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| Images courtesy of 88 Films |
In a swift turnaround after the success of Wellson Chin’s sequel
to his hit 1988 comedy film series The Inspector Wears Skirts and the
second film a year later, Chin and producer Billy Chan reunited with the cast
once again with the 1990 aptly named Raid on Royal Casino Marine or The
Inspector Wears Skirts III. Moving
the action adventure crimefighting to a Casino Ship with the chief Inspector
Kan (Stanley Fung) married to Madame Wu (Sibelle Hu) now somewhat retired, the
ragtag gang of female soldiers are tasked with going undercover on the ship to
try and sniff out and apprehend a group of thieves stealing military equipment
and weaponry. With Sandra Ng reprising
her role as the temperamental Amy and Billy Lau as troublemaking Nam, the film
is an unlikely candidate in the Inspector Wears Skirts saga for
ratcheting up the stakes and giving Sandra Ng’s character her biggest challenge
in the series yet!
After quitting the force, Madame Wu’s husband Inspector Kan
goes out to regroup the remaining SKIRTS members while she begins training the
Banshee Squad Members for their upcoming mission. As Kan and Nam prepare their SKIRTS members
for the possible hardships ahead with their undercover Casino Ship mission
including but not limited to being tortured or electrocuted, the girls get into
spats with a sexist bus driver meanwhile Amy ups the ante by taking on three
middle-aged female gamblers. After beating
them at their own game, her ascension into the upper ranks of poker leads her directly
in the firing line of nefarious criminals keen on besieging and burglarizing
the patrons while trying to kill off en-masse the SKIRTS unit.
Basically an Inspector Wears Skirts entry moved out
to sea with many of the casino caper tropes rolling themselves out onscreen,
the third entry officially titled Raid on Royal Casino Marine due to not
being made by Golden Harvest winds up being among the best of the lot for
ushering in many of the same lowbrow and off-color sexist comedy mixed with badass
martial arts choreography by Lau Chau-Sang.
Giving Sandra Ng the most to do while also giving our two main
characters Inspector Kan and Madame Wu their most death-defying feat yet, this
water-bound action-adventure is at once hilarious and thrilling and perhaps the
most thoroughly entertaining and fully fledged Inspector Wears Skirts film.
Shot by two cinematographers Au Ming-Hung and Au Kam-Hung
and scored by Noel Quinlan and Jim Yeung, one of the joys of this casino borne
actioner is seeing the characters going undercover in tuxedos or dresses while
the unexpected card gaming wunderkind Amy finds herself in a magician’s outfit
for the final round. Characters get thrown
in and out of the water or climb up back onto the Casino Ship sneakily and the
setting made all the more remote by being out in the middle of the sea gives
the proceedings an added layer of excitement.
Mostly though, the gang is all here in perhaps their funniest and
finally most intense operation with the character arcs of Madame Wu, Inspector
Kan and Amy coming full circle while The Killer and The Blue Jean
Monster actor Fui-On Shing makes a wonderful cameo as a gangster smitten by
Amy.
Licensed by China Star Pictures and restored in 2K from the
original camera negative, Raid on Royal Casino Marine aka The
Inspector Wears Skirts III is the logical height of the series with all the
characters in place, just the right amount of silly slapstick violence and
serious hardcore carnage. As with the
previous two iterations, 88 Films have packaged the film with reversible sleeve
art, a double-sided poster, audio commentary with Hong Kong film expert Frank
Djeng, a deleted scene and original trailer.
While the second and third installations sadly still lack Cynthia
Rothrock who brought a formidable energy to the first entry, this was a
surefire delight and proof you could still squeeze another movie out of this
saga with these quirky, funny, lovable but ultimately badass women of the
SKIRTS team!
--Andrew Kotwicki
