User reviews

If you like to watch ladies in hot pants kicking stunt men then you are the target audience for this movie. The original title "Five Pretty Young Ladies" was changed to "Bruce, Kung Fu Girls" for the VHS release to attract the American audience who knew nothing of martial arts but had heard about Bruce Lee. The story loosely involves a scientist with a secret formula, an invisible man (or woman) robbing the rich, and somebody's mother gets kidnapped.

My copy is a digital version of the VHS that plays on a HDTV as a bit wider than typical 4:3 VHS format but not yet wide screen and is English dubbed. It is © 1981 Ocean Shores as are so many of these movies.

The movie is off to a gratuitous start with our girls fighting in their bikinis against male bullies at the swimming pool. By girls that means mostly our star Polly Shang-Kuan Ling Feng. She is also known as Polly Kwan plus at least 22 other aliases that you can find at HKMDB if you must. I have most of her movies and I have reviewed most of them here starting with her first 1967 "Dragon Inn". That movie is one of the greatest ever in martial arts movie history. She has also starred in some of the worst just to balance things out. She has a Facebook page from her fans but I have never found a proper biography. Her movie career ended in 1981. She spent about 20 years living in Los Angeles. Since about 2013 she has relocated exclusively to Taiwan.

I am sure that without the help of a review anyone could figure out that this is just a dumb and sometimes fun movie showing some pretty girls fighting for no special reason. I rate it below average even for those minimal standards.

Five fabulously fiesty Kung Fu savvy femmes, who work at a Hong Kong fitness club, become dangerously embroiled in the transparently nefarious activities of the 'invisible thief'. Our heroic, high-kicking heroines must rely on their limber minds, dazzling good looks, chi chi outfits, and magnified martial art majesty to bring this sinisterly see-through miscreant to justice! Bruce Kung Fu Girls is a sublimely silly Taiwanese femme fighting gem, undeniably goofy, but packed to the rafters with old school chop socky malarkey! Fleshly fortified with friskily fighting female fists galore, and a funky score, Bruce Kung Fu Girls ain't no cheap Schlock Socky bore!!! What this kooky Sci-fried Taiwanese fight flick lacks in dramatic smarts is generously compensated by its generosity of attractively perky parts! For the sake of full 'transparency' I must conclude by openly stating that I found the slapstick-slathered birthday party tussle to be the icing on this oestrogen-enriched Kung Fu confection!!!!!!!!!!! There's a definite Carry On Chop Socky vibe here, and I kinda dug that!

An invisible thief has been carrying out a series of robberies. Five pretty kung fu women help their policeman uncle to crack the case. The thief is apprehended while trying to steal some valuable moon rocks; once in custody, and visible again, he explains that he has been forced to commit the robberies by a criminal gang who are holding his mother captive and who want to learn the secret of his invisibility.

A Taiwanese Charlie's Angels, the ridiculously titled Bruce Kung Fu Girls is dumb chop socky fun, with the girls' activities -- swimming, celebrating a birthday, hiking and camping -- always interrupted by the bad guys, leading to some fairly entertaining martial arts scenes, Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan and pals kicking seven shades of the proverbial out of their male opponents. Adding to the fun is the fact that whenever the girls are on a mission, they wear matching studded leather outfits, comprising of short jacket, hotpants and knee-high, high-heeled boots. Why? Why not?

Shoddily directed, badly acted, with lousy production values, this is far from great cinema, but fans of trashy '70s kung fu flicks featuring kick-ass cuties should have a reasonably good time with it.