Monday, October 4, 2010

Lethal Panther (1990. HONG KONG)

(ALSO KNOWN AS DEADLY CHINA DOLLS)

Cut and Paste Master Extraordinaire Godfrey Ho, famous for taking unfinished films, shooting ten minutes of new footage, and editing the whole thing together and releasing it as "NINJA VERSUS SOMETHING OR OTHER" tries his hand at the Girls with Guns craze that was sweeping Hong Kong in the mid-nineties.

As per usual, he delivers a sleazy by the numbers product that goes the extra mile to deliver the goods.

To my eyes, this seems like a straight up original job without any extra footage, but I could be wrong. The final product is still as disjointed as ever, and it deals with two assassins, a police woman and...some other girl...blowing away anyone in a suit and tie. They hate people in suits because one of them killed an entire family of bears.

To be honest, the subtitle on my copy kept hiding right under the screen, so the plot wasn't much of a concern. I had to keep myself interested by the constant barrage of uninspired gunfire, the full frontal nudity, and the non-acting gweilos. The major problem with the film is that most of the action is pretty rote: Close up of gun firing, close up of person being hit, cut to person rolling out of the way.

I actually got *gasped* bored about thirty minutes in.

This is trash ladies and gents. The girls look pretty. The violence is violent. The story is inconsequential. It does nothing new with the genre, in fact, it's fairly happy with flat out ripping scenes off. Hey look! The assassination scene for A BETTER TOMORROW!

Was that Carpenter's Halloween theme song I just heard?

And then the movie just ends.

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