Ma lu xiao ying xiong (1973) User Reviews

A weird gender bending tale from Wei Lo and Golden Harvest.

[Captain_Couth · 8/10 · 19 February 2005]

Back Alley Princess (1973) is an action comedy from Wei Lo (The Fist of Fury). This gender bending tale is about two street urchins (Sam Hui and Polly Kwan) who make a living pulling all kinds of hustling and scheming. One day they decide to hang around a bunch of street performers. After learning a hard lesson from them, they decide to join their troupe. But a series of unfortunate events has Polly deciding to pull out another scheme out of her bag of tricks and hustles money and legal advice from a wealthy solicitor. Everything is fine again until one day when the boyfriend of one of the troupe members sell's her sister to a sleazy crime lord. The back alley princes are called into action once again. Polly has to pull out the biggest scheme of his life pose as a woman! Can Polly pull it off and save the girl?

A very strange kung fu movie from Golden Harvest. All of the minor stars are involved in this movie. Even some of their biggest stars have cameo roles (includinbg the director). Polly Kwan makes a very unconvincing male (she's too attractive) Angela Mao co-stars as the girl who's strongly attracted to Polly, Sam Hui and many of the Golden Harvest stock players. Han Ying Chieh pulls double duty as the action director and as the sleazy crime lord (virtually the same role he played in Big Boss).

Highly recommended if you can find a copy.

Hong Kong curio

[squelcho · 7/10 · 30 November 2005]

I found a cheap DVD copy of this movie and wasn't really expecting too much from it, but was pleasantly surprised to discover a very watchable film. The image and sound quality and subtitles were also excellent throughout. Someone obviously thought this was worth properly remastering, and I'd have to agree.

I can't help wondering if this was a contractual filler for Golden Harvest regulars. Maybe another movie fell through, so they set this one up in a hurry and developed the script as they went along. I'm only guessing, but it certainly gets a lot sharper as it progresses, having started out as a "lovable scamps" type comedy affair with some very Boulting Bros style title animations and totally cheesy soundtrack.

The fight scenes aren't the most convincing you'll ever see, but Polly Kwan and Angelo Mao do get to kick and crunch a goodly number of snarly evil doers as the movie gets progressively more uptempo and violent. They also get hit quite hard a few times themselves. Tough babes, those 70s starlets. Added fun comes from placing the faces who take up the supporting roles and minor cameos.

It's not a kung fu classic or a lost masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a decent little film, well acted and directed once it finds its feet and drops the slapstick. There's plenty of worse ways to pass 90 minutes on a rainy day.

Lengthy But Fun Kung-Fu Comedy!!

[Movie-Misfit · 7/10 · 22 May 2020]

Having just starred in The Tattooed Dragon with Jimmy Wang Yu and Sylvia Chang, and also directed by Lo Wei, the wonderful Sam Hui's follow-up role was in this wacky kung-fu comedy, set in modern day (70's) Hong Kong. Sharing the screen with kung-fu queen, Polly Shang Kwan, the two stars play con artists who befriend a bunch of street performers and decide to join their troupe. All seems well until a sister of the troupe gets sold to a gangster, leading to Hui and Kwan stepping up to save the day!

Sounds simple enough, but this Golden Harvest production from Lo Wei is pretty nuts in many ways. Polly Shang Kwan plays Chiili Boy - a guy, with boobs - but when Chilli Boy must go undercover to save the sister from a gangster, he (she) disguises oneself as a girl to trick them. Then she gives away her big reveal at the end..!?!

Anyone who doesn't know what they are watching, or understands the long-time tradition of females playing males (and vice-versa) in Chinese theatres and movies, might just be a bit lost.

Opening with a great animated credit sequence much like the classic, Pink Panther movies, the gender-bender tale of Chilli Boy and Hui's, Embroidered Pillow may seem a little dated today, but it does make for a fun watch. It has plenty of comedy, lots of neat kung-fu fights, and a cast of who's who in early 70's Hong Kong cinema including the fantastic, Angela Mao Ying, Tien Feng, Carter Wong, Billy Chan, Lo Wei himself, and a young Lam Ching Ying, Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah in the background. In fact, I would go as far to say that had Raymond Chow convinced Lo Wei to use Jackie Chan in Sam's role, we may have seen a different back-catalogue of our hero today!

It would have been the perfect vehicle for Chan, with the fighting and the comedy, which is all he ever wanted to do - instead, landing a number of serious roles with Wei (most of which I do adore of course). Regardless, the young Sam Hui is as wonderful as always, though over-shadowed by Polly who gets a bit more attention and most (if not all) of the action. After-all, it is her movie...

While its middle may lag somewhat for plenty of drama and a bit of comedy, the last 30 minutes makes for a fun ride with a few short scuffles leading to a lengthy end battle. This is headed by Kwan and Angela Mao Ying against some kung-fu veterans, and is a lot of fun to watch with some great moves. The big baddie is played by Han Ying Chieh, who also choreographed the action, along with Mars for stunts.

The team would return a couple of years later for the equally as fun, Chinatown Capers which continues their adventures!

On a side note; its interesting to see just how many films director Lo Wei had made with the (then young) Golden Harvest studios before breaking off a few years later to direct Jackie Chan in a number of movies with mixed results. This of course led to Golden Harvest taking Jackie off Wei, and thus began the start of a legend..

Overall: Maybe a little too long in its running time, Back Alley Princess is a fun watch nonetheless and packed with stars!

BACK ALLEY PRINCESS – Life in the slum quarter of Hong Kong, with plenty of kung fu

[BrianDanaCamp · 6 May 2012]

BACK ALLEY PRINCESS (1973) is an unusual entry from Golden Harvest. It's a drama of contemporary Hong Kong, with some comic elements, but it's also filled with kung fu. The focus is on poor and working people with a pair of street urchins at the center and the extended family of street performers and vendors they soon join. In this aspect, it's reminiscent of the Shaw Bros. comedy-drama of the same year, THE HOUSE OF 72 TENANTS. What distinguishes this one is the presence in the lead role of Polly Shang-Kwan (aka Lingfeng Shangguan and assorted variations of that) who'd made her film debut in the swordplay classic DRAGON INN (1967) six years earlier. Here Polly plays an orphaned boy, known only as "Chili Boy," who engages in petty thefts and street hustles with the aid of her sidekick, "Embroidered Pillow" (comic actor Samuel Hui). Now, I'm familiar with Polly's frequent appearances in kung fu films where she plays a female fighter traveling the roads of ancient China in male garb. In those films, she always looked like an attractive woman who happened to be wearing male clothing and it took a while for me to understand the convention of those films that every person who encounters her would immediately and unquestioningly accept her as a man. I even discussed this in my IMDb review of her film, 99 CYCLING SWORDS (1980). In this film, however, the actress has short hair throughout, wears boy's clothes and moves and talks like a hyperactive boy of the streets. She really inhabits the character in a way I've never seen in any of her other films. It's easily the best thing she's ever done.

Chili Boy goes through a lot in the course of the film and gets caught up in the drama of the large family he becomes a part of. He initially enters their orbit when he offers to act as a barker to pull crowds into their act, proving such a success that they ask him to join them. When a schoolgirl in the group is robbed of her school fees, Chili Boy goes out and pulls a scam on a good Samaritan lawyer in order to get the money. When the landlord raises the rent on them, Chili Boy turns to that same lawyer to plead their case. The lawyer is so pure-hearted that he offers to adopt Chili Boy as a ward and pay for his schooling. (The fact that this good-guy lawyer who's such a soft touch happens to live in a mansion with lots of servants is just one example of how far-fetched things get in this film.) Just when it looks like the story will shift to a tale of a poor boy's reaction to a new life of privilege, it takes a turn into crime film/kung fu territory. The schoolgirl who'd been robbed earlier gets abducted by a gang working for a pimp. To find her, Chili Boy and another young woman in the group pretend to sell themselves into prostitution in order to rescue the girl, which means that Chili Boy has to dress up as a pretty girl—one who looks like the real Polly Shang-Kwan! There's a big plot hole in this section that never gets addressed, but it's all quickly overwhelmed by a series of kung fu battles between our "heroines" and the pimp and his gang. The gender-bending is then taken another step in an amusing twist ending.

The cast is filled with familiar Hong Kong performers of the era, including Tien Feng, Li Kun, Han Ying Chieh, Wang Lai and in a smaller supporting role, Carter Wong, future star of tons of kung fu films, including BORN INVINCIBLE and 18 BRONZEMEN. Liu Yung (future star of Shaw Bros.' Emperor Chien Lung series) plays the lawyer. Helen Ma (DEAF MUTE HEROINE) plays his girlfriend, conveniently named Helen Ma. The woman who joins Chili Boy in selling herself as part of the rescue attempt is none other than kung fu diva Angela Mao (LADY WHIRLWIND), who has a major supporting role throughout, although she's billed in the credits as "guest star." She gets to fight a lot, too, especially in the final section where she and Polly take on an army of thugs by themselves. Angela, as usual, is pure poetry in motion, but I was astounded by how good a fighter Polly is in these scenes and much more convincing at it than I've ever seen her.

While I enjoyed the film, I take issue with the fact that after the scene where we first see the street performers in action, we never see them performing again. It's as if they completely forgot what they're supposed to do for a living. That scene was a lot of fun and is one of the best in the film. I would have liked more.

Twenty minutes of movie and the rest is filler

[ckormos1 · 3/10 · 9 June 2019]

It starts with a staged street fight. Polly and Samuel are trying to score some money from the crowd. They quickly spend it all on beer and noodles. (Who hasn't?) The movie continues with "A Day in the Life of a Street Kid" for about the first thirty minutes. This was about twenty-five minutes too long. If you started watching the movie at about the twenty-five minute mark, when Angela Mao begins her act, you would have missed nothing.

I find myself waiting until - for something to actually happen. Something like a plot to be specific. Only a storyline has appeared. Polly tries to push her way into the family act. Her and Angela spar on the roof. After defeating Tien Feng Polly joins the family. Finally, the rent money was stolen so we have a plot. Another girl living there also owes the moneylenders.

At just over one hour there is at long last another fight. Polly and Angela rescue a girl. It seems in 1970s Hong Kong that a man could sell his girlfriend into slavery and she could do nothing about it.

The last negative thing is the absurd relationship between Polly and the lawyer.

There is a big fight scene at the end and I would rate that one fight as adequate.

To sum it up there are about twenty minutes of movie out of a two hour movie that you could watch, understand the entire story and see three adequate fights. All the rest is filler material. My only recommendation for this movie is to forget it.