Tag: hong kong

The Lady Assassin (1983)

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★★½
“Fairly whizzes past – though not necessarily in a good way.”

lassThe running time here is 86 minutes, but would probably be closer to two hours if they’d filmed the fights at normal speed. Because the undercranking – filming at a slower than normal frame-rate, so action looks quicker when played back at the normal speed – in this one is both copious in volume and excessive to its degree; I kept hearing the Benny Hill theme in my mind during the fight sequences. That’s a shame, because the performers here are talented enough they don’t need it, and the technique detracts from, rather than enhances, their skills. On the other hand, perhaps they needed to hurry things up to make room for the plot, because there’s quite a lot of that to fit into the film too. Let me try to summarize it.

There are two heirs vying for the imperial throne, Fourth Prince (Tony Lui) and Fourteenth Prince (fortunately, princes #1-3, 5-13 and 15+ are not apparently interested). To tip the balance his way, Fourth gets the assistance of dissident Lui Liu Liang (Ku), whose niece Si Niang (Leanne Liu) helps retrieve the emperor’s will, so #4 can doctor it and make himself the heir instead of #14. After taking over, Fourth exiles Fourteenth and “forgets” all his promises to Lui about not being so harsh an overlord. When Lui keeps showing up at court to remind Fourth of his broken oath, Fourth opts to silence his former ally permanently. But in so doing, he makes a mortal enemy of Si Niang, who joins forces with Fourteenth’s bodyguard, Tsang Jing (Chu) to take care of the usurper, who has hired some additional help of his own, in the form of a Japanese martial-arts master.

Despite the title, this is probably more of an ensemble piece, with Si Niang just one of many pieces to the jigsaw puzzle which is the plot, albeit one pivotal to proceedings. In particular, she’s the one who breaks into the Imperial Palace, locates the will’s secret hiding-place, and extracts it so Fourth can make himself the declared heir to the throne, thereby kicking off the events that follow. However, she is among a number of interesting female characters, also including Jade and Pearl, who assist Tsang Jing, and Lui’s daughter. While I have my previously-noted and significant qualms about the style of filming, which feels a good 15 years older than its actual 1983 date, I certainly cannot complain about the quantity of action, which is copious, and the people involved clearly know what they’re doing. The script is a bit of a mess though, with elements that just peter out, such as Fourteenth Prince, who must have had another engagement elsewhere. And the ending has to be among the most abrupt of all time, coming, literally, before the final body has even hit the floor. It occupies an uncomfortable position between old- and new-school Hong Kong cinema, and you can understand why the Shaw Brothers’ star was on the wane, and increasingly eclipsed by Golden Harvest.

Dir: Chin-Ku Lu
Star: Leanne Liu, Norman Chu, Tony Liu, Ku Feng

The Angry River

  By

★★½
“A bridge too far.”

angry riverNot just Angela Mao’s feature debut, it was also the first film produced by then-fledgling studio Golden Harvest, who would go on to become arguably the premier name in Hong Kong Film production, up until the colony’s handover back to China in 1999. Even discounting their work with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Tsui Hark, Stephen Chow, Donnie Yen, etc. and sticking purely to the action heroine field, Golden Harvest were the company behind She Shoots Straight, the Inspector Wears Skirts series and Naked Killer. Their commitment to our field is apparent right from this inaugural movie, where Mao plays dutiful daughter Lan Feng, whose father becomes one of the victims of ‘Poison Dart’, whose name pretty much explains what he does. Cursed to a long lingering death, the only cure is a rare herb.

Lan sets off to find it, crossing the fiery Angry River, going through the Merciless Pass, and encountering another couple of dangers without names, but we might as well call them the Cave of Really Bad Optical Effects, and the Giant Gecko That Knows Kung-Fu. The latter actually defeats our heroine (though she does save 15% on her car insurance), but impressed by her filial piety, she is given the herb, albeit at the cost of losing her kung-fu skills. She then has to make her way back home, which is even more perilous now she can’t fight, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers to protect her, because there are a lot of other people who are also very keen to get their hands on the mystical plant, whose powers extend beyond being merely an antidote to poison. And when she finally returns to her home, a nastier shock awaits.

Maybe it is just me: I kept being reminded of Homer’s Odyssey, with Mao playing the hero, whose objective, simply to get back home is endlessly diverted and derailed by external forces. I suspect any such similarity is, as they say, purely coincidental, and they just share the same basic plot of the hero’s journey, as introduced by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. But there are elements where you can tell it was a debut film, such as the rubber-suited lizard which, it’s charitable to say, presumably worked better on the page than the screen. It’s also a mis-step to rob the heroine of her powers for almost the entire second-half, leaving her a spectator to her own story – even Odysseus only spent a bit of time tied to the mast. Particularly early on, Mao’s fights feel stilted – punch-pause-block-pause-kick – though there actually is a storyline reason for why she has to be reined in to start with, in order that Mao can go full-throttle at the end [like I said, the herb has other uses…] You can see where they were aiming – slightly to the side of the then-dominant Shaw Brothers studio – yet overall, there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement here. As a first effort, I guess it’s okay.

Dir: Feng Huang
Star: Angela Mao, Kao Yuan, Pai Ying, Han Ying Chieh

Angel Terminators 2

  By

★★★★
“Angels of death”

angelterm2I have not seen Angel Terminators, so cannot comment on its merits or flaws. However, it does not appear that this impacted my thorough enjoyment of this slice of early 90’s Hong Kong goodness, and nor did the mangled subs which leave me a little vague on some details. The two heroines are Chitty (Lee) and Bullet (Oshima), who are… Cousins? Sisters? Not sure. Bullet has just got out of prison, having turned to delinquency after blaming her policeman father for the death of her mother. He and his partner (Hu) – who adds to the confusion because everyone calls her Big Auntie – try to achieve a reconciliation, but Bullet is unimpressed. She goes to her former gang boss for money, having taken the fall and gone to jail for him, but he just wants Chitty to become a hostess. The fight than ensues, kicks off a chain of events which leads to Bullet stealing some jewels belonging to the boss, who unleashes the accurately-named Brother Mad (Wong).

Will there be mayhem? Yes. Will there by fisticuffs and much gunplay? Yes. Will there be people strung up from lamp-posts like some kind of novelty Chinese lanterns? I’m not saying: I’ll let the film retain some element of surprise. But for all its broad strokes of characterization, it manages to deliver a relatively-even tone, without any of the slapstick and comic interludes which sometimes plague other entries. Indeed, it does become progressively darker, with a kidnapping forcing action that then goes horribly wrong, setting up even further death and violence. This is all accompanied by high-quality action, right from the get-go, starting with Hu leading an assault on criminals holed up in a restaurant, before quickly bringing you a battle between Lee and the leaders of another training squads in a gym, then escalating from there through to a bloody finale.

It’s easy to become somewhat jaded, particularly when you’re watching films because of their genre, without applying any quality control. But then you find a movie like like this, which looks like just another generic action heroine flick, yet instead delivers everything you could want from low-budget action, easily making up for in energy what it may lack in polish. With Lee, Oshima and Hu, you have a hand of three aces, and the film is only a couple of Khans (Cynthia and Michelle, a.k.a. Michelle Yeoh) from having the best cast ever in a HK action heroine film. Unlike some (hello, Avenging Quartet), it lives up to that.

Dir: Lau Chan + Chin-Ku Lu
Star: Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Chi Yeung Wong, Sibelle Hu

When Taekwondo Strikes

  By

★★★½
“The Angela Strikes Back”

7242870.3There’s more than a hint of Hapkido here, with many of the same cast, and more less the same thirties setting, with Korea again laboring under the yoke of Japanese occupation, etc. Things kick off when Jin (Wong) seeks sanctuary from the occupying forces in a local Catholic church. The Japanese soldiers rush in, but get demolished by Uncle Li (Rhee), a rebel topping their wanted list who has been hiding out as the priest’s gardener. Jin and Li depart, along with the priest’s niece (Winton), but the priest himself remains, and is captured and tortured for information about Li’s whereabouts. Wang Lin Ching (Mao) is drawn in when Li asks her to check on the cleric, causing her to become targeted by the Japanese too. An attempt to rescue the priest goes wrong, ending with Li being captured, and the others having to flee Korea for mainland China. However, that may not be far enough, and when the Japanese figure out where they are, they us Li as bait to lure Wang and the others out of hiding.

Despite being considered the father of American Tae Kwon Do, and a good friend of Bruce Lee, this was Rhee’s only released film (rumors of another have been heard). Seems a bit of a shame, as he makes his presence felt here, particularly toward the end. For action heroine fans, the focus will naturally be on Mao, and we’ll get to her shortly. However, we shouldn’t forget Winton, also in her only film role, who makes an immediate impression as an martial arts trained nun  Going by her clothing, anyway; the film is kinda loose on Catholic ritual. Man, The Sound of Music would have been so much cooler, if Julie Andrews had only known kung-fu…

As for Mao, she has a couple of absolutely stellar fight scenes, including a church brawl [after the soldiers realize she isn’t Catholic, because she didn’t cross herself on entering!], a battle in a forest, and the final fight. However, in terms of her action, things perhaps peak when she returns to her family restaurant to find a long-haired Sammo Hung, playing a Japanese henchman, roughing up her mother, along with his goons. The last is embedded below – it should start at the correct time, but if not, 39:20 is where you want to be. I just love the way she casually flicks her pigtail round the back just before things kick off, as if to say, “I am serious Angela Mao. This is serious business.”

The one thing that stops the film from getting a seal of approval is a disappointing slump in the middle, after the (fairly lame) effort to rescue the priest. Nothing much happens for what feels like a good half-hour, and that’s a shame, since the action elsewhere is both copious and often excellent. Many fights are virtually the equal of any Bruce Lee film, not least because there are half a dozen excellent martial artists involved here, rather than Bruce being far and away the best. This adds a real sense of balance to proceedings, and if you’re looking for an introduction to the movies of Angela Mao, this is certainly recommended.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Angela Mao, Jhoon Rhee, Carter Wong, Anne Winton

Kickboxer’s Tears

  By

★★½
“Tears are not enough.”

kickboxersA truly crappy plot here, used to link fight scenes that range from the boring – that would be the actual kickboxing, which greatly outstays its welcome – to the impressive. Li Feng (Lee) is visiting her kickboxer brother in Hong Kong, when he is killed by a cheating opponent, after refusing to take a dive on the orders of Mr Wong (Lung). The death also throws into jeopardy the family training gym/healthcare establishemnt [a crossover at which no-one blinks an eye], which was already financially shaky. To both get revenge, and earn enough money to stabilize things, Li goes to Wong, and demands an underground rematch against his fighter. When that happens, but leaves her opponent permanently paralyzed, Mrs. Wong (Yukari Oshima), who is the victim’s brother, as well as the promoter’s wife, demands a winner-take-all match to the death. And she kidnaps Li’s semi-boyfriend (Lam) to make sure Li  turns up for the contest.

This 1992 Hong Kong film has the same jarring shifts in tone present in many of that time and place. Given the sombre nature of the core situation, there really shouldn’t be any room for slapstick humor – yet there are at least two comic relief characters too many here, and I found myself cringing in just about every one of their scenes. The early action is more than a bit ropey too: while it may be ‘authentic’ kick-boxing, it’s pretty dull to watch, and it’s only when the film moves outside the ring that things become interesting, especially when Lee gets going. She has one great street-fight against a group of thugs, another in a restaurant when she’s proving her worth to Wong as an opponent, and of course, the all too brief duel which pits her – literally, since they’re in a pit – against Oshima. All three are a great combination of inventiveness and hard-nosed action, also showcasing Lee’s great flexibility [there’s also an eye-popping training scene, where her character casually does what is best described as the vertical splits].

However, to appreciate these sequences, you are going to have to sit through story-telling of the most cliched sort, plus acting from her supporting cast that would be rejected as lacking in subtlety by Adam Sandler. Particularly irritating is the finale which has three fight scenes going on at once, cross-cutting between them to the detriment of all three, then robs Li of being able to take her thoroughly-deserved revenge personally, before ending so abruptly, I was left wondering if the final ten pages of script had fallen into a shredder, and the makers decided just to do without them. All these other aspect are significantly sub-optimal, and ten good minutes of action do not sufficiently outweigh them. Especially not when those ten minutes are embedded below, saving you an hour and twenty. You’re welcome!

Dir: Da Wei Shen
Star: Moon Lee, Wilson Lam, Mark Cheng, Lung Fong

The Bod Squad

  By

★★★
“Several virgins short of a six-pack.”

7seasIn the 1970’s legendary Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers sought to broaden their market with a series of co-productions. The results included the likes of Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, from a partnership with Britain’s Hammer Studios, plus Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. But perhaps the most bizarre such product is this, which crosses martial arts with the softcore sex films from the time, the best-known of which is probably Hofbauer’s Schulmadchen Report (Schoolgirl Report). The results are… Well, I’d be hard-pushed to call them great cinema, but I would have to confess to being rather more entertained than I expected.

Contrary to one of the alternate titles, Enter the Seven Virgins, there are actually only five women here, and some of those aren’t exactly virgins. They are captured by pirates, and brought to their island lair, where buccaneer boss Chao (Hsieh) leers at them and puts them through a training course designed to get them ready to be sold into white slavery. Except, he doesn’t know that one of his minions, Ko Mei Me (Liu), is actually working, along with her brother, to take him down, and trains the captives in martial arts, as well as the ancient Chinese art of spitting olive pits at such high-velocity, they can punch a hole through a vase. After copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, the women eventually break free, get recaptured, escape again, and take on Chao and the rest of his henchmen in a battle which makes up for in duration, what it may lack in quality.

Actually, that’s a little unfair: considering the Western cast were more used to films with titles such as Campus Pussycats, they perform credibly enough. There’s not as much stunt doubling as I expected, and they’re clearly giving it all they have, occasionally impressively. Bray stands out in particular – and I mean that literally, since it seems she’s taller than most of the men in the cast. Liu, however, clearly has the most experience, and its understandable why she gets given most of the action. In some ways, this can be seen as a primitive ancestor of Category III films such as Naked Killer: while lacking quite the same lurid insanity, and featuring a degree of casual racism that’s fairly off-putting [apparently, the sight of Western flesh is enough to send most Chinese men into drooling imbeciles], it’s still fun for the undemandingly open-minded. Admittedly, a fondness for Benny Hill may help, and providing you can get past hearing Chinese people dubbed into German, as well as subtitles that may have lost their way a bit in translation. I’m still trying to figure out the meaning of, “It’s a bank holiday, it’s Mothers’ Day in Africa.”

Dir: Kuei Chih-Hung + Ernst Hofbauer
Star: Liu Hui-Ling, Wang Hsieh, Sonja Jeannine, Gillian Bray
a.k.a. Virgins of the Seven Seas
a.k.a. Enter the Seven Virgins
a.k.a. Karate, Küsse, blonde Katze [Karate, kisses, blonde cats]

Deaf Mute Heroine

  By

★★★½
“Silent but deadly.”

deafmuteheroineThe physically disabled hero has long been a staple of martial arts, to the extent that is is sometimes referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as “cripsploitation”. The One-armed Boxer, The Crippled Masters, Zatoichi – it’s a genre that survives more recently than you may think, with Mat Fraser, recently seen in American Horror Story: Freak Show, starring in 2009’s Kung Fu Flid. While this is rarer for heroines, they are not immune, with Japan giving us the Crimson Bat series, reviewed elsewhere on this site. This is another entry, Wong playing the titular heroine, Ya Ba, who is unable to speak or hear, but can still fight a mean battle, assisted by reflective wristbands that let her see who’s sneaking up from behind, in lieu of hearing them.

She comes into possession of a set of pearls, taking them off some robbers with extreme prejudice. However, this brings down the wrath of Miss Liu (Huang), leader of her own gang, and whose brother was one of the robbers. While her first attempt to kill Ya is unsuccessful, Lui’s poisoned flying daggers do injure her. Ya is found and nursed back to health by kindly cloth-dyer Yang Shun (Ching); romance blossoms, and the pair marry, with Ya figuratively hanging up her wristbands;  she actually puts them away in a box. That’s relevant, because her husband ends up entrapped into responsibility for a friend’s gambling debt by Liu, and she demands he steal Ya’s wristbands as payback. That opens the way for Liu and about five billion henchmen (count may be approximate) to launch their attack. But that’s not the only threat she faces, since lurking in the wings is another talented master, with a previously relationship to Ya and who was left with a nasty facial scar for his pains.

The fights are good. Really good. As in, the final battle between Ya and Lui (below) may be the best of the era I’ve seen between two women – like most of the action here, it’s fast, hard-hitting and imaginative, weakened only by some unsubtle wirework. The film is also bloodily messy, to a somewhat surprising extent, and both Wong and Huang make for highly-effective characters, the latter making up for the former’s silence.  However, the movie grinds to a halt in the middle, as the focus shifts off Ya to her husband, who is both a great deal less interesting and almost unlikeable. The film is also hampered by poor availability: while the version I watched was as close to complete as possible, that required a combination from three different sources, including one print dubbed into German(!) and another which was sub-VHS quality with a large logo in one corner. That helps leave this short of getting our “seal of approval,” but if a good copy ever becomes available, we might re-visit it. For as I said to Chris, what’s not to love about a wife who never says a word?

Y’know, our couch really isn’t so bad, when you get used to it. :)

Dir: Wu Ma
Star: Sally Wong (a.k.a. Helen Ma), Shirley Huang, Ching Tang, Wu Ma

Beauty Investigator

  By

★★
“Beauties and the beasts.”

beautyinvestigatorEllen (Lee) and Grace (Kim) are police officers, who are first on to arrive when the latest victim of a serial sexual predator is found in a dumpster. After a brief diversion to catch a purse snatcher – really, how dumb must you be to do that at a murder scene? – they are sent undercover as nightclub hostesses, since that’s the profession of all the victims. While fending off both lecherous customers and employers, they stumble across an arms smuggling outfit, whose leader Bill (Tsui) has pulled a fast one over his Yakuza partners, with the help of a hired hitwoman (Oshima, whose character in the end credits is named as, I kid you not, “Japanese Jap”!). Rather than letting their superiors know, they decided to investigate themselves. Probably not the wisest of moves: as they’ll discover by the end of the movie, discretion is indeed the better part of valour…

Very quickly, the bar for this one is set low, with the creators’ idea of comedy gold being to have Grace throw up over the corpse on seeing it: oh, hold my sides, for I fear they may split. If you’d be thinking the only way to go from there is up, the next hour seems to take a sadistic pleasure in proving otherwise, with Ellen and Grace doing the “mismatched cop” thing, which was already about 20 years past its sell-by date, when this came out in 1993. Then, with about 20 minutes to go, the film inexplicably takes a far darker turn (especially considering how lightly the previous carnage has been played), with the mission become one of personal revenge rather than law enforcement. In cinematic terms, it’s like putting a sprig of parsley on a cow-pat, and calling it a salad: I was left wondering if someone had sloppily spliced on the final reel of an entirely different movie.

The only redeeming aspect – and even this falls well short of making it recommendable – is the action, which is quite frequent and high in intensity. Lee and Oshima are both in fine form, and watching the pair of them go toe-to-toe with each other is a joy, as always: that’s particularly so for the end battle, in which all the previously mentioned participants are involved, along with Sophia Crawford, who plays the villain’s mistress (she also takes an entirely gratuitous shower in some versions of the film). However, the truth is, you can see Lee and Oshima in any number of other movies, without having to endure the feeble efforts at buddy comedy attempted here. And you’d be well advised to do just that.

Dir: Tso Nam Lee
Star: Moon Lee, Kim Je Kee, Tsui Zen Aie, Yukari Oshima

Lady Whirlwind

  By

★★½
“Because Lady Moderate Breeze wouldn’t sell as many copies.”

deepthrustI’m not saying this is a bad film. But when I watch one called Lady Whirlwind (though here is as good a place as any to acknowledge the wonderfully tacky alternate title featured on the poster at the right), I expect a good deal more lady whirlwinding. The focus is instead on Ling Shi-Hao (Chang), beaten and left for dead after trying to leave a gang. Wisely, he decides to continue with his death, hiding out in the country for three years with girlfriend Hsuang Hsuang (We). This anonymity is shattered by the arrival of Tien Li-Chun (Mao), who wants a word with Ling, along with ripping the beating heart out of his chest. For it turns out, he was a bit of a bastard who jilted Tien’s sister, leading to her suicide. Hence, when he thanks Tien for saving him, she replies, “I just didn’t want somebody else to kill you.”

Ling admits he deserves his fate, but asks for a stay of execution, so he can first take revenge on his former colleagues (who include Sammo Hung in an early role). Tien is clearly pretty laid-back about the whole vengeance thing, since she’s nowhere to be seen during the lengthy training montage that follows, after Ling helps a Korean herbalist, bitten by a snake, and is taught the deadly Tai Chi Palm style. Will that help him beat the bad guys? And will Tien then stop lurking off-screen and goddamn do something?

There’s certainly no shortage of action, though in comparison to some other Mao films I’ve seen recently, the fight scenes doesn’t seem as smoothly choreographed and frankly, get a bit boring – it also suffers too much from the “we’ll attack you one at a time, while everyone else circles about aimlessly” trope, common to many movies of the time. Indeed, I must admit, there was one of Ling’s battles in the middle where I actually fell asleep: never a good sign where a martial-arts films is concerned. The frequent use of musical cues definitely not composed for the film is also rather distracting: one, in particular, will be particularly familiar if you’ve watched James Bond movies, but other sources say the pillaging also includes the works of Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann. Hey, if you’re going to steal, do it from the best, I suppose.

Mao does have some good fight scenes, particularly going one-on-many with a copious line of henchmen. But you wonder why she’s so apparently disinterested in her revenge, particularly at the end, which is entirely ludicrous, and all but negates everything that happened over the previous 80 minutes. Not one of her best, with not enough going on beyond her usual graceful performance, to merit your attention.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Chang Yi, Angela Mao, Pai Ying, June Wu
a.k.a. Deep Thrust

Beach Spike

  By

★★
“Shaolin Volleyball.”

beachspikeSharon (Chau) and Rachel (Fu) have a pretty idyllic life, spending their days mostly on the beach playing volleyball, with occasional bouts of clubbing and very occasional work. But this relaxed approach to things is threatened by the Brewer family, who plan to turn the entire seafront into a megaresort, displacing all the happy local beach-bums. Leading the charge is family daughter Natalie (C, whom I can only presume was named by the same model-actress-whatever department to give us Maggie Q), who has a hatred for the “little people” and, along with her sister, kicks the arse of Sharon and Rachel in an early contest.

Through a series of frankly implausible events, and clouded by the blossoming relationship between Sharon and Brewer scion Tim (Law), the future of the resort project hangs on a rematch, the two teams making their way through a tournament to face each other in the final. However, anyone familiar with kung-fu movies will not be surprised to hear the good girls have been getting training from relatives well-versed in martial arts, and they won’t be such a pushover in the second battle.

It’s hard to work out exactly who the audience for this mess is supposed to be. Beach volleyball fans will hate the dreadful CGI, used to portray any protracted rallies, in lieu of actual skill, and likely find the heroines implausibly unmuscled (one in particular looks like she will shatter if dropped). Action fans will find little to remember here either, despite the presence of veteran heroine Yeung Pan Pan as Mrs Tao, and despite an obvious influence being Shaolin Soccer, there isn’t a trace of Stephen Chow’s wit. Even those looking for pleasures of a more exploitative nature will likely get bored, sitting through the lengthy comedic and romantic interludes.

I suppose those fascinated by Acting Performances In A Second Language might get a kick out of the Brewer family, who deliver lines in English about as well as I could in Cantonese. But I think the main intended market for this is a fetish one, and fairly specific at that. If you like seeing women hit in the face by balls, this is the movie for you. No, really. particularly during a competitive montage at the end, where it becomes a virtual barrage of ball-to-face action, including in slow-mo. Otherwise, the idiocy of the plot and blandness of the lead characters overpower much of whatever potential this had, and Wanted: DOA did a much better job with the sport. Probably, this needed either to be taken completely seriously or go over-the-top entirely and head into total parody (like Soccer did). Instead, this does neither, and the end results just sit in front of you like a beached whale for 95 minutes.

Dir: Tony Tang
Star: Chrissie Chau, Theresa Fu, Him Law, Jessica C