Operation Lipstick
Director:
Inoue Umetsugu
Year:
1967
Rating: 7.0/10
This film has Inoue Umetsugu
smeared all over it like tasty jam. This Japanese director was induced to
come over and work for the Shaw Brothers in order to bring some of his splashy
pop style with him. Vibrant colors, glossy sets, light-hearted comedy, sentimental
romance, beautiful starlets and lots of music. He directed what are considered
the two best Shaw musicals – Hong Kong Rhapsody and Hong Kong Nocturne –
along with fifteen other films. A number of them are admittedly quite forgettable
as they got lighter and lighter but ones such as The Brain Stealers, The
Millionaire Chase, We Love Millionaires and The Venus Tear Diamond are good
fun. He was the exception to most of the Shaw directors as he never really
went into the martial arts genre or period films.
Operation Lipstick was
his second film for Shaw after Hong Kong Nocturne and he brings along one
of his female stars from that film – Cheng Pei-pei. It is a cute little espionage
caper – with a plot that has similarities to his later Brain Stealers – with
various parties chasing after the film’s McGuffin – in this case microfilm
with nuclear secrets on it. It is smooth, fast moving without an ounce of
fat and charming – sort of Spy vs Spy – with great décor and fashions
and of course Cheng Pei-pei. At this point in her career after her huge success
in Come Drink with Me, Shaw was still giving her diverse roles – but that
was to change by 1968 when she was key-holed into martial arts films.
She is bright-eyed and
bushytailed in this with a smile that radiates and is given a few kung-fu
knockabout action scenes that were less than authentic though good fun. In
one scene adorned only in a towel in a Turkish bath she has to battle off
two women to hold on to the McGuffin and it is silly but enjoyable. In another
scene she takes on the gang on a rooftop and gives as good as she gets.
Lee Bing (Cheng Pei-pei)
is a nightclub entertainer coming out of a cake when we first see her – but
previously she had been part of a pickpocket team – now retired. One of her
friends is not though and he steals a wallet that has a mysterious key to
the microfilm – and he has the police after him as well as a gang, the girlfriend
(Tina Chin-fei) of a murdered scientist and a gentleman thief (Paul Chang-chung)
– and it becomes a merry-go-round of who has the package. Lee Bing is in
the middle of all of it. There is a great musical number that felt like pure
60’s Bollywood in which three killers come on stage with guitars that are
weapons in order to kill Lee Bing and sing lyrics that go Bang Bang Bang
as they wait for the drum solo in order to shoot her.
In the cast is a roll
call of Shaw character actors – Yang Chi-ching, Wu Ma, Tien Feng, Fan Mei-sheng,
Ku Feng, Shum Lo, Pang Pang, Lee Kwan and more.
