Lunatic Frog Women

 
 
Director: Lee Tso-nam
Year: 1982
Rating: 5.5
Aka - Lady Pirhana
Aka - Virgin Commandos

Considering that the director of this film is Lee Tso-nam, it is relatively conventional. He directed the wonderful but kookie Taiwanese fantasy films Kung Fu Wonderchild and Magic Warriors but also some solid action films such as Life of Ninja, Beauty Investigator and The Magic Amethyst. So you hardly know what to expect especially with the various titles that this has. It has the smell of a Filipino girls exploitation film all over it but is Taiwanese. The version I saw is dubbed and the stars are such big names as Patty Tie, Caphy Lee, Diana Dee and directed by T. Somchai! What the hell - considering that there are actually two well-known Chinese stars in the film. The world of pirating films, dubbing and making up names. Still the quality of the video was watchable and I have wanted to see this for a while. For one reason which I will get to.



The first ten minutes is rip roaring fun and the final fifteen minutes as well - in between is a lot of down time. Rip roaring and violent. Women are being held in a prison camp on an island off of Vietnam who are Chinese Vietnamese dissidents. They break out and six are recaptured in a graphic scene of dismembered heads and legs. These six are told by the head of the prison that they will be executed that night . . . unless they escape with him. Why? No idea? So in another big action scene they kill about a zillion guards - one of the women is a sharpshooter, another a circus knife thrower - and get to the beach with all the women in the camp not killed where one of them has their father waiting with a boat. He tells them about a container of diamonds that had been in the American Embassy in Saigon but is now hidden on a boat in Vietnam. And then he conveniently dies.



Off they go headed for Hong Kong but the boat sinks and they swim towards a small island where they are met by Chinese Vietnamese guerillas. The girls look up and meet the steely eyes of Golden Swallow. I mean Lady Piranha. I mean Cheng Pei-pei. What the hell is Cheng Pei-pei doing on the beach and doing in this movie. She had retired from the film business eight years earlier after Whiplash to get married, have children and live in America. And she came out of retirement for this film? Who was her agent? The two films that she made after this were quite respectable - King Hu's All The King's Men and Sammo Hung's Painted Faces. But somehow she got talked into this. She gives it a smidgeon of dignity. The other actress in this that some may know is the mighty female kicker Ha Kwong-Li of Shaolin Invincible Sticks and the Invincible Kung Fu Legs. The rest are fairly unknown Taiwanese actresses as far as I know.



Any way they tell Lady Piranha - Piranha for short - that the container actually has American secrets on how to make atomic bombs and that they could not let it fall into the Communist hands. Ok - though China  conducted their first atomic test in 1964. So she puts them through a grueling training period which includes scuba diving - thus the Lunatic Frog Woman - a totally great title. And off they go to valor or death in a hell of a shoot-up against the Vietnamese. Not as much fun as the first ten minutes would lead you to hope for and then sluggish as hell  while on the island training, falling in love, partying and so on - but it at least ends on a good note.