Operation Pink Squad II
In this 1989 film, many of the same actors return
from the first Operation Pink Squad – though whether they are playing exactly
the same characters doesn’t seem perfectly clear to my failing memory –
but certainly similar ones. Jeff Lau is again at the reins as director
and brings his scattershot comedic approach to bear on this film with excellent
results. While the first one was a combination of comedy, girls with guns
and drama – here he throws out any attempts at drama but adds horror to
the mix. It makes for 90-minutes of rarely slow down wacky fun like the
way they used to do it back in the 80’s. With no big stars in the cast,
Lau makes this into a fast moving ensemble piece that gives everyone plenty
of screen time and lots of out of breath moments.
This time out the female cops – Sandra Ng, Ann
Bridgewater, Suki Kwan and Cheung Man (who was not in the first one) are
assigned by Woo Fung to go undercover as club hostesses and get the goods
on a counterfeiting operation and Shing Fui-on. This string of the story
soon takes a backseat to a few other plotlines that emerge. Billy Lau has
just been married to Sandra and gets it into his head that she and Woo
Fung are having an affair and follows her on her assignment and in that
Billy Lau madcap manner (actually Lau annoys the hell out of me!) gets
into a number of messes.
At the same time the fun really begins back at
the apartment house where the four women are pretending to live. Unknown
to them everyone else has moved out because of a horde of ghosts that have
decided to set up shop there. Hopefully most of you check the basement
when moving into a new place to make sure that it doesn’t have a door to
Hell down there as this one does - but the girls neglect to. The landlady
(Helen Law Lan) has hired a Buddhist priest (Yuen Cheung-yan) to clean
the place up and seal up that darn portal to Hell. Yuen captures most of
the ghosts and stuffs them into these nifty little bags – but unnoticed
by him, one particularly unruly (and occasionally playful) female ghost
escapes to create havoc for our characters.
Much of the first half of the film is a set up
for the second half when it turns into a screwball and nearly non-stop
series of escapades of the four women, Billy Lau and Woo Fung all running
through various hallways and rooms to escape the ghost. Make that two ghosts
– sort of – at one point her head is hacked off and now a flying head and
a headless body are chasing after them. Soon Shing shows up – humps the
ghost in the elevator – and ends up with the head in his bag of money.
Yuen is not far behind him as he realized that one ghost was missing –
but this time it turns out to be a much more difficult task to catch this
ghost – as well as many others who have smelled the scent of blood and
are descending on the building – though a more pathetic group of ghosts
with bad wigs you are not likely to come across!
Unlike most ghosts in films these days, this female
ghost (anyone know who the actress is?) is not particularly powerful –
your basic door can keep her out and a poke in the eyes will stop her for
a moment – and she isn’t all that mean and quite enjoys having her toes
sucked! Still after her head is separated from her body she does become
fairly irritable and wants to open up that Hell door and let her friends
out.
It’s all nonsensical and lots of silly fun with
one of those great “B” casts that HK films used to revel in. It is terrific
seeing four of my favorite females all together – Suki in one of her very
earliest roles is quite adorable, this is also an early role for a very
fresh faced Cheung Man who plays the bubblehead in the group and both Sandra
and Ann are fine. The only thing that disappointed was that Ann had no
good one on one fights as she did in the first one and in some of her other
films. But this is more comedy and the supernatural than girls with guns
and thankfully with its low budget look it keeps the special effects to
a minimal but enjoyably tacky level.
As a note, the DVD from Winson is called Thunder
Cops though the opening title is clearly Operation Pink Squad II. It’s
a bit confusing though because there is a Thunder Cops II with many of
the same actors (though clearly playing different characters) and directed
by Jeff Lau – but as far as I know there is no Thunder Cop I - so
perhaps this film was released under both titles back in the 80’s? The
DVD is also full screen, which is a shame as there are a few scenes in
which the cropped picture hurts the visual effect and the transfer is o.k.
but far from good.
My rating for this film: 7.5