In the US, Roger Corman cannily encouraged his New World Pictures protégés (such as Jonathan Demme and Kaplan) to infuse social commentary into their chicks-in-chains exploitation programmers. Across the Pacific, a new, hungry generation of contract directors at Shaw Brothers – most notoriously “rebel in the system” Kuei Chih-hung, responsible for Bamboo House of Dolls among other salacious shockers – expressed their frustrations at life in British Hong Kong right under the nose of newly knighted studio slave driver Sir Run Run Shaw, eschewing the strictures of Shaws’ Movietown backlot for down-and-dirty location filming, with the casts speaking full-throated local Cantonese instead of the more easily exported mainland Mandarin.
Sa dam ying is a loose spin-off of Kuei’s The Teahouse and Big Brother Cheng (both vehicles for Chen Kuantai, a “guest star” here) helmed by Sun Chung, who had already directed this film’s star Chen Ping in Sexy Killer, Shaws’ pastiche of Pam Grier in Coffy. Here, she stars as Ying, an ass-kicking agitator with a dark past, defending her put-upon garment factory co-workers in a pact of sisterhood against the clammy mitts and vicious fists of the misogynist scumbags in power.
Make no mistake, this is only a progressive or feminist film in the loosest sense, written, produced and directed by men; the lowbrow tone is set early on with Ying beating up a predatory lesbian in the factory washroom, and gratuitous sex and nudity abound throughout. Still, audiences with tougher stomachs who take their female empowerment narratives however they can get them will reap plenty of trashy rewards, from the rough-and-tumble fight choreography by the late Tong Kai, to the groovily eclectic library music soundtrack (featuring Giuliano Sorgini) curated by Frankie Chan, all lensed in gloriously lurid Shawscope.

James Flower