CLEOPATRA JONES & CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD

CLEOPATRA JONES (1973)

CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD (1974)

There's nothing wrong with "Women's lib" and having a main character being a beautiful, strong and smart female, but somehow female action heroes just fail miserably on the big screen. The Cleopatra Jones series is no different, super heroine Cleopatra Jones is a 7 foot tall black woman with lots of make up, a dazzling wardrobe,master in kung fu and highly skilled with all kinds of weapons, basically she's Dennis Rodman.

The first movie "Cleopatra Jones" (Tamera Dobson) basically introduces her as this powerful secret agent of the U.S. government out to get the evil drug lord known as "Mother". Shelly Winters plays Mother a middle aged, over weight lesbian in leather. Her over acting is the best part of this movie. The action and plot is pretty lame. Cleopatra Jones is seen wearing a different outfit for each fight scene, outfits that include big hats, long capes and platform shoes. Cleo is probably bald underneath the scarf, the hat and the Afro wig.

The second of the series is probably the better one, "Cleopatra Jones and the casino of gold". This was filmed in Hong Kong, following the death of Kung Fu master Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong martial arts add a great touch to this another lame blaxploitation flick. Cleo is joined by the stereotypical Chinese girl with the name "May Ling" played by Tanny. May Ling is a detective of the Hong Kong police, she is also a master in Kung Fu, while the long haired skinny male cops working under her are a bunch of useless goofs on motorcycles.

However the villain this time is played by Stella Stevens as "The Dragonlady". Dragonlady is also a drug dealing, money smuggling lesbian, with a lair decorated with gold dragons located in the island of Macu outside of Hong Kong.

Although Bruce Lee brought the action of Kung Fu from Hong Kong to the big screen, the fight scenes from the 70's lack a lot of the sharp skills and choreography of the martial arts films of today. Unfortunately, most of the action sequences you can see Cleo, Dragonlady or May Ling were all stuntmen in drag.

Ironically this was the first of a series of cat fight films featuring Stella Stevens and Tamara Dobson. They played against each other in several other low budget movies through the 70's to the mid 1980's, one of them "Chained Heat", yep you got it, a women's prison movie.

One interesting note: Cleo's boss in Hong Kong was played by Norman Fell whose name in the film was Stanley. The next character named Stanley played by Fell was the famous Stanley Roper of "Three's Company", I wonder if they are one and the same?