Operation Pink Squad II

Director: Jeff Lau Chun-wai
Year: 1989
Rating: 7.5
In this 1989 film, many of the same actors return from the first Operation Pink Squad – though whether they are playing exactly the same characters doesn’t seem perfectly clear to my failing memory – but certainly similar ones. Jeff Lau is again at the reins as director and brings his scattershot comedic approach to bear on this film with excellent results. While the first one was a combination of comedy, girls with guns and drama – here he throws out any attempts at drama but adds horror to the mix. It makes for 90-minutes of rarely slow down wacky fun like the way they used to do it back in the 80’s. With no big stars in the cast, Lau makes this into a fast moving ensemble piece that gives everyone plenty of screen time and lots of out of breath moments.
 

This time out the female cops – Sandra Ng, Ann Bridgewater, Suki Kwan and Cheung Man (who was not in the first one) are assigned by Woo Fung to go undercover as club hostesses and get the goods on a counterfeiting operation and Shing Fui-on. This string of the story soon takes a backseat to a few other plotlines that emerge. Billy Lau has just been married to Sandra and gets it into his head that she and Woo Fung are having an affair and follows her on her assignment and in that Billy Lau madcap manner (actually Lau annoys the hell out of me!) gets into a number of messes.
 

At the same time the fun really begins back at the apartment house where the four women are pretending to live. Unknown to them everyone else has moved out because of a horde of ghosts that have decided to set up shop there. Hopefully most of you check the basement when moving into a new place to make sure that it doesn’t have a door to Hell down there as this one does - but the girls neglect to. The landlady (Helen Law Lan) has hired a Buddhist priest (Yuen Cheung-yan) to clean the place up and seal up that darn portal to Hell. Yuen captures most of the ghosts and stuffs them into these nifty little bags – but unnoticed by him, one particularly unruly (and occasionally playful) female ghost escapes to create havoc for our characters.
 

Much of the first half of the film is a set up for the second half when it turns into a screwball and nearly non-stop series of escapades of the four women, Billy Lau and Woo Fung all running through various hallways and rooms to escape the ghost. Make that two ghosts – sort of – at one point her head is hacked off and now a flying head and a headless body are chasing after them. Soon Shing shows up – humps the ghost in the elevator – and ends up with the head in his bag of money. Yuen is not far behind him as he realized that one ghost was missing – but this time it turns out to be a much more difficult task to catch this ghost – as well as many others who have smelled the scent of blood and are descending on the building – though a more pathetic group of ghosts with bad wigs you are not likely to come across!
 

Unlike most ghosts in films these days, this female ghost (anyone know who the actress is?) is not particularly powerful – your basic door can keep her out and a poke in the eyes will stop her for a moment – and she isn’t all that mean and quite enjoys having her toes sucked! Still after her head is separated from her body she does become fairly irritable and wants to open up that Hell door and let her friends out.
 

It’s all nonsensical and lots of silly fun with one of those great “B” casts that HK films used to revel in. It is terrific seeing four of my favorite females all together – Suki in one of her very earliest roles is quite adorable, this is also an early role for a very fresh faced Cheung Man who plays the bubblehead in the group and both Sandra and Ann are fine. The only thing that disappointed was that Ann had no good one on one fights as she did in the first one and in some of her other films. But this is more comedy and the supernatural than girls with guns and thankfully with its low budget look it keeps the special effects to a minimal but enjoyably tacky level.
 

As a note, the DVD from Winson is called Thunder Cops though the opening title is clearly Operation Pink Squad II. It’s a bit confusing though because there is a Thunder Cops II with many of the same actors (though clearly playing different characters) and directed by Jeff Lau – but as far as I know there is no Thunder Cop I  - so perhaps this film was released under both titles back in the 80’s? The DVD is also full screen, which is a shame as there are a few scenes in which the cropped picture hurts the visual effect and the transfer is o.k. but far from good.