The Wild Girls - All Over The Place

Jan

28

The Wild Girls - All Over The Place

≡ Category: Action, Category III, Exploitation, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, Worth A Look |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Exploitation/ Martial Arts/ Category III
Director: Cheung Sek-Lung
Year: 1993

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK

I’m not going to tell you that The Wild Girls is a good movie. There are too many drawn out softcore porn interludes for that. It doesn’t help that the dialog is lame and the plotting sloppy.

That’s too bad because The Wild Girls has a lot to work with, starting with the characters.

The Wild Girls belongs to a Hong Kong sub genre I like to call Meanness To Kittykats. Almost all the men in the film are scumbags, it’s just a question of degree. Stuart Ong is a degenerate gambler who beats and humiliates his wife in front of his housekeeper. When David Lo takes a female friend and her sister for a drink, he orders Thai hostesses to screw around with — now that’s just rude. Charlie Cho runs a phone sex service and tries to make the moves on his employees. Triad Alan Chui tries to force the sister-in-law of a man who owes him money to pay up; he’s such a jerk that he’s all to willing to believe that she finds him sexually irresistible. And so on. The male actors do a great job playing various varieties of human slime.

The two women stars, Chan Ting and Yoshida Yasuko, have pretty faces, but absolutely slammin’ bodies, and they both get full frontal naked whenever conceivable.

Michael Chan puts in a welcome appearance as a gym owner and physical fitness enthusiast.

And finally, the action blowout which (almost) closes the picture is as hilarious as it is messy, earning action choreographer Alan Chui his pay.

That makes The Wild Girls worth watching for Category III enthusiasts who enjoy competent scumbaggery, gorgeous nekkid Asian chicks, and Golden Era of Hong Kong martial arts action, but still…

The plot and dialog are worked out sloppily, diminishing the fun of the dramatic elements. And the movie often stops dead for anti-erotic sex scenes.

With a little more work, director Cheung Sek-Lung could have fixed this. Tighten up the plot elements, work on the dialog so it didn’t make the actors sound silly, and link the much shortened sex scenes to dramatic purposes. For example, in one scene, Stuart Ong has sex with his wife in order to make her think that he cares about her, when in reality all he wants is access to her money. That’s the point of the scene, and it shouldn’t have lasted one second longer than it needed to in order to make that point.

Sadly, like most Category III flicks, the filmmakers just tossed off The Wild Girls without much thought. If you’re the kind of filmgoer who is able to enjoy elements of a film in isolation, you might find The Wild Girls entertaining. Otherwise, avoid.