BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

Starring: Angela Morena, Yuki Sakamoto, Jiad Arroyo, Jela Cuenca, Alexa Ocampo, Keanna Reeves
Director: Linnet Zurbano
Action Director: Rey Comia, Miguel Vasquez, Anna Mitra, Ivan Oleta

So, I was at a Brazilian online movie store when I came across this film, which I’d never heard of. When I saw the name and took at look at the poster/DVD cover, I was curious and went to the IMDB, whose plot suggested this was a spicy film about a woman who discovers a “second use” for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I watched the trailer on YouTube and it seemed like that was the case and decided to plunk down a few BRL (Brazilian Reais) and purchase it. If I had only known…

Elise Guererro (Angela Morena, of Butas and Sabel is still Young) is a pretty young lady attending Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (or BJJ from here on out) lessons. When it’s her turn to spar, the combination of her lying on the ground and facing a larger male opponent triggers her and she runs screaming from the dojo.

The film jumps to five months earlier and we find Elise at a college party where she is visibly uncomfortable with all the debauchery—mainly drinking—going on. She asks one of her friends to take her home, but said friend gives her, “Don’t be such a killjoy!” speech. When Elise heads up to the bathroom to freshen up a little, she accidentally walks in on Marco (Jiad Arroyo, of Pabuya and Us x Her) and Riza (Alexa Ocampo, of Bugaw and The Marianas Web) getting’ it on. Although Elise quickly makes her exit, the fact that Marco keeps on looking back to the door will carry some significance. Later on, Elise is given a roofie and some masked figure takes her up to an empty bedroom and tries to rape her. When a traumatized Elise returns to the thick of the party to report what happened, Riza slut-shames her (Marco carries a torch for Elise and Riza knows it) and has everybody pour beer all-over the poor girl.

Elise drops out of college and isolates herself for several months. One day, while exposing her feelings to her deceased father (i.e. talking to the sky and hoping he hears), Elise meets some strapping young man carrying a small birthday cake and balloons. That turns out to be Ace (Yuki Sakamoto, of Pabuya and Wanted: Girlfriend), a jiu-jitsu instructor who lost his fiancée, Diane, a few years earlier. He has a ritual of buying a cake on his deceased love’s birthday and buying balloons that he writes messages on and releases to the sky. He kindly invites Elise to write a message to her dad on one of the balloons and take part in his little ritual. He later gives her his card, which is enough for her to sign up for lessons.

Back to the present, Elise still is dealing with the trauma of her sexual assault even after a few months of training. Ace calls her into a special class where he opens up about how he was abused by his dad and how he learned BJJ in order to take back the narrative and strengthen himself. This is enough to get her to confess her own trauma and he helps her to start putting herself more into her training. A special bond develops between master and student, while Marco is still pining for Elise in the background (despite screwing Riza on a regular basis)…

So, I thought BJJ: Woman on Top was a film about a girl who learns jiu-jitsu to take back her sexuality and even incorporate it into the same. No, not really. This is basically a movie about a girl who has been traumatized, but who develops self-confidence and falls in love with her instructor. Almost like if Redbelt had focused Emily Mortimer’s character getting her confidence back and then pursuing Chiwetel Ejiofor’s ebony tonfa to show her thanks. For the most part, the sex (of which there is a lot) and the jiu-jitsu are treated as separate elements of the story, except for maybe the circumstances leading to Elise’s and Ace’s first love scene together.

The sex itself is what I’m going to assume is standard softcore fare (I am really not an expert on that genre). Lots of female nudity, but no actual full-frontal. Lots of faces in ecstasy and a wide variety of (otherwise standard) positions--including lots of simulated cunnilingus--all set to one love ballad or another. And it feels almost fitting that the first two letters of the title of this softcore romp reference a sexual act (that does show up briefly).

But as I said above, there isn’t actually any jiu-jitsu choreography incorporated into the sex itself, contrary to the IMDB synopsis. The only exception is the opening scene, in which two random people (Paul Pegasus and Honey Jade…now those are two porn names if I’ve ever seen any) are sparring in an overtly erotic manner. What this means is that BJJ: Woman on Top is just some average softcore drama with some jiu-jitsu window dressing, but no real exploration on how the different choke holds, arm bars, and leg locks could incite passion or serve as a enhancement of the same.

There is a bit of jiu-jitsu sparring thrown in here and there. The film ends with Elise discovering who her rapist is—it’s no surprise, given the small cast—and confronting him about it. I honestly don’t know who’s dumber, the man who keeps his “rape kit” under his bed, but close enough to the edge that any one of his girlfriends might see it; or the woman who confronts the man about it in his own house, instead of sneaking out with the evidence and immediately taking it to the police. The two end up going at it, jiu-jitsu style, but as you can expect, this is no Flash Point or Special ID. Rey Comia and Miguel Vasquez were responsible for the fight scenes, while I assume Anna Mitra and Ivan Oleta were responsible for training the actors behind the scenes.

If you want martial arts-tinged sex (like the erotic applications of the praying mantis style), BJJ: Woman on Top is probably not the film you’re looking for. If you want to see gorgeous Filipino girls in various states of undress, then that is another story. It’s not really my cup of tea and it was just some random one-off movie that I checked out because…I dunno…curiosity got the best of me, I guess. 

Naked Killer (1992)

Naked Killer (1992)
Chinese Title: 赤裸羔羊
Translation: Naked Lamb

Starring: Chingmy Yau, Simon Yam, Carrie Ng, Yiu Wai, Madoka Sugawara, Ken Lo, Hui Siu-Hung, Dick Lau Tik-Chi, Chang Tseng
Director: Clarence Fok
Action Director: Lau Shung-Fung

This is one of the more infamous films to come out of Hong Kong, often coming close to being the ne plus ultra of Category III filmmaking. To the uninitiated, Category III refers to a film rating in Hong Kong that corresponds to a very hard ‘R’ or ‘NC-17’ in the United States, or ’18’ in the United Kingdom (and Brazil). The movies are often extremely violent, sexual, and profane in nature. But unlike NC-17 films in the States, Hong Kong theaters are not loathe to show them and sometimes they can even be financially successful. NC-17, on the other hand, has gained the reputation of “porn with a plot” and thus theaters will simply refuse to show them and major studios will try to cut them to get an R rating and thus theatrical distribution.

There was a period in the early and mid-1990s when Category III films were popular. There were a series of hyper-violent films, some of which were based on true crime stories, that were popular in Hong Kong (or at least with HK cinephiles). Things like The Untold Story; Dr. Lamb; and Red to Kill, among others were the notorious examples of the excesses of the Category III rating. Heck, in our day and age, a tasteless exploitation piece like The Ebola Syndrome can get a classy Blu-Ray release over here. And then there is this film, which got released on VHS in the States by Tai Seng in the 1990s and later multiple DVD releases, one of which I believe was cut and this one—released by Tai Seng—was uncut, but with some of the worst dubbing on record.

Naked Killer opens with a elegantly-dressed woman being followed home by some guy who has something impure in mind. The man follows her home and to her bathroom, where she is taking a shower. Before he can do anything, the woman (Carrie Ng, of Cheetah on Fire and Crystal Hunt) unleashes a barrage of GYMKATA!!!! on the poor sap before smashing in his temples with a pair of dumbbells and shooting his cock off with a pistol.

The next day, the police are investigating the murder, including a detective named Tinam (Simon Yam, of Mission Kill and Ip Man). Tinam is a psychological wreck since accidentally shooting and killing his brother six months before. The emotional damage is so extensive that he is not only impotent now, but he cannot even look at a gun without getting sick to his stomach and throwing up. But for all of his issues, Tinam is not an idiot. He quickly realizes that the killer is a woman—his boss immediately writes off his theory—and that it may be the same woman who has been committing a series of similar killings that leave the male victim with his limbs broken and his manhood removed in some way.

Later that week, Tinam is getting a haircut when he witnesses an episode from some womanizing jerk named Tommy, his pregnant ex-girlfriend, and Tommy’s new paramour, a pager operator named Kitty (Chingmy Yau, of City Hunter and Kung Fu Cult Master). After Tommy knocks down his ex and kicks her in the tummy (man…dude…what the heck?), Kitty grabs a pair of scissors and stabs him in the crotch. Tinam can’t overlook that—although he somehow could overlook the domestic violence that preceded it—and runs after her. Kitty initially thinks he’s a pervert, but warms up to him when she learns that he’s not only a cop, but a damaged one, too.

The two start a relationship of sorts—kicked off by his leaving his pager behind and she using it to track him down to the police station—but that is interrupted by fate. Her dad (Chan Tseng, of The Red-Tasseled Sword) is a humble street vendor whose Mainland wife is too materialistic for her husband’s job. When dad catches Kitty’s stepmom in bed with a Triad boss (Ken Lo, of King of the Sea and Stage Door Johnny), a fight breaks out between the cuckold and the lover. The Triad pushes the old man down the stairs, causing him to accidently stab himself in the chest. A distraught Kitty walks into the building the next day and starts blowing everybody away, including her dad’s murderer. However, there is only so much an untrained marksman can do against an army of Triads.

She is saved by the intervention of Sister Cindy (Yiu Wai), a female assassin who is looking for a new student. Cindy takes Kitty under her wing, slices off her finger prints, and starts teaching her how to seduce and kill. Cindy even kidnaps local perverts, chains them up in the basement, and locks Kitty in there with them so she can have something to practice her skills with. Uhh…okay.

After Kitty finishes her training, her and Cindy go to Japan to kill a Yakuza—which involves the two women dancing suggestively in a nightclub and then slicing off his head with a thin wire. The Japanese then hire Princess—the lady from the opening scene—and her lover, Baby (Madoka Sugawara, of Rape in Public Sea), to kill the women responsible for their boss’s death. And it just so happens that Sister Cindy was Princess’s teacher, too. And the closer that Princess draws to Kitty, the more she starts to fall for her. And Tinam eventually crosses path with Kitty again, thus testing her new loyalties…

Naked Killer is a very stylish movie. From a technical standpoint, the film looks great. The photography is kinetic. The set design is garish and colorful. The costumes are over-elegant, but they fit the over-the-top nature of the film and complement the cinematography to a ‘T’. There are certain films where critics say that composition—sets, costumes, lighting, and angles—is such that you could take every frame of the movie, blow it up, frame it, and place it on the wall. That applies to Bride with White Hair. It applies to Naked Killer, too. Almost every scene could placed in a photobook, albeit maybe one put together by Dian Hanson.

It goes without saying that Naked Killer is also a very sleazy film. As expected from a Wong Jing film, the word “rape” gets tossed around rather casually, which will definitely offend some sensibilities. That said, there is also a lot of talk of forcibly castrating men and a lot of “doohickies” get sliced, shot and smashed over the course of the film, so maybe that balances things out. Chingmy Yau has a long sex scene with Simon Yam—she is the only one who can cure his impotence—although the camera always shies away from showing her nipples. The actual nudity is provided by Japanese actress Madoka Sugiwara, playing the female plaything of lead villainess Princess. Princess, as played by Carrie Ng, is portrayed as a predatory lesbian and she has two love scenes with the character of Baby. I’m going to guess that the explicity lesbian sex is what really gave this film the Category III rating.

Being a Wong Jing film, one may expect some broad, out-of-place humor in an otherwise serious film. Wong Jing, who both wrote and produced this, actually keeps his worst comic instincts under control for the vast majority of the film’s running time. In fact, the only real joke is a gross-out gag involving a policeman who unwittingly eats a severed penis after mistaking it for an uncooked sausage. Really, Wong? Really?

There is some action in the first and last thirds of the film, staged by Lau Shung-Fung. Lau cut his teeth in the genre by working with Corey Yuen and Yuen Tak in films like Prince of the Sun and Saviour of the Soul. This was one of his earliest films as the main action director and he does pretty good job with the set pieces. The best scene is the shootout at Ken Lo’s office that becomes a hyper-stylized bullet ballet in a parking garage, complete with a knife at the end of an elastic cord that can do all sorts of things. Near the end, we get a kung fu fight between Princess, Baby and Sister Cindy. The choreography is very balletic in a way that recalls Ching Siu-Tung’s work in The Heroic Trio—the two men worked on the same team to choreograph Legend of the Liquid Sword. The finale features more kinetic gunplay and some brief fighting between Kitty and Princess.

Naked Killer inspired two remakes: Naked Weapon (2002) and Naked Soldier (2012). That is a perfect “every ten years” scenario, unfortunately derailed by the slow death of Hong Kong cinema and the COVID pandemic. Where is my Naked Assassin, people? There is another film, Raped by an Angel, also starring Chingmy Yau, that was promoted in some markets as Naked Killer 2. They are unrelated, and Raped by an Angel inspired its own set of unrelated sequels, generally involving women who get violent revenge against the men who raped them. There are six films that particular series, with two of them purporting to be Raped by an Angel 5, which is just…so…Hong Kong, I guess.

Mission Kill (1991)

Mission Kill (1991)
Aka: Mission of Condor
Chinese Title: 禿鷹檔案 
Translation: Bald Eagle Files

Starring: Moon Lee, Max Mok, Simon Yam, Wong Yee-Kam, Kwan Hoi-San, Eddie Ko Hung, Fujimi Nadeki, Ken Lo
Director: Lee Chiu
Action Director: Ho Wing-Cheung, Douglas Kung

One of my less-ambitious movie watching goals—something of a subset of the goal to watch as many Hong Kong-Mainland-Taiwanese martial arts and action films as humanly possible—is to watch all the movies that Tai Seng released as their three-movie “series” on VHS back in the 1990s. The movies were often unrelated, even within their own sub-genre, like the “Shaolin Classic Series” that featured one old school film and two obscure 1990s wire-fu movies; or the Asian Connection series, which were HK action films set in other Asian countries (Thailand, Laos, The Philippines); etc.

One of them was the humorously-named “Yam Can Kill” series, a riff on the then-popular PBS program “Yan Can Cook,” something you watched when you wanted your mouth to water over creative Chinese cuisine. They were three of Simon Yam’s lesser-known action films, most of which came out either before he hit it big with Bullet in the Head or immediately after. One of the movies was Killer’s Romance, which was low-budget take on “The Crying Freeman” manga at about the same time Clarence Fok and Tsui Hark were doing their bigger-budgeted Dragon from Russia. The second was Cyprus Tigers, which is dismissed as an inferior copy of Tango & Cash. And then there is this one.

Mission Kill is ostensibly a Girls-With-Guns films and comes across as a low-rent riff on Angel, also starring Moon Lee. The film opens with a drug deal between an Asian gang and a Caucasian gang led by Angel Terminators’ Bruce Fontaine. The deal is broken up by the police, including Inspector Rose Wong (Moon Lee, of Angel II and Princess Madam). Following the bust, Bruce’s higher-up in the hierarchy, played by Jonathan Isgar (the guy in Once Upon in Time in China who says “Who is this Wong Fei-Hung? The Devil?”), contracts the services of an assassin named Lion (Simon Yam, of SPL and Bad Blood) to eliminate four officials. Three of them are the top brass in Operation Condor (snicker), the HKRP-Interpol operation meant to bring down the drug dealers. The fourth is Rose Wong for having busted Bruce.

The first three men are eliminated very quickly—this goes back to my opinion that it does not pay to be a witness or the like in Hong Kong: you have no one protecting you from getting off’d. The American F.B.I. gets involved—since the Caucasian drug dealers are apparently from Puerto Rico—and sends Stephen (Max Mok, of Once Upon a Time in China 2 and Holy Flame of the Martial World) to help protect Rose. Why Stephen? Apparently he’s the only member of the F.B.I. who speaks Cantonese. Really, people? Of the 10,100 special agents in the F.B.I.’s employ in 1990, only one was Chinese-American? I call shenanigans on that.

Almost as soon as Stephen arrives in Hong Kong, he is met by Rose and her cousin, Lily (Wong Kee-Yam, of Eagles Alert), who is also a cop. Rose is almost shot to death immediately afterward, with the gunman being the psychologically-unstable Bill (Eddie Ko Hung, of Hitman in the Hand of Buddha and The Executioners), one of Lion’s enforcers. The police take the opportunity to fake Rose’s death—she was wearing a bulletproof vest—and even change her record to deceive Bill when he sneaks into the police station to look over her file (just like one of the killers in Angel). Bill is ultimately captured and kept prisoner in the same safe house where Rose, Lily and Stephen are holed up.

Lion and his men, including the kickboxing Panther (Ken Lo, of Drunken Master II) and Wild Cat (Crystal Hunt’s Fujimi Nadeki), eventually find out where Bill is being held—thanks to a traitor—and send a small army to free (or kill) him and everybody in the safe house. The action ramps up as Stephen, Rose and Lily decide to take Lion head on, even as they begin to suspect that someone involved in the case is a traitor. After all, how did Lion’s men know about the location of the safe house?

Mission Kill is a fairly average, run-of-the-mill Girls-with-Guns flick with a strong cast and good action. It suffers from some pacing issues, especially after the first 15 or 20 minutes, when almost a good 25 minutes pass without much of interest happening. The movie picks up in the second half starting with the raid on the safe house, which is a huge gunfight with some good kickboxing from Moon Lee and the knife-wielding Nadeki—the two also fought in Killer Angels and Angel Force. This leads to a fight between Max Mok and Ken Lo at a hospital (the latter shows up to finish off Eddie Ko’s character), a raid on Simon Yam’s home, and a finale at…you guessed it…a warehouse. In the mix is the revelation of the identity of the traitor and some mutiny between the traitor and Simon Yam’s Lion.

The part of the story that had me scratching my head was Lion’s gang. When we meet Lion, the Caucasian drug dealers are paying him to eliminate the bigwigs behind Operation Condor, which suggests that he is a professional assassin with a few underlings working beneath him (like Panther, Wild Cat, and Bill). Later on, we see him meeting with the Caucasians again, who want him to sell their new product (which the traitor wants to avoid, since it will kill addicts a lot quicker and force them to strive to find new users). So, does that mean that Lion is not a professional assassin, but just the head of another drug gang? Was it his gang that got busted in the opening action sequence? Or was he an assassin who was looking to get into the drug game and the opening bust created a vacuum for him to fill? I wish the film had been a little more explicit in that explanation, since my attention waned as I trying to figure it out.

The shoot-outs are pretty generic: a character fires a Mac-10 sub-machine gun (or Uzi) in the bad guys’ general direction, and three or four men fall over. None of the stylishness or choreography of the best Heroic Bloodshed films. But the fights, staged by Ho Wing-Cheung (A Punch to Revenge) and Douglas Kung (King Boxer), are generally of a solid caliber. The choreography isn’t quite so crisp as that of the Angel films, but everyone looks good on screen, including Simon Yam. I do have to question the believability of Moon Lee and Max Mok having to team up to defeat Simon Yam, but whatever. I think the best fight is the one early on where Moon Lee and Lily have to beat up a bunch of Interpol agents posing as hired killers in order to test their skills for Interpol. Ken Lo also looks great in his limited fights and really deserved more action.

All things considered, Mission Kill is middle-of-the road, but with enough solid fisticuffs to compensate for the ugly clothes (orange and yellow blazers? Really?) that Max Mok wears and a lethargic second quarter.