Lady Whirlwind

As this is an old film, there should be no harm in discussing what the film is about. Despite the film being advertised with Angela Mao Ying as the star, she plays a more subdued part in the film.

Mao (Miss Tien) plays a woman who is searching to take revenge on a man who abandoned her younger sister and because of the abandonment, eventually resulted in the girl's death. The poor doomed fellow has problems of his own because of a vendetta against gangsters. Mao, deciding that she would not be cheated of her vengeance, helps him against them, so that she would have the pleasure of killing him, herself. Furthermore, he has fallen in love with another girl who tags along with him. So, every so often, the two end up begging Tien to wait a bit longer before killing the pathetic guy.

The fellow starts the film as a lousy fighter, but eventually learns Tai Chi Ch'uan from an old herbalist. This stands him well to help him later in the film.

So, what happens next? Does he escape from the gangsters? Does Miss Tien get her revenge? Is this a pretty good movie?

Well, I can answer the third one. I found it enjoyable. The fight scenes were pretty realistic as this belongs to the "gritty" style of Martial Arts films. As for Mao Ying...she's always a pleasure to watch.

This is a Golden Harvest movie starring Angela Mao. One thing to note is that early Golden Harvest movies had very good quality, and it is recommended that whenever possible, they should be viewed in remastered DVD. The difference between the original and the faded copy is like night and day, and drastically changes the viewing experience.

Released in the United States as Deep Thrust, the shabby title doesn't do justice to the action contained in this movie. Angela Mao explodes with her signature moves in this movie. Did she learn new style of martial arts within a year of making this movie ? It seems likely as her previous movie "Hapkido", and this movie has drastically different level of moves compared to her earlier movies.

This movie, Hapkido, and When Tae Kwon Do Strikes all has similar looks and feel to the story and appearances. Anti-Japanese sentiment is strong on all three movies, but this is probably due to the bombastic success of Fist of Fury starring Bruce Lee from a year earlier. the scene where Bruce Lee destroys the sign that says "No dogs and Chinese allowed" really caught on at the time.

This movie is a step down in production for some reason from the previous "Hapkido", and looks almost like a Shaw Brothers film. The good is as mentioned earlier, Angela Mao's moves are fantastic in this movie, and she was in the height of her beauty in 1972.

It would have been better if there were more of Angela Mao's action in this movie, but even as it is, it's still a very good kung fu movie, and is recommended for viewing.

"Lady Whirlwind" AKA "Deep Thrust" is a little better than another Angela Mao film released by the same company that I saw recently, "Deadly China Doll", because Angela is indeed one of the two main characters here and has several fight scenes. The bad news is, her and everybody else's fight scenes are generally mediocre, often spoiled by poor editing and ludicrous wirework. The good news is, Angela brings a relentless aggression to them that few other female stars can match. More good news: her character is a little more complex than usual for this genre - she begins as a revenge-obsessed woman but gradually becomes more compassionate. More bad news: it's exactly this compassion that doesn't allow her to have a climactic fight scene. A watchable but forgettable film on the whole. Gotta love the stolen score notes from "Diamonds Are Forever", though! (**)

"Miss Tien, thank you for saving me." "Forget it. I just didn't want somebody else to kill you!"

This film was directed by Huang Feng (who made 18 films in the 1970s alone), and stars Angela Mao. Not sure if Mao is well known outside of martial arts circles (probably not), but she probably should be -- why let Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee get all the credit?

Although I know very little about the martial arts film genre, I feel like this might be one worth seeing. If for no other reason than the fact that literally everyone is kung fu fighting -- there are hardly any scenes without a dozen guys trying to defeat Lady Whirlwind (and losing).

Raymond Chow's upstart company sure played it smart with this movie. He used Chang Yi as the male lead. Chang Yi was an established Shaw Brothers actor doing martial arts films since about King Cat in 1967 but was shelved due to new talent such as David Chiang and Ti Lung. Next add Pai Ying for the bad guy. He's another Shaw Brothers actor who did a fine job as an evil eunuch in the 1971 "The Eunuch". Sammo Hung was the martial arts choreographer and with some side burns (quite stylish in 1972 but ridiculous otherwise) he got good screen time as a co-villain. Bruce Lee had just done "Fist of Fury" so add the theme of evil Japanese to the mix. (Actually the movie still works fine without the subplot, but why not?) With all that foundation, the only risky element was casting Angela Mao as the hot kung fu chick female lead. That was really no risk at all. Angela was fabulous despite the otherwise impression that the entire movie was done in one take. Yes, the whole movie seems to have been made with a budget for the price of the rolls of film with just a few dollars left over to pay the crew. Nevertheless, here I am 40 years later and watching it for the second time and enjoying every minute of it. Certainly recommended for all fans of the genre and my rating here is 7.0