Ongles rouges et cuisses d'acier

Satires are always going to be a thing after a serious film gets made. For "Wonder Women" this is once farce I don't mind watching. You got these super chicks would can kick butt without effort. There's this female mad scientist(Nancy Kwan) who is a cross between Dr. No and Dr. Frankenstein, only more advanced. These women would kidnap athletes and use them for making older men more active. This is going too far. There's an insurance investigator(Ross Hagen) who would take the assignment to get the j'ai a'Lai player all in one piece from the scientist and her crew. The choreography in the film needed work. The fight scenes are a little light. Yet, very subtle. Why would they give this movie a 'PG' rating, when they have topless women in the beginning. Back in the 1970's, there was no 'PG-13' at the time. And it wasn't violent enough for an 'R' rating. I wasn't born in that time, and it was a first time for me to see this flick. I liked it though. 2 out of 5 stars

A multi-racial gang of ladies with skimpy clothes, big hair and bigger guns is running amok in Manila - kidnapping athletes and skinny-dippers left, right and centre. When they nick a Jai Alai player, hero Mike Harber (Hagen) is called in. Hooked up with a sidekick jeepney driver (denim-clad Vic Diaz), Harber winds up on the island lair of transplant artiste Dr Tsu (Nancy Kwan). "Her genius and her talent transcends the question of human morality," says her debonair sales manager (Sid Haig) and Tsu's brain transplant techniques and stock of body parts are the key to longevity. With a labload of flashing, bipping and swirling things, brain sex, a high-speed downtown jeepney chase and an army of Filipino warrior gals enthusiastically belting the crap out of people, Wonder Women is a load of fun. And that's before Dr Tsu's mutant test subjects escape their cells! The ending - Harber, a blonde and another all-female hit squad - is a reminder that Ross Hagen was the producer of this manic actioner.

After the mysterious disappearance of one of the biggest names in Jai alai (a variation of the sport pelota), insurance investigator Mike Harber (Ross Hagen) is hired to try and find the missing sportsman. Mike's search leads him to the heavily guarded island fortress of Dr. Tsu (Nancy Kwan), where the unscrupulous surgeon has been harvesting the bodies of athletes abducted by her all-female army and using their limbs and organs in illegal transplant operations for the super-rich.

Opening with a scene in which several topless female swimmers are abducted by Dr. Tsu's sexy hench-women, this early 70s USA/Philippines production starts as it means to go on by being unashamedly exploitative trash. As his film unfolds, director Robert Vincent O'Neill (who also gave us the equally exploitative Angel and Avenging Angel) piles on the outlandishness, delivering a prolonged chase scene through the streets of Manila (which involves some particularly perilous looking stunts), some really bad fight scenes (his actresses clearly total strangers to the martial arts), lots of leggy babes in revealing outfits, and a very silly finale that sees a bunch of Dr. Tsu's failed experiments running amok on the island (the daft creatures including a half man/half ape and a guy who sports a glass cranium with an orange beacon inside). All of this is accompanied by a cool funky '70s soundtrack.

The movie's kitschy style also adds immensely to the fun factor: there are go-go boots and hot-pants aplenty, Dr. Tsu's operating theatre boasts cutting-edge psychedelic coloured lighting and swirly hypno-discs (while her PVC operating gown is the height of '70s surgical fashion), and Mike samples the delights of 'brain sex' via a silly high-tech headband covered with diodes.

Add supporting roles for cult favourites Vic Dias and Sid Haig, and what you have is a delightfully daft piece of nonsense—not great film-making by any stretch of the imagination—but highly entertaining nonetheless.

This spy satire, in which a nasty female "Dr. No" (Nancy Kwan) trains a number of women assassins to go out and win the world for her, is rather inane entertainment. However, having seen dozens like it, with better heroes than Ross Hagen, there are so many vivid scenes in my mind that it must be better than most! Cinematography and direction were certainly above medium, and Marilyn Joi and Maria de Aragon are wonderful bad girls.

Wonder Women (1973)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mike Harber (Ross Hagen) is a Los Angeles detective who finds himself trapped in the Philippines. An insurance agent wants him to track down a missing person, which Harber reluctantly agrees to. Before long he learns about a strange doctor doing bizarre experiments on people as well as her gang of female fighters.

WONDER WOMEN kicks off with the MPAA sticker announcing that the picture is rated PG. From here we get a scene of some topless women swimming and throughout the 82-minute running time we are greeted with more nudity as well as some sleazy violence. This here has to be one of the dirtier exploitation movies from this era that didn't carry a R-rating.

With that being said, is the movie any good? It's certainly not a masterpiece or a "good" movie but at the same time it is an entertaining picture. As I stated above, the film contains a fair amount of nudity as well as some violence and this certainly helps keep the film moving. The nice mix of sleaze is a bonus with the various action and martial art scenes.

Another plus is that we've got a lot of familiar faces in the cast. Hagen does a very good job in the lead role as he pretty much plays a James Bond type. I thought the actor was a lot of fun in the role and helped keep the film moving. You also get other exploitation favorites like Roberta Collins, Marilyn Joi, Nancy Kwan and Maria de Aragon.

The story to WONDER WOMEN isn't the most original and there's no doubt that there are a few pacing issues. With that said, I thought the film was entertaining enough to make it worth watching.