Top Fighter II - Deadly Fighting Dolls

 
Year: 1996
140 minutes
Documentary
Rating: 7.5

When I was first getting into Hong Kong films there were two genres that particularly sucked me in. Heroic Bloodshed primarily meaning Chow Yun-fat and then the Girls with Guns that over time expanded to broader female action films. Female action figures in Hong Kong films can be traced back to the 1930's in Wuxia/fantasy films, but they were much less violent and the action choreography very basic. For the most part female actresses had traditional female roles. But in the 1960's this began to change quickly.
The film that really began this trend was King Hu's Come Drink with Me (1965) starring former dancer Cheng Pei-pei as a fierce warrior who slices and dices with the best of them. The choreography was much more complex, there was a lot more killing but it was still influenced by Chinese Opera in its style. King Hu was to make a few more films centered around women - Dragon Inn (1967) starring Polly Shang-kuan and A Touch of Zen (1971) starring Hsu Feng. Hu also made The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) with Angela Mao.


During the 1960's there were loads of female action stars - the Cantonese actress Connie Chan in quite a few and then in the Shaw Brothers studio besides Cheng Pei-pei, they also had Ching Ping, Lily Ho, Helen Ma, Shih Szu, Li Ching, Chen Ping and others taking up the action role from time to time. Now none of these actresses had really been trained in martial arts or acrobatics other than what they learned at the studio. That was about to change.


Once kung fu came along in the 1970's and pushed wuxia aside to some degree, a few female actresses who had been brought up in Chinese Opera learning martial arts along with singing and acting made the scene. These were Angela Mao (Broken Oath), Judy Lee (Queen Boxer with one of the highest body counts ever), Polly Shang-kuan who went on to make loads of low budget kung fu films, Sharon Yeung Pan-pan (called Lady Jackie Chan at one point). These films had lots of fighting - some set pieces were very extended in which the women fought off hordes of men and the choreography was intricate, incredibly athletic and very rough.



Then in the 1980's strictly period kung fu films lost their popularity to a large degree, but towards the end of the 1980's a new style of female action film with a new generation of stars began - the Girls with Guns - that jumped into popularity with Angel (1988). These films tended to be set in contemporary times and have some amazing stunts and fights that look incredibly brutal and fast on the screen. Some of these actresses had training - Kara Hui Ying-hung who started off with the Shaw Brothers in the classic My Young Auntie - while others like Moon Lee (Angel) and Michelle Yeoh had been dancers. Others like Cynthia Khan (the In the Line of Duty series) and Elaine Lui (Stone Age Warriors), Joyce Godenzi (She Shoots Straight), Maggie Siu (Sting of the Scorpion) were actresses who saw getting into action films as an opportunity.



Some foreign actresses came aboard as well - often playing the villainess - Yukari Oshima who had trained with Sonny Chiba and Michiko Nishiwaki who was a professional body builder came from Japan, Cynthia Rothrock started her career in Hong Kong before returning to America as well as a few smaller players like Sophia Crawford and Karen Shepard.



By the early 90's these films were getting cheaper and cheaper though stars like Jade Leung (Black Cat) were still emerging on the scene and then Almen Wong (Her Name is Cat) but by the mid-90's the Girls with Guns genre barely had a pulse. A few films that tried to re-start it like the terrific So Close (2002) just couldn't do it.



I was just in the mood to re-watch this documentary for the first time in nearly 20 years. I have been getting a slight urge to re-enter the world of Hong Kong films after a long absence. This film along with the books Deadly China Dolls and Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the head were my roadmaps to HK films back in the 1990's pre-Internet. This film runs about 100 minutes, has a ton of great action clips that unfortunately are rarely identified and focus on most of the actresses mentioned above with interviews (they nearly all speak English). It pointlessly begins with some exploitation - a nude female doing kung fu and Amy Yip who has nothing to do with Hong Kong action. But then it is Amy Yip so I am not really complaining! But then plays it straight from there on (other than Crawford also fighting in the nude).