Angel the Kickboxer (1993) Pauline Chan | Yukari Oshima
3709DVD
Pauline
Chan. Yukari Oshima. Cynthia Rothrock.
also known as POWER HEAT
director: Chi Keung
Ho (as Godfrey Ho)
starring: Pauline Chan · Waise Lee · Yukari Oshima · Tao Chiang · Cynthia
Rothrock · Donna Jason
Prolific
Industry technician Chi Keung Ho - better known as Godfrey Ho - directed
very few complete movies (hisCANNIBAL
MERCENARY, THUNDER
OF THE GIGANTIC SERPENT and HONOR
AND GLORY are significant exceptions). Usually Godfrey would
shoot a bit of new footage and then mix it with scenes from an unreleased
or obscure project to flush out a whole film (some examples of his paste-n-release
productions are NINJA
THUNDERBOLT, GHOST
NINJA, et al). Often this resulted in jarring continuity
problems. However, special notation must be made for this film. It is
unique - even for Godfrey Ho. This finished title is composed from an
assortment of his own outtakes.
Godfrey
Ho is a hack of astonishing proportions. First, he took financing from
the American-based Action Star Pictures to make a Cynthia Rothrock movie
which would be shot in the USA and released to an international audience.
That film is the aforementioned HONOR
AND GLORY. Shrewdly, Godfrey also made a side-deal with Action
Star that gave him ownership of the raw footage once the shoot was completed.
Immediately, he took his favorite segments and wrote a new narrative
around them. Godfrey brought in a team of popular HK actors (which included
sex starlet Pauline Chan, fighting diva Yukari * Oshima and A Better
Tomorrow co-star Waise Lee) to film those new scenes and then
spliced everything together, releasing the production as a brand new
movie which hit the Hong Kong theaters later the same year.
This
motion picture was released as ANGEL THE KICKBOXER
even though there's not an 'Angel' character in the film. The new story
has a plot vaguely connected to stolen nuclear weapons and banking fraud
(loosely mirroring the plot of the
original Rothrock film) but then there's a Japanese hired killer
tracking down targets in both America and Hong Kong. That guy is attempting
to kill a corrupt banker played by Waise Lee when his wife (Pauline
Chan) gets in the way. The scenes with Yukari Oshima have little to
do with any of the plot fragments, but she is incredible in some spirited
fight segments.
A Hong Kong
film with English/Chinese subtitles; widescreen format, fully uncut
(93 minutes),
DVD encoded for ALL REGION NTSC WORLD FORMAT; extras include various
trailers.
Graphic
Brutality/Martial Arts Violence/Sexual Themes
For Adult Audiences
