THE CHEWER COLUMN #15

We bring you Part 2 of Dragon Ma’s look at the female warrior in Hong Kong movies.  Enjoy!

Art of the Female Warrior in Hong Kong Movies -- Part 2

By Nathan Wishart (Dragon Ma)

Member Since 5/18/02

Born 5/20/79

By the early '80's nearly all the female kung-fu stars had either retired or faded into obscurity.  Sammo was a major force in the industry and in 1985 he decided to produce a buddy action-movie.  Originally having two male leads, Sammo changed his mind after seeing a young woman named Cynthia Rothrock in an open audition for another movie.  Ms. Rothrock was the world champion in forms and held five black belts competing in the men's division.  He offered her the role of "Carrie" in the film Yes Madam.  Her co-star was a young woman named Michelle Khan (also known as Michelle Yeoh), a former "Miss Malaysia" who already had one film on her resume as well as some commercials.  Ms. Khan chose to make Yes Madam after being offered a number of other films.  Michelle had become fascinated by the stuntmen in her previous movie Owl and Dumbo.  Her role in Yes Madam allowed her to train with those stuntmen in a gruelling fitness regimen to prepare her for the film.  Michelle was up for it and the result was a box office smash, launching both Michelle Khan and Cynthia Rothrock into stardom.

The piece de resistance of this movie was a climactic brawl inside the villain’s mansion.  No man is left unscathed.  The stuntmen truly earn their pay here.  Cynthia gets to fight Dick Wei, perennial heavy of Hong Kong movies and a man known for not holding back when it comes to fight scenes.  This made him a good match for Cynthia, seeing as she herself had a reputation for hitting the stuntmen particularly hard.  She came from a martial arts background and these were Hong Kong stuntmen we’re talking about, not exactly pushovers.  There was one rumour that Cynthia had her jaw broken during that fight scene, she’s said herself that she got hit so hard once that blood starting pouring.

Speaking of Cynthia, she is a curious oddity in the Hong Kong film world.  Skills aside, she’s the only Caucasian to actually get top billing beside her Asian counterparts.  Most gwailos (a term for white people in Hong Kong) are there just to get their asses handed to them by the Chinese hero.  Although Cynthia’s tenure in Hong Kong was brief (she only made 12 Hong Kong films) she’s still the only Caucasian to achieve that level of status before she moved back to the US to make straight-to-video movies.

Michelle, of course, is one of the most well-known female action stars in the world.  Since her fantastic physical performance in Yes Madam, Michelle has gone from strength to strength.  Her role in Heroic Trio (I don’t think she’s ever been sexier than in that film, if you disagree, you’re dead from the waist down); Magnificent Warriors proved she was more than capable; her comeback in Police Story 3 after retiring proved again she could kick some serious ass.

Although Yes Madam provided the inspiration for the genre now known as “Girls with Guns”, the movie that busted it wide open was a film called Angel.  Taking the formula of Charlie’s Angel’s, it’s given the Hong Kong treatment, we got a ton of action, minimal plot and one kick-ass film.  It made stars out of its two lead actresses Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima.  There was a third woman named Elaine Lui who went on to make a name for herself in action films but the movie really belongs to Moon and Yukari.

Moon Lee is a study in both cuteness and sheer toughness.  There’s a quote which sums her up perfectly:  “She is by measures a sweetie pie and tough as an incoming missile”.  You’d be mistaken for thinking someone looking this adorable, could kick so much ass.  She is and she does.  Her fight scene at the end of Angel proves that.  It’s brutal.

Yukari Oshima, on the other hand, is all business.  A graduate of the “fuck you and die” school of badass, Yukari in her most well known roles plays the serious ass-kicker perfectly.  Like Cynthia Rothrock, she has a background in martial arts, mainly Goju-Ryu karate and some other traditional weapons forms she’s picked up along the way.  She attended the Sonny Chiba stunt school for a year. She then went out to make a name for herself.  How I wish Tarantino had cast Yukari as O-Ren, she would’ve owned that role more than Lucy Liu ever did.

I mention these two because they’ve created the two most enduring images for the genre, and they both inspired and pushed the genre forward along the way, until it faded.  They were almost like a tag team. Whenever these two made a film together you knew you were in good hands.  The films within the “Girls with Guns” genre, were, for the most part, made on the cheap and sold to an international market.  There were gems in the midst though. Films like Angel Terminators 2, Dreaming the Reality and Killer Angels all had fairly entertaining plots, if anything you were at least guaranteed great action.

It wasn’t long before this small but fairly interesting genre began to snowball.  More and more movies were being turned out and they provided a showcase for actresses to showcase their skills onscreen. Among the actresses who emerged during this time were Michiko Nishiwaki, Cynthia Khan, Joyce Godenzi and Kara Hui Ying Hong, who got her start in Shaw Bros. films, and got her nickname “Auntie” from the movie My Young Auntie.  This is a damn fine kung-fu movie and effortlessly moved this little genre forward.  Michiko started out in her home country of Japan as a bodybuilder.  She won three championships before opening three female fitness clubs.  Her Hong Kong debut was spectacular even if it was just a cameo.  The moment she drops her kimono to display her impressive physique, it’s almost like dropping the shackles of the society in which she was raised.  Michiko was seemingly cast into the role of femme fatale, a role in which she excelled in films like In the Line of Duty 3 and Princess Madam.

Cynthia Khan never really escaped the role that made her famous, that of Madam Yeung in In the Line of Duty.  She knocked it out of the park with that role, her dance background giving her fight scenes a degree of flexibility and proving she could hold her own.  Not bad, considering she was cast as a replacement for Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Khan.  After In the Line of Duty 4 though, the series began to get stale with the occasional good action sequence but not much else.  Cynthia’s career never really took off outside of the In the Line of Duty series, the budgets seemingly got smaller and smaller for her films.

Joyce Godenzi is one of those “what if…” scenario’s  --  what if she had done more films?  The only two major movies on her resume are She Shoots Straight and License to Steal.  She also acted in Eastern Condors but she wasn’t the star.  She proved she could handle action provided by her husband Sammo Hung, but audiences didn’t take to her.  It’s been speculated that it was because she was of Australian heritage (her father) and not of true Chinese descent.  Whether or not this is true has no bearing on her abilities which were impressive, as showcased in License to Steal.  I actually prefer her to Michelle Yeoh.

By the early ‘90’s, the genre had stagnated.  Interest was no longer there, so actresses like Yukari Oshima moved to the Philippines to continue working even though the films were never seen outside of that country.  Other actresses merely retired.

In 2000, Ang Lee cast three generations of Hong Kong female warriors in his film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon – Cheng Pei-Pei, Michelle Yeoh and, the third, Zhang Ziyi, who was unknown at the time but acquitted herself admirably.  It was a treat to see Cheng Pei-Pei in action again after such a long time and she proved she could still handle herself.  It was a subtle nod to not just King Hu but also to the female warrior down through the history of Hong Kong film.

Every now and then there’s a spark of interest but not enough to ignite the flame.  It’s like kung-fu movies that way.  Corey Yuen tried it in So Close and it was followed by Naked Weapon to not so good effect.

In retrospect, Hong Kong has always had a fondness for females in action roles.  It may not have been that way in real life, but I guess that’s the way things go.  Hong Kong was leagues ahead of Hollywood in terms of female, action role-models and still is in some aspects.  I’ll always admire the attitude in those women to get the job done.  There was no posturing or “look how tough I am” in their attitude.  They had nothing to prove because they already knew they could kick your ass.  Why boast?

Although the genre is for all intents and purposes dead in the water, it still maintains an influence in countries outside Hong Kong, including Japan, Korea and finally the US where shows like Alias and Buffy maintain a strong female character and finally in Kill Bill.

For those who wish to read more about this genre, I suggest you go to http://www.brns.com/femalewarr/pages/contents.html   This site has some wonderful essays on the subject.