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There is nothing for feeling 19 again like seeing Green Snake for the first time in years––and now, for the first time, in an exciting 1080p blu ray from NOVA. Green Snake was probably the first Hong Kong film that really bowled me over so completely (though, to be real, I probably saw The Heroic Trio or Wicked City first, followed by Hard Boiled, The Bride with White Hair, Full Contact, Ashes of Time and Peking Opera Blues before I saw Green Snake––and they pretty much bowled me over as well). Watching it in hi-def was like falling in love again. I've never had the opportunity to see this in a theater, so seeing the blu ray is a transformative experience. The light, the colors...this movie...this movie is so great.

But to be fair, this isn't always a great blu ray. Altogether there is visible grain, and there are sharp edges––but one often has the feeling that the grain has been dulled a little overmuch––not extraordinarily so, but just enough to see sometimes. Closeups always look really sharp. And a lot of establishing and action shots look very sharp. And, for what it's worth, Green Snake is full of visual aberrations which are deliberate parts of the cinematography. There is tons of haze and smoke, there's the occasional soft-focus shot, there's the FX shots––always having been of wildly varying quality––and there's the color filters that drip all over this movie in crazy ways. Many shots also boast some scratches, and a couple of shots look degraded by time rather than on purpose. Good news is, the original FX, in all their glory, seem intact, so far as I can see. That snake is as rubbery as I recall. Probably the worst effects in the whole film are the golden dragon the monk summons––which is just pure early 90s digital animation––and the now rather awkward-looking negative cutting and process shot where the monk dispels the illusion of the Snakes' manor in front of the scholar's eyes. Honestly, I didn't know that effect looked so half-baked before I saw it in hi-def. But I'm glad they're there, instead of remixed FX.

The best part about this disc is the color separation that comes with the blu ray format. For the first time the richness of the colors really comes through. The film has such a fascinating palette; the Hong Kong movies of the aughts that boosted colors so indiscriminately ought to have taken note of this film. The better color separation make the movie feel bigger and more immersive than it did in the past.

It also occurred to me as I watch how rare Green Snake is. Here's a Hong Kong film not really about violent action or suspense, but about handling sensuality with the same lip-smacking enthusiasm as the filmmakers use to approach the martial arts films. Most so-called "erotic" fare from Hong Kong is shot cheaply, just plunking the camera down in front of whatever willing bodies can be wrangled, and filming them thrashing around in indiscriminate, poorly-lit long-shot for a while. The result are most often films that handle sensuality on screen with the same grace as one would film a the infestation of rats in a derelict building. But Green Snake treats sensual connection as its subject, constantly filming moments and details of bodies, pressing needily against one another, in the most visually striking of ways. And the film surrounds these scenes with an orgy of tactile experiences, like the cherry blossoms that blow through the scholars' salon, like the scholar rubbing soy sauce on White Snake's burned hand, like the bamboo shoots buffeted in the wind and rain when the monk sees the villager giving birth in the forest. The punishment the monks have for the scholar at the end of the movie is even the closing off of his senses. Quite interesting; it all makes Li Han Hsiang look like a chump.

Anyway, even though the disc isn't perfect, I'd recommend it. The improvement over the Mei Ah reissue DVD is still phenomenal, and the movie looks better than it ever has, for me, at least. The subtitles are the standard ones for the film, with a few weird capitalizations in the middle of sentences, but absolutely readable. The sound might be a deal-breaker for some? The Cantonese track is only 5.1, the Mandarin track is the only one in plain stereo, 2.0. I listened to the 5.1 track, and it sounded fine on my Samsung TV (I don't have a 5.1-channel stereo setup), and it sounded very good, with a lot of good audio clarity. Bottom line, the movie is great, and it's so much better with the added visual clarity. Just stunning.

feihong wrote: Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:56 pm

Glowingwabbit wrote: Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:48 pm

feihong wrote: Fri Sep 02, 2022 12:40 pm Incidentally, I just saw a Chameleon films region B blu ray of Johnnie To's Exiled for sale, with allegedly 2 Frank Djeng commentaries. Does anyone have this disc? What's the quality like? I can't find a review of it anywhere.

I just got this and Breaking News in the mail. No mention of a restoration, but both are loaded with special features (and yes 2 Frank Djeng commentaries on Exiled) and booklets. Dylan Cheung who does a lot of the 88 films did the translation and subtitles so at least that will be good.

They've also hinted that they'll be releasing at least the first Election film. Because of the delays to their first titles I think announcements for newer titles will be delayed for bit.

Awesome. Thanks for reporting on these. Have you seen them yet? Is the picture quality pretty good?

The Election blu ray from Hong Kong was not very high-quality. If they can improve on that, it would be something, alright. I don't think the second Election movie works very well by itself, but the original is such good stuff.

Hey feihong, was going to send you a PM but that option seems unavailable to me. I manage Chameleon Films. If you could drop me a line sometime I'd love to have a chat with you. [Edit - contact established, thank you!]

In some really surprising news, there will be a German bluray release for A Better Tomorrow II:

I've been meaning to post about this for a few months as I viewed this back in July. Wai Ka-fai's first directed film in thirteen years, Detective vs. Sleuths, is a great amalgamation of the contemporary Chinese thriller and the go-for-broke style of an earlier period of Hong Kong cinema. The way Wai's narrative playfulness functions with little to no semblance to anything based in reality, but still managing to convey clarify about it to the audience makes me excited me every time I encounter one of his works. Functioning as a sort of spiritual sequel to Mad Detective, Lau Ching-wan again plays a detective with their own unusual, borderline spiritual way of being able to solve crime. He teams up with a squadron of police to stop a group of young vigilantes who are using Lau's own screeds to try and get revenge for past crimes that were solved fraudulently. I'm always skeptical of contemporary Hong Kong action films that adopt the altruistic, cooperative, clean-cut police unit model (Z-Storm, Cold War) of viewing various screens and surveillance devices, but following Lau whose methodology is based potentially on schizophrenic visions is far more fun. It seems to have a pretty unfavorable view online, but it's still my favorite film I've seen this year.

You make it sound very interesting! Thanks for tipping me off to the film. I'd seen the poster for it, but I didn't realize it was a Wai Ka-Fai film.

I was also lucky enough to catch this in theatres a few months ago and it really is a fantastic mystery-thriller that effectively captures the kinetic energy that's been missing from HK films for a while now. It's also interesting to see the Christian themes and motifs, which became only apparent to me after finding a tweet linking to a press interview with Wa Ka-fai in which he says that he converted to Chrisitanity a few years ago. You can put this as the third installment of a crazy detectives, right after Mad Detective and Blind Detective.

I'm honestly not that shocked that it's gotten a middling response since that's pretty much the reception that Wai Ka-fai's solo films have received (besides Too Many Ways to Be No. 1). It's honestly a damn shame since films like Fantasia and The Shopaholics deserve more recognition, especially the former for being a remake of a classic film (Hui Brother's The Private Eyes) that might actually surpass the original film.

EDIT: It's also pretty interesting that Johnnie To lent his crew and office space to Wai Ka-Fai during production, despite this not being produced by Milkyway Image.

I only wish I could unsee this film. What a load of crap! If Wai is trying to capture the earlier mode of HK moving-making like the two above posts suggest, how about hiring some actors that can actually, you know, act (not that the script gave people other than Lau much material to work with, though)? And how does such a ridiculous amount of stupid special effects and gaudy color-grading reminiscent of HK classics instead of, say, Chinese straight-to-streaming Z movies? This film only goes to show how different (dare I say dilapidated) HK's movie-making business has become. With the ideas and guts long gone, now the technicals are broken as well. But then I think of Limbo, a film made around the same time but gives me infinitely more pleasure to watch and production value to savor afterwards. HK cinema may not be dead after all, but definitely not because of this...thing.

I didn't have such a negative reaction to the movie at all. While it was playing, I found myself sitting there in rapt attention. Immediately afterwards, I think I really liked the film. With the distance of 24 hours, the flaws are more memorable to me than the successful part of the film, and I wonder how much of the narrative clarity came for me from watching Mad Detective and Blind Detective previously.

The absence of Johnnie To's more measured, grounded filmmaking was pretty evident here; the film is frequently visually unfocused (the cinematography seems typical of Cheng Siu-Keng's shaky adoption of digital cameras, with some sequences looking flat and some sequences looking beautiful, but this time there was also a lot of shots where the color grading was far off the mark, making me wonder if they were pickup shots with a lower-quality camera), but Wai seemed very confident with the story. The story felt very clear to me, a sort of extended "what-if?," like a direct sequel to Mad Detective if the detective in that film had lived, and gotten worse over the years. In Mad Detective, there was considerable sympathy for Bun the detective, who couldn't tell truth from fantasy, who was manipulated left and right, who was ultimately a sort of doomed Cassandra, destined to be ignored and, ultimately, discredited. It was chilling in that movie to find out how dangerous ordinary, skeptical people were when they doubted Bun. The interesting idea here in Mad Detective 2 is that maybe the people who listen to the crazy detective are more dangerous than the ones who don't. The "Sleuths" gang is a vigilante group formed around our mad detective hero's theories, enacting justice as it is scripted on the wall by the maniac ex-detective. Lau Ching-Wan is the ex-detective racing to stop them from carrying out their plan. Charlene Choi is very subtle as the pregnant police commander who begins to believe our demented hero is onto something; his hand, pointed like a gun, will go on to guide her shots into the dark. After about 15 minutes the film really started to click for me; 25 minutes from the end, the film started to unravel a bit. If it had somehow ended before that, I would have thought the movie fairly brilliant (with the qualification that the implausibility of this film is much more front-and-center than it was in the more accomplished original Mad Detective, with nothing really to distract you from it); with the extra, fully-explicated later material, I had to downgrade my opinion of the movie. The weird sequences of the demented ex-detective dragging the mild-mannered pregnant cop all over Hong Kong had a lot of charge to them, like a kind of crazy scavenger hunt for corpses. The sequences of the "sleuths" gang getting revenge seemed to me a more interesting variation on Jackie Chan's New Police Story (admittedly told with less compelling actors in similar roles). And the action sequences––while lacking the clarity Johnnie To would have brought to them––had a lot of compelling energy and tension to them.

The police in the original Mad Detective were clearly a dangerous organization, and that film went to lengths to prove how easy it was for a cop to "go bad" and start using the system to his own depraved advantage. The Detective vs. the Sleuths doubles- or triples-down on that notion, but it's actually harder to tell how Wai Ka Fai feels about the police this time around. This is likely in part the kind of censorship or self-censorship that gets the movie made in the climate it's been made. This time the police force produces yet another gentle madman, and it also produces another serial killer––one whose actions can be both hidden by the force, and then pinned on other people at a later date. More than in Mad Detective, the police force itself is revealed as a system very vulnerable to manipulation from the top down––though there is less of the sense that To's earlier film provides of the police closing in on its own disaster, fortifying against the public knowing the truth. I found myself wondering––and this is maybe idle speculation, I suppose––what the crazed hero of Detective vs. the Sleuths would do when his department was mobilized to menace and attack dissidents, for instance? But those are the concerns that indicate you're beginning to tire of cinema, perhaps; a friend wondered watching Drug War where was the higher-up official in the Chinese government that allowed the drug smuggling in the film to happen. I feel like these are worthwhile questions––certainly Memories of Murder has time to point out the dual-function of cops, depicting them struggling to solve a crime, but also showing us the way they are rolled out for political purposes, to suppress protests––but it's hard to believe To or Wai could get a movie like that made in the current climate of Hong Kong. So instead the overwhelmingly large and totally incompetent police force in the movie mobilizes to hunt down a few serial killers, unsuccessfully. So I think something is being said, or, at least, Wai is trying to get a point across. I wish the film delivered a little harder here. The finale, including a siege on a boat, with a baby being born, reminded me a little of Tsui Hark's Time and Tide––though that film handled its scene with more restraint (more restraint from Tsui Hark???) and more suspense. One could feel the film's budget shuddering as it was forced to accommodate this gigantic action scene. By the time it happened, most of the conflict in the movie had already been resolved. The showdown could have taken place without the police raid, honestly. Mad Detective and Blind Detective both end with more tension and more controlled, intimate showdowns. The last shot of the film is exceedingly disappointing, implying a Twin Peaks-like twist which the movie is fully unprepared to engage with. I think tone is always a problem for Wai, and it makes one really appreciate the presence of To. Wai, I think, gave ambition to their movies, and thematic complexity. To brought consistent tone and focus, and clarity in craft––and it's clear that Wai Ka-Fai lacks in those categories specifically. They were, in essence, a great partnership. At the end of the day, this movie offers a lot of interest, especially in the middle. But I think it's Wai's inconsistency as a director that undoes a lot of the good parts of the film. But in general, I still liked the movie, and I think I'll probably try and rewatch it one day. It did remind me a lot of Running on Karma; but that's one of my least favorite Milkyway productions. At the end of the day, I think what this film does most effectively is map out the strengths Wai Ka Fai provides to the Milkyway movies, and the strengths Johnnie To brings to them. I certainly don't think the movie is terrible. But I don't think it's the masterpiece that the Hong Kong theatrical cut of Mad Detective is.

Also, it was powerfully weird to see Lau Ching-Wan looking so old. I realize I haven't seen him on screen in quite a few years. He has genuine jowls now, and it's just strange to see. I thought he would stay middle-aged forever; now he looks like an older man. I must look pretty old, myself. It makes me feel like Jean-Pierre Leaud at the end of Two English Girls, feeling my age––except instead of looking at lovely young women and realizing time is passing, I'm looking at Lau Ching-Wan and thinking that he looks like he could be a grandfather now. Looking it up, I see he's about 15 years older than me. That's scarier than anything in the rest of this movie.

Special I.D. (Clarence Fok, 2013)

The usual undercover cop nonsense. A troubled production contributes, I’d guess, to a disjointed experience. You can see the film setting up story avenues it then just brushes by, with a plot that only makes sense because fundamentally it’s good buy pursues bad guy and the confusing details hardly matter. A lesser riff on Donnie Yen’s rather good Flashpoint, enlivened by some astonishing fights that Yen and co. attempt to make more brutal and realistic, incorporating MMA-oriented boxing, Muay Thai, and BJJ. They ought to be commended for making extended moments of grappling exciting and cinematic, and for turning the fights into brutal and visceral assaults without draining the fun or excitement. There is still the usual perfect spinning back kicks and such from Yen, but mostly the fights are a terrific extension of what Yen was doing in Kill Zone and Flashpoint. Some of the best uses I’ve ever seen for martial arts techniques from the MMA era. Too bad they’re in search of a decent movie to anchor.

Reign of Assassins (Su Chao-Pin & John Woo, 2010)

A wuxia martial arts fantasy, with twists and turns, secret identities, and a childlike sense of romance. Thirty years ago, this would’ve been 90 minutes of delirium instead of a fitful 120 of bland competence mixed with over-rushed story telling. I’m guessing to keep the runtime down, many scenes fell victim to over-tuning, as they speed by without properly communicating what they’re about; but then so many other scenes, like the innocent romance between the leads, are given endless amounts of time to develop. The plot is intricate, but involves the bifurcated mummy of a long-dead mythical buddhist monk, the two halves of which, when joined, will give the joiner endless unspecified power. Kelly Lin, an overpowered sword-wielding member of a league of assassins, absconds with one half and attempts to start a regular life by getting plastic surgery to become Michelle Yeoh. She marries, and tries to keep her past hidden from her husband while her former league attempts to get back what she stole. Yeoh is dubbed into Mandarin by what sounds like a small teenager, which is endlessly distracting. Apparently Woo was such a heavy-handed on-set ‘adviser’ to Su that he earned a co-director credit. I don’t know what to say about this one, really. Goofy wuxia stories aren’t as much fun when they’re filmed like this, as tho’ they were blockbusters or something. There’s no poetry, no madness, no artistic spark. Just an alright movie with decent fights, bland actors, and an underused Michelle Yeoh. If anyone knows some really good wuxia from the last twenty years not directed by Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, or Hou Hsiao-Hsien, let me know.

Ronin Flix has a listing for a Fist of Legend/Tai Chi Master double feature. No details, price, or release date listed, but the art looks like a repackage of the lousy Dragon Dynasty Blus.

I’m loving the many releases we’re getting, sometimes in multiple regions, but I wish we could get some of the biggies like the John Woo movies, Jet Li’s biggest hits, and so on. I know why we’re not-damned rights issues-but man, if fan bootleggers can do it, hopefully studios can do it too someday. Apparently the negatives have been destroyed, which isn’t helping, I’m sure. I wish I was more torrent-proficient. Maybe I could find some treasures there .

Magic Crystal (Wong Jing, 1986)

I'm torn on this one. It's a really bad movie, but it's so weird and all over the place that it's also kind of fun. Plus the fights are incredible. Leave it to Hong Kong put world class choreography into a lame adventure comedy. This one's a hodgepodge: at any given moment, it's a spy thriller, a crime film, an Indiana Jones-style adventure, a slapstick comedy, a horror film, a sci-fi film, and an E.T.-style kids movie, but without any melding. The tone and style switches from scene to scene. So one scene will have espionage replete with KGB agents, truth serums, torture, and the like, the next a kid is making friends with a giant, glowing, telepathic rock (seriously, one of the characters is a magic green rock that befriends the kid) and the next is a big brawl at a gymnastics facility. Even for a cinema as restless and manic as Hong Kong, this one's a weird mess. At least it knows how to use Cynthia Rothrock. She's playing second-fiddle again, but thankfully it's to Andy Lau and Max Mok instead of Jalal Merhi or Steve McQueen's son. She actually gets to show off her skills, too, especially her weapons training, instead of spending 90% of the film not fighting while bland non-entities like Jeff Wincott and fucking Jalal Merhi get all the screen time. Goofy trash, but I had fun. A lot more fun than goddamn Tiger Claws II, that's for sure.

Mr Sausage wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:46 am Magic Crystal (Wong Jing, 1986)

I'm torn on this one. It's a really bad movie, but it's so weird and all over the place that it's also kind of fun. Plus the fights are incredible. Leave it to Hong Kong put world class choreography into a lame adventure comedy. This one's a hodgepodge: at any given moment, it's a spy thriller, a crime film, an Indiana Jones-style adventure, a slapstick comedy, a horror film, a sci-fi film, and an E.T.-style kids movie, but without any melding. The tone and style switches from scene to scene. So one scene will have espionage replete with KGB agents, truth serums, torture, and the like, the next a kid is making friends with a giant, glowing, telepathic rock (seriously, one of the characters is a magic green rock that befriends the kid) and the next is a big brawl at a gymnastics facility. Even for a cinema as restless and manic as Hong Kong, this one's a weird mess. At least it knows how to use Cynthia Rothrock. She's playing second-fiddle again, but thankfully it's to Andy Lau and Max Mok instead of Jalal Merhi or Steve McQueen's son. She actually gets to show off her skills, too, especially her weapons training, instead of spending 90% of the film not fighting while bland non-entities like Jeff Wincott and fucking Jalal Merhi get all the screen time. Goofy trash, but I had fun. A lot more fun than goddamn Tiger Claws II, that's for sure.

Having recently been exposed to Wong Jing’s absolutely ludicrous and intermittently hilarious Sixty Million Dollar Man, I’m definitely interested in checking this out

Mr Sausage wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:46 am Magic Crystal (Wong Jing, 1986)

I'm torn on this one. It's a really bad movie, but it's so weird and all over the place that it's also kind of fun. Plus the fights are incredible. Leave it to Hong Kong put world class choreography into a lame adventure comedy. This one's a hodgepodge: at any given moment, it's a spy thriller, a crime film, an Indiana Jones-style adventure, a slapstick comedy, a horror film, a sci-fi film, and an E.T.-style kids movie, but without any melding. The tone and style switches from scene to scene. So one scene will have espionage replete with KGB agents, truth serums, torture, and the like, the next a kid is making friends with a giant, glowing, telepathic rock (seriously, one of the characters is a magic green rock that befriends the kid) and the next is a big brawl at a gymnastics facility. Even for a cinema as restless and manic as Hong Kong, this one's a weird mess. At least it knows how to use Cynthia Rothrock. She's playing second-fiddle again, but thankfully it's to Andy Lau and Max Mok instead of Jalal Merhi or Steve McQueen's son. She actually gets to show off her skills, too, especially her weapons training, instead of spending 90% of the film not fighting while bland non-entities like Jeff Wincott and fucking Jalal Merhi get all the screen time. Goofy trash, but I had fun. A lot more fun than goddamn Tiger Claws II, that's for sure.

I thought this was one of the better Wong Jing movies I've seen, and definitely the best Wisely adaptation besides The Seventh Curse (all that means is that every other Wisely movie adaptation is just worse). It's as you say, bad, but kind of fun. I'd put it below High Risk and God of Gamblers, which thankfully play more to adults than most of Wong Jing's post-Shaw Bros. films as a director (though Fanciful Norwegian recently pointed out that Kirk Wong is rumored to have ghost-directed a lot of High Risk, which makes a lot of sense). Probably equivalent in quality to Boys Are Easy, another Wong Jing movie that's awful, but also a lot of fun.

I didn't realize the movie was a Wisely story. Everyone in the movie called Andy Lau's character "Andy".

I suppose that's more of a guess than a certainty, though I'm fairly sure I heard Frank Djeng mention it on one of the Seventh Curse audio commentaries from the 88Films blu ray as a Wisely adaptation. I don't know enough to tell you which book is the likely source––I think it might be "A Peculiar Gem," the 66th book in the series, which came out 2 years prior to the movie––but it has the Wisely stories' trademark limp sci-fi trappings and dandified action (to be fair, the action in the film is pretty great, but there's a particular aesthetic to the Wisely movies action I think is on display here). I don't know why they backed away from the Wisely branding here––Wong Jing did several other Wisely projects, including another with Andy Lau. Maybe there was a legal issue with the novel at the time?

Speaking of Wong Jing, apparently there’s a new Blu of God of Gamblers coming from a boutique label; forget who.

It's coming from 88.

Spectrum Films are releasing a boxset which includes 6 Wong Jing movies of the God of Gamblers series:
- God of Gamblers (1989)
- God of Gamblers 2 (1990)
- God of Gamblers 3: Back to Shanghai (1991)
- God of Gamblers' Return (1994)
- God of Gamblers 3: The Early Stage (1996)
- Challenge of the Gamesters (1981)

It's coming out in about a month: https://www.spectrumfilms.fr/prochainem ... 71617.html

However, unless I'm wrong, no English subtitles, just French.

You know, I’d be willing to pay exorbitant import prices-and have in the past-for overseas discs with English subtitles. I wish more of these French and especially Japanese release would include them. It must be a more complicated and expensive process than I’m aware of to include them.

mrb404 wrote: Fri Nov 11, 2022 3:27 am Spectrum Films are releasing a boxset which includes 6 Wong Jing movies of the God of Gamblers series:
- God of Gamblers (1989)
- God of Gamblers 2 (1990)
- God of Gamblers 3: Back to Shanghai (1991)
- God of Gamblers' Return (1994)
- God of Gamblers 3: The Early Stage (1996)
- Challenge of the Gamesters (1981)

It's coming out in about a month: https://www.spectrumfilms.fr/prochainem ... 71617.html

However, unless I'm wrong, no English subtitles, just French.

Due to the weirdness of HK movie titles, God of Gamblers II and II are Parts 1 and 2 of the Do Hap/Knight of Gamblers series in the Chinese titles. God of Gamblers' Return, the fourth film, is Dao San 2/God of Gamblers 2 in Hong Kong!

Kick Boxer's Tears (Shen Da-Wei, 1992)

Another Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima team up. The plot's a mess. It starts with Moon Lee's brother dying in a muay thai match to a dirty fighter managed by a crime lord, then transitions to a story about money worries mixed with a romantic comedy as Wilson Lam, a pickpocket, tries to woo her, then becomes a revenge film of sorts that goes to some dark and strange places. There's something enjoyable about the poor story-telling--it keeps you constantly on your toes, often making rote plot points unexpected and just as often throwing in inexplicable curve balls, including a lot of unexpected violence. Hong Kong action films often favoured tragic endings I've noticed, a tendency to show the violence culminating in resolution at the level of plot and theme, but without any restoration or catharsis for the characters. The characters don't balance an earlier cost with their final acts of violence, therebye redeeming themselves; they continue to accrue costs until the very end, earning resolution only at the cost of further suffering and sacrifice. I wonder if there's something specifically Chinese about this outlook, or were the filmmakers borrowing a noirish fatalism because it was cool without having the narrative skills to structure a properly fatalistic story that ends on an appropriate downbeat. Either way, the action, the reason you're here, is impossibly good, including a 15 minute muay thai match between Ken Lo and Billy Chow to start the show. And the finale? Most movies would be content to finish with one big fight; this one cross cuts between three separate fights, each one blisteringly choreographed, becoming one long opus of rhythmic mayhem. I don't know who the action director was, but he should've won an award. This may be my favourite Lee/Oshima matchup (even if Oshima has only a small supporting role).

Orlac wrote: Fri Nov 11, 2022 3:40 pm Due to the weirdness of HK movie titles, God of Gamblers II and II are Parts 1 and 2 of the Do Hap/Knight of Gamblers series in the Chinese titles. God of Gamblers' Return, the fourth film, is Dao San 2/God of Gamblers 2 in Hong Kong!

I feel like the booklet should come w/ a flow chart.

Some Moon Lee Girls with Guns Flicks


Beauty Investigator (Lee Tso-Nam, 1992)

More Lee/Oshima low budget nuttery. Hostesses are being murdered and, to solve the case, rookie officers Moon Lee and her partner must go undercover as, well, prostitutes. So Cruising mixed with Miss Congeniality, basically. Meanwhile, some mid-level HK gangster wants to take over the gang after the boss gets cancer and hires hitman Yukari Oshima to take out his rivals while the yakuza he’d backstabbed earlier plot their revenge. The film cross cuts between “comic” scenes of the two prudish police officers trying to avoid being assaulted, and Oshima’s assassin murdering swathes of people until the two strands meet. The comedy is tedious (two roomates literally do the whole splitting the apartment in half schtick) and the fights, while amazing by Hollywood standards, are brief and well below the excellence of the pair’s Kick Boxer’s Tears from the same year. The plot mishmash is only comprehensible because it’s assembled out of long-familiar cliches. The movie does ascend to some mind-boggling lunacy, like when Moon Lee suddenly dons an as-yet unintroduced robotic glove that fires rockets and proceeds to blow cars up left and right. Out of nowhere the thing becomes some futuristic sci-fi film. Also during the finale (and this is technically spoilers but honestly who cares with a movie like this) Yukari Oshima casually reveals she’s been an undercover cop the whole time. Keep in mind she’s been straight-up murdering people with piano wire and blow darts for the whole movie. I love Hong Kong.


Killer Angels (Tony Lou Chun-Ku, 1989)

Moon Lee again, plus Gordon Liu in aviators and a leather-cap as a conflicted bad guy (I’m glad he was still finding work, but it’s sad he was no longer a leading man). The film crash-opens with a series of contextless, brutally violent murders, followed by credits set to the most upbeat pop electronica you’ve ever heard. Tonal whiplash is the name of the game. Gangster action cuts to slapstick comedy cuts to full song-and-dance numbers! Nice to see Moon Lee making use of her dance background for something besides fighting. Lee is a member of the Blue Angels, a Chinese Marlene Dietrich tribute band…I mean, an all-female special operations unit that resembles Charlie’s Angels and are really ok with just murdering people. I’ll be honest, I stopped trying to follow the plot; it’s a bunch of gangster machinations. Hitman Gordon Liu falls in love with an undercover Moon Lee while the boss’ daughter lusts for him; a former gang member has incriminating evidence on the gang while also being involved in the murder of the son of one of the Angels years ago; a mid-level gangster tries to squeeze out the old boss; middle-eastern gangs show up for business; Shing Fu-On tries to muscle in. I don’t know. The fight choreography, while frenetic, feels oddly old-school, especially in the first half, showing more of a late-70s sensibility than what you’d find in Corey Yuen, Yuen Woo-Ping, or Ching Siu-Tung’s work from the period. It feels odd, like a clash of sensibilities. The version I watched credits the choreography to Yuen Yan—they don’t mean Yeun Cheung-Yan, Yuen Woo-Ping’s brother, do they? Did he take over half-way through, because the second half’s fights are certainly more in line with my expectations and have a slightly different rhythm. This film is mental; I had a great time.


Iron Angels (Teresa Woo, 1987)

A low budget, incoherent, hyper-violent, utterly insane Charlie’s Angels riff that, along with Yes, Madame, helped define and popularize the Girls with Guns subgenre of HK action cinema. Endless 80s action movie cliches done with style and imagination. The plot’s something like this: a huge opium bust angers a psychotic gang member who carries out a series of vendettas against the police. At their wits end, the police call in the Angels. Or something. The movie’s all plot and no connective tissue. It’s Lee/Oshima doing their thing again. The movie makes up for its low budget by trying it’s best to kill its stuntmen. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff I was seeing, including stunt guys genuinely free climbing the outside of a skyscraper--no nets, no wires, just going for it. And the fights are impossibly good. There aren’t enough of them in the mid third (I’m not going to say ‘act’ because that would imply structure), but when they arrive they are up to the already high standards of HK action.


Iron Angels 2 (Teresa Woo, 1988)

More of the same. The Angels travel to Malaysia on vacation. Alex Fong runs into two old friends, one a big shot businessman and philanthropist, the other a journalist. The big shot is secretly planning a coup while the third friend was sent by the CIA to gather evidence of the coup. Meanwhile, Elaine, Angel #2, falls in love with the big shot. The plot is, as ever, murky. And there’s way too much Alex Fong: there are long scenes in the middle of Fong and friends ladding it up around Malaysia while the film makes jokes about ladyboys. There’s one baffling scene where three friends go to a stage show, and it’s a woman dressed as Snow White singing dirty songs while little people got up as the seven dwarves prance around her. She then transitions into a song called You are a Sex Maniac while doing a striptease. I can’t even. Hollywood is far from alone in making xenophobic culture shock jokes. There’s also some not-so-veiled anti-communism. The opening has one of my favourite HK action bits: there’s a guy with a live grenade in his mouth, so Alex Fong kicks his stomach to make him spit it out and Moo Lee nabs it midair and tosses it out the window. So creative. The ending goes full Rambo--an unbelievable amount of carnage and destruction in the jungle, with wall-to-wall shots of stuntmen nearly dying. Might be the best scene of its kind. An alright movie with an astonishing climax.


Iron Angels 3 (Teresa Woo & Stanley Tong, 1989)

Oh, great, another adventure in a foreign country. Let’s see what Thai stereotypes there are. Tong is here as action director but gets co-director credit, unlike whoever directed the action in the first two. I have to believe it wasn’t Woo herself, because if she had, no one would ever think to replace her. The choreography is slicker and more polished in this one, with one particular fight in a mansion that might be Moon Lee's finest hour. The movie continues its slide away from the Girls with Guns subgenre. It’s almost entirely focussed on Alex Fong, with Moon Lee sidelined for much of the film and Elain Lui absent entirely. Vietnamese terrorists in Thailand bring out the Angels once again. The terrorists have hired assassins from Japan and America, so we get the trifecta of villainous Hong Kong movie ethnicities: the Japanese, the Vietnamese, and the Americans. But the ultimate villain revealed behind all of it? Ghaddafi. He’s played by an Asian guy and he spends most of his screen time verbally and physically assaulting his black generals for no real reason. And the movie ends with the heroes flying around on machine-gun-mounted jetpacks, gunning down baddies in black suits. Like the others, it's an incoherent plot mixed with superb action.

Just remembered that the German blu ray industry is moving forward with more Hong Kong blu rays, so I jumped in to order City on Fire. I restrained myself from getting Yes, Madam!, since that's on the way from Eureka (and 88Films, I guess?), but I noticed they have another batch up for pre-order. Not relevant after the 88Films set are the three Tiger Cage films, all sold in separate boxes, and someone mentioned A Better Tomorrow II coming. But also listed was The Inspector Wears Skirts, which surprised me more than a little. All these releases have multiple covers (you have to buy the cover you want, basically), but this one had this incredibly strange design choice on it:



I just don't know what to make of it. Was this how the film was promoted in Germany?