I have a classic one for you today. Golden Queen´s Commando is a 1982 Taiwanese action movie directed by Yen-Ping Chu, prolific director known for this movie, its companion piece titled Pink Force Commando (1982), Fantasy Mission Force (1983) and several other entries in the genre. It was co-written by the infamous Godfrey Ho, who did movies such as Undefeatable (1993), Honor and Glory (1993), Princess Madam (1989), Lethal Panther (1990), Angel´s Mission (1989) and the previously reviewed Angels Enforcers (1989).
Like a lot of these asian action movies Queen´s Commando is known by several alternate titles such as Hong fen bing tuan, Queen´s of the Pink Commando, Seven Black Heroines, Amazon´s Commandos and Jackie Chan´s Crime Force (it has nothing to do with Jackie Chan). Also, most copies online have a terrible picture quality, so don't expect HD versions of this one.
At its core, it's a rag-tag movie about a bunch of women in a deadly secret mission, think female Dirty Dozen, Guns of Navarone or any other movie with that storyline but the execution sets this one apart.
It could be best described as four or five movies in one, the ultimate genre pastiche, particularly in the action woman category. It begins as a character roll call (that in itself encompasses many genres), it turns into a women in prison movie, then into a war film, a western and finally into a (wo)men in a mission movie, it's also a comedy, an action film and a seedy grindhouse movie.
The roll call goes as follows:
1- Black Fox
The leader of the group, played by Brigitte Lin (Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, The Bride with White Hair, Dragon Inn, The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains, Fantasy Mission Force), this eyepatched assassin gets herself thrown in jail in order to recruit the rest of the warrior girls, who aren't surprised to see her there because of her reputation.
2- Amazon
Played by Chun-Chun Hsu (Pink Force Commando), she is a fur bikini wearing strongwoman who murders enemies with her hatchet and bare hands. The muscle of the group, gifted with great strength and a ferocious attitude. She murders her opponent during a Mongolian wrestling match and is jailed because of it. Being Mongolian and an expert warrior and wrestler she reminds me of the real life princess Khutulun to some extent.
3- Black Fox
Played by Hui-Shan Yang (Phoenix the Raider, New Pilgrims to the West, and the previously reviewed films Woman Revenger and Deadly Silver Angels), she is a talented gunslinger carrying a black bible and a trickster who murders a man after winning against him in a card game, possibly by cheating.
4-Brandy
Played by Hao-Yi Liu (Pink Force Commando, Shaolin Chastity Kung Fu), she is a drunken master, a trope that began with the popular 1978 film of the same name, which means that she's a fantastic martial artist but only when she is drunk, as her body becomes more fluid and loose in that state. She is introduced in a reenactment of a scene in Rio Bravo, she gets abused and harassed by some drunk military guy but once she gets her hands on some alcohol she kicks his ass, cuts off his hand, slashes some other soldier´s face and then beheads another military guy.
5-Quick Silver
Played by Hsueh-Fen Peng (Pink Force Commando), Quick is a young thief who is caught stealing a great amount of money from the french consulate. She even snatches a watch from the guards on the way to her cell.
6-Sugar
Played by Joyce H. Cheng (Pink Force Commando, Golden Doll, The Cabbie, Country of beauties), she is an ambitious prostitute who always asks for more money, when a guy doesn't want to pay she stabs him in the back. She's obviously taken to jail because of it.
7-Dynamite
Played by the prominent Sally Yeh (Peking Opera Blues, I Love Maria, The Killer, Pink Force Commando), she is a bomb expert who asks for her piece of a presumed robbery she helped a gangster with, when the gangster doesn't wish to give her the money, she blows them up.
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| Cool girls dont look at explosions. |
Actually, not only does the film have alternate titles but it also has a few different cuts, the fullest version is the original Mandarin version as far as I can tell, it opens up with the introduction of Black Cat. The version titled Jackie Chan´s Crime Force opens with soldiers escorting a prisoner and then changes into the Mongolian wrestling scene with the Amazon lady. The Mandarin version is 91 minutes, while the Crime Force cut is 86 minutes.
I can't recommend the original version because the subtitles are hard to read but you are gonna have to put up with the typically dreadful dubbing these movies have in the english version, it doesn't really ruin the fun but it's still something to consider.
The girls are taken to prison, where they meet each other and engage in different shenanigans like smuggling cigarettes into the prison, stealing from inmates and finally having a food fight that gets them locked together for starting it. It was all planned by Black Fox who recruits the girls in order to put their special skills to good use: a suicide mission that involves destroying a chemical lab.
Using their special skills to beat up the guards and wear their uniforms, the gals escape the facilities by horse and they are attacked by some paramilitar group and taken to their camp, where they engage in more cheeky tests, which they beat in ingenious ways.
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| Brandy humiliates some warrior men. |
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| Skilled knife-thrower |
After the girls leave the group, the independent guerrilla is attacked by enemy soldiers and they defeat everyone but the leader, who seeks the aid of the Golden Queen ́s Commando. They realize that one of them is a traitor, Black Fox can't bring herself to eliminate the vain Sugar, so Black Cat takes a shot at it, literally.
The girls then face off against the mounted enemies in an extended action sequence that steals the music piece Ecstasy of Gold from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Brandy is shot down right after the battle ends. After the funeral, they move on to the chemical lab section of the movie. They enter a secret facility and defeat more bad guys, by the end of the movie, none of them survive. Making it one of the few movies of it´s kind where the suicide mission actually lives up to the name.
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| The spit of victory. |
The film succeeds at presenting nonstop action set-pieces filled with charisma and ingenuity, not only do we see a lot of shootouts and fights (which are very dynamic and stimulating) but they are also executed with tons of personality, making the characters react according to their characterization and employ their special skills while battling, something a lot of the other movies in the subgenre forget about altogether since often the girls in these groups are kind of interchangeable.
The quick shifts in tone and the disjointed structure that incorporates different sections with a completely dissimilar objective and setting actually work really well here. In any other movie of this kind, these would be deviations that are there to fill time because Joseph Lai had another movie he added footage to in order to make it more marketable, but here the eclectic sections set up one inventive set-piece after another, the film develops swiftly and with ease, always in constant movement and focusing on astounding spectacle, mini-vignettes that charm you with their simple creativity.
Endlessly entertaining, Golden Queen´s Commando is one of the high points of the dirty, ultra low budget, asian action flick field, offering amazing fights and gunplay, sort of a messy story overall but it's all in service of pacing, rhythm and potent images. Totally check it out if you are even slightly interested.
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