Lady Dragon (1990)

German DVD edition


After her golden career in Hong Kong during the second part of the 1980's and when she made the best female
martial arts action movies ever (and mostly directed by Corey Yuen Kwai) she returned to her homeland USA.
Where she made a series of entertaining B movie action films involving her Kung Fu kicking martial arts during
the 1990's. These film were however much trashier than her Hong Kong classics and without the knowledge of
how to do the choreography correctly, of how to direct martial arts fight scenes.
These 1990's films of hers are still fun to watch as Cynthia was and still is - The Queen of Martial Arts, but she
deserved better directors and scripts.

But, let's not forget that producers in the US couldn't possibly allow the Hong Kong style of shooting action
films, where actors and stuntmen risked their life, due to laws and they would've been sued to extinction if so.

Cynthia Rothrock plays the ex-CIA agent Kathy Gallagher and she lives for only one thing, to find the man that
killed her husband on her wedding day. Richard Norton's bad guy business man Ludwig Hauptman had his goons
kill him when the newly wedded couple were still on their way out of church.

Kathy looks for Ludwig all over .... Bali, Indonesia (?) and when she enters his nightclub disguised as a hooker
and kicks some of his underlings around, he catches her and rapes her and dumps her body out on the countryside.
An old mute peasant (Piet Burnama) finds her and takes care of her until she's ready for the revenge on Ludwig.

The Pluses: Richard Norton was pretty good as the evil piece of slime Ludwig. Cynthia did her kicking and well
but could've have had some more scenes with a weapon in her hand (a rod of some sorts).
There were some below par shot fighting scenes early in the film, but it got better later on and there were a chase
scene too involving a MC, some cars and some fruit stalls.
An advice to all Bad Guys driving cars and chasing a hero on film - Don't take part if there are fruit stalls around.

The Minuses: Bad direction and script and with a screen ratio fucked up. The sleeve says 4:3 but i don't know,
supposedly it was shot in 1.85:1 (?). A somewhat crappy blurry picture too.

4:3 fullscreen stated on sleeve, english audio 2.0, region all, some Rothrock trailers as only extra

 

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