Nancy Kwan is an evil dragon lady with a prosperous side business. She sends out her hit team of all-girl assassins to bring back top athletes and then uses their body parts and organs to transplant onto old rich farts so they can live forever. Ross Hagen is the cranky ex-cop who gets hired by Lloyd’s of London to bring down her organization.
Wonder Women is a weird flick. Kwan plays sort of a female-flipped version of Fu Manchu. The transplant scenes feel like a Ted V. Mikels movie. The stuff with busty ladies in tight outfits seem like something out of a Russ Meyer daydream. Hagen’s scenes are like a generic made-in-the-Philippines actioner. All this sounds like an ideal mash-up of genres, but unfortunately, most of the exploitation elements are kept to a minimum. Even though things kick off with a trippy multicolor scene of topless women swimming around in a pool, that’s about all the skin we get. (I mean, it’s rated PG for God’s sake!)
The beginning is choppy as hell too. There were times when I was struggling to tell what was going on. However, if you’re a patient viewer, you eventually figure it out, mostly from osmosis. Even then, it kind of takes a while for it to make sense. Fortunately, the fractured narrative becomes a bit cohesive as the film goes on. I will say the scenes with Hagen run on a bit long though, and there will be times when you’ll start to wonder where the Wonder Women are.
Is the plot choppy? Sure! Is the storytelling structure erratic as hell? You bet. BUT… even with those detriments, I must be honest when I say that director Robert Vincent O’Neil’s kitchen sink approach is quite admirable. While there are certainly some rocky stretches here, the sillier aspects of the flick eventually won me over. I mean by the time Kwan was giving Hagen a tour of her personal prison of misshapen freaks, I had to admit I was having a good time. The set-up for a sequel, which sadly never happened, also goes on too long, but since it features some of my personal favorite ‘70s actresses, Marilyn Joi, Robyn Hilton, and Leslie McRae, it’s hard to complain too much.
The cast is solid throughout. Hagen is grouchy but fun, and Kwan makes for a solid villainess. It doesn’t hurt that her all-girl army (including Roberta Collins and Maria de Aragon… who went on to play Greedo in Star Wars!) are easy on the eyes. Sure, Wonder Women is messy and uneven, but it’s hard not to like any movie that features both Sid Haig AND Vic Diaz.
The music is probably the best part though. The soundtrack is full of funky toe-tapping ditties that will keep you moving and grooving, even when the plot isn’t moving and grooving. Also, the opening theme was later incorporated by Vinegar Syndrome, which by itself is pretty cool too.
O’Neil later went on to direct the iconic Angel.
AKA: The Deadly and the Beautiful.
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