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.

Widow Warriors (1990)

Widow Warriors (1990)
Aka: 虎膽女兒紅
Translation: Tiger Gallant Daughter Red

Starring: Tien Niu, Elizabeth Lee, Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Wang Lai, Wong Aau, Michiko Nishiwaki, Cheung Suen-Mei, Ha Chi-Chun, Eliza Yue Chi-Wai, Alex Ng Hong-Ling, Shek Kin, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Phillip Chan, Ken Lo, Ngai Jan, Winnie Lau Siu-Wai, Chan Ging-Cheung, Walter Tso Tat-Wah
Director: Johnny Wang Lung-Wei
Action Director: Sun Chien, Johnny Wang Lung-Wei

Widow Warriors stands out among the Girls n’ Guns movies as being a bit stronger on the character development and story than a lot of the other entries, which generally pit our female fighters against generic gangsters, drug dealers, and arms traffickers. Actor-turned-director Johnny Wang Lung-Wei directs another strong film based on a script by Manfred Wong, who later became a legend for both his work on the popular Young and Dangerous films and adapting the “Feng Yun” comic into a screenplay for The Storm Riders. His work here would serve him well for the later Young and Dangerous franchise. This film in particular plays almost like a Triad version of the 14 Amazons, or an “other side of the law” inversion of She Shoots Straight.

Liu Lung (Shek Kin, of Enter the Dragon and From China with Death) is the aging head of a Hong Kong triad, which has largely gone legit in the past few years. I mean, there is probably some crime going on behind the scenes and he still employees armed men to deal with rivals, but the bread-and-butter of his empire is pretty honest. Liu Lung has an equally-elderly wife (Wang Lai, of Hong Kong Emmanuelle and Fist of Fury III) who is an honest and pious woman who constantly worries about what karma her husband’s lifestyle will bring. Together they have five children: Liu Chuan-Hau (Phillip Chan, of Bloodsport and Double Impact); Liu Ma-Yee (Michael Chan Wai-Man, of Spirits of Bruce Lee and Shaolin Handlock); Liu Yong (Ken Lo, of Crystal Hunt and Mahjong Dragon); Ann (Wong Au, of A Bloody Fight and Thunder Cops II); and the youngest, Ching Ching (Elizabeth Lee, of Sword Stained with Royal Blood and Blonde Fury).

In addition to his wife and kids, Liu Lung took on a second wife about 17 years prior—that would’ve been about 1973, although the practice of polygamy was banned in Hong Kong in 1971. His second wife, or “concubine,” is Aunt Nan (Tien Niu, of The Brave Archer and Lackey and the Lady Tiger), whose teen rebellion lead to all sorts of debauchery before the “man of her dreams” knocked her up and left her with a baby, Wai (played as a teenager by Winnie Lau, of Future Cops and Dragon Heat). Wai is going through a rebellious stage similar to that of her mother, probably because she is only barely tolerated by step-siblings and the staff of the Liu household.

As this is the Hong Kong equivalent of Bella Mafia, all of the men have their own companions, too. Chuan-Hau is married to a lady whose name we never really learn, played by Eliza Yue (of Angel’s Mission and Satanic Crystals), but who is always fighting with her husband because of his unrepentant infidelity. Ma Yee is married to Kara Hui Ying-Hung (of My Young Auntie and Lady is the Boss), and the two are the kung fu fighters of the family. Liu Yong has a Japanese wife named Chieko (Michiko Nishiwaki), who is a karate champion herself. And Ching Ching, whom daddy has always shielded from the uglier parts of his profession, has just returned home from studying abroad with a new husband in tow: Shek Chi-Au (Ngai Jan, of Mr. Canton and Lady Rose and Devil’s Vendetta).

I spent three paragraphs just describing the family dynamics, since there are initially a lot of characters to follow and it’s easy to get the relationships confused. So, the plot itself revolves around a rival gang of Triads led by the Yim brothers who have someone on the inside. They want to put Liu out of commission and take over his business and whatever territory he may be controlling, too. With the help of the mole, they are able to stage an ambush at a traditional Peking Opera presentation with results in the deaths of most of the men—Ah Hau is murdered by his mistress, who was also in the Yims’ employee. Once the men are out of the picture, all of the underlings (including Kickboxer’s Dennis Chan) are unsure of what to do, since Liu Lung was the heart and brains of the operation. Thankfully, Aunt Nan spent a lot of time accompanying her husband’s Triad meetings and has enough street smarts from her earlier years that she is able to take the reins. Meanwhile, Kara’s character—whom everyone refers to as “sister-in-law”—suspects that the Ching Ching’s new husband may be the traitor in their midst.

The first half of Widow Warriors is largely a family drama, setting up all the characters, their relationships, and the external conflict of the Yim brothers trying to edge the Liu Clan out of the business. There is a brief fight sequence early on with Michael Chan beating up some guys for hitting on his wife and sister. But beyond that, it is mainly the different interactions between the members of the Liu family, with both Ching Ching and Aunt Nan being the emotional anchors and foils—the sheltered Ching Ching and the more seasoned (but still sensitive) Aunt Nan. The first half is closed out by the aforementioned massacre of the Liu men.

The pace then picks up the second half, as the women take charge and gear up for revenge. This results in some fight sequences involving Kara Hui and Michiko Nishiwaki, which were staged by both director Wang Lung-Wei and Venom alumni Sun Chien. The highlight is a lengthy two-on-one duel between Kara Hui (whose skills steal the show) and a pair of fighters: a kicker (Shaw Brothers veteran Jackson Ng) and a musclehead (Yang Hsiung, another Shaw vet). Before that, Michiko has a weight room throwdown with Ha Chi-Chun, who also did some fighting in Brave Young Girls. Those two duke it out with a shirasaya katana and a weight bar (used as a staff), respectively. The choreography in these sequences that I'm disappointed that Sun Chien didn't evolve his craft into a better career as an action director after the death of the old school film.

The movie then veers into Godfather territory as the women start executing their enemies one by one, including all the traitors. This culminates in a big Girls-with-Guns finale at a junkyard, where the women compensate their lack of gunplay skills with by using both the element of surprise and the altitude advantage. Lots of blood is spilled before the girls finally get their revenge against the remaining Yim brother, played by Stephen Chan. And even then, all of the women are battered and bloody by the time the smoke clears…that is, those who are not dead. They may be Widow Warriors, but they are not Immortal Warriors, or Bulletproof Warriors (the Brazilian title of Once Upon a Time in China). In the tradition of the best Hong Kong movies, nobody has plot armor and everyone is subject to violence and physical suffering (not just the overwrought emotional suffering that follows each death scene). Fight fans should keep their expectations in check: there isn’t a whole lot of martial arts, but what you see is of a high standard. And with generally strong performances and a stacked cast, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Robotrix (1991)

Robotrix (1991)
Chinese Title: 女機械人
Translation: Female Robot

Starring: Chikako Aoyama, Amy Yip, David Wu, Hui Hiu-Daan, Billy Chow, Kwai Chung, Wu Fung
Director: Jamie Luk
Action Director: Yuen Tak

Robotrix is one of the more memorable Category III films to come out of Hong Kong during the 1990s, mainly due to its loopy Sci-Fi premise. It is an exploitation film through and through, though it would be hard whether to call it a “Girls and Guns film with a sci-fi twist and an extra helping of T&A”, or a “Sexploitation film with a handful of fight scenes in it.” I tend toward the latter and it stands up there with Lethal Panther in terms of female-centric action movies that are interchangeable with softcore porn.

The movie begins with the Hong Kong police playing bodyguard to a Saudi prince whose sheik father is in town to attend a convention on robotics. Among the cops are Selina (Chikako Aoyama, of the Oedo Rapeman movies), who is visibly upset with having to keep watch over a man cavorting about in a swimming pool with four naked beauties. Shortly after she excuses herself—she is not about to watch her charge engage in a fivesome—the pool room fills with sleeping case. A mysterious man (Billy Chow, of Fist of Legend and Blonde Fury) kidnaps the prince and puts a large hole in Selina’s chest (what gun was he carrying? An AMT Hardballer?). Selina is rushed to the hospital with no prospects of leaving, except via the morgue.

Meanwhile, at the robot conference, we get to see the German and American models (played by Once Upon a Time in China’s Mark King and City Cop’s Ken Goodman, respectively) duke it out in a kung fu battle. They are defeated by another robot, built by Japanese scientist Dr. Sara (Hui Hiu-Daan) and her assistant, Anna (Amy Yip, of Requital and The Inspector Wears Skirts II). While showing off the robot to the interested sheik, the Hong Kong police commissioner (Wu Fung, of Big Brother and Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon) shows up to inform the sheik of his son’s kidnapping. Dr. Sara offers to let her robot perform the investigation and the commissioner allows her to transfer the now-deceased Selina’s memories and appearance to the fighting robot we saw.

We also learn the reason for the kidnapping. There is an evil Japanese scientist named Ryuichi Yamamoto who had tried secure funding for a robot army from the sheik. The sheik decided against it, so Yamamoto killed himself and had his consciousness transferred to a robot of his making—the guy we saw perform the kidnapping. Now, the sheik must agree to fund Yamamoto’s robot legion, or else his son gets it. I like the subtitle in this scene: “a mad robot is trying to undermine social security.”

Dr. Sara manages to create the robot clone of Selina, who initially has a hard time coming to grips with her new reality. Nonetheless, only the commissioner knows the truth; the rest of the cops, including Selina’s boyfriend (or suitor), Chou (David Wu, of In the Lineof Duty V and Tiger Cage II). They rekindle their romance while Anna goes undercover as a prostitute to flush out Yamamoto, who has been out screwing harlots to death—quite literally. It won’t be long before they find Yamamoto and he is going to wonder why the police officer whom he murdered is still out and about as if nothing happened…

Much like Inframan, you do not go into a film like Robotrix hoping to find anything resembling pseudo-science. The science fiction elements are there in set dressing, but no attempt is made to explain, even in gobblety-gook language, how memories are transferred, how synthetic skin is made, or how anything else works. This is a movie where “80s lightning” effects are run across the body of a dead woman and suddenly a robot body looks like her—very Metropolis level of technology here. It is fascinating to see female robots with sexual capabilities (to the point a man can go down on one and be none the wiser), AI brains (in the case of Anna), and a full range of movement (including martial arts), while 35 years later, we have silicone sex dolls with AI voice and interactive capabilities, but little actual movement—depending on who you talk to, we’re 5 years away from actual sex bots with realistic “movements”.

With that in mind, Robotrix is very much an excuse to film a bunch of sex (and rape) scenes, punctuated by the occasional fight sequence. I counted no fewer than seven pairs of breasts in this film, with four being displayed in the first five minutes. There are two consensual sex scenes and two rape scenes—the first rape starts consensual and then goes on after the woman decides she cannot keep up with Billy Chow’s stamina. Billy Chow’s rear end gets a lot of screentime, which is not something I ever thought I’d say about a movie and we even get a glimpse of his junk, too. All the sex scenes are both very explicit and lengthy, so smut fans will get their fill, just as much as Chikako Aoyama and Amy Yip do in their respective love scenes (there is no nudity from Amy, who does her famous “Yip Tease” when lying down with Stuart Ong).

The fight scenes were staged by Yuen Tak, who at the time was working on films like The Dragon from Russia; Prince of the Sun; and Saviour of the Soul. The fighting is typical modern-day kickboxing of a late 1980s or early 1990s movie. There are a few wire-assisted flourishes here, but not many. The choreography is pretty much what you would see from other non-fighter girls making movies at the time, think any movie with Sibelle Hu, or Carrie Ng and Cheung Man in films like Cheetah on Fire or Crystal Hunt. Only the finale really disappoints, as it starts as a fight scene and then becomes a stunt sequence involving a giant magnet and a trash compactor. I think sleaze hounds will get more out of this than fight fiends, although Billy Chow fans will certain enjoy him getting a lot of the spotlight.

Close Escape (1989)

Close Escape (1989)
Chinese Title: 飛越危牆
Translation: Leaping Over Dangerous Walls

Starring: Aaron Kwok, Max Mok, Michael Miu Kiu-Wai, Charine Chan Ka-Ling, Dick Wei, Yukari Oshima, Chan Chik-Wai, Albert Cheung Miu-Hau, Pomson Shi
Director: Chow Jan-Wing
Action Director: Phillip Kwok

Although nominally considered a Girls n’ Guns film because of the presence of Yukari Oshima in the cast, this is actually a more male-centric crime thriller with Oshima showing up in a supporting role. She delivers the film’s second best fighting performance, with top honors going to Dick Wei, whose speed and power were legendary during the heyday of his career.

Max Mox plays Lam Wai-Leung, a fencing student who has dreams of going abroad to study. Unfortunately, he is not all that well off in terms of money and his brother, a widower named Wai-Tung (Michael Miu, of Fatal Termination and The Fortune Code) isn’t much better. Wai-Tung lost a lot of money on the Stock Market in recent years and these days only has his apartment and a second property, a bungalow that he shared with his deceased wife (and his one major memory of her). The two men talk of selling it to finance Wai-Leung’s trip, but Wai-Tung has other ideas.

Another person who was hit by bad Stock Market decisions is a suave businessman named Chiu Ying-Kau (Dick Wei, of Project A and Yes, Madam!). Chiu, however, is the unscrupulous sort whose shift into crime was almost a given after legitimate investing went south. His current racket is diamonds, which involves buying diamonds and selling them to wealthier collectors for a small profit. Although, like many criminals in these movies, he is always looking for a way to get out of paying, which is where Wai-Tung comes in. Wai-Tung rigs the hotel’s AV system to fill the seller/buyers’ room with smoke and then breaks in and steals the diamonds.

Unfortunately, the criminal who betrays his vendor’s trust will ultimately betray the hired help he needed to swindle the former in the first place. When Leung Wai-Tung meets up with Chiu Ying-Kau the next night to hand over the diamonds, Chiu has him ambushed and killed on his way home. The murder is witnessed by both his brother and his brother’s best friend, Sgt. Ben Kwok (Aaron Kwok, of Divergence and The Storm Riders) of the Hong Kong Royal Police. Ben identifies one of the killers, Big Head Man (Albert Cheung), whom Ben’s colleague Uncle Kwut (Chan Chik-Wai, of Dragon Strikes and Return to Action) identifies as being one of Chiu’s men.

Much to Chiu Ying-Kau’s dismay, the diamonds that Lam Wai-Tung gave him were fake, a sort of guarantee on for his life (or a life insurance policy for his brother). Chiu sends his men to trash the Lam residence (and murder their dog) in search of the diamonds. When that doesn’t work, they kidnap Wai-Leung and try to torture the information out of him. When that also doesn’t produce results, Chiu murders Big Head Man—the police were already snooping around about him—and frames Lam Wai-Leung for it. He flees and is hit by a car driven by a Japanese reporter, Miko (Yukari Oshima, of A Book of Heroes and Ultracop 2000). Wai-Leung takes her hostage (he still has the gun that Chiu left in his hands) and forces her to go to his bungalow while he recovers and hides from the police. And maybe, just maybe, that may be where Chiu left the diamonds…

Although Close Escape’s plot is perfectly serviceable for a low-budget 80s/early 90s action flick, the film does suffer from a paucity of action, especially in the draggy middle act. There is a period of 30-40 minutes where Wai-Leung is convalescing in his brother’s bungalow and Sgt. Kwok is going above the law and observing Chiu, whom he knows has framed Wai-Leung. This section of the film may test any viewer’s patience.

It does start to pick up in the last half hour or so, starting with a fight between Yukari Oshima and chopsockey veteran Pomson Shi (Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow), who plays Chiu’s lead enforcer. There is an assassination attempt by Wai-Leung on Chiu, which leads to some fighting. And then there is the final fight in the cramped bungalow, where Yukari Oshima throws down with Dick Wei while Aaron Kwok and Max Mok team up against Pomson (what an interesting Anglican name). There is some good martial arts on display and that finale is very brutal and vicious. I would even venture to nominate this for Phillip Kwok’s best choreographed martial arts sequence of his post-Venom Mob career.

Aaron Kwok and Max Mok do well with the choreography, but it is really Yukari Oshima and Dick Wei who shine. Dick Wei, a Taekwondo expert, was never the flashiest of the kickers, especially given his particular style. But what Dick could do is the basics with speed, precision and ferocity. His roundhouse, side, and spin kicks look and feel like they hurt—oftentimes because they actually did. Yukari Oshima looks as good as ever, even though she only gets two fight sequences. We get to see her perform an “over-the-shoulder” kick and a scorpion kick, which is great.

The two are well matched, even though the script foregoes the usual HK action approach of “a sufficiently-trained woman is just as good as an equally-trained man” (which us fans can easily suspend our disbelief on) and goes for something a little more realistic: if two individuals, a man and a woman, have about equal training and skills in the absolute sense, the man will stay at the advantage based on his musculature and body structure. Dick Wei did it in Angel Enforcers and he does it again here.

Zeiram (1991)

Zeiram (1991)
Aka: Zeram

Starring: Yuko Moriyama, Kunihiro Ida, Yukijiro Hotaru, Masakazu Handa, Mizuho Yoshido
Director: Keita Amemiya
Action Director: Mitsuo Abe
Special FX Director: Hajime Matsumoto, Hiroshi Onodera

This one of those films that I caught on TV at the tail-end and wondered just what it was I was watching. It was cable TV back in the mid-1990s when I was channel surfing and happened upon a Japanese movie I was unfamiliar with (despite being a huge Godzilla fan at the time) and watched the last ten or fifteen minutes, which was full of action and monsters. A year or so later, I came across it again, probably on the Sci-Fi Channel (back when it was still cool) and watched all of it. It was neat. Then, when the Sci-Fi Channel did their Saturday Anime cycle, I noticed that the anime adaptation of this movie was on and taped it (over the course of two Saturdays). It is one of my favorite animes of all time. I eventually got this movie (and its sequel) on VHS from Video Daikaiju near the end of the 1990s (or early 2000s).

The movie opens with some high contrast black-and-white photography of a strange, mushroom-headed being walking through a corridor, viciously slaughtering all the soldiers standing in its way. Enter: Zeiram.

Switch to our Earth, where we meet our two main male protagonists: Kamiya (Yukijiro Hotaru, Gamera, Guardian of the Universe and Deep Sea Monster Reigo) and Teppei (Kunihiro Ida, of Weather Girl and Moon Over Tao). Both men work for an electronics company and seem to specialize mainly in equipment repairs. They’re working on a Sunday, which both men resent for differing reasons: Kamiya has scored high on his latest race bet and wants to celebrate with his friends; Teppei has a date with one of his female co-workers (whom we’ll never meet). Their last job of the day is to investigate a claim of someone stealing power from the grid. I would think that would be the job for the power company and not an electronics company, but maybe it’s a Japanese thing.

They show up at the apartment in question, which is inhabited by a mysterious woman named Iria (Yuko Moriyama, of Kunoichi Lady Ninja and Tokyo Raiders) and her talking computer, Bob (voiced by Masakazu Handa). Before our heroes’ arrival, we had met Iria and Bob, who were talking about setting up “the Zone” and earning money from their latest job. Yes, they are intergalactic bounty hunters and their next target is Zeiram, whom we saw in the opening scene. “The Zone” refers to a temporary pocket dimension which can mimic the surrounding area up to a certain radius and thus can be used to carry out jobs without endangering the locals. Zeiram is on its way to Earth and Iria wants to capture him. So, she creates a version of the Zone to resemble to the industrial zone of Tokyo and sets up a portal for Zeiram’s travel pod to land directly in it. Unfortunately, when Kamiya and Teppei show up to find out why she’s stealing power—we learn that the Earth has been evaluated as being naturally unfriendly and uncooperative to outsiders from space (even friendly ones), so she’s working on the sly—they are accidentally transported into the Zone. That means that Iria will have to work twice as hard to fight Zeiram and protect the two humans (the dialog suggests that she and Bob will lose their bounty hunter license if any of the locals dies on the job, probably something about the “prime directive”).

From there on out, we have martial arts battles with monsters, gunplay and explosions, lots of slimy special effects (Zeiram can create little monsters from the DNA of other organisms it has assimilated), more gunplay and fighting, and even a scene of Teppei eating a space cockroach. At one point, Iria is transported out of the Zone and has to direct Teppei and Kamiya while she fixes the transporter. And Zeiram is not just powerful, he has several different forms he takes on whenever it looks like the humans are going to defeat him.

Zeiram is a highly entertaining Tokusatsu film from Keita Amemiya, an artist an effects man who became a director of some renown in Japan. This is one of his earlier films and he shows a good eye for monster designs and action sequences. These days, Amemiya is probably most well known for his work on the “Garo” TV series/franchise, which is sort of a more adult-oriented Tokusatsu series. He also directed Mechanical Violator Hakaider and Cyber Ninja, the latter of which was available to rent at places like Blockbuster Video back in the 1990s. He also directed an episode of “Dinosaur Squadron Zyuranger,” which corresponds with the first season of the “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” (specifically the episode with the Terror Toad villain).

The movie takes a little while to get going, but once the characters enter the Zone, the pace picks up considerably. My main complaint is the interval in which Iria is temporarily trapped outside the Zone, leaving our clumsy heroes to fend for themselves. It’s a good way of upping the ante and the stakes, since the two men have no skills and have to improvise to not die, but Yuko Moriyama is so compelling as Iria that watching her just hang around doing nothing is a bit of a letdown. Thankfully, she eventually finds her way back into the film, which sets up a triple-climax for the movie. And director Amemiya is really good at drawing out the suspense and upping the stakes so that deliverance really comes at the last possible second.

Most people will never forget the design of Zeiram, with its hulking green body, mushroom-shaped head, and a tiny, white, humanoid face in its head that can extend, much like the secondary mouth of the Xenomorph. Zeiram can engage in hand-to-hand combat, wield a gun, and produce clones of its victims to use as his minions. The effects are attributed to Hajime Matsumoto and Hiroshi Onodera. The former is best known for his work on Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and later Godzilla-Mothra-King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack and Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. Onodera, on the other hand, worked on the FX teams for all of the Heisei Godzilla and Mothra movies, plus some of the early 2000s Ultraman movies. Their job is to give life to Keito Amemiya’s monster designs, which they do handily, mixing rod puppets, man-in-suit techniques, and even some stop motion animation.

The martial arts is a little limited, and its clear that Yuko Moriyama is doubled for the flashier moves. Japanese cinema was not the place to turn to for quality martial arts in the 1990s, but watching a beautiful woman like Moriyama (and her stunt double) karate-kicking a giant, four-legged stop-motion skeleton is just the epitome of entertainment.

 

Brave Young Girls (1990)

Brave Brave Young Girls (1990)
Aka: Blood Sisters
Chinese Title: 黑海霸王花
Translation: Black Sea Queen Flower

Starring: Yukari Oshima, Margaret Lee Din-Long, Jo Jo Ngan Lai-Yue, Ha Chi-Chun, Shing Fui-On, Leung Kar-Yan, Pak Yan, Chan Pooi-Kei, Kara Hui Ying-Hung
Director: Luk Bong
Action Director: Chiang Tao

Brave Young Girls is a lesser-known entry in both the Girls n’ Guns genre and Yukari Oshima’s filmography. It is notable as the final film of director Luk Bong, who had been in the director’s chair since the early 1950s. Luk Bong’s wasn’t particularly distinguished among fans, with his notable martial arts films being Blind Fist of Bruce and Rocky’s Love Affairs, of which he was producer. The film is more of a(n) (unfocused) melodrama, revolving around three girls who are more or less compelled to enter the prostitution business.

The three girls are connected by Cheng Ga (Shing Fui-On, of City Cops and The Killer), a mid-level criminal who runs a handful of small rackets: a hotel for prostitution, a hostess club (which often ends in prostitution), and a loan shark business. He also tries to get into the parking lot extortion racket, which results in a random fight between his men and Kara Hui (My Young Auntie and Lady is the Boss).

Anyway, first their Hong (The Centipede Horror’s Margaret Lee), a fugitive from the Mainland. Hong and her brother need to raise money for a sick relative back in the PRC and is on the lam after getting in a shootout with the police. She eventually runs into Cheng Ga, who offers her 20,000 HKD in exchange for a year’s worth of turning tricks.

Next we have Li (JoJo Ngan, of Fury in Red and City Warrior), who appears to the daughter of Cheng Ga’s borrowers (Gam Biu, of The Lama Avenger and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold). The old man owes a lot of money and has asked for a second loan, so Li is given as collateral to work at the hostess club. But soon she learns that it is assumed that she’ll have to service clients at Cheng’s hotel, too. And that is something she did not sign up for.

Finally we have Jenny (Ha Chi-Chun, of Eastern Condors and Aces Go Places V), who is a veteran prostitute at this point. She’s pretty good at what she does, but soon finds herself in trouble with the law. Her savior, so to speak, is “Lady Overlord” (Yukari Oshima), a Japanese policewoman who has arrived in Hong Kong in order to arrest Cheng Ga’s boss (Leung Kar-Yan, of The Thundering Mantis and Cantonen Iron Kung Fu).

The film mainly goes back and forth between Hong’s and Li’s stories, with frequent intervals of Cheng Ga running things like the scuzzbucket we the viewer expect from Shing Fui-On. Jenny’s character has less to do until the final half hour, when they team up to find dirt on Leung Kar-Yan’s character. It all leads up to a final battle royale, with Yukari Oshima trading blows with Beardy, while the other girls just blow away Shing Fui-On…because of course, they do. Despite dealing with forced prostitution, the film is quite chaste (at least the cut I watched was) and may feel sleazy, but never is sleazy.

There are four action sequences in this film, the first of which starts out the movie and the others coming in intervals of 20 minutes or so. The opening sequence is a drug deal in which Cheng Ga’s men buy drugs and then ambush the vendors so as to get their money back. It is mainly gunplay, but at one point they engage in fisticuffs, too. That is followed the aforementioned scene with Kara Hui, who is only in the film for that one scene. Her fight scene is with Cheng Ga’s men at a parking garage, much like her big fight in the previous year’s Burning Ambition. Later on, Yukari Oshima is introduced and gets in a fight with the same guys at a pier. And finally, Yukari gets to beat up Shing Fui-On’s men again at a mansion before squaring off with Leung Kar-Yan. Yukari does some fine work, especially in the extended one-on-one fight with Beardy, and the sequence may be one of Oshima’s better one-on-one duels. Ha Chi-Chun gets to show off some bootwork, too, despite never having been established as a fighter up to that point. But that’s the thing we love about vintage HK action: any character will suddenly start throwing down with the kickboxing, even those whom we least expect.

Stage Door Johnny (1990)

Stage Door Johnny (1990)
Chinese Title: 舞台姊妹
Translation: Stage Sisters

Starring: Kara Hui Ying-Hung, Ann Mui Oi-Fong, Eva Lai Yin-Shan, Ida Chan Yuk-Lin, Pauline Wong Yuk-Wan, Wu Ma, Waise Lee, Lam Ching-Ying, Lau Siu-Ming, Chung Fat, Mars, Ken Lo, Lee Jun-Git
Director: Wu Ma
Action Director: Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association

Stage Door Johnny is an interesting film from director Wu Ma. Apparently filmed on sets leftover from Mr. Canton and Lady Rose, it is a melodramatic tale of sisterhood among female Peking Opera performers set around the 1920s. It demonstrates a lot of Wu Ma’s strengths as a filmmaker, but it ultimately held back from being “Very Good,” let alone “Great,” by a tad too much melodrama and a needlessly bleak finale.

The movie opens at a train station in China where Peking Opera star Tsui Yen-Hsieh (Kara Hui, of Burning Ambition and Widow Warriors) is waiting for her lover. Unfortunately, the man is too attached to his rich family to be willing to elope, thus leaving her and their unborn child to their own devices. Watch for a great scene of a depressed Tsui approaching a group of reporters with her head bowed in shame, only to lift it up and reveal a million-dollar smile for the cameras. Great acting from Kara Hui.

Somewhere in Shanghai, there is an all-female Peking Opera company led by Pops (Wu Ma, of Mr. Canton and Lady Rose and Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards) and Boss Shen (Ann Mui, older sister of Anita, who had a small role in Police Story 2). This troupe is going through hard times, mainly because of a mixture of Shen’s insistence on performing pure dramas (as opposed to stories with martial arts in them) and the general chaste representation of the same—were there China Operas that revealed a bit of skin back in the 1920s?

At this point, Pops is so desperate for money that he’s pawning his own old costumes just to keep the troupe paid. The company has four star players: Shen; Boss Ching (Ida Chan, of Shaolin and Wu Tang and On the Run), who is resigned to see the company go out of business; Boss Hsiao (Pauline Wong, but not the pretty one from Mr. Vampire, but the evil one from Mr. Vampire Part 3), who is “dating” a mid-level Triad named Pin San (Lee Jun-Git, of A Better Tomorrow II and Police Story 2); and Boss Sai (Eva Lai, who played the evil demon girl in Burning Sensation). There is also the troupe musician, Mr. Liu, played by Lam Ching-Ying (of The Prodigal Son and Eastern Condors).

Boss Sai becomes the object of affection of Pin San’s boss, Chang (Lau Siu-Ming, of Royal Warriors and A Chinese Ghost Story). Chang really wants to get into her trousers, but before that happens, we have to meet some more characters. While out making purchases one day, Sai witnesses a gunfight between Chang’s gang another a group of gunman led by “benevolent” crime boss Lu (Waise Lee, of Wing Chun and Bullet in the Head). It’s suggested that Lu is one of those good crime bosses who doesn’t have a problem with extortion and prostitution, but drugs are a complete no-no. Lu and Sai sorta become enamored with each other during the fire fight.

While that’s going on, Pops decides to hire Tsui Yen-Hsieh to boost sales and direct the troupe’s repertoire to more action-oriented stories. That creates a lot of tension between the girls, especially when the gamble pays off and Pops pays Tsui a higher share of the profits than the other girls—these scenes definitely feel like the Peking Opera equivalent of the Caitlyn Clark controversy: all-girl’s association is just eking out a living, a new girl shows up and starts filling seats, the other girls feel jealous that their hard work had gone unnoticed until then, the same girls are equally angry that the person who is making them profitable for once is making more money than they are…

So, there is this conflict between the girls, plus each girl has her own issues (eg., Tsui is still pregnant and is considering an abortion; Hsiao is seriously considering marrying the scuzzy Pin San), some moments of unrequited love (like the rickshaw puller Kui, played by Mars, who is secretly in love with Boss Shen), and there’s the external conflict of the bad blood between Chang and Lu coming to a boil within the walls of the opera hall.

Stage Door Johnny is a very melodramatic film. There are lots of overwrought emotions, especially in the second half as the film reaches its emotional crescendo. It gets so over-the-top near the end that I was wishing it kept the subtlety of that opening scene with Kara Hui. Probably the worst example is the scene where Mars’s rickshaw puller character breaks curfew in order to fetch a doctor for Boss Shen, who has lost her voice for some reason. He basically gets himself shot to death by the police in order get her medical attention, but she refuses to take the medicine. But in the same scene, Tsui is about to take a medicine that would induce abortion. The scene ends with Shen overcoming her severe laryngitis by screaming, “Mommy, don’t do it,” which causes Tsui to reject her medicine. What the heck? It completely invalidates Mars’s sacrifice. That said, the film benefits from strong performances around the board.

The Sing Ga Ban—aka Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association—handled the action, which pops up sporadically throughout the movie. There are three major set pieces and two smaller action scenes. There is a short gunfight early on when Lu’s Men (including Ken Lo) are trying to stop Chang’s men (led by Chung Fat) from smuggling opium. Near the end, there is a fight scene between Ken Lo and Pin San’s men, which has some of his kicking (although it is a bit over-edited). The first big sequence is a fight during a performance at Chang’s house, where Lu’s men team up with the Opera performers to fight Chang’s men when he tries to kidnap Boss Sai. Later on, some rude men at a restaurant (including former Jet Li doubles Xiong Xin-Xin and Mak Wai-Cheung) start picking on Pops until the five leading ladies step up and beat the hell out of them. Then you get the big finale, in which five women in full Peking Opera regalia take on an entire Triad—spears and pole-arms versus choppers and hatchets. It’s a really well-staged fight sequence and should satisfy most fans of the genre.

I would recommend that most Hong Kong cinephiles and fight fans at least check out Stage Door Johnny. There is a nice pristine copy of the film uploaded to YouTube via the Cinema No.8 - HK Movie channel. It’s one of Wu Ma’s better movies, all things considered.

Fighting Female February 2026

A lot of things happened in my life last year, especially with regards to my personal life. I was suddenly left with one less LARGE responsibility (or burden, if you want to be cynical) and I was promptly planning on spending the next five years of my life watching nothing but movies after my work shift had ended. I even had a planned schedule of: Day 1 - Vintage Sci-Fi Movie; Day 2 - Movie for the Site; and Day 3 - Movie for my Fanzine.

But life likes to throw curve balls, many of which are blessings. I have enjoyed that. As a result, I don't quite have the same movie-watching time that I'd had for much of last year. Nonetheless, I enjoy a level of love and companionship that I had not enjoyed in a very long time. I'm still trying to update the site regularly, but it's a bit complicated as I try to organize my life. Horrible, awful DOOM SCROLLING also gets into the way of my productivity as an amateur movie critic. Curse you, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts!!! CURSE YOU!!!

This year's Fighting Female February may very well be my last update for full-length reviews for a while. I'm still doing the fanzine. I have another book project I'm working on. And I have a blossoming part of my personal life to attend to, whose dividends are certainly better than "dozens of views" for a single movie review. But, there will be some sporadic updates here and there, so stay tuned.


Movies Reviewed:

Stage Door Johnny (1990)
Brave Young Girls (1990)
Zeiram (1991)
Close Escape (1989)
Robotrix (1991)
Widow Warriors (1990)
Mission Kill (1991)
Naked Killer (1992)