2 Capsule Reviews - The "Yam Can Kill" Series

The Cyprus Tigers (1990) 

Starring: Simon Yam, Conan Lee, Collin Cheung, Phillip Ko Fei, Joey Wong, Robin Shou, Luk Chuen, Winston Ellis, Sophia Crawford
Director: Phillip Ko Fei
Action Director: Luk Chuen (Yasuyoshi Shikamura), 

Released on VHS in the late 1990s as part of the "Yam Can Kill" series--the others being Mission Kill and Killer's Romance (see review below). I've yet to read anything remotely positive about this film, from Asian Cult Cinema to "View from the Brooklyn Bridge". So, I took it as a challenge.

On the island of Cyprus, the local police force employs a trio of Chinese immigrants, who are known on the force as "The Cyprus Tigers." They are: Rick (Simon Yam, of Bullet in the Head and Hitman); Bob (Conan Lee, of Tiger on the Beat and Ninja in the Dragon's Den); and Alan, or "Kid" (Collin Cheung Chi-Tak, of Angel's Mission and Fatal Termination). They are the both the biggest hotshots and goof-offs of the force. The film opens with them foiling a hostage situation by having Bob taking their own police chief hostage and confusing the bad guys.

Anyway, after a few random asides involving a nude beach (lots of bare breasts here) and a gag involving an attempt to get Bob to pay for everyone's expensive dinner (makes sense in context), the film settles down for a story, such as it is. The three are assigned to a case to bust some counterfeiters, who are working for the town's stand-out citizen, Mr. King (Phillip Ko Fei, of The Fearless Dragons and too many low-budget films of the 1990s). They lose the counterfeit plates during the bust, which gets the chief on their back. They try to bust Mr. King's bodyguard (Winston Ellis, of Operation Condor), but that leads to Rick and Bob being held at gunpoint and ordered to undress each other--which leads the bad guys to take the security tape and release it as a bestselling gay porno movie.

Rick and Bob are suspended. Rick goes back to Hong Kong to try to patch things up with his ex-wife, Joey (Joey Wong, of A Chinese Ghost Story and The East is Red). Bob gets in trouble with the law when Mr. King's men murder some tart whom he'd gone home with and frame him for the killing. Mr. King overplays his hand when he sends his girlfriend (Sophia Crawford, of Beauty Investigator and U.S. Seals II) to Hong Kong to (unsuccessfully) eliminate Rick. Rick goes back to Cyprus and convinces his boss to let Bob out in order to bust Mr. King and find evidence of his counterfeiting activities.

Most of the film is very dumb comedy, like watching Conan Lee and Collin Cheung walk around the police station with baseball caps that have a mouth with a tongue on it and one with female breasts sculpted on it, respectively. The bad guys are not intimidating, even when they bring in a pair of supposedly crazy Japanese criminals (action director Luk Chuen and a young Robin Shou) to help his operation. The Japanese characters are depicted as being racist against blacks (i.e. Winston Ellis). Conan Lee's hothead cop is annoying and basically unlikeable. And the subplot involving Joey Wong is more filler than anything else.

Some of this may be forgivable if there was more and better action. The fight choreography was provided by Luk Chuen (aka Yasuyoshi Shikamura, whose action direction credits include A Boxer's Omen and Bamboo House of Dolls). It's actually not all that bad, but the problem is that the fights are all short and tend to end before they even begin. Among the fights, we get: Conan Lee vs. Winston Ellis and a roomful of goons; Robin Shou vs. Winston Ellis; Simon Yam vs. Sophia Crawford; Conan Lee vs. Luk Chuen; Simon Yam vs. Robin Shou; Simon Yam vs. Winston Ellis; Conan Lee vs. Robin Shou; and Simon Yam vs. Phillip Ko. It is pretty clear that Simon Yam is being doubled for much of his fights. His throwdown with Winston Ellis is undercranked (purposely) to the point of absurdity. The final throwdown between Robin Shou and Conan Lee is disappointingly one-sided in favor of the latter.

The film's ending is surprisingly somber given the film's tone overall. But all things considered, this is only for completists of the filmographies of Conan Lee, Simon Yam, or Robin Shou.

Killer's Romance (1990)

Starring: Simon Yam, Joey Wong, Phillip Ko Fei, Luk Chuen, Lau Siu-Ming, Foo Wong-Tat, Ishida Kenichi
Director: Phillip Ko Fei
Action Director: Luk Chuen (Yasuyoshi Shikamura), Wong Coh-Wah

Phillip Ko's low-budget action films--well, mainly Final Run, seemed to do well enough around the turn of the 1980s that he was able to scrounge up enough money to film abroad. One of those was the dire Cyprus Tigers, which wasted a great cast on unfunny comedy and an unlikable lead (Conan Lee). Surprisingly, it did okay at the box office. Then there is this film, the low-budget answer to Clarence Ford and Tsui Hark's Dragon from Russia: a loose adaptation of the popular manga "The Crying Freeman".

The movie opens with Jeffrey (Simon Yam, of Sha Po Lang and Exiled) coming back to London following the murder of his father (Foo Wang-Tat, of A Better Tomorrow III and An Eye for an Eye). His dad was one of the heads of the Yamada Gumi crime syndicate, which means that violent revenge is an acceptable response. According to his dad's top lieutenant, Yoshikawa (Luk Chuen, of City Cops and Ninja Over the Great Wall), his dad was murdered by the Chinatown triads of London, under the command of Ma Tin (Lau Siu-Ming, of Swordsman and A Chinese Ghost Story).

So, Jeffrey goes on a mission of revenge, killing the top three leaders of the gang, including Ma Tin himself. While committing one of the murders, he is witnessed by Paula (Joey Wong, of A Chinese Ghost Story III and An Eternal Combat), a dance student in London who is also an amateur photographer. She manages to photograph Jeffrey and becomes mildly obsessed with him. They (coincidentally) run into each other after another killing, which leads to both the police, represented by a Chinese detective (Siu Yuk-Lung), and the Triads to think that Paula is in cahoots with Jeffrey.

The Triads, now led by Charlie (Phillip Ko Fei, of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter and Shaolin Intruders), show up at Paula's house and a huge gunfight breaks out. Paula is injured and Jeffrey goes into hiding. Meanwhile, we learn that both Charlie and Yoshikawa had Jeffrey's father killed so that he would wipe out Charlie's bosses and the two could rise to the top of their respective gangs. The only loose ends left are Jeffrey and Paula, and sooner or later the latter will lead the bad guys to the former.

I'm admittedly not familiar with the source material for "The Crying Freeman" or its accompanying anime--I've only seen Dragon from Russia and that very well may have been unsubbed, too. That said, I'm not really sure what the similarities are between Killer's Romance and the manga. Perhaps it deals with Japanese assassins and mobsters and a guy is supposed to kill a female witness to his activities, but falls in love with her instead? I'll let more educated people school me on that.

The movie was shot entirely in London--or at least it looks to have been, so I'm guessing that ate up much of the budget and left less money for explosive action sequences. It does feel more like a real movie than a lot of low-budget Phillip Ko opuses (opera?), with a beginning, middle, and end, a greater emphasis on characters, and a decent attempt to add genuine stakes to the action. It is also brutal and unforgiving, even to characters who might normally hold plot armor if Hollywood tried to do the same thing. So, I will applaud attempts to be legitimately dramatic over some of the lulls in story.

Simon Yam plays his character with limited dialog. Not John Wick level of "limited," but there are a lot of scenes where he does more acting with his eyes and facial expressions than with his mouth. Joey Wong is Joey Wong: lovely, adorable, and someone you just want to give a SMOOSHY hug to. And despite the unlikelihood of a normal girl falling for a sociopathic killer, one only need to remember the worldwide popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey to know how popular that sort of thing is. I would say that Phillip Ko often overplays his Charlie character, especially during a scene where he's getting a bullet extracted from him, in a way that takes away from the film's otherwise serious tone.

The action was choreographed by Luk Chuen (Yasuyoshi Shikamura) and Wong Coh-Wah (billed as "Panther Wong"). Much of the action is made up of gunplay, which is fairly well staged. The big shootout at Charlie's house is a definitely highlight, with all the carnage and "shooting guns in the air" that we would expect from a vintage John Woo movie. I'm just surprised that, given the size of the pistols that Simon Yam uses in that scene, he wasn't taking off entire heads and limbs with those babies.

The martial arts are limited to the last 20 minutes or so. There is a nice fight between Simon Yam and some Japanese assassins sent to take him out, led by Ishida Kenichi (Final Run and Drugs Fighters). Ishida is an excellent kicker--he even recreates the jump-over-the-table spinning side kick that Casanova Wong did in Warriors Two--and I wish we could've seen more of him in Hong Kong cinema. The film ends with an extended, two-part sword fight between Jeffrey and his fellow Yamada Gumi members, capped off with very good throwdown (with katana) between Simon Yam and Luk Chuen--this was included in the now-defunct Wasted Life's Top 100 Fight Scenes of All Time. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it goes a long way to justify the film's earlier pacing issues.

Retreat of the Godfather (1991)

Retreat of the Godfather (1991)
Chinese Title: 大哥讓位
Translation: Big Brother (Godfather) Steps Back

Starring: Lam Wai, Wong Mau-Chow, Ko Chun-Hsiung, Wan Lai-Jing, Dick Wei, Tsai Chia-Hung, Long Shao-Hua, Kam Kong, Wu Ma
Director: Chen Chi-Hwa
Action Director: Wang Yao

A lesser-known Hong Kong triad action film from the Golden Age of Hong Kong Action. It had an entry in Thomas Weisser's Asian Cult Cinema, but he gave it a lukewarm rating that suggested it was a low-grade heroic bloodshed film. Yeah....no. As usual, it's clear that Weisser did not watch it (he said that the main villain was played by Wu Ma) and to dismiss it that way is unfair. Directed by longtime Jackie Chan friend and collaborator Chen Chi-Hwa, the film excels in the action department, even if it suffers from a lack of clear direction with regards to the plot.

Ko Chun-Hsiung (Miracles and Island of Fire) plays Kwan, a crime boss who is trying to move smuggle some antiques out of Hong Kong and into the hands of wealthy clients. One day, a shipment of priceless vases is stolen from two of his enforcers: Andy (Lam Wai, of Project A II and Long Arm of the Law) and Phil (Wong Mau-Chow, of Shaolin Temple Against Lama and Ninja vs. the Shaolin Guards). They find out that the thief is Uncle Siu (Kam Kong, of The Crane Fighters and Against the Drunken Cat's Paws), Kwan's main rival.

Andy and Phil go to see Uncle Siu and he says that he stole the vases as a way to arrange a visit with them so he can try to persuade them to join his side. They refuse, but he gives them the vases back as a sign of good faith. Psych! He gives them forgeries, which puts them on the wrong side of their boss. Anyway, Phil gets shot and they go into hiding. Meanwhile, their mutual friend Chen (Dick Wei, of Millionaire's Express and Paper Marriage) gets out of jail. He initially joins up with his friends, but eventually goes to work as a bouncer for Uncle Siu. He also blows off his girlfriend, Emma (Tsai Chia-Hung, of Dragon Kid and King Swindler), who has become a bar girl-cum-prostitute.

Long story short, Kwan kidnaps Andy's girlfriend, Tina (Wan Lai-Jing), as a way to squeeze him a little into getting the vases back. This reveals that Kwan's lawyer, Tony (Long Shao-Hua), may or may not being planning a coup d'état against Kwan. A lot of people are killed (or commit suicide) and Andy and Phil are forced to go against Siu on their own when Chen is killed and Tina is kidnapped...a second time.

The film is rare enough that I feel justified in a more detailed plot synopsis than usual. The main problem is that the main characters spend much of the middle act hanging around one of their safehouses until the bad guys show up...and then move to a second safehouse (a warehouse). The stolen vases are nothing more than McGuffins and disappear from the narrative for large swaths of the film.

Thankfully, the action comes at frequent and regular intervals. The fight scenes were staged by Wang Yao, one of the first members of the Sing Ga Ban (although he seemed to leave once Jackie set up shop at Golden Harvest). The fighting is standard 1980s-era Hong Kong kickboxing, plus lots of painful falls. The fisticuffs are generally "solid" whenever it's Lam Wai or Wong Mau-Chow performing them, although they jump to "quite good" whenever Dick Wei is onscreen (unsurprisingly). There are about 7 or 8 small fights before the climax.

The finale is where the film really shines. It is a crazy mix of more kickboxing, chopper action, Bullet Ballet, and stuntwork that will make you wince. The characters are in a warehouse full of cardboard boxes and water drums and a huge melee breaks out between Kwan's and Tony's subordinates, with Andy and Phil caught in the middle. Prepare for lots of painful falls, people being thrown from glass, people flying back 10 feet whenever they get shot, and all sorts of mayhem. It's just good action cinema right there. And just to further the Jackie Chan connection, the film ends with the outtakes.

Zeiram 2 (1994)

Zeiram 2 (1994)

Starring: Yuko Moriyama, Yukijiro Hotaru, Kunihiro Ida, Sabu, Kazuhiko Inoue (voice), Mizuho Yoshida
Director: Keita Amemiya
Special FX Director: Hiroshi Kidokoro
Action Director: Akira Ohashi, Mitsuo Abe

Zeiram 2 is an interesting sequel in that it tries to take some of lore created in the (superior) anime Iria: Zeiram the Animation and insert it into the context of the live-action films. It is only partially successful, thanks to the fact that Iria’s long-time rival Fujikuro (actor-director Sabu, who was in Don’t Look Up and Shinjuku Triad Society) has gone from a seasoned veteran trying to exploit Iria’s lack of experience to an annoying punk. But it does have flying umbrellas!

The film is set a few years after the events of the first film. Kamiya (a returning Yukijiro Hotaru) is trying to patch things up with his estranged wife. Teppei is about to marry his long-time girlfriend. And Iria is back on Earth with Bob (Kazuhiko Inoue) and Fujikuro in order to intercept a valuable teleportation device called the Karmelite from a band of space mercenaries. While that particular mission goes off without a hitch, the trouble begins when Iria is given a second, complementary mission.

The Intergalactic Bounty Hunters Union has recently built a new battle robot from the remains of Zeiram, the indestructible alien whom Iria had faced off with a few years earlier. Normally, that would be a very bad idea…wait for it. In any case, Iria supposed to have a duel of sorts with the robot to test its capabilities against a superior target (as opposed to robots and remote-controlled tanks). When Iria shows up in the outskirts of Tokyo to meet it, she is met by even more galactic ruffians. Zeiram does show up and, as per its programming, will not let the interstellar brigands harm her, so it switches into Turbo Mode and slaughters the lot.

The robot is initially not supposed to engage with Iria until a) she gives it orders to and b) they are isolated in a Zone (a pocket dimension meant for doing interplanetary dirty work without alarming the locals). This is where things get complicated. Iria and Bob are betrayed by Fujikuro, who wants to sell the Karmelite on the black market and retire early. To this end, he disables Bob’s hardware and kidnaps Teppei, who had coincidentally caught a glimpse of Iria earlier. So, while Iria is trying to rescue Teppei, she is not around to stop the last surviving star thug from spitting blood all over the Zeiram robot, awakening the little head that was built into it…really people?

This is the equivalent of setting a Krusty doll on “Evil” and Zeiram starts the “exercise,” creating a Zone and trapping itself, Iria, Fujikuro, and Teppei inside. Meanwhile, Kamiya has found his way to the abandoned building that Iria is working out of and fixes Bob and the teleporter. Get ready for more action in the vein of the first film.

The main problem with Zeiram 2 is that after the initial set-up (which probably takes longer than the first movie), it becomes a clone of its predecessor. It’s the same beats: Iria fights with Zeiram and wins; something happens for Zeiram to be revived; Iria is separated from the heroes for an extended period (she doesn’t even interact with them directly until the end); and then there is a final battle set to the Zone slowly deleting itself. Other than the monster designs—and we don’t get any stop-motion this time around (boo!)—there isn’t much to distinguish this from the first movie.

That said, one thing that director Keita Amemiya does well is suspense. There are several situations in which the protagonists find themselves fighting against impossible odds, like when Teppei is tied up with his foot on a landmine while Iria is trapped in a trash compactor room while holding onto a wasp-shaped missile (!) that is trying to fly toward Teppei. Or the climax, where Iria is engaging in a pitched martial arts battle with Zeiram at the top of a Kanon Statue as it “dissolves” from the ground up while the heroes scramble for the Karmelite. And the final scene will have even mildly-invested viewers at the edge of their seat…

The action is pretty good by Japanese standards, although it might pale in comparison to its Hong Kong cousins. The martial arts definitely have the feel of a Super Sentai series (or similar Tokusatsu show), although watching them performed by a GORGEOUS Japanese actress (and her stunt double) makes it more interesting then some Metal Hero. The rest of the action involves LOTS of gunplay and explosions. I enjoy the climax, which starts out as a sword fight, then becomes an aerial dogfight involving a winged Zeiram and Iria on a flying umbrella, and then becomes a martial arts fight, followed by ripping off the end of The Terminator.

The film is filled with early 1990s CGI (not great), miniature explosions, and your standard Japanese suitmation. I like the redesign for Zeiram. What I don’t like is the dog monster it creates—both the suit and the way the monster is created. Anyway, there’s enough fun action to keep most viewers entertained, plus Yuko Moriyama is always easy on the eyes. I just wish the film tried to set itself apart more form its predecessor.