Angel on Fire
Director: Phillip Ko-fei
Year: 1995
Rating: 6.0
(Dubbed) - Dreadful low
budget Filipino film that Cynthia Khan unfortunately involved herself in.
Incompetent & often incoherent from beginning to finish. Why would Tai
Seng even release something like this that could harm Cynthia's reputation.
Rating: 3.0
That was the review that I wrote some 20 years ago after
watching the Tai Seng video. I can’t exactly recall why I disliked it so
much – Tai Seng may have edited it badly, the dubbing may have really grated
on me or I was much more discerning then. But re-watching it now with subs
I can’t imagine how I could have disliked it so much. It has plenty of issues
no doubt but it also has a never-ending finale that begins around the 54
minute mark and goes almost to the end of the film 30 minutes later. It is
insane and bonkers and often gets totally lost in itself and loses us but
hell’s bell a 30 minute action finale. There is plenty of action before that
as well and has two of my favorite Fighting Femmes – Cynthia Khan and Sharon
Yeung Pan-pan. And let’s not forget the Black Leopard and Mark Houghton!
I am now a huge Black Leopard fan.
It begins on the Mainland in a nutty scene as well. A tall slim woman in
a long red coat watches the Shaolin monks in the courtyard of a temple go
through their martial arts exercises. She attempts to slip upstairs where
she pockets a small ancient amulet that acts basically as a MacGuffin through
the film. She is seen though by two monks who try and stop her but she brushes
them aside. And makes a run for it with forty monks behind her. She fights
off a few more (more practices boys) and jumps on a horse and rides it through
town with the monks still giving chase. She then shifts to a bicycle and
heads for the highway with the monks now on bicycles chasing her. Finally,
a helicopter shows up and she jumps aboard. I was half expecting monk helicopters
to show up as well. The actress is Melanie Marquez, a Filipina beauty contest
winner and model. She is very striking with her high forehead, piercing eyes
and Botox lips.
She tells her partner Phillip Ko that she was unable to steal the amulet
and the two of them first go to Hong Kong to report to the boss. Meanwhile
the Mainland sends a cop to work with a Hong Kong cop to bring it back. The
Mainland cop is Sharon Yeung and the Hong Kong cop is Cynthia. But Melanie
makes a run to Manila because her cohorts don’t believe that she didn’t get
it and Cynthia goes after her with Sharon coming over later. At the airport
Cynthia grabs a taxi with driver Ronnie Ricketts, who is a big martial arts
movie star in the Philippines. The taxi breaks down, she loses Melanie but
she gains a side kick – who literally has a hell of a side kick. There are
a bunch of small scale fights but the standout is when Ricketts has to take
on the Black Leopard in a match where they tie the two opponents to each
other. The Black Leopard is Winston Ellis and he is huge, muscular and black.
And scary as hell. It is a good fight that ends in a draw when the rope catches
on fire. Ellis has been in a few other Hong Kong films – Black Mask, Armour
of God II, Fun and Fury and First Option but he gets to shine here.
And then comes the finale. In an open field with a few abandoned buildings
and corn fields (guessing corn). Imagine taking fifty kids to something like
this and giving them paintball guns and saying go to it. The last one standing
wins a trip to Disney Land. It is crazy. Literally everyone in the film ends
up in this field. Both our girls and their companions. So do two large groups
of bad guys armed with machine guns, a security force, Melanie, Phillip,
a buyer for the amulet who has Mark Houghton as a bodyguard and of course
the Black Leopard. And they all try killing each other. After a short period
I had no idea whose side most of them were on but they were all trying to
kill Cynthia and Sharon. It goes on and on till pretty much everyone is dead
or wounded.
Fights between everyone at some point. Mark Houghton gets beaten up as usual.
The poor Gweilo. He is this huge blonde white guy that you can always spot
and he gets clocked in film after film (51 Hong Kong credits). Often by women
half his size. Kind of funny in that he has a wonderful back story of growing
up in England, falling in love with kung fu movies and moving to Hong Kong
to learn under none other than Lau Kar Leung. He now has his own martial
arts school specializing in Hung Gar. Then on top of this, Ronnie ends up
in a plane, knocks out the pilot and realizes it is flying and he has no
idea how to land. Another plane with one of the bosses comes along and tries
to blow it out of the air and instead blows up about 20 houses below. It
is insane, ridiculous, hard to follow but how can you not love it. It is
like your pet iguana got out and bit the neighbors you hate.
