Latest news with #GirlsWithGuns
South China Morning Post
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Girls with Guns: a Hong Kong cinema staple of a bygone era
The Hong Kong film industry's output in the 1980s and 90s was kinetic, breathtaking, bursting with innovation and energy. Films of the era insisted on packing everything possible into the run time, as if they knew something we didn't: the city's economy was booming and filmmakers enjoyed the kind of artistic freedom and backing that was, like the period itself, never going to last forever. A child is dangled from a moving car while Moon Lee Choi-fung clings to the bonnet in 1990's Fatal Termination. Photo: Golden Sun Films One of Hong Kong's most memorable cinema fads of the era became known as Girls with Guns and, like all the best movies from Hong Kong, gave viewers exactly what the name implied: women armed to the teeth, who could wreak just as much havoc with their bare hands. Some of the genre's stars are now recognised globally, such as Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng and Maggie Cheung Man-yuk . Others, like Yukari Oshima and Jade Leung, are known mostly among aficionados, even if their films were as good or sometimes better than those of more popular stars. For a decade, these films provided their audience with some of the craziest movie experiences available anywhere, and the rise and fall of the genre, along with the reasons behind both, provide a glimpse into the workings of the wider industry at the time. The history of Hong Kong heroines predates the Girls with Guns craze, of course. From Cheng Pei-pei's iconic 1966 performance in King Hu Jinquan's Come Drink with Me to Angela Mao Ying's Golden Harvest kung fu films of the 70s, Hong Kong cinema embraced girl power long before Hollywood, too: Nora Miao Ke-hsiu appeared alongside Bruce Lee Jackie Chan and others, not as arm candy but as a serious presence. Josephine Siao Fong-fong's prolific career has proven her enduring appeal, and even into her 40s she remained a formidable presence, the proof of which can be found in Jet Li 's Fong Sai-yuk films of the early 90s. Moon Lee with the requisite firearm in Fatal Termination. Photo: Golden Sun Films Further precursors to Girls with Guns were early-80s Taiwanese action films. Many female protagonists' names may not ring a bell, but some of these films featured cinematic luminaries such as Cheng Pei-pei , who starred in 1982's Lunatic Frog Women, aka Lady Piranha, aka The Virgin Commandos (any one of which makes for a must-see title). Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia was the lead in 1982's Golden Queen's Commando, as well as its sequel, Pink Force Commando, released the same year. The year also saw the release of The Deadly Angels, a Taiwanese film whose title foreshadowed a staple Girls with Guns franchise in Hong Kong. Hong Kong cinema of the 80s never met a rule it wouldn't break, and the old aphorism of 'there's no reason to ever hit a woman' carried no weight in the industry's freewheeling heyday. Whether that violence was documentary or exploitative, there were many times a female character was punched or kicked and sent flying across a room or through a table, and that same woman would, in the best action-film tradition, stand up, dust herself off, and give it right back to her attacker, more often than not emerging bloodied but victorious. For their time, these scenes could even be seen as progressive. They helped define the cinematic potential for female characters and should be thought of as the predecessors to today's female action stars. The genre's films show little narrative variation. There are women. They have guns. They fight, and they shoot. Then they shoot and fight more. They break things. They break people. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they die. No one watches a Girls with Guns movie for the plot. Corey Yuen Kwai directed the film that started the Girls with Guns genre, Yes, Madam (1985). Photo: SCMP Archives What makes Girls with Guns so exciting are the breathtaking stunts, filmed in ways that assure the viewer they are seeing the actors, not stunt doubles, take very real risks. Even children weren't spared their share of death-defying stunts. A car chase in 1990's Fatal Termination, starring Moon Lee Choi-fung, infamously features a young girl dangling outside a moving car, a terrifying scene created by dangling an actual child outside a moving car. There was a steel beam and cables involved, but the asphalt and gravity were real. In the same sequence, Lee clings precariously to the bonnet of the car, with little evidence of any similar safety measures.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
This week in PostMag: Girls with Guns, a trip to Wanfenglin and the peak of Japanese luxury
Before she was an Oscar winner, Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng was flying through glass panels and landing kicks in cult Hong Kong action films, shot without doubles, rewrites or much in the way of safety precautions. Somehow I missed that part of her career until now. In our cover feature, Sean Tierney dives into the wild, improvisational heyday of late 1980s and early 90s Hong Kong action, when the industry's 'get it done' ethos collided with an era of boundless energy, in a genre aptly named Girls with Guns. The under-appreciated category is many things: kitsch, camp and groundbreaking. Sometimes grim, always unapologetic. The plot is loose, the dialogue questionable, but the thrill is real – women defying gravity, expectations and (probably) every rule in the insurance handbook. Needless to say, I know what I'm planning for our next family movie night. Elsewhere in the issue, we ask what luxury looks like when the shine is swapped for soul. In Tokyo, Gavin Yeung checks into the Palace Hotel's Jaxury suite, where a hinoki-wood tissue box – assembled without a single nail – feels more extravagant than a bottle of Dom Pérignon. It's all part of a government-backed initiative called Jaxury that tries, rather valiantly, to define what Japanese luxury really means. The result is a philosophy that favours intimacy over ostentation and the handmade over the high-gloss. It may be a tourism push dressed up in academic language, but even so, I find the premise compelling. Jaxury isn't just about aesthetics, it's a kind of manifesto for living: deliberate, detailed, quiet in all the right places. From Japan's lacquered restraint we ride to Guizhou's Wanfenglin, where Marco Ferrarese revs up his e-scooter through karst peaks and rice paddies. No roaring engine, no Instagram scrum, just the hum of an electric motor and the luxury of getting a little lost. It reminded me of a trip through Yunnan province in the summer of 2020, riding a rented scooter through provincial back roads with a feeling of freedom strangely out of step with China's closed borders at the time.
