Dirty Pair (1985) Retrospective - Episode 5: The Heartbeat of Criados

This episode opens with Kei listening to music but this annoys Yuri, who can't concentrate on her reading and has a small fight with her partner and friend, ending up with Kei hurting her nose when the zero gravity mode is deactivated. Kei then reveals that he has a date with a boy younger than her at Planet Antares, where they are heading in their rented spaceship. 

They are intercepted by a huge unknown thing that causes turbulence and flashes. The event disturbs the girls who land safely at a space station. Kei gets told she can't leave the station, ruining her plans and getting upset about it. The girls identify themselves and manage to enter the city. 

Kei takes a shower while Yuri walks around the streets and gets sudden visions, flashbacks to the incident and a strange voice cries: "Die!"

The redhead is preparing for her date but something attacks her and she shoots it, causing a commotion. A bunch of ships also start attacking the city, specifically Yuri. Kei then shoots a ghastly device and chases it throughout the city, in her undergarments no less, in fact, she's in her underwear throughout half of the episode. Yuri also faces off against some machines.

Yuri saves Kei and both of them leave the planet and engage in a space fight against the ships that are following them, Yuri theorizes that they are trying to capture them alive for unknown reasons. They are then taken to a disposal station for nuclear waste, the girls then evacuate the ship in their space suits and they are swiftly attacked by the mechanical enemies surrounding them.

They realize that the creator of the disposal station was mad scientist named Criados who designed the place like a technological nightmare, a doom trap created to take revenge on the Dirty Pair since the gals defeated him in a previous case. A countdown begins and the Lovely Angels then are forced to escape the traps set there by the deceased madman.

Their little companion robot, Nanmo, gives them its memory disk. They use the robot's self-destruct feature in order to blow up the center of the station and get rid of the AI that controlled the place. After that, Yuri is left alone in the rubbles by Kei, who promptly flees to get to her previously mentioned date. 

The mystery unfolds in quite an engaging manner, you never really get a true sense of what's going on and the investigation actually becomes rewarding because of how unpredictable it is. The animation is again top notch and the actual designs and details of the ships and the giant fortress in this episode are some of the best in the series. 

It's an outlier in the sense that it sets the comedy and the fights aside in service of the procedural and astounding vehicle and mechanical designs but it works even despite some small contrivances that are inevitable because of the quick nature of the format. Another great episode overall.

Woman Revenger (1981) Review

A gritty and sometimes goofy Taiwanese martial arts revenge flick. As usual with these movies it has more than one title, one of these being The Nude Body Case in Tokyo but it was originally titled Woman Type Revenge. 

It was directed by Tsai Yang-Ming, who is responsible for other movies that could fit the blog such as Phoenix the Raider (1982), The Greatest Plot (1977) and Dragon Gate (1975). It stars the beautiful and skilled Yang Hui-shan, who has experience in the genre as she debuted in Five Pretty Young Ladies (1975) and also starred in the previously reviewed Deadly Silver Angels (1984) but she has many more credits, appearing in classics of action chick flicks like the fantastic Golden Queen's Commando (1982), The Country of Beauties (1981) and The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983). In 1987 Yang left the film industry to work on her glass art but movies like this one keep her cinematic legacy alive. 

The film revolves around Lingling, a kung fu lady and dance teacher who learns of the death of her friend and travels to Japan, to find her friend's sister (Meifeng) since she has been kidnapped by evil drug lords who force her into prostitution. We see Lingling investigating the whereabouts of Meifeng and saving her from the bad guys.

I will say that this is a very good movie overall. It's fast paced and goes by very quick, the choreography is quite solid and while the story is trite the script and the performances manage to make the characters likable and the plot keeps building up to a last third that's very exciting. The cinematography is good, they make splendid use of widescreen with its large framing and the shots are carefully composed, they achieve a beautiful look, particularly during the snow scene near the end. 

However, there are also some rather silly moments. Like when the kidnappers are handling some girls and it's just two guys (without weapons) pushing a bunch of girls around who could easily run or fight them. I know they aren't fighters and that they are probably stuck there anyways but it does seem too preposterous to suspend your disbelief. There's also a funny sumo scene that has Rocky music playing over it. I will say the main heroine doesn't even get an eye-patch until an hour into the movie, so the poster lies a little bit but her attire and her look are very iconic during these last sequences.

The second half is a super energetic and well directed stretch, ending in some of the best set-pieces in Taiwanese action cinema from the eighties. The appearance of the girls is pretty memorable and the battles are constant. Overall, I can recommend it to anyone looking for a neat little revenge picture. It doesn't offer much new but it's mostly entertaining.