Hong Kong, poor Hong Kong! When not overrun with midgets shooting acid from their goiters or gangsters shedding blood in a most heroic fashion, the (swinging) city's peace and quiet is disturbed by evil masterminds like the Temptress of a Thousand Faces (Pat Ting Hung). As her name suggests, she is a master of disguise, using those magical latex masks we know and love from a lot of movies to good effect.
As far as evil masterminds go, Tempie's one of the less intimidating ones - she's a big time jewel thief without a proclivity for bloodshed, so the non-jewel-possessing part of the world is safe from her plans.
Her biggest ally is in fact the Hong Kong police itself, here mostly present through The Detective, an older guy who is always barking at his underlings how incompetent they are without ever showing the slightest trace of competence himself, Porn Cop (so called because the film never bothers to give him a name and he has trouble discerning between porn and reality) and our heroine, Chi Ying (Tina Fei Chin).
All would be swell for the Temptress, if she wasn't crushing on a reporter named Yu Ta (Liang Chen), who - what are the odds! - is also the boyfriend of Chi Ying.
What's an evil woman to do when she's in love with another woman's boyfriend? Well, why not start with kidnapping the guy's cop-girlfriend to a) strip her down to her underwear and tie her up nicely and b) tell her that you are not that evil - after all, you are robbing rich people, who are all evil themselves and when you were still poor, nobody helped you; also, men are evil. and c) torture her by spinning her around really fast in something reminding me of a shower cubicle; afterwards torture her some more with electro shocks.
Surprisingly enough, Chi Ying continues her hunt for the Temptress afterwards, which soon leads to another kidnapping. But this time, the Temptress disguises herself as the policewoman to rob some more jewels (really, she has to pay off the cost of her lair) and discredit her enemy.
That goes rather well, what with every copper in town as stupid as one of those damn flies that tries to drown itself in a bowl of soup again and again.
Chi Ying is not willing to give up though, and uses the hypnotic powers of leg rubbing to escape from the watchful eyes of Porn Cop. She's caught again soon enough, but not before she's had a bout of sweet sweet love-making with Yu Ta.
It must have been very very sweet love-making indeed, since the reporter is now absolutely convinced that Chi Ying is not the Temptress. He starts the woman's rehabilitation at once by putting on drag (and hot damn, that's a sight that will sink into my nightmares) and robbing some jewels. He leaves the Temptress' card at the scene of the crime, leaving the Detective not much choice than to let Chi Ying go free.
Alas, she doesn't even have the chance to go and thank her man - the henchmen of the Temptress (some of course in the guise of blindmen) grab her again!
After dressing Chi Ying down to her underwear and installing a TV tuned to the Yu Ta bedroom channel, Tempie (the tramp!) again dresses up as the cop and has some fun with Yu Ta - who is of course oblivious to the fact his girlfriend now has a different body below her face.
The part with the TV is a mistake. A very pissed off Chi Ying punches and shoots (while still in her underwear, obviously) through a whole lot of henchmen and goes off to rescue her men.
As you might probably have guessed, this Shaw Brothers epic is one of the studio's experiments with the Eurospy formula, spicing things up with Diabolik-like supervillaindom and as much sleaze as it could get away with. Which, in 1969, was quite a lot, as long as nobody got too naked.
Temptress (directed by the South Korean Chang-hwa Jeong, a typical Shaw house style director without much of a distinctive voice, but the sure hand of an experienced craftsman) pushes all the right buttons of the genre: the cheap but cool sets, the sometimes outrageous outfits (Tempie's got a thing for a wide variety of henchpeople uniforms), the highly dubious plot and so on and so on.
There's enough action to keep everything moving all the time. As usual in this genre, the fight choreography is nothing to write home about, but Tina Fei Chin does much of her fighting herself while dressed in mini-skirts, high heels and wearing gravity-defying big 60s hair, so I'll give her a pass for the effort alone.
Really if this film does not sound fun for you, there's not much I can do - it's probably the perfect Shaw Brothers not-Eurospy film with all the problems and virtues this title brings with it.
(A warning to sensitive people: there is a Wong Jing-like rape "joke" at the end that could make you a little mad. Personally, I am so desensitized that a scene in which Porn cop and another cop are grabbing two of Tempie's harem henchwomen to "have their fun" and the rest of the police and the henchwomen are laughing at those whacky comedy cops does hardly even register anymore.)
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4 comments:
Great review! This one's a big favorite of mine. David over at Teleport City, after reading my review of it, hipped me to the fact that it was a nearly scene-for-scene, gender-reversed remake of Andre Hunebelle’s first Fantomas movie from 1964.
Thank you! After trying to watch another dreary thing by the Hausu guy I needed something non-depressing. This fit the bill perfectly.
The Fantomas thing is fascinating. I'll just have to watch it, I'm afraid.
This sounds like fun, and I've been watching a string of depressing things too. Perhaps I will check it out. You can't go all wrong with high-heel, mini-skirt, big-hair fu.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what we choose to watch and how it desensitizes us. Something always comes along and surprises me, though. I try to vary my selection enough that I don't get numb to any one thing.
Yes, it's a great medicine against film that put one into a bad mood.
Yeah, I'm not really getting too numb, either, or I wouldn't even have registered the scene (that really came out of nowhere).
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