No, not a sequel--in fact there never was a previous LETHAL GIRLS. And judging from this schlocky toss-off, maybe that's just as well. This 1992 feature made its debut in the US on home video in 1997.
Anxious to escape China, moll Annabelle Lin (Yukari Oshima) two-times her boss with his bodyguard Eddie (Mark Cheng). Discovering their affair, the boss sets them up; discovering the set-up, the lovers kill the boss and sneak into Hong Kong with his cache of illegal arms.
Following their trail through China, Hong Kong cop David Law (Gordon Liu) zeroes in on the lovers. At the same time Interpol agent Sophie Lawton (Sophia Crawford) tracks them down, just as Eddie's deal to sell the arms goes bad and he winds up killing his intended buyer. Forced to change plans,
Eddie kidnaps David Law's son and girlfriend--a woman Law brought back from China--and arranges a new arms sale on the high seas.
But Law shows up at the weapons exchange, together with Sophie. They foil the sale, although the criminal couple escape. That is, until Law's Chinese girlfriend blows up the boat, with the criminals and herself aboard. Law and Sophie return to land just in time to rescue Law's tied-up son from
death.
The film is a perfectly competent formula thriller, enlivened ever so slightly by the low-budget HK version of a multi-Chinese milieu. The mainlanders want nothing more than to escape their country (where everyone's on the take and clothes must be washed by hand) to Hong Kong (where even dogs and
cats eat from cans). The main villain, on the other hand, is from Taiwan; he interrupts Law's girlfriend in a karaoke bar (her offkey, a cappella warble is an enthusiastic hit with the hick Shenzhen locals) with a lewd "traditional" Taiwanese folk song. In a telling bit of nationalism, the good
girl falls for the Hong Kong cop; the bad one, for the Taiwanese mobster.
Originally titled STORY OF THE GUN, the film is notable for offering significant roles to a pair of former marquee headliners from chopsocky days, Lo Lieh (FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH) and Gordon Liu (MASTER KILLER). Employing casual child nudity and even more casual plotting, it has cop David Law,
racing to prevent a crime, stop along the way at a roadside foodstall to ask directions to the criminals' lair. Overhearing him, a pair of crooked diners phone in a warning to their boss. When the news gets back at the lair, the two gangs begin shooting one another for no discernible reason.
Another seemingly haphazard bit of scripting has Annabelle shoot Sophie in the leg, then toss the gun away so the pair can briefly fight, with Sophie grimacing and limping. In point of fact, actress Sophia Crawford injured her ankle at that point in filming, and the script was rewritten around her
infirmity. (Violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations.) leave a comment
