| Wow, this is the kind of movie you expect your mind to make up while you’re sleeping after a Shaw movies marathon explosion. This is pretty much what I imagine a Shaw Bros. exhibition show to be - various stars in various staged scenarios and colorful costumes demonstrating how they can kick butt… except at this point there is nothing they need to prove.
A martial arts school, with Kara Hui as the very “Americanized” boss, has only 5 rag-tag students and attempts all sorts of homemade PR events all over Hong Kong to get more students interested in attending. Eventually, they have to settle for the kind of students no one really wants - whores. But, alas, the whores also have their night jobs, and their pimp is none too pleased that they are spending so much time learning martial arts and how to protect their breasts from their johns’ very busy hands. So the pimps beat up the whores (surprise) and keep them locked up in the whorehouse - er, I mean, nightclub - to prevent them from going to class. The martial arts school is so enraged at this injustice that they set up a fashionable trap in a disco and, later on, attack the bad guys with kung fu while riding BMX bikes. When Lady Boss is kidnapped by the bad guys, the school visits one of the bad guy’s nightclubs, armed with cameras as their weapons (the flash is blinding, you see). It turns out that the bad guys are holding her hostage at a gym and there, stylishly dressed and striking studly poses, they wait for the school to show up. Now, this is the creamy center of the film - this is the exhibition OF the exhibition, where Gordon Liu reprises his well-known role as a monk and Ching Siu-Tung shows off his monkey fist, and there are numerous duels between the good and bad guys.
There are some great fight scenes peppered throughout the film, but you really have to sit through some WTF moments to get to them. You get to see some of the more famous and favorite Shaw stars get decked out and let their hair down (except Gordon Liu), kind of like prom night when you see your friends all dressed up and you’re all, “I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight… never seen you shine so bright. Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm.” |