Yes, Madam (1985) by Corey Yuen

[cranefly]

Two policewomen kick ass on thugs who need their asses kicked.

Michelle Yeoh, age 23.  Cynthia Rothrock, age 28.  By my reckoning.

Michelle Yeoh wanted to do all her own stunts.  So she trained 8 hours a day.
Cynthia speaks Cantonese, but garbled her first scene.  She expected a retake, but Corey told her it was fine.  This was her first exposure to Hong Kong's way of making movies, where voices are all redone in post.  Therefore, most actors almost whisper their lines.  Throughout, the other actors couldn't underrstand why Cynthgia was always shouting.

Tsui Hark plays a counterfeiter.  He doesn't really fight, but has a nice escape scene where he eludes an attacker for a long spell with gates, partitions, sliding doors, etc., always keeping somethiing between him and the attacker.

Sammo Hung is in this, living in an old folks home (I think), receiving gifts and financuial support from his students.  He doesn't fight.

I kept thinking I saw Yuen Bao, but it was Hoi Mang, another baby-faced martial talent with a nicer complexion.

Mayhem with a scattered plot, but enjoyable for all the expected reasons.

The month of March is showing Michelle Yeoh kicking ass early in her career.  I finally decided to indulge.

[Drunk Monk]

A true classic. The stunt where Michelle does the back bend through glass over the rail to seize two opponents was hailed as one of the gutsiest ever attempted. Keep in mind that Hong Kong cinema used real glass. They didn't get candy glass for stunts for years and thought everyone just uses real glass. Upon that stunt hinged Michelle's first major claim as a stunt person, a tremendously difficult title to attain in Hong Kong.

[cranefly]

Hmmm.  I kept seeing big irregular glass shards and thinking, Is candy glass capable of breaking like that?  It looks dangerous.  Now I know.

I did see a couple of stunt people (one was a major actor) take really bad falls.  You'd think stunt people would age really fast.  But then there's Michelle and Jackie sticking around, and others...

We should come up with a workout video where all you do start to finish is throw yourself through glass and take dangerous falls, etc.

[Drunk Monk]

Jackie is in constant chronic pain (according to Daniel Wu). Michelle hasn’t taken as many hits, but I do wonder about some of the others like Sammo. He’s gotta be in bad shape.

[Drunk Monk]

I just rewatched this on Amazon Prime as the dubbed version retitled In the Line of Duty II: Supercops. It's still great fun and Michelle in action at 23 is still something to behold. She could really move. Cynthia is dubbed with a proper Brit accent (although her character is supposed to be Scottish from Scotland Yard) but that dubbing really works. It's one of her finest films as she trades blows with Dick Wei. Also the clown thieves are given cartoon voices - that worked too. It's re=edited to omit the flasher scene in the beginning, and Aspirin, Panadol and Strepsil are renamed ... I forget what Meng Hoi (aka faux Yuan Biao) was named already but the other two were the Professor and Fingers.

[Greg]

Mmmmm, Strepesil.