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Tomb Raider

Tomb Raiders (Review)

Tomb Raiders

aka Ba hai hong ying aka Avenging Quartet

1992
Starring
Cynthia Khan (Cynthia Luster) as Lisa
Yukari Oshima as Shoko
Moon Lee as Moon Lee
Michiko Nishiwaki as The Sister-in-law

This is called Tomb Raiders, despite the complete lack of tombs, lack of raiding, and lack of Lara Croft or Angelina Jolie. Any of those things would have helped this movie. In fact, Tomb Raiders is just a title repackage, as this was released under the name Avenging Quartet before, though that name is also misleading, as the women are not on the same side, and only two of them can be counted as avenging anything. At least they didn’t go with another Charlie’s Angels ripoff title, like many other movies some of these girls starred in.


Clan of Amazons

Clan of Amazons (Review)

Clan of Amazons

aka Xiu hua da dao

1978
Lau Wing as Lu Xiaofeng
Ling Yun as Jin Juiling
Yueh Hua as Hua Manlou
Ching Li as Xue Bing
Shih Szu as Jiang Qingxia, 3rd Sister
Cheung Ying as Serpent

This Shaw Brother’s epic features no Amazons, instead you have red shoed women, police inspectors, blind kung fu, sword fu, needle fu, embroidery fu, burning boat fu, and prostitutes getting paid to look out a window.

Naked Weapon

Naked Weapon (Review)

Naked Weapon

aka Chek law dak gung

2002
Starring
Maggie Q as Charlene Ching
Anya Wu as Katherine
Almen Wong Pui-Ha as Madam M
Daniel Wu as Jack Chen

As a big fan of Naked Killer and similar fare, I was initially thrilled when it was announced that they would be remaking it, and that Wong Jing would be involved. Then it was announced it would instead be a “Naked Killer“-type movie, and I began to get a little worried. This formula is hard to do wrong, though, and Jing has been doing it for decades. OR so I thought. Instead, what could have easily been a great movie instead became a shining example of everything WRONG with Hong Kong cinema these days and explains why they are being surpassed by Korea and other places. Some of the many many problems will be addressed when they come up and others at the end.


Catch the Heat

Catch the Heat


1987
Starring
Tiana Alexandra as Checkers Goldberg
Rod Steiger as Jason Hannibal
David Dukes as Waldo Tarr
Can you Catch the Heat? Not really, the heat is more like the warmth you feel if you sit down where someone was just sitting, not flaming hot heat as the title suggests. Maybe Catch the Lukewarmness should have been the movie’s title. Or Generic 80’s Action Film #2323535 as that is an accurate description. The only thing going for it is Tiana Alexandra is hot but she seemed to vanish after this film, so this is her Citizen Kane sadly enough.

Tiana Alexandra Catch the Heat
Catch the Heat

Protege De La Rose Noire

Protege De La Rose Noire (Review)

Protege De La Rose Noire

aka Gin chap hak mooi gwai

2004
Starring
Gillian Chung as Gillian Lo
Charlene Choi as Charlene
Ekin Cheng as Jim Lo/J-Lo
Teresa Mo as Rose
Directed by Donnie Yen and Chun-Chun Wong

The TWINS! Hong Kong pop stars Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi star in their second vehicle movie, partially directed by Donnie Yen. It’s campy eye candy.

High School Ghosthustlers

High School Ghosthustlers (Review)

High School Ghosthustlers


2000
Starring
Senna Matsuda as Kyoko
Yuka Nakamori as Emi
Yuko Kitamura as Mayu
Directed by Yoshinori Nishikiori


High School Girls, Ghosts, penis monsters, live action hentai, Japan, if you like that stuff, here is a movie containing it. It’s campy trash, but it’s somewhat fun. And with three Japanese Models as main characters, it has plenty of eye candy to cover the boring stretches. After a slow opening, quickly interswitched with a high school girl jumping to her death, and then Kyoko is bungee jumping while Mayu and Emi sit talking. They are members of the Supernatural Phenomenon Research Club at their school. Their club is sponsored by Mr Shimada, who tells Emi, Kyoko, and Mayu that people this was part of a series of suicides and people are talking about the school being cursed, and he wants the girls to investigate. Of the girls, Kyoko is most interested in supernatural phenomenon because she wishes to see her dead grandmother again. Emi is the daughter of some sort of monk that performs exorcisms, and has some psychic powers. Mayu is basically there to fall down and ghosts to catch, and uses a ghost detector that looks like a toy gun. But the brave Mr. Shimada now has three high school girls wandering around an empty high school at midnight knowing that many high school girls have recently killed themselves. Around 12:30, they hear piano music, which turns out to be the weird janitor. As Kyoko and Emi go to the bathroom, Mayu gets attacked by scissors which cut off part of her clothes (oh, the horror :P). It is, naturally, the weird janitor, and Kyoko and Emi show up to help, and the Janitor tries to hypnotize Kyoko to kill herself, but she just beats the crap out of him. And he was responsible for the other girls’ deaths, so now the trio are heroines.