LADY REPORTER [1989]

Lady Reporter (1989)
Directed by: Corey Yuen, Mang Hoi
Written by: Michael Swift, Sai-Shing Shum
Starring: Cynthia Rothrock, Elizabeth Lee, Mang Hoi, Siu-Ho Chin

AKA SHI JIE DA SHIA, BLONDE FURY, RIGHTING WRONGS 2: BLONDE FURY, ABOVE THE LAW 2: BLONDE FURY

HONG KONG

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY: 26th June, from EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

RUNNING TIME: 89 mins / 87 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

Cindy is an American FBI agent sent undercover in Hong Kong to crack a counterfeiting ring headed by editor of The Asian Post Ronny Dak, who’s been printing counterfeit money using the newspaper’s presses. She pretends to be a reporter as she investigating Dak’s crimes, but this pretense doesn’t last for very long as Cindy attracts the attention of the local cops, in particular an [unnamed] undercover policemen, while also being bothered by intrepid journalist Shorty and even her friend Judy Yu, whose father is the prosecuting lawyer in the counterfeiting case, and who soon gets kidnapped…

I was hoping that Eureka Entertainment would bring out more Cynthia Rothrock, as I’m really not that experienced with her work. Hell, I’ve never even seen the China O’ Brien movies. This shouldn’t be taken as me not particularly liking Rothrock. I could be risking my life here from the man himself by saying this, but I haven’t seen many Chuck Norris films either. Maybe when I retire I’ll have the time to watch everything that I want to. In any case, in terms of Rothrock Eureka have come to my rescue with Lady Reporter, which I’d always heard of under the name of Blonde Fury its export title – and the differences between the two versions are rather unusual. I opted to view the film in its entirety [the Blu Ray contains both versions] in its Hong Kong edit for this review, but did check out bits of the export cut later. This meant that I was often hearing Rothrock dubbed into Chinese, but hey? Back in 1888 Eureka released the pretty terrific Millionaire’s Express which featured Rothrock in her small but stunning debut film role, and more recently 88 Films released the pretty awesome Righting Wrongs which paired Rothrock with Yuen Baio, resulting in all the fantastic action that you might expect. So here’s the sole Hong Kong film in which she was top-billed; in fact it’s the only Hong Kong film where a Westerner was top-billed. It’s therefore quite an important movie in her career, even in the script by Sai-Shing Shum and Michael Swift [though did the latter contribute any more than a small amount of English dialogue?] can’t resist having somebody else rescue her at one crucial point. It’s not on the level of the above mentioned efforts as a film, with a lot of humour which often doesn’t come off [as you’ll no doubt know I’m certainly not adverse to the comedy in these movies but it really does tend to fall flat in here], plus a very scrappy plot, not to mention some glaringly obvious continuity errors. It’s still a great showcase for Rothrock, with some of most memorable fighting footage from her that I’ve seen,  but it’s also a film where her hair style changes repeatedly. You might be asking why?

Well, to properly enjoy and appreciate Lady Reporter it’s worth being aware of some of the circumstances of its making, after which one can make some allowances for many of the issues that resulted. Fortunately there’s some information about this which is easy to find. Mang Hoi shot the majority of Lady Reporter in which he co-starred with Rothrock, but Golden Harvest weren’t satisfied and either shelved it not being sure what to do with it, or, depending upon your source, just waited till Rothrock was available again before re-shoots could happen to make the film better. Rothrock was certainly busy at the time, shooting her two China O’ Brien films back to back and intending to make a film with Sylvester Stallone based on the Executioner books by Don Pendleton which in the end never came about. A lot more money was pumped into the production and most of the cast recalled, martial artists Jeff Falcon and Vincent Lynn were brought in,”Cindy” was changed from a reporter to a CIA agent, a lot of footage was replaced or deleted, and the originally intended climax moved to the middle so a completely new final section could be added. To be honest, the finished film flows better than you might expect, but there are still some distracting gaffs, perhaps the most notable one involving Wu Ma. Yes, the great man is in this, playing the head of a failing rival newspaper to The Asian Post and also Hai’s father. However, there’s a shot of him slumped in a chair during the moved middle fight. Presumably the original cut had him being kidnapped, but that part of the plot has been removed so the shot now makes no sense and it’s a mystery as to why it was carelessly left in. Similarly the character of Judy has a house most of the time, but in one scene lives in a flat. Just as strange are the differences between the Hong Kong and Export cuts. No scenes were removed from either version, but the Export Cut is still two minutes longer because the fight scenes are edited differently. The Export Cut holds on to a lot of shots for longer and lacks some of the very quick shots in the Hong Kong, meaning that the action has a slower rhythm to it. Therefore the Hong Kong cut, which is more kinetic but still keeps the mayhem coherent, is the preferable option.

We start off with some random stock shots of New York and then some American FBI higher-ups talking about a counterfeit ring working out of Hong Kong. It’s always a bit odd seeing and hearing Caucasian actors [well I could be stretching the “actor” term a little here] speaking Chinese who have then been dubbed into English. They have dossiers on not just the known leader Ronny Dak but also his four main henchmen Billy Chow, Si Bar, Grap Manson and Vincent Manel, plus a Dorothy Mill who’s “editor of the newspaper and she’s never even been to college”. Three of the henchmen are even described as accomplished martial artists, which leads to the question as to why so many henchmen in Hong Kong crime organisations are that. I know it’s so that we get worthy opponents for our lead characters, but one wonders if crime bosses go around to martial arts schools and ask the best students if they want to become gangsters. Anyway, these FBI bods decide that, even though Hong Kong is out of their jurisdiction, they have the right to send somebody anyway. Typical arrogant Americans ay? Cindy is clearly the best person for the job, because, in addition to being an accomplished martial artist, she’s also fluent in Chinese and knows Chinese customs well. She’s to go undercover as a reporter at a The Asian Post whose presses are being used by the crime ring. This is nothing if not simple, direct storytelling; in the first couple of minutes we know who most of the villains are and what they’re up to, though Cindy is only to collect evidence, and one may wonder how people would be able to produce counterfeit money using the newspaper’s presses which would surely been in frequent use? Cindy arrives in Hong Kong and is met by her friend Judy, though at first they seem like more than friends going by their amazingly flirtatious behaviour and Judy saying to her judge dad over the phone that Cindy, when he ask if her guest is male or female, replies “half and half”.

On her way to her job interview which of course results in her being given the job immediately, Cindy has accidental meetings with two guys who then become very important. There’s Hai, a reporter from a rival newspaper that’s failing so much that they need to resort to staging photographs who thinks that Cindy is a whore [the reason for this isn’t obvious in the Hong Kong cut], and an unnamed but very annoying man who’s told to be her partner. No doubt Keith Kwan’s antics are intended to be funny, but the character’s main comic [!] set piece is when he claims that he’s Melvin Wong the police chief and  tells Cindy, “That tongue of mine is top pf the class when it comes to boot-licking, how else could I sit in such an elevated position, have a look at my arse it’s big and round”.  Cindy and this idiot are told to cover a story about a burning building which Cindy rushes into to rescue a young girl, jumping from a considerable height carrying her and landing on her feet between her partner and Hai. This was bound to cause suspicion and investigation, but then a a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. Cindy then sneaks into the newspaper’s pressing plant, which you’d expect to be decently guarded, leading to our first fight sequence. Wong finds out who she really is and wants to her to go back to the States, while another man starts snooping around, though he’s not a bad guy, he’s an undercover cop. Then Judy’s dad, who’s been refusing bribes to stop prosecuting Dak for tax fraud, is seized by the bad guys – an act that’s seen by Hai – and injected with some drug which makes him act crazy in court, asking absurd questions and claiming that he’s He-Man. You know that Cindy, Hai and the cop are going to team up to take the villains out, and also know that Judy will soon be in danger.

While there certainly is a substantial amount of [intended] humour, the pace remains fast and the fights come along at fairly regular intervals before piling up in the final section. Rothrock seems to display slightly less power than in the previous Hong Kong films of hers that I’ve seen, but for all we know that could have been as much or more to do with Hoi and Yuen the fight choreographers than Rothrock. Settings are varied and the use that’s made of the environments gives Jackie Chan a run for his money, yet the fighting retains a hard edge which Chan gradually let go of [for the most part]. Rothrock’s opening brawl takes place on high scaffolding, something that we’ve seen several times elsewhere but rarely done as well as here even though it ends rather abruptly. It climaxes with her swinging off a beam onto a railing that she then slide down; despite edits it does look like all of it is her, or at  least most of it. Other fights have her battle Billy Chow twice, the first one particularly fine as it goes all over Judy’s flat [the flat that was originally a house], plus also in the originally intended climax, on the Dragons Forever finale set no less, an unnamed but very powerful Thai fighter who’s quite clearly hitting a visibly scared Rothrock for real; it truly is wince-inducing. He’s talked about a lot in the special features but nobody seems to know his name. He only made one film but by god does he leave a strong impression. In the climax, Rothrock fight a bunch of henchmen on a huge net which in a rather absurd moment is later revealed to be concealing a truck, then Falcon and Lynn, engaging in some fine stick work with the latter. Stunt-wise our heroine also leaps on to a ladder and swings it around to knock down a bad guy, and does a back flip over a bar, returning to kick an opponent; the fact that it’s not all Rothrock doesn’t really matter, it’s still tremendous stuff. These scenes have all the edge and thrill factor that Hong Kong action cinema is known for and I certainly wasn’t disappointed, even if the very last set piece dispenses with martial arts.

Set against all this, the comedy does have its high points, such as Judy stabbing at perennial bad guy Chun Fat, who’s behind some curtains, with a garden rake than whacking him with tennis rackets, because she thinks a rat is in there; it then flies into Fat’s mouth for real before landing in a bowl of cereal downstairs that Cindy is carrying. There are even a few good lines like “curb your tongue of you’ll be without an arse”. This is a film with a lot of slurs [for example the villains keep referring to Cynthia as a “the white hag“] , but for once we even some get some flirting just before a fight, a fun acknowledgement of the often sexual aspect to this stuff,. And how can you dislike a film in which you get to see Roy Chaio with Bruce Lee’s eyes [I’m not joking]? Many other comedic bits don’t really come off, while the tension that you’d expect to come from elements of the plot never results; this is particularly obvious in the subplot about the undercover cop, even in a scene where you’ll expect the latter to surface. Then there’s a very strange moment where Cindy and Judy find Chow in the flat [that was a house] standing beside some fight trophies. Are we expected to think that they’re Judy’s [even though she never fights in the picture], Cindy’s [but why would they be at Judy’s place?], or even Chow’s [he brought them over specially]? Maybe they were Chow’s in real life, so maybe, seeing as his character retains his own name, we should take us as being meta? Rothrock seems to be enjoying herself while Hoi is subtler than usual, even though his major set piece has him have to pretend to snog Judy before being harassed by an escapee of the local lunatic asylum who hates the FBI because they raped his wife, mother and sister. Melvin Wong is again a police chief and again with his own name, while Chaio is again a member of the legal profession. Ronny Yu relishes his villain role, so arrogant and sure of his success that he even burns a load of money, Familiar face Tai Bo gets a slightly larger role than normal as a reporter and James Tien has a tiny one. Probably against all odds, Lady Reporter still manages to be a reasonable action comedy and its action really is top notch.

Rating:

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]

Limited Edition set of Facsimile Lobby Cards [2000 copies]

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray of the original theatrical cut from a brand new 2K restoration
Lady Reporter gets the treatment that we’ve come to expect from these films. Detail is precise, colours are vibrant, blacks are deep. Grain management seems particularly impressive.

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray of the international export cut from a brand new 2K restoration
Watching bits of this makes one come to the conclusion that this is one of the better English dubs of the period, with solid voices and the jokes getting very little alteration. In fact one gets an explanation for one; well, I certainly didn’t get from the Hong Kong version that the reason Hai calls Cindy a “blonde hooker” was because a falling sign by where she is has the word “brothel” on it. However, I’m surprised that there’s nothing on the disc about the differences between the two cuts. I already knew about them, but many buyers will be none the wiser unless they watch the action very closely.

Original Cantonese mono audio and optional “classic” English dubbed audio

Optional English Subtitles, newly translated for this release

Brand new feature length audio commentary by Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) & actor and martial artist Vincent Lyn
Playing over the Hong Kong version, this track, combining Djeng’s usual great knowledge and enthusiasm with the recollections and insight of somebody who actually worked on the film is a joy to listen to, even if Lyn’s portions are rather quiet. I didn’t know that Yu had polio and that his walking stick in the film was the one he was actually using, nor that Rothrock was going out with Hoi during the first part of production though it was all over by the time of the reshoots. We also learn about the randomness of Hong Kong movie stunt doubling, with people often doubling for the actors when they didn’t need to, while Lyn says how he recently saw a show reel of his work and didn’t recall one film; of course Djeng provides the answer. Lyn also mentions being told to do a kick in unison with Falcon but not wanting to do it because his height would have meant that he would have sent his target across the room! I particularly enjoyed this very packed track.

Brand new feature length audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder & Arne Venema
Though both commentary tracks were probably recorded around the same time, I wonder if Leeder and Venema had an inkling that they’d have to rise to the occasion here, because if anything they’re on even greater form than usual. Leeder claims that the Stallone project was why Golden Harvest, thinking that it would make Rothrock huge, decided to rejig Lady Reporter; indeed he also says that an early Hong Kong trailer actually said that Rothrock would next be working with Stallone. and is able to do his own reminiscing of Lynn and Falcon, the latter seeming to have disappeared. As usual Venema is bigger on the filmmaking side of things, but both guys seem to absolutely love chatting about this particular film and are able to chuckle at its daft aspects as well while still respecting it. And I now have to hunt down Somebody Will Know Me, a short documentary shot by Raymond Chow’s daughter Roberta of behind the scenes footage of the stunt team of Project A.

The Blonde Fury – Cynthia Rothrock on making Lady Reporter [16 mins]
It’s great that Rothrock likes to feature in these releases. She thinks that this film had the title The Blonde Fury in some countries because another film hadn’t long come out with the same name. The often chaotic nature of Hong Kong filmmaking can perhaps be examplified by her not knowing what she was doing from one day to the next,k while its often dangerous nature can perhaps be examplified by Yuen asking her to do the burning building jump repeatedly, even if in the second try she kneed herself in the face. She can’t now believe the things she was asked to do, while many others suffered too; Hoi had the back of his throat clawed by the rat in his mouth. She believes that Hoi was still involved with the production even after Yuen took charge.

Director Mang Hoi on the making of Lady Reporter [11 mins]
Considering how he was treated, it’s perhaps surprising that Hoi waqs up for talking about this film, though he doesn’t seem bitter. He says that even before his rep0lacement by him, Yuen helped with the action scenes and shot the net scene himself becauewe Hoi was also acting in another film at the time, and that one of the two main reason for the reshoots was that Golden Harvest thought it looked cheap.

Brand new select-scene commentary with actress and martial-arts movie icon Cynthia Rothrock [17 mins]
Djeng joins Rothrock and typically asks al the right questions while her action scenes play. Rothrock’s memory is understandably hazy in places, but thinks that the pause between shooting wasn’t as long as a year, points out where she hurt herself [where else can an actor he asked to fall onto a basket with a huge hole in it?], and confirms that Hoi shot the rope fight.

Trailers

Reversible sleeve design

A Limited Edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing by James Oliver [2000 copies]

By rights, “Lady Reporter” should probably be terrible, and it is a bit of a mess, but it soars when it counts and still has some of the great qualities we love from the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema. Eureka clearly think a lot of it judging by the great release they’ve given it. Recommended!