Long before Drew Barrymore & McG re-invented Charlie’s Angels by adding martial arts to the mix, Hong Kong & other Asian producers had long been combining beautiful women, high impact martial arts, high octane gunplay and more into highly successful movies.
The 1987 release of a movie entitled ANGEL or Iron Angels as it was known in many countries helped jump start the whole girls with guns & gung fu genre and helped launch the careers of action actresses Moon Lee & Yukari Oshima, both of whom would subsequently headline countless martial arts actioners.
The Man from Hong Kong Big Mike Leeder delves into the vault to take a look back at the ANGEL series of movies for Forces of Geek.
Angel 天使行動
(AKA: Fighting Madam, Iron Angels)
Charlie’s Angels meets James Bond in the original girls with guns & gung fu movie, 1987’s Angel directed by Raymond Leung & Teresa Woo, featuring action choreography by Tony Leung Siu-hung (Ip Man, Bloodmoon).
The first Angel movie opens with a series of bangs as an Interpol operation lays waste to a mass of opium fields, which leads to the Drug lords retaliating by viciously murdering the officers involved in the raid. Interpol assigns the Angel Organization to deal with the case; Keung (David Chiang) assembles a team of his best agents including Saijo (Hideki Saijo), Moon (Moon Lee), Elaine (Elaine Lui) and Alex (Alex Fong) to strike back.
This brings them into conflict with the newly installed leader of the drug cartel Madam Yeung (Yukari Oshima) a sexy but sadistic killer who seized power in the cartel by killing those who opposed her. A series of increasingly brutal confrontations between the forces of good and evil lead to a final battle between Moon, Elaine & Madam Yeung in a classic final fight that still holds up today.
It’s hard to believe that Angel burst onto the a quarter century ago, the movie delivers an incredible cast featuring Shaw Brother’s hero David Chiang, Korean super kicker Hwang Jan-lee in one of his final Hong Kong movie appearances and still delivering the boot, Japanese actor and singer Hideki Saijo, and introducing Alex Fong who would mature into a strong supporting actor over the next few years, Elaine Lui and two of the leading ladies of the girls with guns and gung fu genre, Moon Lee & Yukari Oshima.
Now both Moon & Yukari had already racked up some pretty impressive credits before this film, with Moon appearing in everything from Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors through Midnight Whispers and Mr. Vampire, while Yukari already had various Japanese TV series to her credit as well as her kick ass role in Chu Yen-ping’s classic Book of Heroes, but Angel was the movie that made people ask, ‘Who’s that girl? Or girls!”
Filmed with a modest budget, the movie moves fast and delivers plenty of high impact action from the opening attack on the opium fields, through a series of brutal murders before settling in Hong Kong where the action pretty much never stops.
There’s an epic battle between Hwang Jan-lee and an old friend, a John Woo on crack assault on a mansion and the classic finale which pits fist to fingernail as Moon & Elaine must battle countless nameless thugs before a final showdown with Yukari Oshima at her most sadistic.
The film was a solid success in Hong Kong and did very well across Asia and internationally where it was released as IRON ANGELS, and before long the audience and the producers were calling for a sequel!
(Iron Angels 2)
The majority of the Angels team return for the 2nd film, which opens with the gang wrapping up a case in Hong Kong before taking a well earned vacation in Malaysia. The 2nd film isn’t as dark toned as the first film, with an extended comedy travelogue section as the team arrive in Malaysia, sample the food, the nightlife (including dwarf dance shows) and get to know Alex’s old school friends, one of whom Peter has become a very rich businessman and Elaine is soon succumbing to his charms. But Peter harbours a dark secret, he wants to start a revolution and get up to all kinds of nefarious activities, which he demonstrates by killing his other old friend when the truth is uncovered, and setting the team off on the road to vengeance.
With Peter encamped in his jungle hideout, the girls break out the Rambo gear and take action. The last 20 minutes of the film feature plenty of gunplay, some incredible stunt work including high wire falls by Moon Lee from an exploding tower, an epic crisply choreographed battle between Moon Lee & Yuen Tak (former classmate of Jackie Chan & Sammo Hung and Madonna’s stunt double on Shanghai Surprise) and a final face off between Alex & Peter.
The 2nd Angel movie delivers plenty of action but loses a bit of the shine from the first film.
Moon Lee still gets to look cute as a button and kick all kinds of ass with style, Elaine Lui gets to look good and kick a bit of butt but the love story between her and Peter seems a bit tagged on (do check out the moment when she hitches a ride on a helicopter which went a lot higher and faster than anyone had originally planned for), and Alex Fong seems more at home this time round. But there is a lot of filler comedy wise, which doesn’t work too well. The films action scenes are certainly slick choreographed by a young stuntman turned action director named Stanley Tong and his team which included Chan Man-ching (Rumble in the Bronx) and Sam Wong (Police Story 3: Supercop), with the jungle camp finale now looking like a lower budget rehearsal for the jungle cap scenes in Police Story 3!
Angels 2 or Iron Angels 2 as it was released internationally was also a money maker and there was soon a 3rd and final official Angel movie in development.
Angel 3:
Iron Angels 3
The third and final official installment in the Angel series has a lot of good intentions and some great ideas, but budgetary limitations seem to have affected the final outcome as does the sudden disappearance of certain cast members for chunks of the film.
An assassins training school has been established in Thailand sending killers out into the world to cause chaos, run by a mysterious western woman who is as sexy as she is dangerous (she has a pet baby crocodile as an ornament!), it’s up to the Angels to put an end to her plans for world domination.
But while Moon is able to infiltrate the training camp, she loses contact with the rest of her team who seem to spend a bit too much time at a kickboxing match where Alex enters the ring for a brutal bloody brilliantly choreographed if utterly non-realistic Thai boxing fight against a young Thai action actor and choreographer named Panna Rittikrai.
Moon is off screen for about 30 minutes solid but returns for an epic battle against an army of assassins which sees her demonstrating some powerful kicking techniques and weapons work, including some epic nunchuck use to aid her escape. As Madam and her assassin’s stage an assault on local government officials using suicidal motor bikers and trucks filled with killers, it’s up to Alex to save the day as he flies into action using a Thunderball styled jetpack and twin Uzi’s to full effect!
Angel 3 is a guilty pleasure, there are some great moments but it’s not the film it should have been. Elaine Lui’s character is nowhere to be seen (perhaps recovering from the emotional turmoil of her failed relationship in part 2), Moon Lee is in the best action sequences but disappears from the film for the entire finale only to reappear in the comedic coda to the film with no explanation for where she was for the epic final showdown, while Alex Fong suddenly becomes the focus of much of the film.
No disrespect to Fong I like his work, but it’s an Angel movie; I want to see more of Moon Lee kicking butt than anyone else!
The films action sequences were choreographed by the great tang Tack-wing (the Sifu from College Kickboxers) while Stanley tong & Teresa Woo co-directed the film.
The mysterious western female assassin isn’t credited in most prints of the film, but at times you could almost think she was Dutch kickboxer and occasional actress Saskia Van Riwsk who appeared in China White & Final Gate round about this time.
The first Angel movie was given a crisp remastered release in Hong Kong on DVD by Mei-Ah a few years ago, while apart from VHS & Laserdisc releases, the other Angel movies have been hard to find in the best quality. There have been recent releases in Eastern Europe of crisp letterboxed editions but sadly with neither English subtitles or English dubs, and I really wish some enterprising DVD/BluRay distributor would consider picking up Angel 1, 2 & 3 to put together for an epic 25th anniversary re-release complete with remastered prints and subtitles, and a wealth of bonus features, trailers, interviews (I could help put this together!), one can but hope!
Now the Molesworth produced Angel series came to an end with Angel 3, but the success of the first Angel movie really was a phenomenon. The film not only cemented the status of both Moon Lee & Yukari Oshima as bankable action actresses, but made the girls with guns & gung fu genre a highly attractive one for producers and directors for the next few years.
Moon & Yukari would headline countless movies on their own as well as working together on multiple projects including Dreaming the Reality, Yes Madam A Serious Shock, Angel Terminators 2, Mission of Justice, the dark Kickboxers Tears and the utterly nonsensical but highly enjoyable The Big Hit, a girls with guns and gung fu movie as directed by Stephen Chow on acid which has to be seen to be believed! Moon & Yukari would also team countless times with other girls with guns heroines including Sibelle Hu from Top Squad/Inspector Wears Skirts, Cynthia Khan from the Line of Duty series and the bombastic Michiko Nichiwaki from My Lucky Stars. In fact Moon, Michiko, Cynthia & Yukari would work together on one particular movies The Avenging Quartet which while sadly a fraction of the film it could have been, has such classic poster artwork that it nearly defines the whole girls with guns & gung fu genre, four beautiful, but dangerous woman in leather on motorbikes with machine guns….
Unfortunately none of girls with guns and gung fu actresses ever really got given the kind of big budget showcase that Michelle Yeoh got, that could have given them the leap into the international market or the A-list category. But they and these films will always hold a special place in our hearts and memories.
And as mentioned the success of the Angel movies launched countless imitators, as producers grabbed high kicking starlets and martial arts veterans to play female cops & special investigators in countless movies with Angel somewhere in the title.
Over the next few years we’d see everything from the wonderfully named Angel Terminators which starred kung fu movie queens Sharon Yeung & Hui Yin-hong battling Michiko Nichiwaki and her western thugs in some kick ass action scenes, Angel Terminators 2 which sees Sibelle Hu as a jaded street cop trying to battle the bad guys and keep street kids Moon Lee & Yukari Oshima becoming full time criminals. Both films are well worth tracking down for some kick ass action scenes, bone crunching reactions and some incredible visual imagery.
Yukari herself would pop up in Angels Mission which sees her & Dick Wei teaming up to battle sex slave traders in Hong Kong, while Moon Lee headed Angel Force which sees her venturing into the jungles to take down the bad guys. Sharon Yeung would also headline Angel Enforcers which features a trio of female heroes taking on the bad guys, while her slick Princess Madam actioner with Moon Lee, which sees the two of them battling Michiko Nichiwaki, would be retitled as Angel 4/Iron Angels 4 in certain territories. The Angel title would pop in countless movies, posters and marketing ploys over the next decade and a half, showing the success and influence of the Angel movies.
I even wonder sometimes if the entire Naked Killer, Naked Weapon & Naked Soldier series of movies produced by Wong Jing is his sexier riff on the Angel concept at times? While Thailand’s Born to Fight with its jungle camp finale and girls with gung fu elements seemed to be riffing on the second Angel movie at times, and the Thai action comedy Chai-Lai Angels/Dangerous Flowers pays homage to the whole girls with guns & gung fu genre and its various offshoots and the rebooted Charlie’s Angels franchise.
The majority of the Angel related movies are available on DVD in varying qualities but be warned certain titles either lack English subtitles or leave you with the choice of only being able to watch a full screen English dub that may be cut, or an unsubbed uncut version! The best place to look for a lot of these titles is on www.yesasia.com, head on over and tell Ross and the gang that Forces of Geek sent you!
In the meantime, we’ll be cranking up the volume, turning down the lights and revelling in the beauty of the female form kicking butt and taking names as only Hong Kong cinema can deliver…..hmmm definitely time for a revival of the genre! Grace Huang, Celina Jade, Jiang Liu-xia, Bernice Liu…come on someone give me the funding….ANGEL: The Next Generation!
