“Iron Angels” Japanese Poster

Director: Teresa Woo San
Cast: Saijo Hideki, Elaine Lui, Yukari Oshima, Alex Fong Chung Sun, David Chiang, Hwang Jang Lee, Peter Yang Kwan, Wang Hsieh, Lam Chung, Chiang Tao
Running Time: 93 min. 

By Z Ravas

I can’t say this period of history has many consolations for those of us living through it, but getting to experience obscure Hong Kong action films via terrific looking and sounding boutique Blu-ray releases is most assuredly one of them. The first time I saw Iron Angels, it was on a crappy Region 0 DVD that I ordered off of Ebay; I say ‘crappy’ mostly because the disc kept skipping during the final twenty minutes of the movie. (If you’ve seen Iron Angels, you know some of the film’s best action is crammed into the final twenty minutes. You don’t want to miss that part!). What a difference a few years make: now I have the privilege of watching Iron Angels with a pristine hi-definition transfer, courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome.

And if you’re unfamiliar with this series, it’s absolutely worth springing for Syndrome’s recent 3-film box set. The first film ranks up there alongside Royal Warriors and She Shoots Straight as one of the finest examples of that Hong Kong subgenre fondly remembered as Girls with Guns. The movie has the brilliant idea to ask, ‘What if Charlie’s Angels were co-ed and Charlie was played by Shaw Brothers legend David Chiang?’ The story opens with a sequence that could mislead you into thinking you’re in for a military-themed actioner, as the Thai army unleashes machine guns and flamethrowers on a massive opium-harvesting operation in the Golden Triangle. Back in Hong Kong, a lead subordinate of the drug operation—played by Japanese martial artist Yukari Oshima—swears revenge and begins targeting various Interpol agents around the globe. With their backs to the wall, the Hong Kong police decide to enlist the help of the mercenary service known as the Angels.

And you really don’t need much more justification than that to string along 90 minutes of go-for-broke Hong Kong action, though the film has a capable cast to lean on. The Angels are led by Hideki Saijo, an actor primarily known for his singing career in Japan (he did a chart-topping cover of the “Y.M.C.A.”) but who comes across as a tough martial artist here; Moon Lee, a veritable icon in the Girls with Guns genre thanks to her appearances in films like Fatal Termination and Devil Hunters;  and Elaine Lui Siu-Ling, who would go on to co-star in fan favorite Hong Kong titles like The Bride with White Hair and The Red Wolf.

I have to single out Elaine Lui Siu-Ling in particular because at first you assume her role is kind of the party girl of the trio, you know, the gal with big hair who’s more into her wardrobe than taking the mission seriously—but about halfway through the film, her character makes a sharp pivot, diving into battle while strapped with grenades and bullet clips like a pint-sized Rambo. Elaine Lui totally sells you on the transition too, displaying a wealth of onscreen moxie. It’s one of the greatest examples of the Hidden Badass trope that I can recall seeing.

Director Teresa Woo Ann is immediately interesting as one of the only women filmmakers in the Hong Kong action space during this time. I should note that Raymond Leung and Ivan Lai are also sometimes listed as co-directors or Executive Directors on the film, but Woo would seem to be the driving creative force behind this project, having also served as producer and sole credited screenwriter. The action is attributed to the great Tony Leung Siu-Hung (Bloodmoon, Ip Man) and it’s undeniably spectacular stuff, despite the obviously thrifty budget, including a sequence where Hideki Saijo is hanging from a helicopter’s ladder as he fires his machine gun into a McMansion’s worth of bad guys. (As an example of the budgetary limitations: expect liberal use of stunt dummies for some scenes). The final clash between Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima is brief—in fact, I don’t think it’s much longer than a minute or so—but the two combatants go at each other with such ferocity that their bout has rightly become the stuff of legend.

There’s a short list of the top Hong Kong action movies of the 1980’s, the ones that a casual viewer can sample to get a feel for the genre and witness the industry operating at its peak; no doubt well-known titles like Righting Wrongs and In the Line of Duty IV would have to be on there, but I could imagine making a case for Iron Angels as well. While it’s not quite as technically polished as what filmmakers like John Woo and Yuen Woo-ping were producing at this time, when it’s firing on all cylinders, the movie delivers some of the most electrifying action of its decade.

Z Ravas’ Rating: 9/10

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“Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2” Filipino Poster

AKA: Digital Warriors 
Director: Philip Ko Fei
Cast: Darren Shahlavi, Lee Kwang-su, Yukari Oshima, Zoren Legaspi, Jimmy Ko, Man-Kei Lin, James Jim-Si Ha, Philip Ko Fei, Winston Ellis, Thorsten Nickel
Running Time: 93 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Let’s address the elephant in the room – I’m convinced nobody was clamouring for a sequel to the 1997 sci-fi action mashup Techno Warriors. Philip Ko Fei’s incomprehensible Philippines shot action flick gave us a dystopian future (set in 2020!), where a villain called the Black Ninja escapes from the Cyber World into the real world, and cops from both worlds team up to stand a chance of taking him down. What Techno Warriors lacked in narrative cohesion it did make up for in its energetic pacing and high kicking action sequences, so much of which were shot Ko Fei decided to make a follow-up, ensuring the scenes that were left on the cutting room floor didn’t go to waste. The result would come 3 years later in the form of Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2 (or as it was released in some territories, Digital Warriors).

In my review for Techno Warriors I complained that “Explaining the plot…could easily be described as headache inducing”, however compared to Lethal Combat I can safely take that back, as almost nothing make sense from the first scene. Essentially a thematic sequel rather than a direct continuation (even though characters names remain the same, and scenes from Techno Warriors are frequently shown in flashback, albeit in a different context to how they first appeared!), Lethal Combat opens with returning cops Darren Shahlavi and Lee Kwang-su. Neither Tamara Guo or Monsour Del Rosario (despite him being listed on both the HKMDB and IMDB sites!) return this time around, replaced by Yukari Oshima (naturally billed by her Filipino alias of Cynthia Luster, in what would be her final role until a one-off return in 2011’s Legendary Amazons) and Zoren Legaspi (a stalwart of 90’s Filipino action flicks like Shotgun Bajo).

After an opening warehouse shootout against some villainous computer game developers who are secretly smuggling uranium (why we never find out, and it’s never mentioned again), Shahlavi and Kwang-su are killed in a hail of bullets, with Legaspi turning up to already find them dead. Harrowing stuff, so naturally he attends a press conference to discuss their deaths in the next scene wearing a brightly coloured tie adorned with images of Marilyn Monroe. Legaspi’s girlfriend is a game developer working for Banana Computers (even though she’s clearly using a Mac), and as a homage to her boyfriends fallen comrades, she scans the images of Shahlavi and Kwang-su to turn them into ‘Digital Warriors’, who’ll be the main characters in her new game.

However it turns out game developing is a dangerous profession, as Bill Gates (I kid you not) from Mango Computers has called a secret meeting of Asia’s top game developers. He wants to make a game that’ll surpass Streetfighter which should contain “Asian characteristics” to appeal to China’s massive population, and he’s willing to pay big bucks for anyone who can help him succeed. Banana Computers look set to impress the most, however they have heavy competition from the devious Durian Computers, and there’s also internal strife with a rival developer (played by a Filipino actor who isn’t listed anywhere, possibly because he manages to being even more annoying than Niño Muhlach in Techno Warriors). When the rival developer seizes the chance to hijack the game, he inadvertently releases the games villain (you guessed it – the Black Ninja) into the real world, and soon Shahlavi and Kwang-su follow suit.

I confess I’m an unashamed fan of Philip Ko Fei, I mean one look at his filmography and you can see he’s a guy who’s done it all. From being the villain in countless 70’s kung-fu flicks whose presence immediately elevated any production he was in, to choreographing the ninja action in many of Godfrey Ho’s cut ‘n’ paste efforts in the 80’s, to directing a whole bunch of Philippines shot action cheapies in the 90’s. Unfortunately despite his time working with Godfrey Ho, it’s clear that Ko didn’t pick up too many tips on how to put together an effective cut ‘n’ paste job, as in Lethal Combat the leftover scenes from Techno Warriors rarely gel with the newly shot scenes of Yukari Oshima and Zoren Legaspi.

I get the distinct impression nobody really knew what they were doing during the production of Lethal Combat, with any attempt at plot cohesiveness left to the awful dub, and Oshima and Legaspi spending an inordinate amount of time looking listless while staring at a computer screen. There are a number of dialogue scenes which play out as one shot but have bizarre and awkwardly placed long pauses, almost as if another scene was supposed to be intercut before going back to them, but the editor just gave up and walked away. Other attempts at plot logic are simply abandoned all together, like when the characters do escape into the real world, but then in a latter scene Oshima and co. are still watching the action play out on the computer screen. Aren’t they supposed to be in the real world now? I have a feeling the expected audience for Lethal Combat likely wasn’t expected to be anyone beyond the crew’s family and friends.

Speaking of the awful dub, it at least comes with plenty of unintentional hilarity. These Filipino shot productions were notoriously low budget, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the dubbers were also purchased on the cheap, and they simply decided to see how much they could get away with. Most of the clangers are given to Ko Fei’s Black Ninja, who at least gets to show his face this time around (perhaps that’s why Lethal Combat exists?). During his fight with Shahlavi he quips “you have a cute butt, you should join our side!”, and after finally defeating him announces “How’d you like them apples? I suggest you surrender now and call me master!” Other times a character combines the Adidas and Nike slogans by proclaiming “Impossible is nothing, just do it!”, and we even get a villain named after the popular Filipino beer Red Horse.

If anything is a plus, Ko Fei does get a lot more to do on the action front this time around, with the presumably unused Techno Warriors finale pitting him against Shahlavi and Kwang-su here re-purposed into the plot, giving us the opportunity to witness that he still had the moves at almost 50. The most interesting addition to Lethal Combat is the inclusion of an uncredited Thorsten Nickel, the German martial artist most well known for being cast as the bad guy in the Jackie Chan starring Thunderbolt, in which he was given precisely zero fight scenes. Here at least we get to see that he can actually fight, although it’d be easier to theorise around why his talents weren’t utilised in Thunderbolt than it would be for me to try and explain what his role is.

The biggest issue in Lethal Combat though (and all of them are pretty big) is that it’s clear all of the best fight scenes were used in Techno Warriors. Here we’re left with the “wasn’t quite good enough” reel, which when you consider it’s from a movie which was already low budget, is never going to be good news. It’ll always be a pleasure to watch Shahlavi unleash his kicks, however there’s no real standout moments on display, and when you also lose the frantic pace that Techno Warriors came with, it’s not helped by the fact most of the surrounding scenes around the fights become increasingly dull as the plot progresses. Criminally Yukari Oshima is hardly used at all, and as the one person capable of elevating even the lowest budget production, to see her relegated largely to the side-lines perhaps makes it a small mercy that this would be the last movie she’d appear in during the 2000’s.

Ko Fei would go on to direct a further 18 movies between 2000 to 2003 until his retirement from behind the camera (he’d act intermittently in the succeeding years), so it’s not a surprise with such a quantity over quality approach that Lethal Combat ended up as an unwatchable mess. Perhaps the best way to approach a viewing is as a collection of deleted scenes, with fast forwardable filler inbetween.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3/10

Note: Since there’s almost no trace of Lethal Combat’s existence anywhere, here’s the full movie, but dubbed in Tamil. We apologize. 

The post Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2 | aka Digital Warriors (2000) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Final Run” Theatrical Poster

Director: Philip Ko Fei
Cast: Michael Miu, Cheung Kwok-Keung, Simon Yam, Phillip Ko Fei, Francis Ng, Daan Gwai-Chi, Yukari Oshima, Ridley Tsui, Dick Wei, Newton Lai, Ha Chi-Chun, Ricky Wong, Shum Wai, Mark Houghton, Suen Kwok-Ming
Running Time: 79 min.

By Paul Bramhall

When discussing kung fu cinema, chances are it’ll never take too long before the name Philip Ko Fei comes up. One of the greatest screen fighters of all time, his ‘shapes’ work in the likes of Master Killers, The Loot, and The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter contributes a large part as to why they’re considered genre classics, and when any of his fight scenes are viewed it’s easy to see how he was in a league of his own. As a director, Ko Fei was somewhat of a different story. Making his directorial debut in 1982 with the crime thriller Dirty Angel, Ko Fei spent the rest of the 80’s toiling away at IFD shooting additional footage to create cut ‘n’ paste atrocities with various Thai, Filipino, and Korean productions that Joseph Lai had bought the rights too. By the time the 90’s rolled around Ko Fei had broken away from IFD, and took to shooting a string of cheap and cheerful B-movie action flicks in the Philippines, many of which starred Yukari Oshima.

In the couple of years before putting his IFD era behind him and setting up shop in the Philippines though, Ko Fei spent most of 1989 and 1990 finding his feet as a director. Many will speculate (including me) that he never really found them even by his final production in the directors chair with 2004’s Majong King, but at least during this brief window we got a change of scenery from the increasingly familiar Philippines locales that dominated much of his 90’s output. In 1990 he hit Europe to make both Killer’s Romance (shot in the UK) and The Cyprus Tigers (shot in, yes, Cyprus), but before either of those, in 1989 he’d make his first full length feature since his directorial debut in the form of Final Run, which saw him shooting in Thailand.

Yet to gain the reputation of a director that shoots action cheapies, Final Run is arguably still a B-movie, but it’s a B-movie that comes with a killer cast of martial arts and local Hong Kong talent. The plot involves a pair of corrupt officials played by Michael Mui (Burning Ambition, The Fortune Code) and Ko Fei himself. They’re looking to make some extra money off smuggling drugs so they can emigrate before 1997, and just need a connection in the customs department to make sure they get the stashes through without any issues. Mui gets in touch with an old friend who’s now working in customs, played by Cheung Kwok-Keung (Cops and Robbers, Raging Fire), however he wants nothing to do with their scheme. Unfortunately for Kwok-Keung, Ko Fei has a psychotic streak, and orders his mother and sister to be murdered, which ultimately sees Kwok-Keung escape to Thailand to plot revenge.

While that’s the story in a nutshell, since Ko Fei has managed to enlist so much stellar screen fighting talent, the core plot constantly finds itself side-tracked by numerous subplots of varying quality, created to give the rest of the cast some worthy screen time. Leung Kar-Yan (Warriors Two, The Victim) plays an army general who Yukari Oshima (Iron Angels, Dreaming the Reality) reports to. He believes that Oshima’s brother, played by Dick Wei (Yes, Madam!, Heart of the Dragon), may have left the army to get involved in the drug trade under the guise of being a kickboxing coach. It’s not a spoiler to say that he’s not involved with drugs, and really did leave just because he wanted to be a kickboxing coach, which renders the whole subplot kind of pointless. He’s even given a bizarrely over dramatic introduction at the start where he’s filmed in close-up declaring that he’ll return, even though it’s the first scene we see him in.  

We get Simon Yam (Black Cat, Run and Kill) as a drug kingpin who’s protected by Mark Houghton (Killer Angels, The Outlaw Brothers) and Ridley Tsui (Tiger Cage III, Night Life Hero), and of course since it’s set in the golden triangle, we also need a rogue military unit who are controlling the supply of the drugs. Headed up by Lung Ming-Yan (A Better Tomorrow II, Bloody Brotherhood), under his command is Francis Ng (Big Bullet, The Mission) in an early role, and muscle in the form of Ha Chi-Chun (Eastern Condors, Thunder Run) and Dan Mintz (Fatal Termination, That’s Money). With such a formidable cast all crammed into what’s essentially a fairly simple revenge tale involving a trio of key players, it’s fair to say that narrative coherency and characterisation are not some of Final Run’s strong points.

However it’s also fair to say that most people who watch Final Run won’t be clocking in for either of those things, and I also fall into that category. Final Run is probably best described as an exercise in building up to a bunch of action sequences, the kind of which sees our various cast members go at each other with their fists and feet, run around with rocket launchers blowing stuff up, and take a number of wince worthy falls. In short, everything you want from a late 80’s Hong Kong action flick, and to his credit Ko Fei does end up convincingly bringing everyone together for a big all action blowout in the finale which doesn’t disappoint. In between the action, the tension during the dialogue sequences tends to rely on that distinctly 80’s HK trope of having a constant high-pitched synthesiser tone playing in the background, even when the scene doesn’t necessarily warrant it. It may be a cheap workaround, but it’s effective enough.

The action itself had a large amount of input, including from the rarely seen Ko Fei’s Stuntman Association (who’s only other credits are 1995’s Angel on Fire and 2003’s Soccer Clan), and an even rarer chance to see Yukari Oshima provide input on the action design. Principle fight choreography duties though go to Ridley Tsui, and there’s plenty of it to go around. The sheer amount of martial arts talent in Hong Kong during the 1980’s made it easy to take for granted, and in retrospect it can feel frustrating when a movie that contains a number of amazing screen fighters doesn’t take the opportunity to have them face off. Final Run thankfully doesn’t suffer from that issue, and there’s a number of exciting matchup’s throughout.

Highlights see Dick Wei squaring off against Mark Houghton, Yukari Oshima goes toe to toe with Ha Chi-Chun, Leung Kar Yan exchanges blows with Lung Ming-Yan, and Ridley Tsui battles it out with Ishida Kenichi (Killer’s Romance, Drugs Fighters). While none of the fight sequences can match the quality of the higher budgeted productions everyone involved has worked on, they’re still solid, with a focus on impact and falls giving them a welcome hard-hitting edge. Yukari Oshima in particular performs a stunt where she abseils down a building and appears to suffer a rope burn injury on her hands, as after performing it she spends the rest of her scenes with her hands covered in bandages. While it could well be an aesthetic decision for her character, considering its Hong Kong action cinema the prospect of it actually being a legitimate injury certainly isn’t one to rule out!

As close as we get to a main character, Ko Fei wisely has Cheung Kwok-Keung sit out the finale from a martial arts perspective, instead letting him loose to rampage through the enemy camp after Michael Mui and Ko Fei with a machine gun and rocket launcher. The pyrotechnics and bullet riddled mayhem compliment the fisticuffs well, coming together to deliver a worthy finale to Ko Fei’s fully fledged return to the director’s chair. 

While Ko Fei would never match Final Run in terms of both quality as a movie and the action contained within it, the fact that he was able to bring so much onscreen talent together helped to ensure 80’s Hong Kong action cinema went out with a bang. The likes of Yukari Oshima, Mark Houghton, Francis Ng, and Simon Yam would all go on to really establish themselves in the 90’s, and this would be the only time for many of the cast to share the screen together. This alone makes Final Run a worthy watch for fans of both Hong Kong cinema in general, and those who crave a dose of late 80’s HK style action, and let’s face it, you should fall into at least one of those categories!

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Final Run (1989) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Burning Ambition” Theatrical Poster

Director: Frankie Chan Fan Kei
Cast: Frankie Chan Fan Kei, Simon Yam, Yukari Oshima, O Chun Hung, Eddie Ko Hung, Michael Miu Kiu Wai, Seung Yee, Austin Wai Tin Chi, Lau Siu Ming, Kara Hui
Running Time: 104 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The final year of the 1980’s represented a peak when it came to the elements that had come to define Hong Kong action cinema during the latter half of the decade. Arguably kicked off by Jackie Chan’s Police Story in 1985, the high impact kickboxing style and brutal stunt work that made its action scenes so memorable soon became the go-to action aesthetic, and could be found in almost every corner of the genre. Determined to see out the 80’s with a bang, 1989 gave us triad potboilers like Bloody Brotherhood, Girls with Guns action with Devil Hunters, and even Phillip Ko Fei picked up his directorial game for Final Run. Featuring plentiful knocks and bumps, all of these productions looked to ensure that the stuntmen involved certainly earned their paycheque, and left a legacy of action that’s never been replicated before or since.

Another entry in the 1989 canon was Frankie Chan’s Burning Ambition. While Chan is most well known as being the composer for literally hundreds of Hong Kong movies dating back to the 70’s, he’s sat in the directors chair and appeared in front of camera in a respectable number of movies as well. For many fans of kung fu cinema it’s likely Chan will always be remembered as playing Yuen Biao’s nemesis in Sammo Hung’s seminal 1981 wing chun movie, The Prodigal Son. Despite only being his 2nd time onscreen after his acting debut the year prior in the comedy Read Lips, Chan’s performance in The Prodigal Son is one of the contributing factors why many fans consider it the greatest kung fu movie ever made. Not a bad achievement for a film composer!

A year after The Prodigal Son Chan also started directing, mainly sticking with romantic comedies, but in the latter half of the decade he also couldn’t avoid the action bug. After (somewhat unsuccessfully) attempting to combine romance and action in 1986’s Goodbye My Hero, by 1987 he fully embraced the action genre with The Good, The Bad & the Beauty. It was 1989’s Burning Ambition though that represents Chan’s most accomplished work of the decade, a dark and decidedly cynical triad flick that has no qualms about killing off characters left, right, and centre.

Like many Hong Kong movies of the era, the plot isn’t necessarily a strong point, with it initially looking like the tried and tested tale of the head of a family who passes away, and the power struggle that emerges between the 2 sons who both believe they should be the heir. Simon Yam (Tiger Cage, Killer’s Romance) plays the son who wants to make the family business go legit, while the power hungry Michael Mui (Men from the Gutter, Lucky Stars Go Places) has more nefarious plans. However the focus ends up being more on the family of the late father’s advisor, played by Ko Chun-Hsiung (Tragic Hero, The Dragon Family), who actually murdered the father to curry favour with Mui and assist him to take the top spot.

Legendary femme fatales Yukari Oshima (Iron Angels, Outlaw Brothers) and Kara Hui (My Young Auntie, The Inspector Wears Skirts) plays Chun-Hsiung’s daughters who are blind to their fathers villainous ways, and soon find themselves caught up in a vicious retaliation attempt. Out of the many stellar action sequences that populate 80’s HK action cinema, the frantic sequence that sees Oshima and Hui fending off literally dozens of attackers in the restaurant they’re ambushed in, before segueing into the basement carpark (that mainstay of so many Asian gangster movies, even today!), is right up there with the best of them. Breathlessly kinetic, full of hard hits, and the physical dexterity of Oshima and Hui front and centre, while their screen time is limited, the sequence alone is one that’s worth bringing up in any discussion around glorious HK action scenes.

With the ladies exiting stage right, Chun-Hsiung is left with no choice but to ask his exiled son to return from Holland to prevent an all-out war between the families. I don’t know what it is about 80’s HK cinema and it’s fascination with the Netherlands as being a place for triad activity, with Philip Ko Fei playing the titular A Man From Holland in the 1986 triad flick, and of course director Ronny Yu’s China White went one step further and was actually filmed in Amsterdam! As expected with most of Frankie Chan’s directorial efforts, he plays the son, essentially making himself the main character. Similar to Yukari Oshima and Kara Hui’s characters, Chan also doesn’t realise exactly how far Chun-Hsiung will go to achieve his Burning Ambition, and it’s the realisation of his fathers true character that becomes the plots driving force upon his arrival.

With Simon Yam and Michael Mui left to drift in and out of proceedings almost as if they’re barely considered important to the plot anymore, we’re left to spend time with Chan and his acquaintances who have joined him from the Netherlands. We’re introduced to them in a rather bizarre scene in which they arrive on a pier riding motorbikes, then proceed to rev the bikes so they go off the end and into the sea. When its asked why they did it, Chan replies that “They may hinder our affairs.” Ok then. The group notably features Robin Shou in an early role, who carries around a 3-section staff regardless of it being 1989, and an Amy Schumer lookalike who can bust out the moves. The rest of Burning Ambition becomes a relentlessly paced thriller that sees both families looking to retaliate against each other, and in the brief moments of quiet in-between Chan begins to learn the truth about why they’re really fighting.

Action choreography duties got to Fung Hak-On and Austin Wai. Hak-On had worked with Chan before as the choreographer on Read Lips, and their reunion here would mark the beginning of a partnership which would see Hak-On return as choreographer on Outlaw Brothers, Fun and Fury, A Warriors Tragedy, Oh! Yes Sir!!!, and The Legendary Amazons. Austin Wai was less prolific as a choreographer, being primarily known as a kung fu actor well regarded for his roles in classics like Five Superfighters and Magnificent Wonderman from Shaolin. He also plays one of Chan’s acquaintances, and most notably is the older brother of Kara Hui, with Burning Ambition being one of the few times the siblings would work together after the Shaw Brothers studio shut up shop.

The choreography throughout Burning Ambition is top shelf, with bodies thrown into all kind of immovable objects, windshields, and breakable furniture. One of the highlights sees a group of hired gweilo killers (apparently from New York) face off against Chan and his gang in an amusement park. The killers consist of 80’s gweilo mainstays like John Ladalski (City War, Death Cage) and Louis Roth (Undeclared War, Black Cat), and the sequence even throws in a fight in a water chute, which I’m sure is a first. The real reason for the setting though is that it provides a semi-legitimate excuse to have access to a bunch of traditional kung fu weapons, which allows for a fun face off between Frankie Chan and Jeff Falcon (Prince of the Sun, Six-String Samurai). Fans of The Prodigal Son will no doubt recognise Chan’s distinctive ‘shapes’ in the scene, and we even get the distinctive Wong Fei Hung theme thrown in.

While die-hard fans of kung fu cinema may be disappointed at the lack of a final fight, the final reel of Burning Ambition delivers a perfectly fitting end to proceedings which is just as intense as any of the earlier fight scenes. With Chan finally forced to accept the truth about the way his father goes about doing business, and the two brothers constantly at his heels to seek revenge, everything hurtles towards an inevitable ending that’s both satisfying and also ruthlessly downbeat. I wanted to close the review by saying Hong Kong doesn’t make them like this anymore, but of course the truth is it can’t. For a dose of hard hitting 80’s HK action backed up by an all over the place but ultimately enjoyable plot, Burning Ambition is one of the best.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Burning Ambition (1989) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Dreaming the Reality” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Tony Liu Chun-Ku
Producer: Chui Fat
Cast: Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sibelle Hu, Ben Lam Kwok Bun, Eddie Ko, Hsu Hsia, Lee Ho Kwan
Running Time: 102 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The years spanning 1991 – 1993 burned the brightest for the Girls with Guns genre, a 3-year period in which an almost countless number of butt kicking femme fatales graced the screen. Names like Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Khan, Sibelle Hu, and Michiko Nishiwaki became almost inseparable from the genre, one which could be argued wouldn’t exist without them. While the wave of hard hitting ladies had gained popularity with entries like Yes, Madam! and In the Line of Duty III from the previous decade, there was something in the air during the early 90’s that saw the genre explode.

One of the best things to come out of this era was the pairing of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. A Chinese ballerina and a Japanese action actress, the pair first appeared onscreen together as heroine and villain in the 1986 classic Iron Angels. The deadly duo would go on to co-star in a further 8 movies together, although interestingly their sophomore pairing wouldn’t come until a whole 5 years later, with all 8 of the subsequent features they’d appear in being made between 1991 – 1993. Their second time to grace the screen as a duo saw them on the same side, in the form of 1991’s Dreaming the Reality, helmed by director Tony Liu Chun-Ku.

One of the most consistent directors working in the genre, Chun-ku helmed everything from early classics such as Hell’s Windstaff and Tiger Over Wall, to zany 80’s Shaw Brothers efforts like the Bastard Swordsman flicks and Secret Service of the Imperial Court. By the time it was the 90’s, he’d become somewhat of a Girls with Guns aficionado, and sat in the director’s chair for half of the 8 Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima pairings from the period. In addition to Lee and Oshima, Dreaming the Reality also throws Sibelle Hu into the mix, an actress who came to embody the Girls with Guns genre, ever since she appeared as the commanding sergeant in 1988’s The Inspector Wears Skirts.

All three of the actresses, and director, would constantly be within each other’s orbits in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Both Sibelle Hu and Moon Lee starred in Chun-Ku’s Devil Hunters in 1989, in which Hu suffered serious burn injuries, when an explosion went off early before she could jump out of a window. In Dreaming the Reality you can see the scars she suffered on her hand, a reminder of just how dangerous stuntwork can be. The trio of ladies also featured in Chen-Ku’s The Big Deal and Angel Terminators 2.

Dreaming the Reality plays out as two separate storylines for almost half the runtime, each of which has a tone that varies wildly from the other, somewhat to the detriment of the production. The main storyline concerns Lee and Oshima as a pair of orphans, who have been raised as assassins by Eddie Ko, along with another orphan played by Anthony Cho. When a cop who’s been using Ko’s services reveals that his dealings have been exposed, and an Interpol agent is enroute to Hong Kong with a floppy disk containing all their transactions, Ko sends Lee and Oshima to intercept the disk and kill the agent, who’s transferring in Thailand.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, Hu plays a beer guzzling cigarette smoking bar owner (who naturally happens to be an ex-cop). Kind of a female prototype for Chow Yun Fat’s Tequila character in Hard Boiled if you will, which would come a year later. Hu has a brother played by Ben Lam, a talented martial artist who never quite hit it big the way he should of, who wants to be a Thai boxer. When Lam’s ambitions lead him to fall under the management of a Triad, played by Hsu Hsia (director of the likes of Kid from Kwangtung and Crystal Hunt), his change of heart to no longer fight doesn’t go down too well, and the usual chaos ensues.

For those familiar with the genre, it should come as no surprise that proceedings relocate to Thailand. Despite its popularity, the Girls with Guns flicks that populated the early 90’s landscape all came with cheap and cheerful budgets, and Thailand became a popular location that allowed the crew to get more bang for their buck, usually in a literal sense. Unfortunately the Thai setting also tended to result in one of two scenarios used to pad out the time – either extended travelogue sequences, or overly long Muay Thai matches.

Admittedly, the Lee/Oshima vehicle Kickboxers Tears also falls into the latter category, despite not having a Thai setting, however in Dreaming the Reality it’s particularly prevalent. Lam’s main match goes on for a whopping 4 rounds, which is about 2 too many. In many ways Thai kickboxing matches were to HK cinema in the early 90’s, what MMA is to modern day action flicks. Yes when it’s the real deal they’re pretty exciting to see, but as choreographed bouts, regardless of how authentic the techniques may be, they don’t lend themselves well to screen fighting, and are usually pretty dull to watch.

Thankfully the main plot of Lee and Oshima as the pair of assassins compensates for the slightly grating pairing of Sibelle Hu and Ben Lam as the quarrelling siblings. The movie kicks off with the characters still as children, learning to shoot despite their young age. Hilariously, the child version of Cho’s character then turns up and shoots the girls rabbit, which sends it flying into the air like a spring-loaded rocket bunny. It’s refreshing to see the deadly duo in such atypical roles, and there’s something undeniably cool about their Mark Gor inspired wardrobe and slow motion strutting, as they riddle their surroundings (and targets) with bullets. Naturally, a series of brief but hard hitting scuffles are scattered through the runtime, including a botched restaurant hit that has Lee and Oshima showing off their physical prowess, and a training sequence in which they face off against each other.

There’s an interesting subtext going on in the relationship between the pair, with Lee cast as the distinctly feminine, more sensitive femme fatale, and Oshima as the shorthaired straight talking tomboy. It’s never directly stated they’re in a relationship (it’s an early 90’s Girls with Guns flick after all, not The Handmaiden), however they sleep in the same bed, and when Lee states she wants to leave the world of bloodshed behind later on, Oshima’s reaction is one of a scorned lover. The influence of Dreaming the Reality’s blurred relationship dynamics can be seen in similar movies, such as Ching Siu-Tung’s Naked Weapon, however unlike Siu-Tung’s 2002 feature, don’t expect any shower scenes here.

It’s during the attempt to intercept the agent with the floppy disk in Bangkok that Dreaming the Reality picks up its pace. It’s a suitably cool scene, that features such brutality as Lee shooting off the arm of the agent who the briefcase is handcuffed too (and subsequently has Oshima running around with said briefcase, complete with the dangling limb). It’s during the escape on motorbikes that Lee is knocked down, and finds herself washed up on a riverbank with memory loss. She stumbles across Hu and Lam, mercifully bringing the plot threads together at just short of an hour, and they take her in as a worker at the bar Hu runs. Despite Lee suffering from dream sequences that see her on the run from the Thai police (hence the movie’s title), she still finds herself falling for Lam’s aspiring boxer.

As is par for the course for these movies, her memory does eventually come back, just in time for everything to go to hell. Action choreographers Lung Sang and Fan Chin-Hung, who also worked together on the likes of Fire Phoenix and Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead, construct a fitting finale for the genre, providing plenty of Girls with Guns. Lee and Eddie Ko get a satisfyingly impact heavy throwdown against each other, that eventually spills over into an area filled with explosive trip wires, adding a significant sense of tension to their exchange. Despite the strength of the action though, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that the extended sequences with Hu and Lam’s bickering siblings, knock Dreaming the Reality down a few notches from its full potential. Proof that a dream cast doesn’t necessarily mean a dream movie, for those that have already exhausted the best that the Girls with Guns genre has to offer, Dreaming the Reality is definitely worth a look.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Dreaming the Reality (1991) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Fung Hak On
Cast: Mark Cheng Ho Nam, Yukari Oshima, Alex Man Chi Leung, Dick Wei, Ken Lo, Wong Yu, Leung Kar Yan, Tai Bo, Anthony Carpio, Chan Daat Gong, Benny Lai Keung Kuen, Chow Kong, Chu Tau, Mark King, Foo Wang Tat
Running Time: 91 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues, besides having a title that resembles a Bob Dylan song gone wrong, rarely seems to get mentioned when fans discuss early 90’s Hong Kong action cinema, yet at the same time also manages to be a title that everyone has heard of. In many ways it could well be down to the fact that it’s a difficult production to categorize. The few reviews that are floating around on the net reference it as a ‘Girls with Guns’ flick, seemingly based on nothing more than it featuring Yukari Oshima and it being from 1991, however once watched it becomes apparent it has little in common with said genre. A better description would be to call it a Triad thriller, which just so happens to have some stellar martial arts talent in front of the camera, who duly oblige in showing that talent off at various points throughout the runtime.

The man in the director’s chair is the late great Fung Hak-On, recognizable from several kung fu classics, most notably as the villain from Sammo Hung’s Warriors Two. Hak-On may have been more well known for his roles in many of the most popular kung fu movies of the golden era, however The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues was actually the fourth (and last) time for him to direct a movie, so he was certainly no stranger to being behind the camera.

Proceedings open with an introduction to a pair of fish farmers, played by Mark Cheng and Benny Lai. Cheng was marketed as the next big leading man by Cinema City throughout the mid-80’s, but for some reason he never really clicked with audiences, and by the early 90’s was mostly starring in lower budgeted productions such as this one. His presence in The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues could also be explained by the fact he married Yukari Oshima shortly before it started filming, so the pair came as a package deal (they’d also appear together in Win Them All, Kickboxer’s Tears, and Hard to Kill). Lai on the other hand is best known as the mute adversary that Jackie Chan faces off against in the finale of Police Story 2. He spent part of his career as a member of Chan’s Stuntman Group, and has a filmography that mostly consists of parts as a thug or gang member, so this production was a rare opportunity for him to play a significant role.

A chance encounter with some gangsters results in them crossing paths with a Triad leader, played by Alex Man, who takes them under his wing and puts them to work in one of his hostess bars. Man has plenty of issues of his own though. His Triad leader is an honourable and old-school guy, who’ll do anything to keep the peace (it’s quite possible Gareth Evans had his performance in mind for Tio Pakusadewo’s role in The Raid 2), however when his Japanese counterpart dies, the latter’s aggressively ambitious son wants to buy out the business from under him. The son is played by super kicker Ken Lo, perhaps most famous for being Jackie Chan’s bodyguard from 1980 – 2010 (not to mention their legendary fight to close out Drunken Master II), who’s ably assisted by his head henchman, played by the director himself, Fung Hak-On, who also takes on action choreography duties.

For those reading that want to check out The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues as Yukari Oshima fans, you’re probably concerned that she hasn’t even been mentioned yet. Actually, Oshima does have a large part, which as the title suggests is that of Man’s daughter. However she doesn’t appear until just over 20 minutes in (she’s been in Japan studying karate), and to see her in action you’ll have to wait until the 50 minute mark. However this isn’t detrimental to the movie at all, and her character fits in perfectly with the events that are taking place. As the daughter of a Triad leader, her role as a young and playful martial arts fanatic is very different from the no-nonsense characters she often embodies, but when she finds out that Lo is trying to undermine her father, she also knows how to get down to business.

Indeed rather than really having a main character so to speak, The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues comes across very much like an ensemble piece. All of the main players get plenty of screen time for us to get to know their characters, as does Dick Wei, who plays the long serving enforcer to Man’s Triad leader. Much like Benny Lai, Wei also spent much of his career in one dimensional villain roles, and was happy for his feet to do the talking for him, which always did so very efficiently. However his role here is one that has a welcome depth to it, and without going into spoiler territory, it’s his decision that ultimately sends the Triads and Yakuza on the path to an inevitable confrontation. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but considering the role gave him a rare chance to show off some acting chops, it’s especially ironic that his character gets a line where he asks, “I act well don’t I?”

When it comes to the business of Triad and Yakuza rivalries, the plot certainly doesn’t shy away from getting nasty. In one particular scene, Lo attempts to lure the Madame’s away from Man’s hostess bar to work in his instead, with the promise of a higher wage. However when one of them insists on being loyal to Man, Lo pays a young teenager who wants to be a gangster to throw a cup of acid in her face. Scenes like this ensure that the story is taken seriously, and it never digresses into comedy or other such hijinks, that HK cinema of the era is frequently guilty of doing.

The action itself is one of those rare occasions in which it serves to further the story, rather than just being stand-alone set pieces. Cheng had the moves when it came to screen fighting, even though his career ultimately didn’t follow a path where he’d get to use them that much, but here he gets ample opportunity to break them out. The choreography is a unique mix of the hard hitting kickboxing style, which would become synonymous with 80’s – early 90’s modern day HK action flicks, blended with some occasional old-school flourishes, such as a shape thrown here and there. A highlight sees Oshima taking on both Ken Lo, Fung Hak-On, and a group of their lackeys single handedly in a gym, which incorporates plenty of prop usage reminiscent of Jackie Chan.

Eventually proceedings build to a satisfying finale that sees most of the last 15 minutes being taken up with action. There’s some satisfying vehicle work on display, of which there are a couple of impact shots that’ll make you question how the stuntman on the receiving end of them survived. Events culminate with Dick Wei having to face off against two opponents, and a closing bout that sees Cheng and Oshima teaming up to take on Lo and Hak-On respectively. It’s a great fight, even if it’s a tier below the best work of all involved, however considering the context it takes place in and the budget that was being worked with, it undeniably delivers. Throw in plenty of smashed glass tables and collateral damage, with a suitably gruesome finishing move, and for fans of both old school and new wave action, The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues arguably exceeds the sum of its parts.

All things considered, Hak-On’s last movie in the directors chair captures a moment in Hong Kong cinema that we’ll likely never get back. Sure, movies can still be made about Triads and Yakuza facing off against each other, but had the movie been made today, it would likely be at least 10 minutes longer, as we’d no doubt have to watch the police arrive on scene and arrest the surviving members. Because China needs to remind us that crime doesn’t pay. As it is, The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues doesn’t have a single police character in it, everyone is either a Triad or a Yakuza, and what goes down takes place between them and no one else. While it’s not perfect, Hak-On has directed a coherent and engaging tale of gang rivalries, which doesn’t feel the need to pad its runtime with such distractions as comedy and romance, and that’s to be applauded. The fact that we get a healthy dose of HK style action on top, is merely the icing on the cake.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues, The (1991) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Outlaw Brothers” American DVD Cover

Director: Frankie Chan Fan Kei
Cast: Frankie Chan, Yukari Oshima, Max Mok Siu Chung, Michael Miu, Sharon Kwok, Sheila Chan Suk Lan, Michiko Nishiwaki, Jeff Falcon, Mark Houghton, Jonathan Isgar
Running Time: 97 min.

By HKFanatic

“Outlaw Brothers” belongs to that most cherished of genres: the late 80’s/early 90’s Hong Kong martial arts movie. Released in 1990, this film directed by, and starring, frequent Jackie Chan collaborator Frankie Chan ticks all the requisite boxes: fierce hand-to-hand combat, reckless stunts, and a breakneck pace. As a result, the film has built up a following over the years and is frequently mentioned in the same breath as movies like “Righting Wrongs.” Believe it or not, “Outlaw Brothers” has been available on DVD in the UK as a Hong Kong Legends title since late 2005. Only now has Dragon Dynasty brought the film over to North American shores. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes, mostly.

“Outlaw Brothers” is a film that celebrates the vacuous, surface-obsessed quality of the Eighties. Frankie Chan and Mak Mok play two close friends who make a living by stealing high-end sports cars. They savor the taste of ‘the good life’ that their ill-gotten gains provide them with: driving Porsches, wearing designer clothes, making it with hostess girls. In other words, they’re worlds away from our usual morally upright martial arts heroes. At first glance, most of “Outlaw Brothers” resembles a random episode of Miami Vice. The soundtrack certainly fits – it’s all keyboard pads and popping bass guitar, almost like b-sides from the Tom Tom Club.

Compounding the superficial nature of the movie, the script indulges in the same political incorrectness you’ll find in many Hong Kong movies of this era. There’s a tasteless joke about AIDs within the first twenty minutes and the ending features the questionable use of live chickens for a stunt. The female characters don’t have it much better. They’re frequently treated as a punchline – or a punching bag. The only co-star who comes out unscathed is Yukari Oshima, a talented actress and martial artist who made a name for herself via the ‘girls with guns’ genre. You may recall her from films such as “Millionaire’s Express” and “Iron Angels,” and she gets to show off her fighting skills during some of “Outlaw Brothers'” best setpieces.

Behind the camera, Frankie Chan has a clear eye for action. All of the fight scenes are staged so that the audience can follow every move and appreciate the performers’ obvious athletic skill. An early clash in a parking garage is one of the highlights of the entire movie. Frankie Chan may look a bit wiry and older than his years, but he can clearly hold his own in a fight. On the run in the parking deck, he manages to fend off nearly a dozen attackers with a mere broom. The editing during the climax of the movie is a bit too fast paced for my taste – cutting back and forth between Frankie and Yakuri’s individual bouts with a frequency that makes it difficult to fully appreciate either fight – but that’s the only real flaw in Chan’s action direction.

While I’d hesitate to label “Outlaw Brothers” an outright classic of its genre like movies such as “Righting Wrongs” and “She Shoots Straight,” it’s still more great Hong Kong-style action for those who miss the genre’s heyday. Most of the script is fluff, moving the plot along with broad comedy and misguided romance, but when the fists start flying it’s easy to forgive Frankie Chan for any missteps. Fung Hark-On served as fight choreographer on the film; while Jackie Chan visited the set to add flavour to the Yukari Oshima fight with Jeff Falcon. One of the best fights in the movie might just be the scene where a bunch of security guards form a ‘human centipede’ while hanging on to the bumper of a speeding car. Such reckless endangerment is par for the course for ‘Outlaw Brothers.’ Hong Kong action buffs wouldn’t have it any other way.

HKFanatic’s Rating: 7/10

The post Outlaw Brothers (1990) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Legendary Amazons” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Frankie Chan
Cast: Cheng Pei Pei, Cecilia Cheung, Liu Xiaoqing, Yu Na, Richie Ren, Yukari Oshima, Kathy Chow, Ge Chun Yuan, Chang Chen, Chen Zihan, Jin Qiao Qiao, David Lam, Liu Dong, Katy Wang Ti, Wang Lee Hom, Wu Ma, Simon Yam
Running Time: 109 min.

By HKFanatic

Love is a battlefield. Or at least that turns out to be the case in “Legendary Amazons,” a 2011 Chinese historical picture about the female members of the Yang Family. When their husbands are lost to war, these widows of great soldiers are forced to take up arms against the foreign army invading their country. If the story sounds familiar, it’s because the same historical event inspired the 1972 Shaw Brothers movie “The 14 Amazons.”

Promoted as a comeback vehicle for actress Cecilia Cheung, this modern version of the tale generated some pre-release hype due to Cheung’s tabloid woes and Jackie Chan handling producer duties. Once “Legendary Amazons” was actually released to the public, it received an absolute drubbing from critics and audiences alike. The box office results were dismal with a paltry US$ 42,000 in Hong Kong. Maybe I just have sympathy for the dark horse but I honestly didn’t think the movie was that bad.

The fact that this same story was previously interpreted by the Shaw Brothers is a crucial fact – as “Legendary Amazons” very much feels in the SB tradition. It’s a hell of a lot sloppier in its filmmaking and nowhere near as well-choreographed as a vintage Shaw Brothers movie, but the blend of intense melodrama and wire-assisted battles feels familiar.

After sitting through so many dry, overly serious Chinese historical pictures like “White Vengeance” and “A Battle of Wits,” it’s almost refreshing to see something as unabashedly goofy and brightly colored as “Legendary Amazons.” There’s a memorable scene where our female heroines cross a giant chasm by ordering their fellow soldiers to make a human bridge. Another character wields weapons that look like two giant baby rattlers – but, boy, do they pack a punch. This kind of plucky ‘historical accuracy be damned,’ comic book-like spirit is present throughout the entire picture.

It feels like the filmmakers’ key concern with “Legendary Amazons” was keeping the audience entertained. There is rarely a moment of downtime as the screenplay moves from battle sequence to battle sequence. Naturally, the actors are a bit left in the dust by all of the spectacle. Richie Ren looks out of place here with his period wig, while there are so many other female warriors in the story that Cecilia Cheung barely registers. If this film was truly engineered to be her big comeback vehicle, director Frankie Chan should have taken better care to spotlight his actress.

This movie has been lambasted by nearly every critical outlet for its silly costumes, weak performances, poor special effects, and cartoony action. For what it’s worth, I still say “Legendary Amazons” is enjoyable if viewed as a modern B-movie attempting to recreate that old-school Shaw Brothers feel. But it’s highly likely that only the most forgiving fans of Asian cinema will be entertained by Frankie Chan’s earnest but flawed production.

HKFanatic’s Rating: 6/10

The post Legendary Amazons (2011) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Project S” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Stanley Tong
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Yu Rong Guang, Emil Chau, Fan Siu Wong, Dick Wei, Athena Chu, Bill Tung Biu, Bowie Lam, Alain Guernier, Ailen Sit Chun Wai, Chan Man Ching, Joe Cheung, Mars, Yukari Oshima, Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang
Running Time: 98 min.

By Numskull

It seems that “they”… whoever they are… really don’t want us North American types to see this movie. The DVD and VCD from Hong Kong are both inexplicably devoid of English subtitles, and the Dimension release is… well, it’s a Dimension release. Dub only, false title, stuff missing, you know the routine. It also has a quote on the package from some peabrained critic calling Michelle Yeoh “the female Jackie Chan.” Good God, how demeaning. That just leaves the Region 2/PAL DVD from the Hong Kong Classics label, which is complete with good English subtitles but will set you back a pretty penny. Is it worth it? I think not. After all, Stanley Tong directed it.

Despite what the Dimension dickheads would like you to think, this is not a true sequel to Police Story 3 (“Supercop”). It takes place in the same universe, and Michelle Yeoh once again plays mainland Chinese cop Yang Chien Hua (NOT “Jessica Yang”), and Uncle Bill is here, and Jackie Chan makes a cameo appearance as Chia Chu in a scene that barely has anything to do with the story where he has a fake pair of laughing tits, and Eric Tsang is in that scene too, and there’s a girl named May who is not the same May (Maggie Cheung) from the Police Story movies, and…what was I talking about? Oh yeah…this isn’t a “true” sequel. Whatever that means.

Yang Chien Hua’s boyfriend (doesn’t really seem like the type to have one, does she?) is played by Yu Rong Guang, not Michael Wong as the UK DVD package states. He relocates to Hong Kong to make his fortune doing all sorts of illegal shit, and she gets teamed up with two marginally competent cops named Lung and Ming (Fan Siu Wong and Emil Chow, respectively) to stop him…only she doesn’t know it’s him at first. The eye-rolling melodrama can be seen miles away.

There’s one bad guy who goes by the name of Mr. Explosive. His specialty is…damn, what was it? Narcotics? Firearms? Forged documents? Pirate versions of Street Fighter video games where Chun Li fights naked? No, wait a minute…wait…oh yeah, right, it was explosives. What I want to know is, how does one conduct day-to-day business with a name like Mr. Explosive? And, for that matter, what about pleasure? I can see it now. He’s sitting in a nightclub, and some scantily clad woman takes the stool (I mean the thing you sit on, not fecal matter) next to his, and he says: “Hey there, gorgeous. My name’s Mr. Explosive. What’s yours?” Would she think he was joking? Would she think he was on drugs? Would she immediately make her excuses and remove herself from the premises? Would she assume that his moniker was an indication of his sexual prowess and that, should she decide to play “hide the salami” with him, she would end up with a fist-sized hole in her back due to some ungodly degree of ejaculatory pressure the likes of which has never been seen before? This is the kind of thing you’ll think about during the film’s boring parts, and, sorry to say, there are quite a few of them.

One of the film’s saving graces, however, is that Lung and Ming aren’t complete boobs, as one might expect. When they are first paired up with Hua, an unwritten formula pops into your mind, indicating that she’s going to have to bail these two f*ckwits out of trouble time and again, but…while she’s clearly more seasoned than they are…they actually manage to do something right once in a while. The film’s other saving grace is the ending, which teaches us (“us” meaning those who aren’t smart enough to figure it out for themselves) that love is a crock, so don’t even bother.

Action scenes are few in number and somewhat lacking in intensity. The best ones are the hostage rescue scenario at the very beginning, which constantly gets interrupted for film credits on an otherwise blank screen (bra-fucking-vo), and Michelle’s fight with a white guy who looks to be about a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her. Apart from that, it’s mostly Police Story 3-style shooting and stunts, which is not to say it’ll put you to sleep, but c’mon, Michelle’s real talents lie in KICKING ass, not blowing it away.

I recommend Project S to anyone looking for an action movie that fails to leave any lasting impression on the viewer, with the possible exception of Michelle Yeoh performing the splits while wearing a knee-length skirt. It doesn’t suck, but it’s not great either.

Numskull’s Rating: 5/10

By James H.

“Supercop 2″ is not so much a sequel, but a spin-off. It stars Michelle Yeoh of Police Story III: Supercop” fame. Supposedly, she plays the same character as in “Police Story III”, but I’m not too sure of that. Her character doesn’t seem to exhibit the same characteristics as in “Police Story III”. Anyway, the plot of “Supercop 2” concerns Inspector Jessica Yang (Yeoh) travelling to Hong Kong to aid a pair of rather inept police officers crack a case. To make things worse, Jessica’s boyfriend, David, is somehow involved as well.

Stanley Tong’s direction shines in this film. It has some very nice action set pieces, and some decent fights. These are definitely the highlights of the film. There is a very nice car chase, and the flooding of the tunnel was pretty damn cool too.

The film is marred mainly from the acting and the lack of characterization. Yeoh’s screen time is cut short because she has to share the screen with the two aforementioned inept cops. Also, the writers could have developed the relationship between Jessica and David more and the issues that followed.

Basically a good movie. Could have been better, could have been worse. It ends up as being a standard action flick. Oh yeah, lest we forget Jackie Chan’s cameo. It has no relation to the story at all, and looks like a scene cut from one of the “Police Story” movies. However, it is worth it to see Jackie in drag.

James H’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post Project S | aka Supercop 2 (1993) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

"Interpol Connection" Theatrical Poster

AKA: Hard To Kill
Director: Philip Ko
Writer: Cindy Chow
Producer: Philip Ko
Cast: Robin Shou, Yukari Oshima (aka Cynthia Luster), King Kong, Simon Kim, Philip Ko, Iwanabeo Leung, Romulo Grabiel, Jose Babida, Jess Babida, Simon Yam
Running Time: 87 min.

By Numskull

Co Chi Pang (Robin Shou) is a Hong Kong narcotics officer assigned to bring an international heroin dealer named Lo Tak to justice. He is assisted by a bumbling Filipino policeman and a fierce Japanese agent. Yay. Despite the poster featuring Simon Yam’s face, his role is only a short cameo. As a special added bonus, here is a RECIPE FOR A BORING ACTION MOVIE…

Ingredients:

– 1 hero (generic)
– 1 sidekick (buffoonish)
– 100 lbs. (approx.) eye candy
– bad guys (assorted)
– 2 dead cop partners
– 1 fake human hand
– 1 brassiere (black)
– 1 drug kingpin
– 1 trite plot device
– 1 big villain house w/Christmas tree
– 90 mins. (approx.) incompetent English dubbing
– 1/2 doz. (approx.) unfunny “jokes” (ex.: “She’s got hard tits! Jesus!”)
– 1 coconut
– 1 doz. (approx.) mistimed sound effects

Directions:

1. Generate 350 degrees homoerotic heat by showing sweaty Robin Shou pumping iron during credit sequence.

2. Credit Yukari Oshima as “Cynthia Luster” for no apparent reason. Introduce bad guys with appropriate music and sunglasses to inform audience that they are evil.

3. Set action in exotic location (ex. Manila) to create illusion that movie is somehow special.

4. Arrange meeting of hero and buffoonish sidekick; the latter should be modeled after Joe Pesci’s character from the Lethal Weapon movies and believe Lincoln is still U.S. president.

5. Have buffoonish sidekick guess what Lincoln’s “specialty” (medicine, computers, etc.) is at regular intervals throughout film (about three at first, then another every 15 minutes or so).

6. Kill hero’s partner in flashback (ex. fall from great height), then buffoonish sidekick’s partner in present (ex. shootout).

7. Let simmer until all momentum is gone; pass time with interrogation scene (ex. hero bends back little finger of fake human hand; audience must be able to tell hand is fake with minimum effort) and lifeless comic relief (ex. buffoonish sidekick wets self; buffoonish sidekick uses brassiere as shoulder holster; assassin poses as nurse with half-coconut shells for breasts; etc.).

8. Introduce trite plot device (ex. key) for everything else to revolve around for remainder of film.

9. Have villains choke hero with wire, thus incapacitating his powers of speech, while demanding that he verbally disclose location of trite plot device.

Introduce eye candy too late for viewers to give a damn. Stage short, unremarkable fight scene.

10. Coast effortlessly for 15-20 minutes or until bored shitless. Stage climactic battle at big villain house.

11. Have hero finally kill drug kingpin for both revenge and duty purposes.

12. Conclude with more lifeless comic relief.

13. Garnish with advertisements for other action movies with laughable “badass” voice placed before feature presentation.

14. Serve.

15. Dodge when guests throw at you.

16. Place in waste receptacle.

17. Watch good action movie instead.

Numskull’s Rating: 3/10

The post Hard To Kill | aka Interpol Connection (1992) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Millionaire’s Express” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Sammo Hung
Cast: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Olivia Cheng, Eric Tsang, Lam Ching-Ying, Kenny Bee (Chung Chun-To), Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Yukari Oshima, Wu Ma, Rosamund Kwan, Dick Wei, Richard Ng, Wang Lung-Wei, Yasuaki Kurata (Shoji Kurata), Emily Chu, Yuen Wah, Hwang Jang-Lee, Bolo Yeung
Running Time: 98 min.

By JJ Hatfield

“Millionaire Express” is a film that combines martial arts, comedy and westerns. There are quite possibly more martial arts/actors gathered together in this film than I have seen anywhere else! Under the direction of Sammo Hung and including just about every recognizable popular star,comic,martial artist of the day and too many cameos to count. Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-Ying, Rosamund Kwan, Usauki Kurata, Dick Wei, Yukari Oshima, Yuen Wah, Richard Norton, Cynthia Rothrock, Phillip Ko, even Hsiao Ho is in this movie! (Look for the Fire Fighter/Sheriff Deputy).

Fong-Tin Ching (Sammo Hung) left his small town years ago promising his mother he would return when he had become wealthy. His plans went awry and he became a thief and con artist. By the time he returns home his mother has died and he is a wanted criminal. He packs up everything including his girlfriend’s brothels prostitutes and head for his small town to buy up and revitalize the place. One of the numerous sub plots involves a bank robbery. The robbers have set a fire as a distraction leading Tsao Cheuk Kin (Yuen Biao) away from his law enforcement duties, as he is also Fire Chief and a reluctant mayor. This leads to a fantastic stunt where Biao cartwheels off a two story building which is on fire!

Fong devises a plan to force people riding on the elegant “Millionaire Express” train to stop in his town and spend money boosting the economy. Tsao can’t let Fong stop the train and that leads to one of the best on screen fights between the two men! Fong is also being pursued by a bounty hunter that looks like he stepped out of a Sergio Leone film. When a mercenary army arrives everyone is going to have to cooperate if they want to stay alive.

This movie makes for good entertainment only because of the fights. There are problems with pacing and a far too long rambling “lecture” from Fong about how the prostitutes were not bad and kept the wives husbands from leaving them to look for something different. Some of the comedy is of the slapstick variety but the finale fight scene is excellent and involves nearly all the characters!

Aside from the fights/stunts/action this movie is not at all what you would expect of Sammo at this stage of his game. The plot, such as it is wanders all over the planet…where is this exactly? Or even roughly. The clothes, hair, characters (such as Wong Fei – hung being a young boy) there is no continuity. Some people dress like gangsters. The mercenary army looks like escapees from a reenactment of the American Civil War. A lot of the props seemed to be from the 1930‘s but others made it appear to be much earlier or considerably further along in the century. I wanted to give this movie a higher rating but the slow development of the thread of a plot does not warrant it. However it is an entertaining movie even with all the continuity problems and is more than worthy of a couple of viewings.

JJ Hatfield’s Rating: 7/10

By Reefer

Art can make you think about things in different ways. Art can challenge you. Art can open your eyes to the things around you. Art can be beautiful, analytical, sad, difficult, and boring.Who needs art?! Judging from Shanghai Express, director Sammo Hung surely doesn’t.

Shanghai Express seems to be Sammo Hung’s excuse to invite every major star in HK cinema to his own personal kegger party. Trust me, this is the most fun you can have watching a kung fu movie. This film is filled to the brim with sight gags, slapstick, eye-popping stunts, and fast-paced kung fu from many of the best in the business.

The plot is not important, but it has something to do with Sammo returning to his home town with plans to repair its dwindling economy by blowing up some train tracks, forcing its rich passengers to get out and spend some money.

Did I mention that the very under-rated Yuen Biao also stars? He just performs one of the most amazing stunts I have ever seen here. Yuen does a backflip off from the top of a three-story burning building!!!! Full screen. Lands on his feet. Then runs over to some firemen and delivers a line of dialogue. All in one shot!!!! I watched this on DVD three or four times. Looking for wires or anything that could explain how in the world it was done. I still don’t know. If any of you do know, please email me. He does kinda sink into the ground a little so maybe a landing mat was involved.

Well, like I said, Shanghai Express is not artful cinema. What is my proof? Well,The Godfather never featured Al Pacino rolling half-naked down a snowy hill eventually turning into a huge snow boulder. Plus, Casablanca did not show Humphrey Bogart busting into his hometown with a truckload of whores accompanying him. Furthermore, Citizen Cane didn’t have a sequence where Orson Welles kicks Cynthia Rothrock’s ass after she questions the size of his manhood (though that would have been cool).

Shanghai Express is nothing but a good time.

Reefer’s Rating: 8/10

By Numskull

This movie is fun. Lots and lots of fun. More fun than a barrel of monkeys on behavior-modifying drugs. So fun, in fact, that I’m taking time out from my action-packed life of battling supervillains and torrid encounters with European secret agent babes just to tell you how fun it is.

But first, I have to tell you about Earthquake Boy.

I don’t know his real name. I don’t care about his real name. He lives in the condo next door and was dubbed Earthquake Boy by none other than myself because of his presumable lifelong habit of STOMPING up and down the stairs as if he weighs 800 pounds. I’ve seen the wastrel in person, and there’s no way in hell he weighs more than 190. But, for some reason which even Sir Isaac Newton himself would be hard pressed to explain, when this motherfucker climbs the stairs, window panes vibrate, candles get snuffed out, and rocking chairs suddenly take on a life of their own.

Anyway, when I first saw Millionaires’ Express, I was sitting in the living room with my friend Jeremy. We put the tape in.

It starts with a portrayal of Sammo Hung as a man who is not above the looting of corpses. When he is captured by a federal marshall-type guy (James Tien, I think), there is a scene where the two of them go tumbling down a snow-covered mountain, accumulating snow as they roll. Before long, the two of them are enveloped in a bad, and I mean REALLY BAD, SFX/animated snowball.

Here’s where Earthquake Boy comes into play. As the two guys are rolling down the mountain, Earthquake Boy descends the stairs. From the TV came half-assed avalanche sound effects; through the wall came the clompings and stompings of EB’s abnormally dense feet. As the giant snowball comes to a halt and falls apart with a crumbling sound, EB reaches the bottom of the stairs and celebrates his triumph by indulging in the luxury of hopping down from the next-to-last step, resulting in an extra loud THUMP.

See where I’m going with this?

Jeremy, with a facial exression suggestive of a broomstick up the ass, turns and looks at the wall.

“What in the name of the man who stole my x-ray vision was that?” says he.

“That was Earthquake Boy, the kid who lives next door,” says I.

“Sounds like he should be demolishing Tokyo,” he replies.

“He only does that while there’s no one here,” I retort.

We return our attention to the movie as Earthquake Boy gets in his dad’s car, SLAMS the door shut, and screeches off to God-knows-where.

And so the story unfolds. Yuen Biao, the fire chief of this little backwater Chinese village, does a flip off a the roof of a two-storey building and then just walks down the road like nothing happened. Wow. Sammo Hung brings back a carload of half-bit whores, all of whom are inexplicably clean, although Sammo himself and the car and totally caked with mud and traildust. Yuen, who has taken over as the village’s chief of security, tells Sammo, a wanted criminal, that he is not welcome. You can see the fight scene brewing already.

Fast forward to said fight scene. Earthquake Boy’s timing is remarkable. Just as Sammo and Yuen start to go at it, he returns, slams the car door shut, slams the condo door open (I didn’t think that was possible but he managed), and then STOMPS up the stairs again.

It was almost frightening. Kick connects, STOMP! Sammo hits the ground, STOMP! Puch connects, STOMP! guy crashes through a wooden bench, STOMP! ,The fight scene was spiffy, but it was hard to keep our attention focussed on it with Earthquake Boy presumably A) spying on us through some hitherto unseen peephole near the staircase or B) being guided by some supernatural force, possibly the ghost of somebody Jeremy or I once pissed off, hell-bent on diverting our attention from where it should have been.

“That guy should have an elevator installed next door or something,” says Jeremy.

“Then, with our luck, the bastard power would go out and he’d have to use the stairs anyway, ” I shoot him down.

As can be assumed by even the most mentally deficient of halfwits, Earthquake Boy doesn’t stop with the stairs. He slams doors shut. He slams windows shut. He slams drawers shut. He slams the toilet seat down. He sings in the shower. He must die.

Anyway, you can imagine how the rest of the movie went. As the story of Sammo Hung trying to get a train full of millionaires to spend money in this little one-mule (they couldn’t afford a horse) town unfolded, almost every punch or kick or smash wass accompanied or accentuated by a slam or a stomp or an off-key chorus from Earthquake Boy.

Fortunately for me, I was already accustomed to EB’s repulsive presence. Jeremy, however, was unable to draw as much enjoyment from the movie as he should have. He now owes Earthquake Boy a debt of blood, and best of all, I have a ringside seat.

Anyway, the little sub-plots in this movie are what really make it worth watching. Richard Ng cheating on his obnoxious cow of a wife was my personal favorite. The “secret agent” scene in the motel room is priceless. At least better than that ninja burglar shit from My Lucky Stars. Whenever I see Sammo, I can’t help but think of that scene and wonder why in the name of hell-bent fuck he thought it was funny. But anyway, don’t let that bother you. There’s also a pair of old martial arts masters whose kids don’t get along, a trio of samurai carrying a treasure map, a huge gang of bandits who can’t decide if they’d rather rob everyone or fuck Cynthia Rothrock, and the village’s former police chief trying to loot the townspeople (note to Sammo: magnets REPEL each other).

Anyone who sits through the first 75 minutes and bitches about the lack of action, remember this: the longer you suffer, the sweeter your reward. The movie concludes with a massive brawl, involving almost every character, in which half the town gets demolished.

See? Fun.

But not as fun as torturing Earthquake Boy to death. I, of all people, should know.

Needless to say, there will be no further expolits of Earthquake Boy in future reviews.

Numskull’s Rating: 8/10

The post Millionaire’s Express | aka Shanghai Express (1986) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Nam Nai Choi
Cast: Fan Siu Wong, Fan Mei Sheng, William Ho Ka Kui, Yukari Oshima, Tetsuro Tamba, Gloria Yip Wan Yi, Philip Kwok, Lam Suet, Frankie Chin Chi Leung
Running Time: 88 min.

By Numskull

As cult favorite Hong Kong films go, this one is pretty good… that is to say, it wasn’t as disappointing as Ronny Yu’s overblown “The Bride With White Hair”, Sammo Hung’s plodding “The Dead and the Deadly”, or Wong Jing’s abominable “Naked Killer”. I have not read the manga upon which The Story of Ricky is based, so I can’t comment on its faithfulness to the source material, but the film itself is a mildly amusing gorefest which, unfortunately, takes itself too seriously. There’s a mixture of martial arts and splatter, but not enough of the first to satisfy fans of the genre, and not enough of the second to REALLY gross out anyone who has watched Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” as often as I have. I’m not saying that the constant blood-gushing, eye-gouging, intestine-spilling, limb-severing, head-exploding carnage isn’t well done, but gore in and of itself does not a good movie make.

Ricky is a guy whose girlfriend is dead because of some heroin dealers, so he found the head honcho and punched a big hole in his head. This landed him in jail, where corporate corruption and over-the-top sadism have nullified any sense of law and order. Ricky fights back against the bullies, and a bunch of no-name inmates who can’t act worth shit make him their hero.

Normally, one doesn’t expect breakthrough performances from extras with one line apiece, but these guys take the bad acting cake and the Michael Wong-shaped candle on top of it. Every time they’re gathered together to look at something, they all wave their hands around like they’re trying to get peoples’ attention, point to whatever they’re looking at, and shoo mosquitoes away all at the same time. Point, murmur, wave, turn head, point, wave, repeat. It’s like they’re all saying: “Look. Right there. You see that? Look. Look where I’m pointing to. No, over there. Right in front of you. There. Look at that. Right there. Right where I’m pointing. Look at it. Look. Right there. You look, I’ll point. See it? Right there. Right there in front of you. I’m pointing at it right now. Right now. It’s there in front of you. Right there. Look at it. Look. Right there.” If you think I’m exaggerating, just watch the damn movie and keep your eyes on the prisoners. You’ll laugh your ass off at how much they just stand there and point and wave their hands around. Who hired these idiots? Of course, this is probably more the director’s fault, but what the hell, it’s easier to make fun of the ones you can actually see.

Anyway, things get worse when the prison warden returns from a vacation in Hawaii with his fat spoiled jackass of a son in tow, and Ricky finds himself fighting harder than ever before for his life, his freedom, and his hand-waving admirers. This brings me to the other thing about this movie that annoyed the living hell out of me. There are plenty of sadistic motherfuckers in this movie, and you can’t wait to watch Ricky butcher them one by one, but this kid is the worst of all. He wears only the dorkiest clothes, constantly stuffs his face with food, prances around like a faggot, and claps his hands and squeals with glee when people get maimed or tortured by Daddy or one of Daddy’s henchmen. Probably what Harvey Weinstein was like as a kid. From the moment he first appears, you fantasize about Ricky tearing his head off and then shoving it up his ass, or something equally crowd-pleasing. Oh, how sweet it will be to watch him die slowly and painfully at Ricky’s hands, you think. And guess what? IT. DOESN’T. HAPPEN. Every other bad guy dies some horrible death or other, BUT THIS FAT FUCK SURVIVES THE MOVIE!!! GRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Aside from THAT little turd, there’s only one other character that I would refer to as “notable”: the androgynous Huang Chan, played by Yukari Oshima, a woman, with a man’s haircut and a man’s voice (though not a very…uh, manly one). SHE is the only character who really gets to show HIS (?) fighting talents; Ricky’s fight scenes, such as they are, mostly consist of him shoving his fists through peoples’ bodies and stuff like that. This is a real letdown because Shaw Brothers/Venoms veteran Philip Kwok (aka Kuo Chui) handled the choreography; his talents were put to much better use in the sensational Brotherhood of the Wolf.

The outrageous violence is good for a few laughs, but it’s hard to take a lot of this shit seriously, and that seems to be pretty much what the film expects you to do. I mean, you can’t have a guy bursting out of his clothing like one of those space aliens in “Bad Taste” and not have people laugh. This isn’t something I would recommend to the casual viewer, but I’m sure you could come up with a good drinking game for it; chug a beer each time you see an empty eye socket, every time Ricky recovers from some horrible injury in a few seconds, and so on.

Numskull’s Rating: 6/10

By Joseph Kuby

Grievous Gore Galore!

Rikki O is somewhat of a misconstrued film.

People who dismiss this film as taking itself too seriously, are, themselves, taking the film too seriously. Considering the subject matter and the origin, you have to contemplate whether and why they expected to see a serious art house movie. It may not be a comedy but it shouldn’t be misunderstood as a failed attempt at creating pathos.

I’ll admit that the acting done by the extras leaves a lot to be desired and the script does leave a lot of lapses as far as overall logic is concerned (even for a comic book) but considering the outlandish origin of the material, of course the acting will come off as hokum and ‘B grade’ – something which this film is not. B grade is something like the live adaptation of Fist of the North Star.

The main players perform their roles with as much gusto as their script allows them to. The art design, computer effects and prosthetics are all of a high caliber so it’s a technically polished A movie with B material.

The quality of the script is no lesser than your average action film, it’s just that this film stands out because of its explicit and outlandish content. This is exploitation cinema with no pretensions.

One thing people tend to not comprehend is the reason why Ricky only fights at the last minute (or uses half of his strength) when he’s undergoing extreme duress.

It’s because he feels guilt about his girlfriend’s death at the hands of gangsters so he’s allowing himself to be punished (something which has been misinterpreted as masochism – I don’t think Ricky is that psychologically traumatized). It may come off as a somewhat demented kind of sentiment but its touching in a deranged sort of way.

Besides does anything really think a superhuman martial artist would unintentionally succumb to the ‘strength’ of an overweight warden with a hook for a hand?

Ricky is torn in a bleakly honorable dilemma. He’d rather die a quick death so he can be with his girlfriend but he knows he must live to defend his fellow man. It’s a struggle between the ego and the conscience in a way which manifests itself in glorious displays of gruesome shlock.

In a alternative way, the film is essentially an anti-suicide message. His girlfriend commits suicide so Ricky feels that the only way he can meet her is through self mutilation. However, a subconscious form of divine intervention forbids him to self harm as he’s destined to go on to much grander things before he can be reunited with the love of his life. I suppose the ideal ending for Ricky would be if he committed suicide a few seconds before he dies of old age or something.

Another ill-perceived flaw was that Ricky was laughing at the warden unintentionally due to the fact that it was played by his father Fan Mei Sheng (the long haired chubby villain who can be seen in Jackie’s Young Master and Project A 2). Within the context of the story, couldn’t he have been laughing at the old man’s attempts at intimidation?! (especially considering Ricky’s overall strength).

Maybe if the film was directed by Wong Jing (a huge fan of Japanese comics and cartoons), we’d get a better film with tighter direction and a sharp-as-shark sense of humor so that the audience would be in on the know that it’s not trying too hard to take itself too seriously. Then again, comedy is best played straight because if a tongue-in-cheek performance reveals the tongue then it destroys the intent of what it is that it’s meant to be depicting. I guess that analogy is almost like the scene where Yukari Oshima puts razorblades in Louis’ mouth and constantly slaps him (with the razorblades dangerously close to bursting through his outer cheeks).

Rikki is the Hong Kong cinematic brother of Peter Jackson’s Braindead (a.k.a Dead Alive).

But then again even that film isn’t said to be the most repugnant film of all time – stacking it up against competitors with the likes of Maniac (1980), Nightmare (1981), Scanners (1981), Day of the Dead (1985), Darkness (1993) and Premutos: The Fallen Angel (1997).

Heck, I’m not even counting one of those horrid Guinea Pig movies which Charlie Sheen accidentally hold possession of (even if they were said to be fantastically fabricated).

In regards to the fight action, the affairs of pugilistic endeavor were administrated by Philip Kwok. Beyond his Venoms catalogue, he was one of the fight choreographers for Chinese Ghost Story and Tiger Cage 2. He shot fight scenes in Police Story 3 that were so phenomenal that Stanley Tong didn’t want to lose in front of his idol Jackie. To Kwok’s dismay, his scenes were abandoned (hopefully left in cold storage than disposed of).

Phil’s design of the fights are simple like the comic with not much in the way of intricacy. I don’t mind since ornate details aren’t exactly essential for HK fights. The way the camera is placed to convey the action is what truly defines HK style action. The speed of the camera setting very much constituted the energy. Case in point, the work of Corey Yuen and Ching Siu Tung. A more direct example is the fight between Jackie and Biao in Winners and Sinners. It’s not elaborate but it’s quick and performed with a slickness that stops the choreography from looking clumsy or ineffective.

Basically, go in this film with low expectations other than seeing some of the most goriest violence displayed on camera that will alienate you more than watching John Carpenter’s The Thing (it’s that stomach-churning and heart-wrenching) and you’ll be fine.

Joseph Kuby’s Rating: 7/10

By Bentley Siu-Lung

I can not explain this completely !@#$ed-up movie! I just can’t! But, I’ll give it a shot. It is the year 2001 (and it ain’t no damn space odyssey!) and prisons have become major franchises. Ricky-O, a young martial artist, is sent to prison after killing the man responsible for his girlfriend’s death. The prison’s bullies see Ricky as just another guy until they saw what he could do… as he bashed his fists right into two of the prison’s main bullies tearing one’s stomach open and completely crushing through the other’s torso!!! This movie has everything: from decapitations to crushed heads to intestine strangling to eye popping to exploding bodies to skinning people alive to… DAMN! I could just keep going!!! But you HAVE to see this movie! This introduced category III to martial arts by bloodying the hell out of it!!! GET THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!

Bentley Siu-Lung’s Rating: For those who can take it: 10/10; Weak stomached HK fans: 3/10 (Not for easy vomiters!!!!!)

The post Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky | aka Ricky Oh (1991) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Beauty Investigator” US DVD Cover

Director: Lee Tso Nam
Producer: Cheung Bo-Wing
Cast: Moon Lee Choi-Fung, Yukari Oshima (Oshima Yukari), Gam Chi-Gei, Chui Jing-Yat, Sophia M Crawford, Melvin Wong Gam-San, Billy Ching Sau-Yat, Peter Yang Kwan, Billy Chow Bei-Lei, Shum Wai, Chung Faat, Tai Bo, Jackson Ng, Ng Ming-Choi, Dang Taai-Woh, Kei Ho-Chiu
Running Time: 90 min.

By Brmanuk

Two bickering partners are ordered to go undercover at a hostess club in order to capture a ‘sexual maniac’ who is murdering women. Whilst scouting out the club they learn that a triad gang is planning a war with a rival Japanese gang over arms trading. In an attempt to impress their superior, the cops decide to take on both cases whilst avoiding a mysterious female Japanese assassin who is working for the Triad gang.

Despite being a fairly average girls and guns actioner, I rather enjoyed Beauty Investigator. The scenes in which the two undercover girls try to avoid the advances of perverted old men are amusing and light-hearted, although the comedy is a bit forced at times. As always Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima are fantastic and deliver some great action scenes including an excellent car chase. Towards the end of the film there is a shocking and completely pointless twist that would have spoiled the film had it not been for the satisfying warehouse finale in which the girls blast and kick their way through hordes of bad guys.

Beauty Investigator doesn’t break any new ground and is as clichéd as they come, but that’s what I enjoyed about it; I knew exactly what to expect and the film delivered. And isn’t that what you want from genre cinema? Although the Universe VCD is rated Cat III, for better or worse the infamous Sophia Crawford shower scene was edited out.

Brmanuk’s Rating: 6/10

The post Beauty Investigator (1993) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.