WONDER WOMEN (Philippines, 1973)

I received this Filipino flick today from Something Weird Video; It's WONDER WOMEN (aka The Deadly and the Beautiful, directed by Robert Vincent O'Neil) from 1973. I haven't watched it yet but I've checked the print and it looks great. Sure it's got scratches but it doesn't have a "soft" picture nor is it foggy like some of the old Greek video tapes. The picture is crisp clear and detailed. Sid Haig and Vic Diaz are in it. Bruce Holecheck mentioned (thanks!) over on my other blog that the film is actually going to get a proper release later this year on both DVD and blu-ray! It would be nice if some more of these old Filipino flicks would get re-released on DVD in proper versions! :D

The SWV DVD is available here. 10 bucks plus postage. If you're outside the US you can pay with PayPal (however, you'll have to send them an email as you can't pay thru their website).

NB: And 5 minutes ago I discovered that SWV have actually closed down their eBay store! I wonder why. @_@


Something Weird description:

Karate-chopping sex kittens! Organ transplants! Zombie sex slaves! Monster Mutants! Go-go boots! SID HAIG! Wonder Women! Yup, here's one of our Philippine faves, a wild and sexy shot-in-Manila grindhouse gem from the Seventies that plays like a live-action sci-fi comic book complete with a title that should've been a disco hit.

Fourteen of the world's top male athletes are shot with hypos, stuffed into coffins, and shipped to the Philippines by the lethal Linda (MARIA ARAGON, also in Love Me Like I Do, who should've had a bigger career than she did), and her beautiful-but deadly glamour girls -- who trade their mini-skirts for mourning attire in order to accompany the "bodies." When one of their targets is a famous jai-alai player with a hefty insurance policy, Lloyds of London hires ex-cop, ex-CIA, and all-around-tough-guy-stud Mike Harber (ROSS HAGEN, who also produced ) to investigate. With the aid of giggling cab driver VIC DIAZ (who's apparently in every Filipino film made in the Seventies), "the indestructible Mr. Harber" battles Won Ton Charlie's motorcycle assassins, then is seduced by Linda who kicks the crap out of him in his hotel room before the violence spills out into the streets of Manila where passerby stare, get startled, and even chase after her!

Mike eventually arrives at the island fortress of Dr. Tsu (NANCY KWAN, a looooong way from Flower Drum Song and The World Of Suzie Wong), a Su-Muru-style mad scientist "a hundred years ahead of her time," who's selling black-market organs and protected by an all-girl army. The missing athletes are there too, in comas and garbed in Saran Wrap, where they're used as unwilling organ donors and as sex robots fo Linda and her squad of killer cuties. Also on hand is Tsu's happy-go-lucky business partner Gregorious (the great Sid Haig of Spider Baby); a millionaire geezer eager to have his old brain put into "the body of a healthy, young, virile, athlete"; and a handful of hilarious motley monsters dubbed "Dr. Tsu's Freaks" which include a former basketball player whose exposed brain has a flashing light atop it. But the operation on the old coot goes bad, Linda is scheduled for "a complete dissection," and the monsters go on a killing spree...

Plus: brief titty; slow-motion cockfights; a killer kid; two quick cameos by MARILYN JOI; big bald BRUNO PUNSALAN (a fixture in Blood Island films); Dr. Tsu's "brain sex" machine; and the classic line: "Hands off, bitch, he's mine!"

Similar in many ways to Franco's equally goofy The Girl From Rio -- there's obviously more than one futuristic city populated entirely by shapely young centerfolds -- Wonder Women isn't exactly the sort of tongue-in-cheek entertainment one expects from ROBERT VINCENT O'NEIL, the director of such grim sex-noirs as The Psycho Lover and Blood Mania. In fact, Wonder Women is so fast, funny, and fetishistic, you'll barely notice it's rated PG>
From a 35mm print pumped full of anti rejection serum.
-- Cadet Happy



Product Details

SKU: 3298
Weight: 0.25 lbs
Format: DVD-R
Year: 1973
Color: Color
Starring: Nancy Kwan
Co-starring: Ross Hagen
Other cast: Maria de Aragon, Sid Haig, Vic Diaz
Directed by: Robert Vincent O'Neil
Produced by: Untamed Video

Betamax / Belgium / FS / English audio / Dutch subs