For Your Height Only/Challenge of the Tiger



I've been sick for for the last week, but I did get to take in this double feature DVD from Mondo Macabro.



I've been meaning to see For Your Height Only (1979) for a while, just because the movie has quite the reputation. In case you haven't heard of it, it's a Filipino James Bond parody starring a midget. Now that I've seen it, I can say I've seen it. And that's about it. For Your Height Only is a totally bland collection of James Bond-ish scenes, with the only difference being that Agent 00 (Weng Weng) is short. Agent 00 talks to women, and is short. Agent 00 beats people up, and is short. Agent 00 is in a gunfight, and is short. Just about the only real joke in the movie is that Agent 00 is looking for the evil Mr. Giant, and you can probably figure out the punchline there.
 
Challenge of the Tiger (1980), on the other hand, I had never heard of, but it was far more entertaining. This Bruce Le film (he stars and directs) is also broadly an espionage thriller, centering on the search for a secret formula. Now that I think about it, I think the formula was for some sort male sterility drug. Le and American actor Richard Harrison are CIA agents, and together they track the formula from Spain to Hong Kong and finally to Macau.
 


Challenge of the Tiger is an odd film. On one hand it's pretty cheap looking, with at least some scenes that look like they were shot in hotel rooms to save money. Oh, and there's scene at a horse race where all the CIA agents and terrorists are wearing nametags, suggesting they just filmed at some event that was going on at the track. On the other hand, the movie does have copious location work in Spain and China, and the cast includes martial arts heavy hitters like Yang Sze and Wang Jang Lee.
 
Presumably Richard Harrison was included to give the movie some selling power in English speaking countries, but I wonder what his contract read like. I suspect that there was a clause about how he wanted to share minimal screen time with Bruce Le, or maximum screen time with naked breasts, or both. Harrison doesn't have much to do in the film, especially towards the end, but he is around for almost all the scenes of gratuitous female nudity, and there are a lot of those. Seriously, Challenge of the Tiger may set some sort of new record for nudity in an otherwise serious martial arts film. An early scene has two topless women playing tennis – in slow motion! That's setting the bar exceedingly high (or low) right there.

Posted: Sun - October 15, 2006 at      

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