Brigitte? There's, uhm, something over your eye...
Golden Queen's Commando is a 1982 Genre Mashup action movie with an All-Star Cast, directed by Taiwanese schlockmaster Kevin Chu, starring Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh, Elsa Yang, and various B-grade actresses as the titular commando team.A plot that can be described as The Dirty Dozen meets Godfrey Ho. Female commandos consisting of sharpshooter Black Fox, explosives expert Dynamite, brawler Amazon, samurai Brandy, and pickpocket Sugar Plum meets former war veteran-turned-bounty hunter, Black Fox (Brigitte) in a WWII Nazi-occupied camp. Forging an impromptu alliance, the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, called the Golden Queen's Commandoes, instigates a prison breakout before escaping into the Nazi-owned territory called "The Valley of Death", where they end up battling a whole platoon of enemies in the Nazi's weapons laboratory.
The plot is roughly as incoherent as its editing and storyline (how did the movie suddenly go from a "Dirty Dozen-style" military thriller to a Prison Drama and back to a full-blown Rambo-style action flick is beyond anyone's guess), but the movie delivers actions in spades.
Notably the second of a Thematic Series directed by Kevin Chu and starring Brigitte Lin, forming a trilogy of sorts after Fantasy Mission Force but before Pink Force Commando.
Golden Queen Commandoes contains examples of:
- Amazon Brigade: The team of Commandoes, definitely. Especially the brawler whose name is literally Amazon.
- An Arm and a Leg: During her first scene in a Japanese sake house, Brandy relieves a Japanese soldier of his arm via katana.
- Anyone Can Die: At the conclusion of the vault shootout, the entire titular commando team are dead, taking out the entire Nazi horde of over a hundred Mooks in the process.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Black Fox and Black Cat in the vault finale, but only because most of the commando force is now dead.
- Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: Used in the prison escape scene, when Black Fox fires a shot at Black Cat... hitting an enemy approaching her from a corner.
- Bullying a Dragon: For the titular commando team, some of their intro is this.
- Brandy's first scene had her being harassed and bossed around by a bunch of Japanese soldiers in a pub where she's a cleaner working for booze. When she ends up desperate for beer money she ends up getting on her knees, at which point one of the Japanese soldiers tosses Brandy her tip... into a urinal bucket. Brandy finally retrieves her tip, crawls to the bar, gets her bottle of sake, and once she finished drinking, she whips out her katana, killing the soldier who threw her tip first (via arm removal) and butchers every single soldier in thirty seconds.
- Black Cat's debut in a casino had her winning hand after hand from a rival gambler. The gambler, being a mob boss, orders his mooks to rob her, only for Cat to effortlessly gun down all of them.
- Amazon is introduced in the sumo wrestling ring, where she beats up the first few of the challengers easily; the champion sumo then declares he can squish her, ordering for the battle to be to the death. Amazon complies and executes him.
- Debut Queue: Each and every member of the commando shows up, one at a time, for the first 20 minutes of the movie. Before they all end up captured and in the same prison cell and had to become a team reluctantly to escape their captors.
- Dies Wide Open: Black Cat.
- Dressing as the Enemy: During the breakout, Black Cat managed to break out by stealing the uniform of Nazis after overpowering a few of them. Black Fox does the same, and somehow none of the Nazi officers questions why one of their members is a woman with an eyepatch.
- Drunken Master: Brandy, who must have alcohol to even be able to walk properly. Once she consumed enough alcohol, she becomes a devil with her katana and slices apart faceless Mooks in seconds.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The final shootout between the Commandoes and the Nazis is set in the Nazi's underground weapons factory, which can be accessed deeper through a heavily guarded vault. Naturally they have to kill their way through an entire army of faceless Mooks, suffering casualties of their entire team in the process.
- Eyepatch of Power: Protagonist Black Fox wears an eyepatch in all her scenes.
- Facial Horror: The champion Sumo wrestler Amazon fought in her intro scene, both of them being participants in a Duel to the Death, ends up having his face shoved by her into a burning torch. With close-up on his barbequed dead face afterwards.
- Fat Bastard: The Nazi warden of the prison camp, which the commandoes takes delight in killing him first during their escape.
- '80s Hair: On most of the cast, despite the movie being set in WWII.
- Fur Bikini: Amazon's attire consists of a leopard-skinned bikini with matching skirt, fur boots, and fur armguards.
- The Gambler: Badass gunslinger Black Cat's first scene had her in a casino winning one card game after another, at which point several rival mobsters decides to rob her. It doesn't end well... for the mobsters.
- Genre Mashup: A prison film, Spaghetti Western, Girls with Guns actioner, The Dirty Dozen-style movie about commandoes on a mission, a James Bond-esque spy thriller, Jidaigeki samurai cinema, and a Martial Arts flick all rolled in one.
- Girls with Guns: Black Cat and Black Fox definitely counts, although by the end of the movie when the commandoes takes on the Nazis in the underground base shootout most of them are holding guns at that point.
- The Gunslinger: Black Cat and Black Fox both favours using pistols as their weapons, which they can use with deadly accuracy.
- Hidden Weapons: During her intro, Black Cat managed to gun down a whole squad of Mooks, only to have the last mook, the rival gambler who lost all his money to her, aim his gun on Black Cat when she ran out of bullets. When the mook threatens her (Bond Villain Stupidity? Yes) while ordering her to drop her guns and hand over her winnings, she does exactly that, taking out a Bible in the process... and shooting the derringer inside said Bible killing her opponent.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Nazi underground base is located in The Valley of Death. Such a cozy sounding place...
- Katanas Are Just Better: For Brandy, she's the only character of the titular commando force who doesn't even use a gun. Because she can kick a ton of ass well enough using her trusty katana.
- Last Stand: For the Commandoes, who faces off against the remaining Nazi army in the underground vault shootout.
- Moment of Weakness: Brandy, after the battle against bandits, where she ran out of alcohol and desperately searches the bodies of Mooks she killed recently for more wine. She finally found a bottle, starts drinking, and fails to notice a surviving bandit approaching her from a distance away pointing his gun on her. BANG.
- More Dakka: The final battle when Black Cat and Black Fox, the moment they got their hands on heavy-machine guns as they storm their way into the depths of the Nazi's underground base. They literally fills every square inch of the vault with bullets.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Black Cat's hairstyle and attire is directly lifted from the late David Bowie, probably from the then-recent ''Labyrinth. (On the right
◊.) - Of Corpse He's Alive: After killing the first wave of Nazis and making their way into the vault, Black Cat notes that there's a very likely chance of more Nazis behind the door. Turns out she's right, the Nazi forces behind are indeed waiting in ambush, but Black Cat and Black Fox had propped a dozen or so Nazi corpses as meatshields before opening the vault, so that the Nazis behind assumes they just shot their comrades and the commandoes can fire back during the Nazis' moment of surprise.
- Off with His Head!: The fate of the last Japanese officer who tries bullying Brandy in her introduction scene. Complete with a freeze-frame of his neck squirting blood.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Amazon, Brandy, Black Fox and Black Cat.
- Prison Episode: The middle half of the movie is set largely in a Nazi-occupied prison where the titular Commando team meets each other for the first time and has to team up for a Great Escape sequence breaking out of the prison.
- Shout-Out: Black Fox's introduction is a blatant reference to the first scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And her choice of concealed weapons makes her a blatant Sartana Expy.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The two huge action scenes that concludes the movie have an explosion roughly every twenty seconds, usually from landmines, grenades, or dynamites. Firstly, the fight against the Warlord's bandit mercenaries where the commandoes booby traps the direction used by the approaching bandits with buried explosives, which they then shoot from a distance killing three to five Mooks with every shot fired, and then the vault finale when they take down an entire army of Nazi, many with flung grenades.
- Sumo Wrestling: Amazon's debut takes place in a sumo wrestling ring, with her being pitted against their champion.
- Taking You with Me: At the end of the vault shootout, Dynamite, mortally wounded by several bullets, grabs on the Nazi Warlord while holding her last bundle of dynamites. She gets shot from point-blank and dies in the process, but her dynamites blows up the warlord.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The titular commandoes during the prison breakout scene aren't a team yet, and have to refrain themselves from killing each other while attempting their escape. Even when they've made it out of the prison and are being hunted by the Nazis, they are still coinstantly at each other's throats.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: The standard move of Demolitions Expert Dynamite, who takes out large chunks of enemies by lobbing grenades all over the place.
- World of Action Girls: The main selling point of the movie, as if the title isn't a giveaway.
- You All Meet in a Cell: The commandoes all met in prison, when Black Fox is already there. They then have to form an impromptu team and formulate their escape.
