The Inspector Wears Skirts 3 - Raid on Royal Casino Marine

A Skirtful Of Dollars

The Inspector Wears Skirts 3 - 
Raid on Royal Casino Marine
aka Huang jia du chuan
Hong Kong 1990 Directed by Wellson Chin 
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilerage, if such a thing is possible with this broad kind of comedy vehicle.

The Inspector Wears Skirts 3 - Raid on Royal Casino Marine is the third of the films in the popular series, although I was dreading watching the third after the appallingly bad second installment. It’s also the only one in the series not produced by Golden Harvest... which is apparently why Golden Harvest don’t allow the film to be packaged together with any of their SKIRTS movies in a box set, although this has many of the same characters and actors from the previous two films. 

Okay, so after Inspector Kan, played once again by Stanley Sui-Fan Fung, loses a bunch of police weapons (including an atomic bomb somehow) to a gang of criminals, the police have gotten wind that a gambling shop which will be hosting four crime bosses may have something to do with the heist. So in this one, he’s told to reform and retrain the SKIRTS unit, once trained up by Madame Wu. After their quick fire romance in the last movie, Madame Wu, played once again by the fantastic Sibelle Hu, is now retired and married to Kan. She has a few scenes with him near the start and, when things go wrong for everyone at the end of the film, she parachutes in to save the day and take back the gambling ship.

Anyway, the SKIRTS are reformed with a few of them returning from the previous films, including superstar Sandra Kwan Yue Ng as Amy, the funny one... providing comedy relief to a film which is nothing but comedy relief. And, yeah, it’s a mess of a movie again, just like the second one. There’s little action and the comedy is just so obvious and crude it’s hard to watch, quite often. It actually had me fooled for a while because the first ten minutes are pretty good but, yeah, when it comes to the Police Academy style training routines and various jokes about body odour, large breasts and a somewhat misogynistic attitude from the various male characters... it’s no fun. 

Things get a little better in the second half of the film, when the girls and the inspector go undercover on the gambling ship but, not that much better, it has to be said. I think it takes a special kind of dimmed down sense of humour to appreciate these films and, sadly, it’s not sparking much appreciation from me. 

There’s some ridiculous stuff too, bordering on surrealism. For instance, a VHS cassette of the notorious movie The Men Behind The Sun (a film I’ve never been curious to see due to its disturbing nature... also, I don’t want to see a bunch of rats eating a live cat for real, thanks) ushers in a scene where the inspector is electrocuting the girls to find out some completely inane and trivial piece of information. When the gals get their revenge, they drug him and make him believe he’s in various horror movies... with girls dressed up as the likes of Jason from the Friday The 13th films and Freddy Krueger from The Nightmare On Elm Street films but, trust me, it sounds better than it is. 

One scene which does have promise is when Amy and the man she falls for are having a heart to heart on the deck of the boat and a violin player comes along to add atmosphere... but it’s kinda thrown away and not really played with to make it funny... which, given the propensity of this film series to milk every joke to death, surprised me somewhat. 

And, yeah, another short review but, asides from a cast of actors who are actually all very good and playing it for all they’re worth and, despite the terrible script, then I think that’s me done with The Inspector Wears Skirts 3 - Raid on Royal Casino Marine... it’s not a film I can, in all conscience, recommend to anyone, I’m afraid. Just one more of these left to watch now... I’ll let you know how it goes.