The Foxy Ladies

Director: Lu Chi aka Lui Kei
Year: 1979
Rating: 4.5

With a title like “Foxy Ladies” I was in truth hoping for a wonderfully cheesy film full of leisure suits and funky beats, but other than a scene in a disco in which patrons are dancing to “Macho Man” this is a fairly straightforward pale imitation of “Charlie’s Angels” – except with lots more nudity. Part comedy, part action, part hot pant’s drama, this is mildly amusing if expectations are kept very low. The three female detectives are Ai Ti, Ling Tai and Ho Yen and their boss is the comic bore Frankie Wei. Ai Ti was becoming something of a star in this genre with her statuesque build and striking looks, but is in fact the only one of the three women to keep attired throughout. Almost every other female though manages to lose their clothes at some point – except thankfully the elderly woman character. You know this isn’t going to be Tolstoy (or even Aaron Spelling) immediately during the opening credits when visuals of women are shown exercising – in the nude. Why? Why not, I guess.


It begins with their boss asking them what their mantra is – to which they answer “new methods, gimmicks and guaranteed customer satisfaction” – but no, this isn’t a brothel but a detective agency. And not a particularly competent one as time will show. They get a case when a wealthy older woman hires them to look into the suspicious death of her son who disappeared during a dive. They begin with a singing rap exorcism in the woman’s house to get a look at all the suspects – which is basically everyone in the family. They then utilize various disguises to keep them under surveillance and this takes them into discos, brothels and drug dens. There are also a few language lessons – Mok Fu means “pants off” and one joke in which they introduce themselves to a rich dork (To Siu Ming) as “An”, Shuiyu” and “Dang” which apparently combined means “Get money from idiots”. Both may be good phrases to know. They finally track down the villain and this leads to a lengthy and somewhat tedious action scene in which it seems like a huge opportunity is lost to have them fight in the nude.