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Vixens Of Kung Fu
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Vixens Of Kung Fu
Released by: Alpha Blue Archives
Released on: 01/01/2008
Director: Lin Cho Chiang
Cast: Bree Anthony, Tony Richards, Peonies Jong, C.J. Laing, Jamie Gillis, Bobby Astyr
Year: 1977
Bree Anthony plays Paula, a young woman whose luck turns sour one day while taking a leisurely stroll through what looks like Central Park in the middle of the afternoon. She's interrupted by three thugs - Jamie Gillis, Bobby Astyr and some guy in a sweater with a receding hairline - with obviously sinister intent. After verbally harassing her, she makes a break for it but unfortunately for her, these guys possess a tranquilizer gun (!!) and before she can make her escape they shoot her in the back. She falls to the ground and they proceed to strip her and rape her and once they've had their way with her, they leave her there all alone.
She regains consciousness and soon finds comfort in the arms of the titular Vixens Of Kung-Fu, a small group of three women (comprised of Linda Trussell and Rosanne Lang, and lead by C.J. Laing) who have no use for men and instead find comfort in one another's arms. Laing takes her under her wing and initiates her by giving her a massage and having lesbian sex with her. Once that's out of the way with, it's time to begin her training regiment and she soon learns the ways of the Vixens. We also learn a little bit about Paula's background as a prostitute and learn that she's exactly the kind of mistreated woman that the Vixens want as a pupil.
Soon, a wandering kung fu practitioner named Yang (Tony Richards, credited here as Tony Blue) makes the mistake of wandering past the Vixens' training grounds. He's immediately attacked for his error in judgment, beaten to a pulp in one of the most inept on-screen displays of kung-fu ever filmed.
Scorned by the Vixens, Yang decides that he needs to bone up on his kung-fu skills and so he heads into Chinatown and kneels at the feet of a woman working in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant (Peonies Jung). This woman turns out to be Madame Blue, though Wang insists on calling her Master for some reason.
Regardless, she reluctantly takes him on as a student and they head into the woods where she instructs him in the deadly art of her own style - Golden Dragon Raising Head! This primarily involves Yang stroking his...uh... wang. While Yang and Madame Blue are training, C.J. and Paula are running up and down the beach together in slow motion like something out of Bo Derek's filmography. Once the two students are finished training, it's time for the climactic showdown to be held in upstate New York at Bear Mountain!
Wow. What a horribly made film! Vixens Of Kung Fu is definitely 'so bad it's good' material, from Tony Richard's Moe haircut and cheesy earring to the 'Asian style' soundtrack presumably added as an afterthought to give the movie some authenticity as a martial arts film. The martial arts themselves?
Amazingly bad. Imagine the likes of Tony Richards, Bree Anthony and C.J. Laing strutting and striking the phoniest looking kung-fu poses imaginable while the film cuts faster than a Russ Meyer movie in an unsuccessful attempt to hide their obvious lack of martial arts training. Someone named Anthony Wong (no relation to the Cat III superstar from Hong Kong we can assume) is credited with 'special kung-fu fighting.' He should have been fired. Wang's tendency to call his female teacher Master time and time again adds to the unintentional comedic value that the picture is overripe with, while the overly long shots of Laing and Anthony running up, and then later down, the same beach pad out the film in a rather curious manner.
The sole directorial credit of one Lin Cho Chiang (this has got to be a pseudonym added to give the film an Asian flavor) and the only known picture produced by Chiang Productions (likely a fake company all together), Vixens Of Kung-Fu is a poorly made and completely goofy smut film but it's certainly an entertaining mess of a film. The girl on girl scene with Laing and Anthony is steamier than you'd probably expect though the heterosexual sex scenes in the film are pretty clinical and devoid of all but the most rudimentary sexuality. That said, this is one of those porno movies that modern smut fans are likely going to watch more because of the camp factor and B-movie values than the XXX happenings. Evaluated as a grindhouse oddity rather than a serious adult picture, Vixens Of Kung-Fu is pretty interesting and definitely worth seeing for the copious amount of comedy that it contains when viewed today, more than three decades after it played theaters.
Interestingly enough, kung-fu porno didn't die with this film. In 2002, gonzo smut peddlers Kick Ass Productions released a series of four Kung-Fu Girls films, which were re-released on DVD in 2007, presumably to cash in on the success of Wicked Pictures' own Kung-Fu Nurses A-Go-Go, which itself was probably made to cash in on Tarantino and Rodriguez' Grindhouse double feature. Digging even deeper into the depths of obscurity, in 2005 Masterlen Productions shat out a fetish video entitled Kung-Fu Masochist in which a chubby girl named Andrea is put through a rigorous kung-fu training courtesy of director/producer/co-star Master Len. Maybe Vixens Of Kung-Fu was more influential than most of us realized!
The film is also known as Vixens Of Kung-Fu: A Tale Of Yin And Yang, which is how the title card reads on this DVD presentation.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Alpha Blue Archives presents Vixens Of Kung-Fu in a 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio that, judging by the compositions, is probably the proper way to view the film. Unfortunately, this transfer has obviously been culled from a tape source as there are some tape rolls/tracking lines present at the bottom of the frame for the entire duration of the film. Additionally, colors are fairly flat and washed out and, since the tape was obviously not in the best of shape, detail is soft throughout. Having seen this film before on a DVD-R sourced from a private collector's old VHS tape, I can say that Alpha Blue's transfer isn't much of an improvement at all, if any. That said, the film has been pretty tough to find until now and this DVD doesn't look any worse than previously available versions and it's certainly a more convenient way to acquire the film than by tracking down a grey market version. It would have been nice to see the disc sourced from a film print, but given the obscurity of the picture, well, what can you do. The film is watchable enough here, it just doesn't look good
The English language Dolby Digital Mono track on the DVD fares a little better than the video but not by much. There's some hiss in the background and the levels bounce around slightly. Most of the time the dialogue is perfectly audible but there are couple of spots where the hushed dialogue will have you turning up the volume a bit
Aside from a static menu screen, Alpha Blue has included trailers for Surfer Girls, Same Time, Saturday Night Special, Sex & Comics, and Tongue. It's not much, but the trailers are fun and you've gotta love the cover and menu screen art, taken from the original one-sheet. Completely misrepresentative, but super cool regardless
The Final Word:
Obviously the weak tape sourced transfer hurts this one and more extra features would certainly have been very welcome, but that said, Vixens Of Kung-Fu is a pretty rad little blast from the dirty past. As a showcase for martial arts, it's abysmal but as a strange porno/b-movie, it proves to be relentlessly entertainingPosting comments is disabled.
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