Abominable Advent Calendar Day 16: Golden Queen Commandos (1982) and Pink Force Commandos (1984)
Crapsterpiece Category: AnythingSploitation
Heads up: terrible dubbing, ridiculously violent
Ever wondered what it would be like to take a fabulous all-woman cast of martial artists (or women who could reasonably fake it); throw them into a WWII spaghetti western women-in-prison/prison-escape-exploitation movie crossed with the Magnificent 7; add a heavy dose of mo lei tau—a form of humor popularized in Hong Kong and characterized by deliberate anachronisms, juxtaposition of opposite or contrasting things, and non sequitur (and often nonsense) breaks in action or dialog; and pepper the whole thing with crazy-violent set pieces, explosions, Nazis, weird little character arcs, fantasy elements, humor, and pathos? Well, apparently screenwriters Li Fu and the incredibly prolific (and usually bafflingly awful) Godfrey Ho did, too, because that’s what Golden Queens Commandos and its sequel Pink Force Commandos delivers. For starters.
In Golden Queens, Black Fox (Brigitte Lin) assembles a gang of fellow prisoners, including sharp-shooter Black Cat (Hui-Shan Yang); drunken swordswoman Brandy (Hao-Yi Liu); Amazon (Chun-Chun Hsu); murderous prostitute Sugar Plum (Joyce H. Cheng); thief Quick Silver (Hsueh-Fen Peng); and explosives expert Dynamite (Sally Yeh) to break out and go on a dangerous mission. Along the way they face Japanese soldiers, Nazis, ghosts (it wouldn’t be a Godfrey Ho movie if it didn’t have ninjas, alligators, or jiangshi), and more in over-the-top action sequences, and end up stealing a cache of gold. Although the characters are more like avatars, it’s difficult not to become fond of them and feel bad when they don’t all survive. As with Fantasy Mission Force, the tone is upbeat until the end, when it takes a turn for the bleak.
In Pink Force, Black Fox has betrayed her team, which reunites under Cat (the incredible Elsa Yeung), but with different names. They battle alongside an Arabian princess and the repentant Black Fox (now called Jackal) to find the gold cache and defeat more Nazis, KKK members, Mexican Desperadoes, and every other type of stereotypical bad guy you can think of. Pink Force is even more of a nonlinear mess than Golden Queens, and even contains footage from Golden Queens to try to orient any audience members who might not have seen the first movie,, but it’s a wild, raucous ride.
These films are great fun because they feature kick-butt women in major roles, they defy convention at every turn, and they’re trying unrepentantly to entertain you. They succeed, even if they’re crapsterpieces.
