Satellite TV gave professional wrestling much new impetus: Hulk Hogan is a hero to a large proportion of eight-year olds, and video store shelves celebrate the thrill of carefully staged, theatrical violence. Below this popular culture of wrestling lies the grey sub-culture of fighting girls. Whilst in these morally conscious days this genre may not be socially acceptable, perhaps the only difference between Cynthia Rothrock and the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling is that the latter are better at acting. So, after much careful research, TC can divide the field into two categories, depending on which animal instinct they appeal to.

VIOLENCE & SEX – Unnecessary Roughness

These are found next to the WWF tapes and bear certain similarities: relentlessly larger-than-life characters; every feature exaggerated to and beyond pantomime level. “Bad” is “evil” and “good” is “good-until-pushed-too-far-by-the-bad-girls”. Watching a decent bout is like seeing a Ken Russell script directed by Chuck Jones, with the female presence providing the final part of that famous Holy Trinity: sex, violence and humour.

Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling – My introduction to the genre and still the best. Little has changed – Amy the Farmer’s Daughter may have gone but her “sisters” live on (characters in GLOW regenerate a la Doctor Who – new girl, same costume). Watch any section and within 15 seconds you’ll be able to work out the plot. They’re about the only wrestling tapes I’d actually watch for entertainment – the sheer tack (the jokes! The musical numbers!) overpowering any moral scruples about the concept. It’s very obviously fake, and is thus entirely harmless. At it’s best, like a truly bad film, it provokes a surreal disbelief and an inner warmth: there is still hope for the universe when things like GLOW exist. B

American Women’s Wrestling Federation – Anyone buying both volumes of this is in for a nasty shock – the first 20 minutes are exactly the same on each (introducing the members of the AWWF). This is an annoying rip-off. Most of the AWWF girls occupy an ambivalent middle ground between Good and Bad, even those who appear to be pure as snow are not averse to malicious wounding. The rivalries tend to be on a personal basis: The Littlest Angel, The Cajun Queen and Rock Candy are at each other’s throats over the affections of a ringside valet, or past injustices.

The lowlights of both tapes are the naff mock-interviews between Spice Williams, a former AWWF champion who also appeared in ‘Star Trek 5’, and the current contenders, asking such penetrating questions as “What do you like to do in your spare time?”. If ‘The Word’ ever need a new presenter, Spice would be ideal. Overall, while the fighting is well-staged, that’s the least part of it. What’s important is the spectacle, and the AWWF seem to take themselves just too seriously. While GLOW may be compared to a Christmas pantomime, the AWWF, if not Shakespeare, is perhaps a play by Arthur Miller… C-

Cutey Suzuki’s Ringside Angels – Buy a Sega Megadrive and play at Japanese lady wrestlers! Over there, Cutey and her colleagues are as famous, if not more so, than their male rivals, with adverts, recording deals and films. The audience is mainly teenage girls, who admire the stars with the ardour a girl here might devote to Jason Donovan. Some enterprising video label should release a tape or two here, as Ms.Suzuki lives up to her name 100%.

SEX AND VIOLENCE – Girls With Gunge

This group might also be called “substance abuse”, as they often involve the use of Jello, mud, oil or anything with the right consistency and appearance. There’s no male equivalent – you won’t see Hulk Hogan taking on Ric Flair in a pool of dessert – and the tendency to separate participants from clothes relegates most to the “Adult” section. Of course, this only increases the allure!

Gellorama – Virgin are selling this for 4.99, but I’d think twice before paying even that. For starters, there is only about ten minutes of actual gello-ing, the remaining fifty minutes being wimpy strip-teases. The inane, repetitive commentary by a Mae West clone continually mentions “loose puppies” (battlespeak for what happens when a bikini-top cracks under pressure) but the camera is always facing the wrong way. The most savage thing on view is the editing (for which I was actually grateful); you’d get more fun from an episode of ‘Baywatch’. E+

Battling Beauties – Dating back to ’83, this is a definite improvement. Some effort is made to give the girls personalities by having them arrive dressed in costume, though characterisation is abandoned when the bouts start (one girl looks much like another, when both are rolling around covered in oil from head to foot). The tape starts with three slippery-but-neat matches, accompanied by the appearance of a Burt Reynolds look-alike, for no apparent reason. Next, the low point of the tape: ‘Foxy Boxing’, which bears more resemblance to semi-professional pillow-fighting than boxing. Things recover in the final section – mud wrestling – which contains the most notable and gratuitous occurrence of loose puppies,accompanied (bizarrely but effectively) by the tune “Duelling Banjos”. B-

Co-Ed Oil Wrestling – Another 4.99-from-Virgin tape, this one fails for similar reasons to ‘Gellorama’: it could be reduced to 15 minutes with no damage. The hook is that male members of the audience bid for the right to get covered in oil and wrestle the girls (personally, if I had $700, I could find better things to buy than the chance to roll around in oil for three minutes, even with a couple of bikini-clad cuties), though they have to endure hours of dull strip-tease first. Save your 4.99, and put it towards your own oiled-bimbo-wrestling session. E+

Foxy Boxing – I wasn’t looking forward to this after the dumb section in ‘Battling Beauties’, but it’s better than feared. Commentator Garrett Atkins comes up with some coherent, amusing sentences, and while headguards and gloves are worn, they have a knack of coming off before very long has elapsed. The girls aren’t that pretty – “tough” is the word that comes to mind – but there may be semi-genuine bitchiness involved – one fighter (‘Konar the Barbarian’) launches an assault on a girl holding the round cards. Said girl is a wasted-looking Traci Lords, who loses her top in the fracas. Further fun is provided by someone who looks a bit like Cynthia Rothrock. £4.99 in Virgin, of course, and just about worth that. C

Comics, where shall I start this time ? Best news of the past couple of weeks (hmmm… TC “production delays” seem to have extended this to couple of months!) has been the final re-release of The Crow, meaning that you can get it reasonably cheaply, and that J. O’Barr gets to finish it off. The first two books reprinted the original four Caliber issues, and the third (a 64 page single issue entitled Death) will complete this tale of love stronger than death. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s your chance, if you have read it, then wait a few months and you’ll finally get the conclusion.

Continuing on the conclusion front, Hard Boiled issue three has arrived and is a suitably down-beat ending to a marvellous series: the art’s still stunning; the stories nicely dystopian; all in all it remains highly recommended. The Griffin has finished too, issue six tying up the loose ends in a pleasant easy style. Not all that much new about it I suppose, but it is very nicely done. And the final final issue here is issue 12 of Metropol, in which the good guys are finally gathered and an assortment of loose ends are left to pave the way for Metropol AD, coming in autumn… I guess you can also expect a collected Metropol around then.

Beyond this, all seems steady on the comics front… the most looked forward to titles for me at the moment are: Hellblazer; Sandman; Akira; Dark Horse Presents (particularly for Frank Miller’s Sin City, Matt Wager’s The Aerialist, and the Rick Veitch weirdness, but always enjoyable nonetheless); Yummy Fur; Shade; Cry For Dawn; and Legends Of The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, LOTDK is now reaching the “buy it if the particular story-line is up to it” stage, early on it managed to always be worth a look, but the Destroyer cross-over series killed that run of. All in all, it’s oldies-but-goodies I guess. Akira has the lowest issue count of the above (if I use a spot of artistic licence and forget Yummy Fur which has never really a regular production), but with only about four or so of the 34 issues coming out last year, it’s still the titles of three or four years ago that are listed. Sad, innit ?

That’s pretty much it. It’s sad but true, I’m finding it tough to find new comics I like. There’s hope for Hard Looks (a new series of Andrew Vachss short stories that’s due out from Dark Horse but not yet spotted, even after TC production delays…), but we’ll have to wait and see. As things stand, this could be the last comics waffle for a while, either that or the old stuff gets dragged out for review yet again!

Lately I’ve topped up the back-catalogue with handy graphic-novel sized collections of titles such as V for Vendetta and Elektra Assassin. They’re much better for reading on buses/trains/tubes than handfuls of individual issues… plus, of course, it’s damn good stuff anyway.

It’s happened again… once I decide that nothing sooper is around, other bits start grabbing my attention. Recent manga sightings are Sanctuary and Crying Freeman vol. 4 both of which: come appropriately recommended; deal with modern day organized crime in Japan and have art by Ryoichi Ikegami. There are also graphic novel collections of Freeman volumes 1 & 2, which do a good job of setting the story and avoid those annoying month+ delays between issues. Another recent addition is A1 book 6 (the final one, and probably the cheapest at £2.95) which ties things up in the style A1 readers will have become accustomed to… i.e by announcing a final-final issue, to be known as A1-6B, The Zirk Low-Brow Woo-Woo Special. This will feature (& I quote!) B.E.M.s, Babes, Boobs ‘n’ Bombs, Bullets, Buttfucks ‘n’ Bastards… need I say more!

Serious mood-swing alert…

Just when I thought that comics were entering a seriously boring phase, our friendly Customs & Excise come along and decide they’re still too much for their half-assed definition of obscene. This is a 2.5 cans of Stella rant [later edited at 3.5 cans!], but is straight from a pissed off heart. A readers copies of Sandman 33 and Hellblazer 48 were seized by HM Customs as they contained (genuine quote!!) “…some scenes of violence and mutilation…”. Unlike (available at a video shop near you!) Silence Of The you-know-whats [I’m afraid to mention the full name in case I get branded a subversive and strip-searched every time I go through Customs from now on].

In fact, those particular issues weren’t even all that heavy really. Issue 48 of Hellblazer had some bastards getting their come-uppance for burning an old dear to death in 47, and Sandman 33 has (as it’s “mutilation” scene…) a demonic chap opening himself up to let some crows out… so they’re not very nice crows, but so what – that’s part of why Sandman prefers mature readers. Guess I’ve been completely corrupted by them. Somehow the gothic horror of Sandman & Hellblazer don’t seem any more horrific than the excesses of the press and all the other brown-tonguing lackeys. No wonder UK life seems such a pisser when you can’t even read mature material.

Intriguingly, I Want To Be Your Dog was judged as being worthy of “…reservations about the content”, but not obscene, and hence, theoretically, importable. This is not a mainstream title. This is a title from Eros comics, who had most of Butterscotch kept out of the country, and very few companies risking trying to bring anything else in. Maybe a further quote will help to show why the risks of importing “interesting ” titles are so panic-inducing for the importers…

“The package also contained a further two comics which, although not considered to be of themselves obscene, are still liable to forfeiture under the provisions of Section 14(1)(b) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, having been mixed, packed or found with goods liable to forfeiture.”

So, basically, get one dodgy comic sent across with a couple of thousand X-Men issues, and risk losing the lot. Would you think it was worth the risk, or would you let yourself be suppressed ?

Okay, so the titles were allowed in eventually (apart from the obscene ones from DC, corrupt underground publishers that they are!) but still, the necessity of law suits to import comics that have been bought, by myself, from such establishment esteemed places as the Virgin megastore on Oxford Street [okay, so it’s a real comic-shop with a franchise there, but it still looks & feels like you’re shopping at Virgin] is genuinely ludicrous.

Please HMC & E, show some sense. Comics are not a medium for children. They are a medium, no better or worse than any other. Don’t take episodes from the middle of story-lines (both the above were the second issues of their respective tales) and damn the carrier as obscene. Although I realise that this is a huge amount to ask, think of more than just a line that you see, try and finds the context for any content. Even better, find a full life that makes you realize just how much good fiction there is that your narrow minds currently reject. Roll on 1993, and a Europe unified against petty bureaucracy… so we can hope.

If you think Hollywood is into sequels, look at Hong Kong, where a successful movie will immediately, if not sooner, spawn a host of variations on the same theme. Jackie Chan’s “Police Story” kicked off a tidal wave of cop thrillers, some better, some worse: perhaps the most consistently interesting series of clones is ‘In the Line of Duty’, produced by D&B Films, all the more remarkable as, to some extent, it isn’t really a series at all…

It all began with the discovery of a girl called Yeung Chi King by the head of D&B, multi-millionaire Dickson Poon – though since she was Miss Malaysia, ‘discovery’ might be a bit strong! He decided she was going to be a star, despite her lack of martial arts and acting skills: some training and a few small parts later (she appears in ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars’, ending up under Samo Hung), she was ready for her first major role:

In the Line of Duty 2 (Corey Yuen)

• Yeung Chi King, Cynthia Rothrock, John Sham, Richard Ng.
• [a.k.a. ‘Yes, Madam ‘, UK title: ‘Police Assassins 2’]

Yeung Chi King is a cop awaiting the arrival of an English contact with evidence on one of Hong Kong’s mob bosses. Before it’s delivered, he is assassinated but the hitman is unable to find the evidence. The people who do find it are two burglars who soon find the mob and the police on their tail.

Behind perhaps the worst piece of cover art in existence, this is an odd, identikit sort of movie which in the UK version opens with a sequence taken from another movie, then meanders for 65 minutes before exploding into one of the best climaxes to any martial arts movie I’ve seen. Cynthia Rothrock, at that time a near-unknown, played a tough Scotland Yard officer, nicknamed ‘Dirty Carrie’, sent over to help, though the dubbing makes her sound like a Sloane Ranger.

Yeung holds her own well, both in action and acting, and the movie is ok, despite a tendency to stage sequences in the dark. However, the final showdown between the pair, now ex-cops, and the mob is incredible, with much leaping about and demolition of bad guys (including one very painful stunt fall the poor man falls off one balcony 20 ft up, bounces off another and crashes to the un-matted floor): this alone is worth seeing and is followed by an ending best described as “nihilist vigilante”. C+, most of which is gained in the last quarter of an hour.

For various reasons this film was put on the shelf but this didn’t stop D&B from making a pseudo-sequel…

In the Line of Duty (David Chung)

• Yeung Chi King, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Wong.
• [a.k.a. ‘Royal Warriors’, UK title: ‘Police Assassins’]

The Vietnam war: A group of men pledge eternal loyalty to each other. The present day: one of them is being extradited from Tokyo to Hong Kong, and a hijack attempt, planned by his blood brothers to rescue him, is foiled by Yeung, Sanada and Wong, who thus find themselves the target for vengeance by the remaining fanatics. They blow up Sanada’s wife and child, kidnap Wong and use him as a lure for Yeung. Though this fails for surprising reasons I won’t give away, they eventually get her to a final show-down.

Despite an opening sequence which, like Sanada, seems to have been included to appeal to a Japanese audience, this is a more even and satisfying film than it’s predecessor. The hijack is well-staged and writer-director Chung is willing to kill off characters, leaving the viewer wondering if this will be a “heroic bloodshed”, everyone dies, film. Especially towards the end, the plot twists and turns, although the final battle doesn’t contain much in the way of martial arts, becoming almost an exercise in the imaginative use of pyrotechnics. This is something of a disappointment after the delights of ‘Yes, Madam’! Still, C+ again, though in a very different manner!

This was released and did sufficiently well to prod D&B into taking ‘Yes, Madam’ off the shelf. Both were picked up for European distribution by Atlas, who suggested giving Yeung a more Western sounding name: ‘Michelle Khan’ was chosen and this is her billing on British releases. Another title change was required here because another film called ‘Line of Duty’ had recently been released, so they became ‘Police Assassins’ 1 & 2, Atlas managing to get them back to front! However, two films later, ‘Magnificent Warriors’ (see TC10) and ‘Easy Money’, Yeung married Dickson Poon and retired from film-making, though rumours of her divorce and return to the screen have been circulating. D&B would not let a trifle like losing their leading lady stop them, so they brought in a new starlet, Yang Li Ching (a.k.a. Cynthia Khan) and continued the series.

In the Line of Duty 3 (Brandy Yuen/Arthur Wong)

• Yang Li Ching, Hiroshi Fujioka, Michiko Nishiwaki.
• No UK release, but the rights have been acquired by VPD

Two Japanese terrorists raid a jewellery show, to raise money for weapons, only to find that the gems are fake and they’ve been duped by the guy running it, as an insurance scam. To gain revenge, they travel to Hong Kong, followed by a rogue cop whose partner they gunned down. Poor Cynthia has to keep the peace while also handling her superior, who’d rather have her doing the typing.

Under the shallow sounding plot, this is actually subtle, with the characters given more motivation than normal. Even the ‘villains’ – I use quotes since neither terrorists nor rogue cops are cardboard cliches – provoke as much sympathy as dislike, particularly Fujioka. Although again there is as much gun-fu as kung-fu, the action mixes with the plot almost seamlessly and is hot stuff, especially when Cynthia takes on Michiko Nishiwaki, a former Japanese power-lifting champ but very cute none the less. The battles have a gritty realism about them, with people taking damage and looking more and more battered as things progress. There’s a high mortality rate in interesting ways, most notably the death by industrial drill (even if it’s no Abel Ferrara). Overall, it’s an exception to the general rule that sequels are only good if you have the same people involved making them. B+

In the Line of Duty 4 (Yuen Wo Ping)

• Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen.
• [a.k.a. ‘The Witness’. UK title: ‘In the Line of Duty’]

A variation on the theme of ‘Yes, Madam’, that of evidence ending up in the hands of someone who doesn’t know it’s worth. It begins in America, where a policeman taking pictures of a CIA endorsed drug deal is gunned down. Before dying, he passes the film onto an immigrant worker, who soon discovers a lot of people want it. After his brother is gunned down, he escapes to Hong Kong, pursued by Khan & Yen (a classic good-cop/bad-cop pairing), plus another policeman who is an undercover CIA agent.

This is a perfect example of the strengths and weaknesses of Hong Kong action films. In the English version (I’ve not seen the Hong Kong print), the story looks like someone removed massive sections, as things suddenly happen without noticeable explanation. Fortunately, the action is incredible and virtually non-stop, so you don’t notice the holes until about the third viewing. The highlights include Cynthia Khan demonstrating her prowess with nunchaku spanners (cut by the BBFC, naturally!), an ambulance battle where she out-Indianas Harrison Ford, and a final 10 minutes where everyone shows off their fighting skills, though these are only peaks in a distinctly high-altitude movie: given a better plot, this would have been the first kung-fu film to get A+, but A will have to do.

In the Line of Duty 5 (Cha Chuen Yee)

• Cynthia Khan, David Wu
• [a.k.a. ‘The Middleman’, No British release]

Once again, the CIA are involved, together with a spy ring who have a nasty habit of terminating anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately, this includes David, the cousin of Insp. Yang Lei Ching (Khan), who’s been dropped in it by a CIA double agent, and is now on the run from the spy ring, the police and the CIA. He’s not the only person to be dragged in – most of these fail to make it to the end of the movie.

The first shock is that there’s no martial arts for about 30 minutes, by which point you’re wondering whether this is an Oriental soap opera. Then, with the sort of bang! you only get when someone falls onto a car roof from a great height, someone falls onto a car roof etc, etc, and things warm up. They continue to improve in a sporadic fashion until the climax, the only bit where the fights rival IV in the series. It does have it’s moments, but overall it fails to gel, though it improved on the second viewing it received for this article. I’d blame the faults on the script-writer, who would seem to have overdosed on John Le Carre, perhaps NOT the best preparation for a martial arts film. D-.

One borderline case worth a mention is Queen’s High, which has been touted as ‘In the Line of Duty – The Beginning’ (‘In the Line of Duty 0’?). This is dubious, as Cynthia Khan’s character is a gangster’s daughter rather than a cop, whose wedding is rudely interrupted by the massacre of her family by another gang. Plot summary: revenge.

Such a story can be forgiven when it’s delivered with such over-the-top panache. Cynthia Khan in full flow, wearing a virgin white wedding dress and spraying automatic gunfire everywhere, is nearly a religious experience. This is fortunate, because up until then, it’s been slow to the point of tedium. One wonders why they carefully built up the other characters, only to casually blown away in a five-minute spell. The second half is markedly better, in a “you killed just about all my relations and you are certainly going to pay” fashion as Cynthia wears knee-length boots and wipes the floor with the opposition. For once, the music is not ripped off from anywhere else (Eastern films, Western films, Jean-Michael Jarre) and is very simple and effective. First half E, second half B+, wedding sequence A+, overall, oh, let’s say B-.

D&B Films have shown, with this series and their other films, that they can compete with the big boys like Golden Harvest. Cynthia Khan is now probably their biggest star – she also has a small role in the recently released ‘Tiger Cage’, which as you might expect, was known in Hong Kong as ‘Tiger Cage 2’! Despite the relative disappointment of part 5, further parts in the series are planned, and I’m certainly looking forward to them.