Queen Boxer

QUEEN BOXER (1972, aka THE AVENGER) is the film that introduced fighting femme Judy Lee (aka Chia Ling) to a worldwide audience. It's a simple low-budget tale that's as much crime drama as kung fu movie as it chronicles the clash of two lone kung fu fighters against a powerful crime boss in early 20th century Shanghai. One of the two is Fan Kao To (Yeung Kwan), an unemployed laborer who seeks to rally the working people of Shanghai, in a rare display of kung fu social consciousness, to gain control over their conditions. The other fighter is a mysterious woman who shows up in Shanghai looking for crime boss Pai Lai Lee. Her mission has some connection, eventually revealed, to the recently deceased gangster Ma Yung Chen whose story, incidentally, was told earlier the same year in the Shaw Bros. rise-and-fall gangster kung fu classic, BOXER FROM SHANTUNG (1972), which starred Chen Kuan Tai. Ma's demise (which took nearly 20 minutes in SHANTUNG) is recreated--in condensed form--in a pre-credits sequence in QUEEN BOXER.

Fan and Judy's character team up for one rousing fight midway through the film in a teahouse in which the action takes up two whole floors with each of the two heroes taking on dozens of Pai's henchmen, including `Michael,' a white guy with a gun. The final fight--10 minutes long--features Judy solo as she takes on Pai's gang in Pai's rather cramped villa. All of Pai's heavy hitters are on deck and Judy lunges at them with utmost ferocity. She kicks with the best of them, slashes with dual knives and swirls around with strength, vigor and balance. She leaps off balconies, rolls over tables and along surfaces and then kicks upward to send combatants flying backwards. She handles multiple opponents with dexterity and force. She is fighting fury incarnate and such a cinematic phenomenon that she belongs in a class with Angela Mao as the two top fighting femmes in Hong Kong cinema. This is the real thing, in contrast with Zhang Ziyi's overly genteel wire-and-effects-assisted restaurant brawl in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000).

The film has a gritty, dark, grainy look, shot on sets and actual city streets that look pretty rundown. It's similar in style to Shaw Bros.' early 1970s crime-themed kung fu films VENGEANCE, DUEL OF THE IRON FIST and the aforementioned BOXER FROM SHANTUNG (all reviewed on this site).

Fans of classic martial arts movie will love this one!

The movie follows a simple plot, no personal revenge or vendetta here. The hero & heroine are on a mission to deliver a certain box. And as bad luck would have it, word gets around and there are other parties interested in that box as well.

The main characters are neat, the hero's character used to work with the circus, from what I can remember. You also have cool villains in this one, a knife specialist and a sword specialist. I saw this movie ages ago so I can't recall. The stunts will leave you with your jaws on the floor. No super powers in this flick, just graceful, deadly kung fu.

I'm giving 6 points to the little jewel this film once was, presenting a pretty tough girl, very acrobatic and good with two knives, or a wood plank, or a hatchet, whatever comes handy, against hordes of bad guys.

The fancy title Chase Step By Step (1982) is appropriate, as most of the many fights in the film take place up and down staircases, and though we cannot count them, the body counter shall be in par with the number of steps.

Queen Boxer was once the international English title, and is also the most current version of the film, on DVD, copyright 2004 Aquarius Media Corp, SOFA Home Entertainment Inc, and GoodTimes (NY) - too many copyrights for what is a destructive job on a classic film. The content is announced at 94m and it runs 84m (those people can't even add up numbers), delete the original credits and substitute them with fancy ones, and large sequences are simply black on black, as they didn't compensate for a poorly lighted original. Also, they got hold of what may have been a bootleg copy, taken off a large screen with an amateur camera, so that we miss a substantial part of the action; as another reviewer said, the end result is as if the camera was permanently out of focus with the fulcrum of the action.

A must see for Judy Lei fans, and viewers onto blade fighting. As bad as the media support is, you still have a good number of deaths, and hectic blade fighting all over. The end scene is obscenely cut by the DVD producers, reducing considerably it's original emotional impact.

Before viewing this movie I had seen her in about four others that I enjoyed.Overall this movie is not as good as them but for sure worth seeing.Since it's her first movie it's probably well known because not many females had given such an outstanding kung fu performance previously.The drawbacks in this film have nothing to do with her even though it seemed like her skills got even better in later films.This film wasn't a quality production,some scenes are out of focus,misaligned or too dark.One of the bad guys uses a pistol which for me is a bummer in a kung fu movie.One amusing scene is when about 8 toughs walking in an alley try to block off Judy Lee thinking they will have their way with her.We see very little action from Judy but do see a lot of bodies flying around.She goes on her way but the scene continues with the guys moaning and rubbing their aching parts while making comments like"who was that broad?"Not many lines are given Judy but the ones she has are attention grabbers,stopping in the doorway of a carpenters shop"Mister I'm after some coffins..two of them".Responding to a verbal threat "Ohhh you frighten me".The main bad guy has a mustaches and smokes cigars,for some reason he reminds me of Groucho Marx.When Judy invades his domain he asks" little girl what are you doing out so late?"She replies"Out to kill you".In a filmed interview Judy Lee states she was trained from childhood to be an opera performer like her parents which included dancing.This training is evident in her ballet like movements in this film.

It begins with a remake of the acid and axe attack that killed (or didn't kill) Ma Su Chen in the Jimmy Wang Yu movie. The theme from "Shaft" plays as Chia Ling in silhouette displays some kung fu moves. After that our girl has noodles at a road side stand in Shanghai and draws unwanted attention from the protection gangsters. Peter Yang Kwan defeats them in the movie's first fight as Chia Ling just watches.

Chia Ling's career of 57 films begins here. Or maybe it began with "The Escape" as it is hard to confirm many details in this genre. Judy Lee, as she became known, came from a Peking Opera background and attended the same school as Angela Mao. This movie is said to have been made in anywhere from 11 to 18 days start to finish. Fans will find the story quite similar to two other movies released that same year so not a lot of time needed to be spent in planning and writing. There is mixed information on the Judy Lee name but the result was fans believed she was Bruce Lee's sister. It turned into a bit of a scandal when the obvious truth came out but she weathered the storm.

Peter Yang Kwan began as a dramatic actor about 20 years before this movie. In the late 1960s he began action leading roles in such movies as "The Knight of Old Cathay" and "King of Kings". For fans of this genre I recommend both of those movies and have reviewed them here. His career eventually broadened to every job in the movie business. My copy is a digital file that plays on a HDTV as widescreen in dimensions but does not fill the screen. It is English dubbed with large Chinese and English subtitles embedded. I also have the Bonzai Media DVD. There are dozens of other versions out there and some are barely visible so if yours is low quality, just try again.

For a first movie Chia Ling could not have done better or could not have been luckier.