Director: Han Bao-chang
Year:  1990
Rating: 3.0

---

I have always been a fan of Kara Hui Ying-hung. She studied martial arts growing up with her brother Austin Wai, signed up with the Shaw Brothers in 1977 and was the star of a few classics, then in the 1980s she jumped into the wild world of the Girls with Guns genre and now at 60 years old she is a fine performer in dramas. And probably could still do a few somersaults if called upon. So it grieved me greatly to see her in this sleazy incompetent action film. Like seeing your mother on the Gong Show. In 1990 Girls with Guns films were being spewed out like an exorcist movie - made quickly to cash in on the short-lived popularity of these types of films. A lot of them such as this one was just a fast dash to the finish line without much logic, any narrative cohesion and as cheap looking as my first suit out of college. This is just dreadful and I have no idea how they hooked Kara into it - kidnap a family member perhaps?



Of course, we Girls with Guns fans are willing to put up with an insipid idiotic plot if it delivers some great action scenes. You won't find much of that here. Kara and her friend (Tu Kuei-Hua, a female body builder from Taiwan) do rough up a few thugs early on and Kara takes on a couple crooks on her own - but nothing very special about it. The final scene is ok - Kara and a few friends are running away in the woods with a gang with guns after them and they go Rambo and kill them all. But even then it was just ok. Kara is capable of so much more.



Ah-phon (Kara) comes to Japan from Taiwan to visit her uncle who runs a restaurant in Tokyo. I guess. It is suppose to be Tokyo but there is not much there to identify it as such. As she gets off the plane her old uncle is getting threatened and then beaten up by the Yakuza who want him to transfer his business to them. You might be thinking that Ah-phon will show up and clean up  - but no, she is lost and eating noodles instead. She meets a few girls who invite her to stay with them till she finds her uncle - a brothel as it turns out - and Kara gets drugged and raped (later the rapist is paid back with three shots to the groin - hats off to the actor who let them explode those caps so close to his manhood!). The girls go off to work where one of them makes her customer lick her toes and slaps him around and pay for the pleasure. Another girl gets whipped. Like I said sleazy. And I have not mentioned the female wrestling match and Kara pushing a topless girl into the audience.



It is just sad and bad. At about the one hour mark for reasons unknown  they introduce another character, Chih-lung, who has come back to Japan from Taiwan which he escaped to 2 years previously. He is here to collect money owed by the Yakuza boss. Like all bosses he doesn't want to pay off. It has no real connection to the plot up to that point or really much afterwards. Chih-lung is played by Pai-ying and I felt embarrassed for him as well. Past his prime for sure but back in the 1960s he was a leading man in martial arts films and was in three King Hu films - the eunuch in Dragon Inn being his most memorable but also A Touch of Zen and The Fate of Lee Khan. Life I guess, from King Hu to Han Bao-chang, whoever the hell he was.

---