Godfrey Ho: Lethal Panther

Hello and good day to you all. Yup the week is upon us and I decided to journey into Z-grade ninja/zombie/commando cut and paste director himself, Godfrey Ho. Why in the nine hells would I subject myself and you, the readers to this cringe making, live taking utter torment? Well after having to sit through Friday the 13^th remake, I was thinking perhaps my readers that make suggestions ARE EVIL and should be punished. Now for you gentle readers that don't want to rock the boat, make waves or create tiny tumors in my brain, I apologize for the week ahead.

Bullet blasting babe of brutality!!

Director Godfrey Ho (Clash of the Ninjas, Bionic Ninja, Ninja 8: Warriors of Fire, Ninja: Silent Assassin, Ninja Death Squad, Cobra vs. Ninja, Robo Vampire, Dressed to Fire, Born to Fight, Ninja Empire and Power Force) is best known for taking films that were not finished or could not get a release date and coming up with his own footage of a different story, doing some exposition to tie the two wildly different stories together with bad English dubbing. Today we look at a cinematic wonder about 3 CIA agents dealing with a counterfeiter when it all comes down to them having to take the law into their own hands. This is Lethal Panther a.k.a. Deadly China Dolls.

Hey, that's not Chow Yung Fat!

Our intro music sounds like I am attending a 1970's Olympic special. Half expected to see Cathy Lee Crosby to grace the screen. Leading this fight against crime is uzi totting former rebel turned hitman or hitwoman Eileen (Maria Jo of Zhong gui, Zai shi feng liu jie, Twisted Love, Searching for Love and Chu nu jiang)CIA Betty (Sibelle Hu of Your Smiling Face, My Lucky Stars, Top Squad, Crystal Hunt, Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead and Fatal Mission) and prostitute/assassin Amy (Yoko Miyamoto of Lethal Panther)

Betty slaps around a punk around and tell him to spill his guts about the nephew of crime boss extraordinaire, Albert (Lawrence Ng of The Underground Banker, A Chinese Torture Chamber Story, Deng Long, Zheng rong, Doctor Mack, Peace Hotel and New Tenant) But enough of plot and potential character development, time for a sex scene with full frontal! Yeah that is not a joke and we are only 5 minutes into this flick already. Only to get offed after getting off. Driving a Wakasashi into a guy's gut seemed a bit off but our girl gets cleaned up, rig dead guy's body with a bomb or maybe the squibs were too powdered and smokes all the dead guy's bodyguards.   Betty and CIA plan to deal with the counterfeiter Charles Wong with an undercover buy that gets so damn gun crazy it was a wonder if anything good came out of it. The shots fired forms will go on for a week easily.

I'm an extra!

Da boss' little girl is already for her big wedding day that ends in a bloodbath as Albert decides to have dear uncle Charles bumped off so he can take over and rule the underworld and each of the girls steps on the others' toes trying to get to the same objective.

Will they join forces and bring down Albert? Is Albert his actual name? Could this dubbing get worse?

There are elements of Le Femme Nikita and John Woo's The Killers but it is clumsy execution. That being said, a lot of the fight and gun scenes are actually shot well from different hand held, dolly and some tri-pod. That being said, I am pretty sure he lifted some Carpenter music from Halloween. No idea why but that is a m.o.he is known for. The choreography for the gun fights on the other hand feel like I am sitting through a Miami Vice episode. No one is covering each other, conserving rounds or even flanking properly so... typical action flick. I am no stranger to the Girls with Guns action genre that I believe Andy Sidaris managed quiet often but it is a bit over the top here. 

At least three sleazier than most sex scenes, decent Kung Fu and Wu Shu fights and more guns blazing than The Killers but the editing has made it confusing as hell. I got the 90 minute version but I doubt that 5 additional minutes cleared up all the plot holes.

Bad ass girl but grandma hair cut!?!

Savage Titles: Savage Sisters

Howdy all and welcome to Day 1 of Savage Titles. As I previously mentioned, the word savage does seem to crop up in quite a few exploitation movies and one of the titles is just that and not just any exploitation film but a women in prison film. Oh yes you know the week is off to a good start when you have Sid Haig making an appearance. So imagine a general being more of a war lord scheming to handle ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!.. out of his region and put in an off-shore bank account I imagine. Well not if Gloria Hendry has anything to say about it. This is Savage Sisters.

My man Rob Zombie can hook you up with a role!

Oh we are in safe hands with director Eddie Romero (The Ravagers, The Passionate Strangers, Brides of Blood, Black Mama White Mama, Beyond Atlantis and Teach Me to Love) as he tells us the slightly risque, possibly tawdry tale of women in prison, revolutionaries and General Balthazar (Leopoldo Salcedo of One More Chance, Bandolera, Vivian Volta, Happy Days Are Here Again, Burlesk Queen and Blood Run) needs to move on an armed caravan full of money and forms a very uneasy alliance with less than trustworthy Malavasi (Sid Haig of The Big Bird Cage, Black Mama White Mama, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Jackie Brown, House of 1000 Corpses, House of the Dead 2, The Devil's Rejects and Halloween) and his one-eyed willie er..um...I mean sidekick One Eye (Vic Diaz of Revenge of the Street Warrior, Crackdown, Strike Commando 2, Blackbelt II, Bloodfist, Fortunes of War and Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom) plan to execute the idea of the snatch and grab only to double cross the revolutionaries and keep that cool million for themselves. Meanwhile revolutionaries Jo Turner (Cheri Caffaro of Ginger, The Abductors, Girls Are for Loving, Too Hot to Handle and Extreme Ghostbusters) and Mai Ling (Rosanna Ortiz of Roulette, Bank Robbers, The Young Idols, Panic!, Savage!, El negro and Ransom) committed to the cause get captured before they can hook up with their comrades and are hoisted off to the prison.

Ernesto, I feel a round of exposition coming up.

Refusing to give up their male counterparts, the ladies have been given to Lynn (Gloria Hendry of Hell Up in Harlem, Live and Let Die,Black Caesar, Black Belt Jones, Seeds of Tragedy, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings and Lookin' Italian) Sgt. Jackson if you're nasty, to get the info out of them. Captain Morales (Eddie Garcia of Dirty Games, Free to Love, Kamlon, Get My Son Dead or Live, Malisya and Life Begins at 40) knows Jackson will get the girls to talk and he is well on the way to his promotion...little sidenote, his female colonel got a little BDSM on him, lashed him and treated like her sex puppet. Really wasn't expecting that.

Ms. Jackson, we need you to go undercover as a college girl nympho.

Jackson tells the girls to co-operate or they get rough. Like the power drill dildo... Yes I didn't make that up. We saw electrodes, clamps and no safety word in sight. Baltazar arrives at the prison with the remains of the revolutionaries and the banditos they worked with are still at large with the million. With the men dead on the ground, the girls' hearts sink but remain adamant. Jackson almost admires the girls' convictions but she has a job to do.

Billingsly (John Ashley of Hud, Beast of the Yellow Night, Apocalypse Now and The A-Team) a hustler for hire and fixer nearly is shot by Malavasi after showing off his stolen million and he also happens to be an on again and off again lover of Jackson's who tells her the girls might know how to get to Haig and the money. Billingsly sporting his Ron Jeremy mustache and groovin' pimp clothes leads the prison break, scoops up the girls and hightails it out of there not before they smoked close to 20 men. Will they get the money? Will Malavasi will get his just desserts?

Clearly not one for the kids, one of the first films having three female protagonists that can actually kick ass, take names and use men like Kleenex. I was expecting hosing down, torture and the like but we are actually spared all that and have a decent story, mild nudity and some screwy gunfights.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THAT MAN??!!!