The Foxy Ladies
Director: Lu Chi
1979
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.
My rating for this film: 4.5
