★ 5 / 10
A Kung Fu Fever Dream
Fustercluck
Martial arts, slapstick, and loads of boobs - that' what The Bod Squad slams onto our plates.Chinese girl traffickers kidnap a group of women who quickly pick…
Martial arts, slapstick, and loads of boobs - that' what The Bod Squad slams onto our plates.Chinese girl traffickers kidnap a group of women who quickly pick up kung fu while in captivity.After just 5 minutes of training in a laundry basement, they take down a bunch of rowdy, overbearing pirates. One more training session, and they tear the whole place apart and escape. One minute they're helpless chicks, the next they're killing with cold-blooded efficiency.And, bless them, they do almost all of it in skimpy panties, bells a-jingling.The movie's packed with absurd scenes-like using olive pits as ninja stars, spit-fired with deadly force. The girl's airbags are shamelessly deployed as close-combat distractions.
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★ 5 / 10
Virgins of the Seven Seas
BandSAboutMovies
Co-directed by Ernst Hofbauer (two of the Schoolgirl Report movies, as well as Teenage Playmates and Secrets of Sweet Sixteen) and Chih-Hung Kuei (The Boxer's…
Co-directed by Ernst Hofbauer (two of the Schoolgirl Report movies, as well as Teenage Playmates and Secrets of Sweet Sixteen) and Chih-Hung Kuei (The Boxer's Omen, Corpse Mania) and written by Yi Hsun Cheng, The Bod Squad - also known as Enter the Seven Virgins, Virgins of the Seven Seas and Karate, Küsse, blonde Katzen in Germany (Karate, Kisses, Blonde Cats) - this is the kind of movie that just couldn't get enough of wild taglines, like "They could do two things with their bodies...LOVE and KILL!" and "Virgin on the Ridiculous! Fantastic Chop Chop! Plenty Hanky Panky! Very Very Sexy!"
This is the kind of film that reminds you that as often that Shaw Brothers movies look classy, they have no problem being exploitation.
Five Western women - Donna (Sonja Jeannine, Mannaja), Anna (Diane Drube), Brenda (Gillian Bray, Death Occurred Last Night), Karen (Tamara Elliot, who showed up as a belly dancer on TV shows like The Incredible Hulk and Fantasy Island) and Celia (Deborah Ralls) - were just trying to sail to Australia when they're kidnapped and forced into white slavery. I mean, no one willingly goes into white slavery, right? Then again, as I write this, I can only imagine that there's going to be one angry reader that sends me a diatribe about how this has happened and what a moron I am.
The girls have the good fortune of meeting Ko Mei Mei (Hui-Ling Liu, Black Lizard), who has infiltrated the brothel they are sold to and who also has a heroic brother named Ko Pao (Hua Yueh, Come Drink With Me). This, of course, leads to training scenes where the girls learn how to weaponize olives and punch needles into wood, not to mention chop concrete blocks.
The great B Movie Heroes site describes this film as one that "mysteriously manages to be both misogynistic and feminist at the same time," which is a strange feat.
Pirate leader Hsao (Hsieh Wang) probably thought that this was going to be easy but he wasn't ready for the fighting fury of five women. Yes, the title promises seven, but...maybe that's why The Bod Squad is better, if not a bit anachronistic.
Constantin Film and The Shaw Brothers joined up and made this, so who are we to think that the nations of our world can't all work together? This played U. S. drive-ins - thanks to Film Ventures International - from 1976 onward, even being reissued in 1980 as Shogun Warlord (thanks, Temple of Schlock!).
This even made it on Siskel and Ebert, back when it was Sneak Previews, with Roger saying, "I have just seen my first nudey karate film. I guess you'd call that genre chop sexy."
I love that this movie exists. It's just so perfect in how it replaces the traditional Shaw Brothers heroes with German exploitation actresses and then puts them into fight scenes. How can you miss that? The best part is that the ladies decimate their captors, which is how it should be.
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Mandarin audio is lost. The German audio is the only audio that exists.