A Girl Called Tigress
The more I see of Polly Shang Kwan the more I
like her. She has a certain cockiness to most of her characters that is
very appealing – and has the physical skills to back it up. Of course the
main problem in trying to track down her better films is the lack of information
and of course titles showing up under various names. So for the most
part when I go to one of those cheapy stores that sell the old kung-fu
films I base my choices on two criteria. Is she prominently displayed on
the cover and does the title hold some promise of action within. With a
title like A Girl Called Tigress I knew that I could not go too far wrong
– and I didn’t.
Though the fighting is not fancy – almost all
hand to hand combat with little use of weapons – it is very solid and there
is a lot of it. Polly wanders into a town looking for her twin sister who
had run off a few years previously. She sits down at an inn to munch on
a few hot buns and four bullies try to get tough with her. They end up
with the buns stuffed down their throat and themselves scattered about
the inn. They go off for more help and about ten fellows come back to attack
Polly. Pretty much the same result. So in the first ten minutes of the
film, Polly has already had two fights and knocked quite a few heads together.
It doesn’t slow down much from there.
It turns out her identical twin sister is married
to bad guy Yasuaki Kurata and he has no intention of letting the two sisters
get together. Polly is joined by a detective – Kam Kang – who is trying
to get proof on Kurata for some evil doings and the two of them have various
run ins with Kurata’s gang. Plenty of fighting to go around. The best being
the final one between Polly and Kurata that goes on for a good ten minutes.
The pacing of the film is excellent – the three
main characters are fleshed out – and wall to wall action – and Polly looked
terrific. I don’t ask for much more than that.
My rating for this film: 7.0
