The only thing that bums me out about Lady Battle Cop is that at the end, it has some text that leads the viewer to believe that there will be a sequel. There never was, but maybe someone should make one now? I would watch it and love it for the record. I’m sure some people might get bogged down in the fact that Lady Battle Cop is quite obviously a riff on RoboCop. First of all, lighten up. Secondly, while that classic film is pure Verhoven and therefore falls into a high-trash conceptual art category, Lady Battle Cop borrows a lot of aesthetics from Michael Mann’s work from the 1980s, particularly Miami Vice. Lots of white suits, high energy music, and neo-noir undertones. It’s undeniably cheesy, but it is well made, and the special effects are pretty cool for having been released in 1990.
If I can say anything other than how much campy fun Lady Battle Cop is, it would be that the film easily made me want to check out director Akihisa Okamoto’s other work. Particularly his other tokusatsu films like Mobile Sheriff Jiban and Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya. This film introduced me to the superhero tokusatsu genre, and I think that I will definitely be checking out more titles in it.
“…undeniably cheesy, but it is well made, and the special effects are pretty cool…”
I guess I could tell you what they are before I go. Even though there’s the thing called the internet, but anyway. Super Hero Tokusatsu is a genre of film which relies heavily on special effects and superheroes. Tokusatsu translates directly to special filming. Godzilla is also a tokusatsu, but since it’s about monsters, it’s a kaiju tokusatsu. Okay, that’s enough of me teaching you Japanese film history, especially since someone who knows way more about it than I do may be reading this.
With all this being said, I hope you have the good sense to watch Lady Battle Cop. It’s so much fun, really short, has amazing (read: hysterical) original music about women in tennis, and the fight scenes are hilarious. What more can you ask for in an action movie from 1990? Seriously, it’s great, and you should watch it ASAP.
"…perfect for those who love B-movies..."
