29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Girls with Guns: a Hong Kong cinema staple of a bygone era
The Hong Kong film industry's output in the 1980s and 90s was kinetic, breathtaking, bursting with innovation and energy. Films of the era insisted on packing everything possible into the run time, as if they knew something we didn't: the city's economy was booming and filmmakers enjoyed the kind of artistic freedom and backing that was, like the period itself, never going to last forever.
A child is dangled from a moving car while Moon Lee Choi-fung clings to the bonnet in 1990's Fatal Termination. Photo: Golden Sun Films
One of Hong Kong's most memorable cinema fads of the era became known as Girls with Guns and, like all the best movies from Hong Kong, gave viewers exactly what the name implied: women armed to the teeth, who could wreak just as much havoc with their bare hands. Some of the genre's stars are now recognised globally, such as
Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng and
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk . Others, like Yukari Oshima and Jade Leung, are known mostly among aficionados, even if their films were as good or sometimes better than those of more popular stars.
For a decade, these films provided their audience with some of the craziest movie experiences available anywhere, and the rise and fall of the genre, along with the reasons behind both, provide a glimpse into the workings of the wider industry at the time.
The history of Hong Kong heroines predates the Girls with Guns craze, of course. From Cheng Pei-pei's iconic 1966 performance in King Hu Jinquan's Come Drink with Me to Angela Mao Ying's Golden Harvest kung fu films of the 70s,
Hong Kong cinema embraced girl power long before Hollywood, too: Nora Miao Ke-hsiu appeared alongside
Bruce Lee
Jackie Chan and others, not as arm candy but as a serious presence. Josephine Siao Fong-fong's prolific career has proven her enduring appeal, and even into her 40s she remained a formidable presence, the proof of which can be found in
Jet Li 's Fong Sai-yuk films of the early 90s.
Moon Lee with the requisite firearm in Fatal Termination. Photo: Golden Sun Films
Further precursors to Girls with Guns were early-80s Taiwanese action films. Many female protagonists' names may not ring a bell, but some of these films featured cinematic luminaries such as
Cheng Pei-pei , who starred in 1982's Lunatic Frog Women, aka Lady Piranha, aka The Virgin Commandos (any one of which makes for a must-see title). Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia was the lead in 1982's Golden Queen's Commando, as well as its sequel, Pink Force Commando, released the same year. The year also saw the release of The Deadly Angels, a Taiwanese film whose title foreshadowed a staple Girls with Guns franchise in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong cinema of the 80s never met a rule it wouldn't break, and the old aphorism of 'there's no reason to ever hit a woman' carried no weight in the industry's freewheeling heyday. Whether that violence was documentary or exploitative, there were many times a female character was punched or kicked and sent flying across a room or through a table, and that same woman would, in the best action-film tradition, stand up, dust herself off, and give it right back to her attacker, more often than not emerging bloodied but victorious. For their time, these scenes could even be seen as progressive. They helped define the cinematic potential for female characters and should be thought of as the predecessors to today's female action stars.
The genre's films show little narrative variation. There are women. They have guns. They fight, and they shoot. Then they shoot and fight more. They break things. They break people. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they die. No one watches a Girls with Guns movie for the plot.
Corey Yuen Kwai directed the film that started the Girls with Guns genre, Yes, Madam (1985). Photo: SCMP Archives
What makes Girls with Guns so exciting are the breathtaking stunts, filmed in ways that assure the viewer they are seeing the actors, not stunt doubles, take very real risks. Even children weren't spared their share of death-defying stunts. A car chase in 1990's Fatal Termination, starring Moon Lee Choi-fung, infamously features a young girl dangling outside a moving car, a terrifying scene created by dangling an actual child outside a moving car. There was a steel beam and cables involved, but the asphalt and gravity were real. In the same sequence, Lee clings precariously to the bonnet of the car, with little evidence of any similar safety measures.
