GOLDEN QUEENS COMMANDO (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This Hong Kong genre-mashup was one of the first teamups of director Chu Yen-Ping with writer-producer Geoffrey Ho, as well as one of the first "girls with guns" flicks from HK. Like most of the Ho-films, QUEENS is erratic in plot and confused in its characterization, not least because it supposedly takes place in World War Two even though all the characters (who aren't in military uniforms) have eighties hair and clothes.

Black Fox (Brigitte Lin) brings together a dirty half-dozen of criminal specialists, all women, whom she finds in a Manchurian women's prison. This works out well because Fox wants the specialists to help her destroy a weapons plant in that country, and it's not beyond doubt that Fox somehow gets all of the other women set up for jail just so Fox can recruit them. 

Like the original Dirty Dozen, the specialists only reluctantly join the team, though by the climax the ladies become more bonded than the male soldiers did. Most of the women have mundane talents-- expertise with guns or explosives-- but there's one character, Brandy (Hao-Yi Liu), who can perform various katana-stunts-- but only when she's drunk. But as if the script doesn't want to play her up too much, her stunts aren't wild enough to verge into the realm of the uncanny.

Similarly, there's only one other potential metaphenomenal content of QUEENS. During the nearly aimless progress of the commandos toward their target, they come across people dressed up like ghosts. Are they crazy priests, or bandits? The phony ghosts appear so briefly that I can't even consider them part of the main narrative.

Some of the music is also derivative of the eighties, with a few strains stolen from John Williams' "Raiders" theme. However, the main aesthetic influence (if one could call it that) is clearly Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, with many swipes from Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold."

Given that it's such a wild devil-may-care adventure, I'm surprised that the stunts and fight-scenes are pretty mediocre for an eighties HK flick.