The Bod Squad (1976)

So much average

Sadly Over-hyped

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This movie essentially begins with six European women being abducted while on their way to Australia by some Chinese pirates who intend to sell them in the sex-slave market. Once they get to the pirate stronghold one of the women resists and she is killed by the boss named "Chao" (Hsieh Wang). Fortunately for them a beautiful Chinese woman by the name of "Ko Mei Mei" (Hui-Ling Liu) helps calm them down at which point they reluctantly do as they are told. From here on the first half of the movie subsequently consists of the women being fondled--and almost raped on several occasions--with Ko Mei Mei always seeming to come to their rescue in the nick of time. Not only that, but she also has a brother named "Ko Pao" (Hua Yueh) who is intent on helping these women gain their freedom. However, in order to do that he has to bide his time and wait for the right moment. Realizing this, Ko Mei Mei proceeds to teach them a few kung fu moves to help them in preparation for the day when they will be sold in the slave market—and they become quite proficient very quickly. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather odd Chinese kung fu movie which was filmed in German and used English subtitles. As I mentioned earlier, it had a rather basic plot and mostly consisted of either scantily-clad women being groped or long scenes involving martial arts—or sometimes both at the same time. It also had some humor here and there as well. Yet even so, I honestly didn't think it was a very good picture and because of that I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

"Karate, Küsse, blonde Katzen" or "Yang chi" (and there exist several English-language titles too for this one, is a collaboration between Hong Kong and West Germany from 1984, so this one is already over 40 years old. I cannot say I am familiar with any of the Asisn people who worked on this film, no matter if behind or in front of the cameras, but the name of director Ernst Hofbauer sure rings a bell and certainly not a positive one. He worked on many German films that were a mix of comedy and soft core porn, but the quality was always very low. The girls weren't that hot and the writing of the story and comedy was abysmal for the most part. And things look similar here in this pretty unusual collaboration. The film runs for slightly under 90 minutes and is about a bunch of young European women who are brought to Asia as slaves for a master who is very influential and owns a big company. Of course, there are also Asian girls for audiences with a more exotic taste. The story is about virginity, greed, loyalty and many other aspects, but the heart and should here is of course once again the mix of nudity and comedy. The women are trained as martial arts fighters to oppose their captors and so it is also somehow a story of survival, even if it is pretty much impossible to take the film seriously from that perspective. After all they are always topless during the fighting sequences. Enough said. I personally don't believe this is among Hofbauer's worst as the Asian influence and the general weirdness of this culture clash adds quite some (un)intended humor. But it's by no means a good film either. I just cannot recommend the watch. Thumbs down.

I discovered this film by accident in the summer of 1978 in New York City, roaming Manhattan with some time to kill and a few dollars in my pocket. In those days the 42nd St district was alive with adult entertainment unlike today's sanitized, Disney-ized fare. In a lot of ways this film was the grand-daddy of female exploitation. The original title was "The Virgins of the Seven Seas" or "Enter The Seven Virgins" (take that, Bruce Lee!). Hot western (German) girls are kidnapped into slavery in order to please their eventual owners but wait!!! They secretly train in martial (not marital) arts to defeat the male pigs who would own them. Of course they do this in the most humiliating and degrading way while clad in their colorful and scanty underwear. Tarantino surely must have seen this film in his youth and turned it into Kill Bill. The bad dubbing, obvious wigs but credible (and sexy) fight scenes only added to my enjoyment of this over-the-top action comedy. I only wish it was available in some format these days so that I could own a copy. Still, I'll never forget how much fun this movie was.

This movie rocks. Very attractive 70's chicks fight it out against evil chinese guys. This movie is highly entertaining and makes little sense. I simply loved it. The german director was also responsible for most parts of the infamous german sexploitation series SCHULMAEDCHEN REPORT, aka SCHOOL GIRL REPORTS in the early till late 70's.