Women on the Run
For those who enjoy that genre of film that could
be titled “Men are Scum” should take pleasure in this one as there isn’t
a man worth a plugged nickel in sight. On the other hand fans of trash
cinema will find many delights within as well – I know I did. Seeing this
1993 minor exploitation classic twelve years later was a needed reminder
of how much fun Hong Kong film was when it was out of control and feared
nothing. This was the film industry that churned out these kinds of sleazy
gems without batting an eye, but they either have forgotten the art of
trash or are afraid to put their foot in it. The last good one that comes
to mind was “Naked Poison” from 2000. Where has all the good exploitation
gone? This one is a nice trip down memory lane in which the filmmakers
happily give us all the tasty ingredients one could ever want with kung
fu nude fighting, drug addiction, police brutality, a man getting his penis
shot off, a gang rape and some pretty solid action.
As a director, Corey Yuen is associated with a
few classic female bonding action films like Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia
Rothrock in “Yes Madam”, Joyce Godenzi and Carina Lau in “She Shoots Straight”
and Hsu Chi, Karen Mok and Vicky Zhao in “So Close”, but this one came
as a surprise with its unsavory aspects and crotch shots. Maybe he just
needed to get it out of his system. Like these other films just mentioned
it too takes as its premise two women who have to bond together to survive
and to kick some male ass – they are just a bit hornier than his usual
characters. If Yuen had put Michelle and Cynthia on scaffolding in order
to shot from below them, my guess is he would have needed reconstructive
surgery, but the two actresses on display here have no issue with it apparently
because they do it on two different occasions!
Siu Yin (Tamara Guo) grows up in rural China dreaming
of being the next Bruce Lee or Jet Li and when she wins a martial arts
contest she thinks that it's only a matter of getting to Hong Kong to make
her dreams come true. Instead, her boyfriend takes her to the big city
of Guangdong and turns her into a moneymaking machine on her back and gives
her a heroin habit to keep her in line. She puts up with this for a while
until one customer urinates into her championship cup and she bounds out
of bed in the nude and gives him a walloping roundhouse kick that sends
him crashing through the door. Her boyfriend being the consummate businessman
that he is isn’t pleased. Soon though she spots him wooing another girl
and drives his head through a nail. He is still not pleased and very dead.
She escapes to Hong Kong, but it isn’t show business waiting for her but
more customers lined up down the hall. When her little den of sin is raided
by the cops she gets away by climbing up scaffolding and just waits there
for them to go away, but instead they send a female cop, Ah Hung (Farini
Cheung Yui-ling in her debut film while part of the musical group Ascension)
to bring her down. The two get into a fracas – the camera leering upwards
like high school peeping tom – before they both fall to earth – unhurt
of course.
The two are brought together again when Ah Hung’s
cop boyfriend David persuades her to go undercover in China to track down
the drug dealer King Kong (Korean kicker supreme Kim Wong-jin) and to take
Siu Yin with her. The real deal though is that the boyfriend is corrupt
and in cahoots with King Kong and they are just setting the two women up
to take the fall if need be. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise after
seeing David suck on her knee like a ripe peach – you just can’t trust
knee suckers. The pair makes their way into China and knock around a bunch
of guys in a well-choreographed scene by Yuen Tak. In particular, Tamara
looks extremely able in her martial arts moves and this makes her willingness
to disrobe all the more peculiar. They hook up with King Kong but things
start going askew when they are met at the Hong Kong airport by rival cop
Corey Yuen and somehow they manage to board a plane to Canada – airport
security not being what it is now back in 1993. In Canada the girls run
into more problems – they get arrested for drug smuggling, beaten by the
cops, almost killed by a band of assassins and then gang raped by no doubt
hockey fans – all in one day. Welcome to Canada. They find there way somehow
back to Hong Kong – resourceful as they are – with only one thing on their
minds – to even the score.
The acting here isn’t very good, there are some
absurd plot holes that are just papered over and the film has a dirty old
man sensibility to it that can be a bit cringe worthy at times, but this
is just good old fashioned trashy fun in a way that seems to be a thing
of the past. By the way, I can only find credits for Tamara for two other
films – a low-budget Filipino production called “Techno Warriors” (1997)
and “Ghost Promise” (2000) – and would be curious as to what else she has
been up to if anyone knows.
My rating for this film: 6.5