic approach by director Romero does help paper over some of the cracks. But you wonder how far down the list of picks the producers had to go before settling on Montgomery. I feel it was quite some distance.

Not that this in entirely devoid of pleasures. For example, the arms cache is located inside an abandoned ship, located inside the territory of what can only be described as a midget warlord. Corlon (played by the inappropriately-named Rey Big Boy), and his devoted followers, appear to have wandered in from a Philippino theme-park inspired by Mad Max. When they catch Sarah, Rick and their crew skulking around, Corlon royally proclaims they can go free if she can best his executioner in single combat. Which, of course, she does, thereby gaining the respect and admiration of the little ruler, who is far more interesting than the ultra-bland Rick.

Then there are the Buddhist monks, whom she also recruits. It’s a bit… disconcerting to see these saffron-robed men of peace, laying down suppressing fire from a 50-caliber machine gun, or piloting a power-boat, which has been converted into a kamikaze vessel. These are the weird elements which kept me acceptably entertained, when the main plot and lead actress, largely failed to do so. Disappointingly, we didn’t even get the expected cat-fight between Sarah and Sanchez’s once and former girlfriend. That annoying bastard, Rick, robs us of this small pleasure with a single shot. Nor is Sarah’s battle against Sanchez much to write home about, yet the sheer volume of running gun battles did keep me awake.

Dir: Joey Romero
Star: Julia Montgomery, Steven Memel, Ruel Vernal, Chanda Romero

The Inspector Wears Skirts series

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★★★½
The Inspector Wears Skirts

skirts1aSpun off from the popular Lucky Stars series, this takes Madam Wu (Hu), who had first appeared in Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars, and branches out into its own saga. After an unfortunate incident involving a sheik’s wife, the local police decide to set up a special group of women officers, who can handle similarly sensitive missions. Wu is given the task of licking the candidates into shape, with the help of Interpol’s Madam Law (Rothrock), and despite the disdain of Inspector Kan (Fung), who is training a similar group of men. Needless to say, the male and female squad members compete, both for success and each other’s attentions, but both are called in to provide security for a showcase featuring priceless jewels. Will the ladies finally be able to prove they are worthy of serving alongside their gentleman colleagues?

If you want an example of the “kitchen sink” school of Hong Kong cinema, look no further, because Chin hurls everything he can think of at the camera. As well as the action – largely concentrated around whenever Madame Law is present – there’s drama (the inevitable cocky bitch among the women learns it’s a team job, misanthropy (two of the recruits discover they share the same boyfriend, and give him a brutal beating) and even a musical number. Oh, yes: and large slabs of broad comedy, particularly in the middle, with a lengthy sequence resulting after the two teams go on a mutual outing to a roller-skating rink. This isn’t subtle, but I’ll admit, I did laugh out loud on at least one occasion. The shifting between these approaches is rarely less than jerky, leaving the viewer with the vague impression they’re channel surfing HK television.

Still, the action, whenever it shows up, is as good as you’d expect from a film produced by Jackie Chan, and on which his world-famous Stunt Team was involved. Rothrock and Hu do much of the heavy lifting, but the rest of the cast don’t seem to get off lightly, Hui in particular. Bizarrely memorable, is the training sequence where Law encourages the recruits to run faster by having them chased by blazing trails of gasoline. [The Chan-esque out-takes at the end show you they clearly needed a couple of takes to get that right…] The final battle, against Western jewel thief Jeffrey Falcon is particularly impressive, and is embedded at the end of this review for your viewing pleasure. If only there’d been rather more of this – rather than, say, quite as much roller-skating – this could have been a classic. Instead, it’s excellent in short bursts, and merely acceptable for long spells.

Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Sibelle Hu, Kara Hui, Shui-Fan Fung, Cynthia Rothrock
a.k.a. Top Squad

★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts II

skirts2For the first hour, this is among the most miserable of action heroine sequels ever to come out of Hong Kong. It’s right down there with Naked Killer II: Raped by an Angel, in terms of the gulf in quality and entertainment value separating it from the original. While Hu and Fung return, as leaders of the male and female squads respectively, outside of a minor battle in the lunch-room, there is almost no significant action to speak of, until the final 20 minutes. It’s almost as if the makers forgot entirely about this side of things until the last week of shooting, and were forced to make up for lost time. It’s certainly brisk and not badly put-together. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be ramming your head into the wall and praying for unconsciousness, long before all that shows up.

The main thing you’ll take away is an appreciation for the delicate balance between action and comedy managed in the first film. Where that juggled those two balls with some adroitness, the balance here is tilted heavily towards the latter, and I’m strongly inclined to put comedy in quotes. For the laughs are largely the product of things like new recruit Amy Yip’s large breasts – she cuts holes in her bullet-proof vest, because she doesn’t want it flattening her figure. There’s even a scene which makes heavy use of flaming excrement for comedic effect. Oh, hold my aching sides for I fear they may split. As in the original, there’s a lengthy “date night” sequence, set at a birthday party for Madame Wu, rather than a roller-skating rink, but still complete with a musical number. It manages to be even worse-staged than the original.

Things do improve somewhat in the second half. There’s a contest on an obstacle course, which emphasizes teamwork over individual success, then another rehash from part one, a “best out of three” martial arts match between the Banshee and Tiger squads. These could have been the most badly choreographed fights in the history of kung fu, and they would still have come as a blessed relief from comedic Peeping Tom-foolery and people smearing tofu on their own face. Have to say, the poster above (Vietnamese?) probably had rather more effort put into its creation, than most of the scenes in the actual movie. There’s an almost overpowering feeling this was little more than a hurriedly concocted cash-in on the success of its predecessor.

Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Sibelle Hu, Sandra Ng, Shui-Fan Fung, Billy Lau

★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts III

Just about any effort at meaningful action is abandoned here, in favour of comedy which spoofs other movies, including Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Chinese Ghost Story series and, in the second half, Hong Kong classic, God of Gamblers. Actually, as a fan (to varying degrees) of all those, I didn’t mind too much: it’s a damn sight more successful than the dire attempts at humour which sank part II before it had left the harbour. Those boat metaphors are also appropriate, given this carries the sub- or alternative title, Raid On Royal Casino Marine. The main mission here sees the Banshee Squad going undercover on a boat, where Amy (Ng) has to take over as a syndicate’s top gambler, after the real person is unceremoniously dumped overboard. However, robbers have designs on the $200 million pot, and hijack the ship, so it’s up to Madam Wu (Hu) to parachute in to the rescue of Inspector Kan (Fung).

inspector3

Takes a while to get to that point, as it starts with We and Kan now married, and Wu apparently largely happy to be a home-maker. Kan is tasked with reviving the Banshee Squad, though his training methods are… somewhat different, shall we say. Yay for electrocuting tied-up women! They gain revenge by donning the hockey mask and knife gloves of Jason and Freddy Krueger, to terrorize him, then restaging an entire Chinese Ghost Story sequence. It’s all such a product of its time (1990) – but since that was when I was heavily into both schlock horror and Hong Kong fantasy, I can’t complain too much, and just wallowed in shameless nostalgia for a bit. However, whatever it may have gained on the comedy side, is entirely handed back in a lack of competent or interesting action. Jackie Chan and his team had clearly severed all connections with the series for this entry, and the results are entirely pedestrian, with hardly a single moment, let alone sequence, of note.

While it likely made more sense at the time, I can safely say it certainly hasn’t stood the test of time very well. I think it’s probably best to say no more and move on to the final entry. Otherwise, I’ll probably have spent longer writing this review, than they spent on creating the entire movie…

Dir: Wellson Chin
Star: Shui-Fan Fung, Sandra Ng, Billy Lau, Sibelle Hu
a.k.a. Raid On Royal Casino Marine

★★★
The Inspector Wears Skirts IV

While still packed with crappy humour, this was at least crappy humour that occasionally made me laugh, rather than roll my eyes. The fourth and final installment went out on a relative high. It demonstrates that it helps when making an action-comedy, to have actors who know their way round the action part. Here, that’s Lee and Khan, both of whom were veterans in the Hong Kong GWG field, and the martial arts here are pretty close to the quality we saw in the first installment.

Madam Lee (Lee) is struggling with the latest bunch of female recruits in the Banshee Squad, to the point where her boss Supt. Hu (Fung Woo), might have to close down the group entirely. For another officer, Madam Yang (Khan), has founded a “gilt-edged” women’s task force, which has been getting glowing reports. To try and recover, Lee and her assistant, Ann (Tse) go in search of some of the former members, now in civilian life, to see if they will come back and help restore the Banshee Squad to its former glories. Which is how we get the return of Amy (Ng) and May (Kara Hui), who have become a single mother and nuttier than a fruitcake respectively.

It’s certainly not elevating the wit: mental illness and date-rape jokes, toilet humour and crotch whacks are very much the order of the day here, right up to the final shot, the film freeze-framing on an excrement gag (perhaps literally!). But there are occasions where it works, such as the misfiring of a pair of jet-propelled shoes, which feels like it could have come out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Someone even gets fired from a cannon. There are also things parodying the bus chase from Police Story [remember, Jackie Chan was a producer on the first Skirts film], Once Upon a Time in China, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff which has gone under the bridge of memory over the past 28 years.

Eventually, we get to the action-oriented main course, which sees the bad guys taking the commissioner’s son hostage in his school. Naturally, Madams Lee and Yang have to team up with each other, as part of the anti-terrorist forces. Even though the fights seem more than a little sped-up, they’re entertaining and well-staged, especially the final battle against a superkicker, whom I’ve seen identified as  Chui Jing Yat, which goes on for what seems like ever, in and around the school. It likely makes me view this slightly more kindly than it deserves, and this is not going to be a film in either Khan or Lee filmographies that will be ranked near the top. But if you’re going to go out, go out on a high note, I say.

Dir: Wellson Chin
Star:Moon Lee, Wan-Yee Tse, Cynthia Khan, Sandra Ng

The Sisterhood

  By

★★★
“Many Mad Maxines.”

This one may be the origin of the meme, “After the apocalypse, food, water and gasoline are in short supply – but hair-spray will still be plentiful.” For there’s no denying the absolute silliness of this slab of post-apocalyptic nonsense. But it’s still imaginative and energetic enough that my interest was largely sustained. We’re apparently long enough after World War III for it all to have become the stuff of almost-forgotten legend. In the aftermath, the world is now occupied by roaming bands, mostly of men. However, certain women are gifted with special powers, and they have banded together into the titular group, under their reverend mother, and are feared by most as witches.

After her settlement is attacked by Mikal (Wagner, looking like a low-rent Chuck Norris), and her brother killed, Marya (Johnson) hits the road, seeking revenge. She meets two members of the Sisterhood, Alee (Holden) and Vera (Patrick), and when they discover Marya’s gift, the ability to communicate with her pet hawk, they allow her to join them. Vera is abducted by Mikal, who then heads off to add her to the collection of Sisterhood members, being held in one of the few remaining cities. Alee and Marya follow, until a shortcut into the forbidden zone of radiation and mutants lets them stumble across a pre-apocalypse arms dump. Now armed with automatic weapons and a tank (!), they are thoroughly well-equipped, first to rescue Vera, and then storm the city and liberate the rest of their sisters.

Made in 1988, the debt this owes to the Mad Max trilogy (which had finished with Beyond Thunderdome, three years earlier) is apparent to the point of being blatant. There’s a lot of whizzing around in a quarry, with giant fireballs going off just to the side of the target. For, while it’s remarkable the heroines are able immediately to drive their tank, their talents clearly do not extend to aiming the guns accurately. This is all highly mockable, not least that it’s apparently set in the far-distant future of… er, the year 2021. Yet those involved play it all entirely straight, and eventually I found this seriousness rubbing off on me. There were occasional moments which, if not making me go “Wow!”, did extract a somewhat-impressed “Huh.”.

Director Santiago should be well-known to readers here, having also given us Angel Fist and The Muthers; he brings much the same combination of female empowerment and exploitation here. Because, for all the strong female characters, they also seem to spent a inordinate amount of time either chained up or getting their tops ripped open – and, occasionally, both. But Holden and Johnson manage to rise above the low-rent production values with their dignity intact – even if nothing remotely like the video sleeve is to be found in this one! By the admittedly low standards of the genre, this is likely well-above average. And we only have to wait two years for it all to come to pass…

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Patrick

Wish Me Luck

  By

★★★½
“Life during wartime.”

This British TV series ran for three series from 1988 through 1990, with 23 episodes (each an hour long including commercials) in total. The same creators had previously been responsible for another WW2-based show, Tenko, about women in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore. The time period here is similar – the second half of World War 2 – but the focus moves from the Far East to Occupied Europe, in particular, France. At this point, the Allies were sending in agents to assist the local Resistance – and as we’ve documented before, this was one of the few areas where women were used as much as men.

While partly inspired by the exploits of Nancy ‘The White Mouse’ Wake, the show cover a range of characters, both at home on London and on the ground in Vichy France. The main one present throughout is Faith Ashley (Asher), who eventually rises to run the department from London. She is responsible for recruiting (more or less) suitable candidates, getting them trained, and once they’re embedded, managing their needs. In the first season, it’s an exercise in contrasts: the two main agents sent over are an upper-class housewife Liz Grainger (Buffery), and factory worker from a refugee Jewish family, Matty Firman (Suzanna Hamilton). In the second and third series, the focus is more on Emily Whitbread (Snowden), an initially rather naive woman, barely old enough to join up. She quickly has to adapt and make some extremely difficult decisions.

It’s at its most effective when concentrating on ratcheting up the tension and depicting life in enemy territory, where the slightest slip can prove fatal. Interestingly, there’s no attempt made at the players speaking – or in most cases, even sounding – French. Yet, this is easy to forget, and soon seems natural, with their English accents still conveying information about their position and social standing. Less successful, with the exception of the final season, are the aspects portraying life in Britain. These are just not very interesting, save for the last batch of episodes. In those, Faith tries, with increasing desperation, to get much-needed resources for a rebellion, when the higher-ups are far more concerned with matters elsewhere. It’s an object lesson that the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few – yet the consequence for the few are no less tragic as a result.

The last season also has considerably loftier production values, with location shooting in France, and significantly more military hardware on view. However, the cheap music still undercuts this, apparently being played by a three-man band, when the action really needs something sweeping and orchestral. That still doesn’t destroy the tension of the final few episodes, when it becomes increasingly clear that the makers have no intention on letting all the characters walk off into the sunset unharmed. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because in wartime, there’s really no such thing as a happy ending.

Creators: : Jill Hyem & Lavinia Warner
Star: Jane Asher, Jane Snowden, Michael J. Jackson, Kate Buffery

Lady Avenger

  By

★★½
“Big hair, big sunglesses and a little budget.”

ladyavengerDeCoteau gave us one of the all-time worst GWG films, in American Rampage. Made the same year, 1989, this is surprisingly… Well, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say “good,” it looks like Citizen Kane beside Rampage; let’s settle on “surprisingly semi-competent.” The heroine, Maggie (Sanders), is serving time in jail, when she is let out on furlough to attend the funeral of her murdered brother. Maggie escapes, and sets about tracking down those responsible, working her way up the chain of command, wielding everything from a baseball bat to a flamethrower(!), and with a fetching line in 80’s wraparound shades, which she wears even when exploring a dimly-lit warehouse. Hey, it was the eighties, man – the decade that gave us Miami Vice! How you looked was at least as important as what you did… The trail of those responsible ends up a good deal closer to home than is comfortable; the character in question is not exactly unexpected, so that doesn’t count as much of a spoiler.

There’s probably only one person in the cast you’ll recognize, and you have to be a B-movie aficionado even for that – scream queen Bauer (under her name at the time, Michelle McLellan) shows up as Maggie’s two-timing friend, who delivers a copious amount of entirely gratuitous nudity and lingerie, to liven things up. Sanders was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for January 1990, which tells you just about all you need to know regarding her acting ability. Wisely, the script opts not to test the limits of her thespian ability, giving her a bit of low-tier emoting early on, as she gets told of her brother’s demise and attends her funeral, before she heads into stone-faced machine of vengeance mode. The villains are a curiously preppy-looking bunch of drug-dealers, all white, mostly with nice teeth, and many wouldn’t seem out of place at a frat party.  Still, they all go down like ninepins, though the action is of widely varying quality; some of the car chases are pretty good, yet on the other hand, the less said about the grenade sequence, the better.

Given how much I was braced for something irredeemably bad when I discovered who had directed this, I will confess to being pleasantly surprised. This is, however, at least as much a result of my low expectations, as any reflection of the film’s quality, and you’d be well-advised to follow suit. If you’re looking for a slice of cheesy, straight-to-video 80’s goodness, from a time in history not long after the question “VHS or Beta?” was still being asked, and with a lurid sleeve to match, this and a couple of beers will represent a throwback to a more innocent era. The trailer below offers a perfect appetizer for it.

Dir: David DeCoteau
Star: Peggy Sanders, Tony Josephs, Jacolyn Leeman, Michelle Bauer