The Lady Constables
Director: Chang Hsin-yi
Year: 1978
Rating: 8.0
What a terrifically
fun film this is to watch with nearly wall to wall action from start to
finish. The fighting is inventive with a lot of interesting twists and a
fair amount of wires being used. I haven’t seen wires utilized nearly as
much in any other of the Angela Mao films that I have seen, but it is quite
fun to see her somersault over her enemies or jump up into a tree to escape
their blows. And as a bonus, not only do we get the wonderful presence of
Angela, but also another of the better known female film warriors of that
time, Judy Lee.
With slight echoes of the Good, the Bad
and the Ugly, the film begins with the four bosses robbing the five shining
pearls and killing the escorts. They then divide the booty and split off
in different directions. There soon appear on their trail three separate
individuals looking to track them down and capture them. Angela Mao is the
sheriff of the area in which the robbery took place. This is a different
side to Angela than I have seen before. She has a bit of a mean streak as
we first come across her torturing two suspects with a bamboo stake see-saw
contraption. As she says later in the film “I don’t really like killing.
I prefer torture”. Go Angela! Other than her usual assortment of deadly kicks
and punches, she also has these scarves that she shoots out from her sleeves
to entwine her victims.
The second person chasing after the bad
guys is Judy Lee – who had a relative killed in the attack – and is looking
for revenge. Her weapon of choice is a twirling baton type object and she
travels nowhere without a coffin at the ready for her enemies. Finally the
third hunter (Wang Kuan-hsiung) is the silent bodyguard of the Prince – who
owns the pearls. He never talks – though he points out that he can – he just
doesn’t like to. So he communicates by various scrolls and always seems to
have the proper one at hand to unfurl. His sword is also always nearby with
which he is quite deadly.
The three fight among themselves almost
as much as with their enemies – and form shifting alliances – but slowly
they track down the bosses and their gangs – one by one. Each little fight
has something fun about it and the film rarely lets up for more than a few
minutes. As usual with these films, one has to wade through dreadfully dubbed
dialogue. I lost count of the number of times in which Angela tells the
other two – “I’m capturing these guys, you two stay out of the way”. I only
wonder if it’s just as bad in Chinese. Judy Lee is very impressive in this
film with her wonderful twirling, killing baton. According to Deadly China
Dolls, she was a classmate of Angela at the opera school. She made over sixty
films and won the Golden Horse award in a film called The Escape. She retired
from films in the early 1980’s. Her Queen Bee is of course a classic.
I have never been able to find a decent
quality video of this. I hope there is one out there.
