Killer Angels
Director: Tony Lou
Year: 1989
Rating: 7.5
Dubbed - there is
a version on YouTube that isn't bad and includes Moon's song, which is missing
in other dubbed versions. It looks to have been stitched in and is in Chinese.
I like films that waste
no time in getting to the action. That is why we are here. The film starts
off with various killings by a professional hitman played by Gordon Liu in
sunglasses and leather. By the time the opening credits even begin some six
people are DOA . Three on a staircase, one in a bathroom and two in a parking
garage. Gordon is a very busy man but it is a good payday. Then during the
credits another five or six are killed. I lost count. A gang member who has
turned witness (called Jackie Chan in the dubbed version) is kidnapped by
the gang and the Blue Angels - two women - Moon Lee and Kingdom Yuen (an
odd choice for an action character – she usually does comedy but acquits
herself ok) have to get him back. At least they didn't call them the Pink
Angels. Like magic they locate Jackie at a warehouse because that is
where the bad guys always hang out. And you know what that means. Moon
has done some of her best work in warehouses. She should get a Union Card.
Maximum bloodshed with another ten or so dead. Then they have to keep the
witness (Lau Siu-kwan) under wraps. Not so easy when a third Blue Angel shows
up and has a history with him. A bad one.
At the same time, the
Blue Angels suspect a nightclub owner of being the big boss and so Moon Lee
goes undercover as a singer after doing a cute dance in the audition (the
dubbed songs are atrocious). The professional hitman works for the boss (Leung
Kar-yan) and for some mysterious reason he has a picture of Moon in his wallet
when she was much younger. He displays protective feelings towards her, much
to the displeasure of the boss's psychotic daughter (Japanese actress Nadeki
Fukimi). Moon performs a song in the nightclub ala Sheila Easton with her
hair piled up high in a black leather outfit that shows that Moon actually
has some cleavage. This is one of my favorite Moon Lee scenes. She is beyond
adorable. The gang headed by Leung Kar-yan is into everything bad from drugs
to trafficking women but another group of triads headed by Shing Fu-on wants
a piece of that and kills a bunch of them in a drug transaction involving
Ng Man-tat.
Almost non-stop action
- some of it terrific and some pretty stupid but all of it is fun. Moon has
a one on one with Nadeki, Nadeki kills a bunch of Shing Fui-on's gang, Moon
has to fight herself out of a trap surrounded by a dozen men with machine
guns and then the finale of course. One Blue Angel tells the other two “They
are all inside. But there are a lot of them". Moon shrugs and pulls out three
machine guns from the trunk and they go to work. Moon scrapes with Mark Houghton
who came to buy girls and Leung Kar-yan. This was clearly not a high
budget film - but lots of energy is shown. The growing relationship between
Moon and Gordon is a strange one - he helps her out of a few jams even after
he knows she is a cop. She tries to get him to leave this life even after
knowing what a killer he is, "I live by the gun, I will die by the gun".
But I never did figure out why the killer has a picture of a young Moon Lee
– she sees it in the end but says nothing. A very solid Girls with
Guns film with a large body count and it is particularly fine if you are
a Moon Lee fan. And who isn't?
It is directed by Tony Lou Chun-ku who after directing some Shaw Brothers
films moved into the Girls with Guns genre with some good ones – this being
his first followed up by Devil Hunters, The Dragon Fighter, Dreaming the
Reality, Mission of Justice, The Big Deal, Angel Terminator II and let’s
not forget the classic Holy Virgin versus the Evil Dead.
