Revenge of Kung Fu Mao
Director: Ting Shan-hsi
Year: 1977
Rating: 5.0
Aka - Big Foot Mama (seriously)
By now I am working my way slowly through Angela Mao's lesser known films
after having seen her classic ones years ago. These films keep popping up
on YouTube generally in terrible quality dubbed versions - but still its
Angela Mao. Every now and then one of them surprises me when it turns out
to be good. This 1977 one is way too plot heavy and takes a long while till
it gets to Angela kicking the hell out of people but when she does it is
quite satisfying - especially in the final fight when she wants to kill everyone.
And pretty much does, At the end she and her brother in law (Don Wong) say,
now we have our revenge and leave behind dead men everywhere you look. We
all know just how good it feels to have your revenge.
The film makes the mistake of saddling Angela with a baby and a husband that
leaves her with nothing to do for the first half of the film. Her husband
is the educated son who is the pride of his father. The other son Don Wong
is considered the family slug. The brother is given the responsibility to
go buy water pumps for the entire village at the nearby town and instead
he gambles it all away. The father has to sell everything so he won't lose
face and his son steals it and again loses it all in gambling. He then leaves
his wife and baby and becomes the boy toy of the female boss (Helen Poon,
in a bunch of Shaw films).
Don and Angela come looking for him, find out the father has been killed
and begin training kung fu under an old man and what do you know, in a few
weeks they are pretty damn good and getting into fights. Angela beats up
the same group of ten men time after time - she seems to be an expert with
the bench - but kind of difficult walking around with a bench. But soon Don
is also sucked into the high life by the Race Queen to become boy toy number
2 and Angela decides to go home with her baby. But stuff happens and she
has to kill everyone. A lot of action in the film - basic kung fu film choreography
- until the finale which is quite enjoyable. The film throws out the name
of Jimmy Wang-yu into the cast list but he shows up for a quick cup of coffee
- and has no action scenes - a bit of a rip-off.
