The promo poster for Wonder Women isn’t much, but the movie, which According to AFI.com premiered today in 1973, stars Nancy Kwan, and we were curious how the titular figure in the blockbuster 1960 movie The World of Suzie Wong had fared in the decade since. Like many serious performers from the ’60s, when the schlocky ’70s came along it was either adapt or fade. Kwan, it’s clear to see in Wonder Women, adapted. Other turkeys from the era in which she appeared include 1975’s Wondercock and 1978’s Night Creature. But we’ll get to those another day, maybe.
In Wonder Women, Kwan, helped by subordinates Roberta Collins, Claire Polan, Shirley Washington, and others, runs an organ harvesting ring in Manila. She kidnaps athletes and uses their perfect bodies as smorgasbords, taking eyes and what-have-you. Her ambitious ultimate goal is a full body transplant, placing a living brain into a recipient body. Conversely, her subordinates mainly just want to get laid, and don’t get along with each other, which can happen when sex starved women are exposed to perfect male specimens.
Meanwhile, over in Act Two, former CIA operative Ross Hagen is hired to find the abductees. His job is made exceedingly easy when Kwan sends an assassin to ventilate him before he even has a clue what the fuck’s going on. Hagen foils the attempt, which goes to show that just because a guy wears a leisure suit doesn’t mean he can’t move quickly. He chases his would be killer, the statuesque, nightgown clad Maria De Aragon, through the packed streets of Manila, in what was probably the strangest display of Western filmmaking in Asia until Annie Belle ran completely naked through Hong Kong in 1975.
The whole chaotic chase, with its hundreds of spectators, is priceless. De Aragon gives everything to this sequence. That’s no surprise—movie performers have to try their best or risk never being hired by another studio. But if you watch De Aragon carefully, you’ll see a telltale quizzical facial expression periodically arise. To wit: How the hell did I get into this? Her showstopping foot pursuit is immediately followed by a lengthy Jeepney chase, highlighting the soft suspensions and general hazardousness of such vehicles. Once Hagen catches De Aragon she directs him to Kwan’s headquarters, and that, folks, is how you get to the heart of dastardly conspiracies while barely trying.
If you take the chases and fights out of Wonder Women there’s barely any movie, and it’s poorly made beyond a doubt, but here’s the thing—some productions of this type are serious, while others are long, inside jokes. The moment we see Kwan’s dungeon menagerie of failed transplant experiments it becomes clear: director/co-writer Robert Vincent O’Neil didn’t take this seriously. Or at least, his goal wasn’t to produce a serious final product. He managed to nimbly cross the line from terrible to terribly fun, and for that reason we consider Wonder Women a must-watch—with friends and gin tonics. It’s dumb-o-licious.
