A Queens Ransom
When I heard about this film, I couldn’t wait
to get a hold of it and when finally I tracked it down I was in a state
of excitement. Oh well, unfortunately the excitement was badly misplaced.
But think of the possibilities.
The plot revolves around a conspiracy to assassinate
Queen Elizabeth on a visit to HK in 1975. A group of professional killers
has been put together under the command of George Lazenby (Bond in On Her
Majesty’s). In the gang are also Jimmy Wang Yu and Bolo Yeung.
One of the bad guys spends some time with a bargirl
and in a drunken stupor hints at the assassination plot. She informs the
police and a race is on to stop the plot. The bar girl is the same actress
(Tanny) who is Cleopatra Jones’s sidekick in Casino of Gold. She did some
great fighting in that film. Not here.
And then finally in a subplot Angela Mao appears
as a Cambodian refugee. Dean Shek appears as her friend.
What more could you ask for! Well how about –
some good action! Hard to imagine that with these actors they could put
together such listless and poorly choreographed fight scenes.
There is hardly any action until the fifty-minute
mark when things pick up a bit. Angela is terribly underutilized, as is
everyone else I guess. And then the ending is just . . . so bad.
