10 Movies Every Action Fan Needs To See
7. Cleopatra Wong
In 2011, Marrie Lee (real name Doris Young) was presented with the Action Queens Honorary Award for her role as Cleopatra Wong, a character she played in 3 low budget movies shot in the Philippines in the late '70s. The pick of the bunch is 1978’s Cleopatra Wong, which you know Robert Rodriguez must’ve seen at some stage because it has the same blend of outrageous action and humour as his Machete films.
Words alone cannot express just how much fun this tale of a female Interpol agent tracking counterfeit money is, but if you can imagine a Filipino-lensed missing link between Faster Pussycat Kill Kill and Rodriguez’s films you’re on the right lines. Then again, none of those films featured machine gun-wielding gangsters disguised as nuns or Kung Fu assassins that can leap walls in a single bound.
Lee returned to the role in The Return Of The Bionic Boy (1979) and Mean Business (1979), but it’s this first instalment you need to watch, if only for the climax that involves several running gun battles with nuns.