Madame City Hunter
Madame City Hunter has been released by Tai Seng
in a dubbed version under the title “Lady Hunter”. It is a fairly decent
little action/comedy with Cynthia Khan as the main focal point. Cynthia
has some able support though from Anthony Wong, Kara Hui Ying-Hung and
Sheila Chan.
It gets off to a quick start as the cops surround
a group of bad guys in a house. The cops can’t do much against the heavily
armed group until Cynthia shows up on the scene. The captain turns to Cynthia
and says “its up to you now”. Gee, thanks. No problem for Cynthia of course
as she jumps onto the roof, slides through a window and takes out all the
bad guys by herself. Just a typical work day for Cynthia.
Five minutes later (in film time), she is taking
on some other bad sorts and in the action kills one of the members of the
Five Fingers group. They came after her for revenge and are able to frame
her for a murder. Her superintendent (Tommy Wong) is worried about her
being killed and so hires a detective, Anthony Wong, to protect her. Wong
plays his role (with the name Charlie Chan) in total goofball style. This
was still fairly early in his career – though done in the same year as
Hard Boiled – and he had not quite acquired his reputation as one of HK’s
premier actors. He has some action scenes in the film – one a classic fight
against a transvestite in which he uses her brass falsies as nunchakas!
Wong’s assistant is the wacky Sheila Chan.
Another plot line has Cynthia’s father (Woo Fung)
engaged to the wondrous Kara. Cynthia is a bit concerned as she learns
that Kara’s last two husbands died mysteriously leaving her loads of money.
Is her father next up for the Black Widow? Kara has two good action scenes,
but she almost steals the film with a sexy and humorous outing. In one
sequence, she does a strip tease, washes a car and dresses as a maid. This
is Auntie? It’s hard to believe she has been doing films since the late
seventies.
This is not a bad outing – not a classic by any
means – but some good action (as one might expect by a film produced by
Yuen Wo-Ping) along with some light so-so comedy thrown in. At times it
gets a bit talkie, but a young Anthony Wong and a sexy Kara make it worth
a view.
