Runtime: 87 minutes
Directed by: Joel Silberg
Starring: Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant, David Dukes, Rod Steiger, Professor Toru Tanaka, Jorge Martinez
From: Several companies in the United States and Argentina
Featuring characters named CINDERELLA PU, JASON HANNIBAL, DOZU, DANNY BOY, WALDO TARR, and CHECKERS GOLDBERG. Long ago I heard of this film; with names like that, how could it be forgotten? A brief respite before continuing watching horror films for the rest of October was needed. A Letterboxd mutual’s review a few days ago plus its availability on Prime made this an obvious choice.
It’s a standard low-budget B-action movie, for the most part. A Vietnamese lady and her white partner are federal agents, working in San Francisco; they investigate Rod Steiger (he’s Jason Hannibal), a talent agent in Argentina. She goes undercover as they work w/ Argentinian authorities to bust him. He uses dancers to smuggle drugs to the States… via breast implants filled w/ heroin instead of silicone!
Her undercover name is Cinderella Pu. If that isn’t absurd enough, this lady (Tiana Alexandra) is Checkers Goldberg! How did Stirling Silliphant come up with such a name? Yes, the dude who wrote The Enforcer, In the Heat of the Night and The Towering Inferno was the writer. Note that Ms. Alexander is also known as Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant… they were married many years before this film, to clarify.
The movie can easily be nitpicked if you so desire. An obvious issue is that you don’t want to think of the logistics or the logic of Hannibal’s scheme. Be that as it may, this movie was entertaining crap that could be enjoyed by 80’s B-action fans. There’s explosions, shootouts, a short chase involving a produce truck and dirt bike-where the former brushes alongside a car, it explodes in a fireball!-basic martial arts, and Professor Toru Tanaka as the expected “tough” character. In addition, there’s no shortage of practical action beats that are better than you might expect for a random low-budget thing you probably have never heard of before.
Much of the film was shot in Argentina (companies from the country were among the producers), providing a different backdrop between the building, the background locals, the Peugeot taxi cabs, etc. As her IMDb page and others on Letterboxd have noted, Ms. Alexandra has lived quite the life. The first female student of Bruce Lee, philanthropy and activism in her birth country of Vietnam, participating in plays, and so forth. She was a charming character, even when the Cinderella Pu guise was a stereotypical Chinese caricature that was deliberately awkward even by late 80’s standards.
The film’s not a must-see yet for genre fans, it might be worth a shot.
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