Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, which sounds like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, only it came out nine years before. I bought it on DVD from an op shop about a year ago.
Cleopatra Jones is tall, black and elitely dressed, like an air hostess on her day off in a magazine. She wears silver and metallic purple eyeshadow painted across her cheekbones, from her eyes to her ears, Bowiesquely. She's a federal agent, I think, who has a CIA protector, played by an actor who reminded me of the annoying dad in Alf. Cleopatra constantly addresses him as Stanley. She wants nothing to do with Stanley.
The opening sequence is a pop song sung over helicopter aerial shots of a boat village and famous floating restaurants, not unlike the opening sequence to The Man from Hong Kong - although that opener is meant to be shot from a hangglider, and its pop song went to number 3 in Australia. Unlike The Man from Hong Kong, the film is fully set in Hong Kong, which is interesting, if you're interested in Hong Kong in the 70s. It looks like it was an interesting place. My memories of Hong Kong are from the 80s, of my Dad having a great time haggling with street traders over a fake Rolex.
Making the most of the helicopter hired for the opening aerials, Cleopatra arrives in Hong Kong via helicopter. She's here to rescue her two buddies, drug smugglers who are acutally undercover cops. Maybe we're meant to already know this from the first Cleopatra Jones movie, but the baddies haven't seen it, and never discover the men are undercover. That would've called for too much drama, methinks.
The chief baddie, Miss X, a white American, reminded me of Chris Evert Lloyd. She owns a casino in Macau and has a heroin lab. Her eye makeup is not a touch on CJ's. In the final boss fight Miss X appears to have a male stunt double. Cleopatra kills her with a sword in the guts, then departs Hong Kong via Singapore Airlines.
There are lots of chase scenes: a longish car chase around a dock area (did people used to find this exciting?) then a motorbike pursuit of the almost mute Chen, who's been stealing drug trade from Miss X. The best chase scene is when Cleopatra Jones is hunted by a car down narrow Macanese lanes. At the end of each car chase there's an explosion. I liked the music that accompanies the action, especially the brief running bass line when the hunter's car appears.
One of the signals of time passing in the movie is 'Cleopatra has a new outfit'. Hats feature, as do pantsuits, but her facepaint stays put. When she arrives in the helicopter I don't remember her having any luggage, maybe Stanley helps on this front.
The predominant stunt throughout is the balcony fall. An infinite number of Chinese henchmen in navy kung fu suits tumble from balconies. I guess the movie was a co-production with a Hong Kong film company, but there's no clues to this in the credits.
At the end of the movie the Casino of Gold's impressive chinoiserie interior is demolished by a machine gun fight. Are most sets blown up at the end of action movies because it saves time/money on the bump out, or do the production crew loathe the set so much they want to destroy it? The violence of the finale -- machine gun battle inside a crowded casino -- made me think about America.
For some reason one of the extras fleeing the shootout is topless. Also, there's a completely out-of-nowhere 45-second erotic scene partway through, where moodily lit naked women rub oil into each other. Was this spliced from a porno the producers had on file?
The original Cleopatra Jones was a hit, naturally the sequel flopped. Someone on wikipedia cited the decline in popularity of blaxploitation as the cause, but I reckon the blame might be on Star Wars.
