In 1966, Woody Allen released What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, a redubbed version of a Japanese spy caper from 1964. Soon, other filmmakers used this technique of taking old foreign films and recutting and redubbing them to make new content. Roger Corman reedited several movies from the Lone Wolf and Cub series to create 1981’s Shogun Assassin. Charles Band cobbled two women-in-prison films together, shot additional footage with Linda Blair, and released it as Savage Island. It was only a short time until Lloyd Kaufman decided to get in on this after acquiring a Filipino movie called Passionate Woman. While the film was shot in English, Kaufman replaced the language track with one scripted by his brother Charles. They attempted to take an unintentionally funny foreign wrestling movie and make it intentionally funny, which horrified the original producer. The result was the retitled spoof Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters.
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Rating
Synopsis
Bambi (Eva Arnaz) is a Judo champion who, despite her fighter prowess, wants to leave the fighting world behind. However, her mother insists she keeps fighting to earn enough money to afford an operation for her little brother. According to the doctor, her brother suffers from a condition where semen rushes to his head when he gets excited. Bambi gets involved with an Elvis-impersonating trainer named Barney (Barry Prima), who gets her into criminal activities. While the money is enough for her brother, Bambi confides in her friend Mia (Leily Sagita) about the degrading wrestling. Barney can also see that this underground wrestling ring isn’t right for Bambi, so he helps her escape. What follows are several poorly staged fight scenes, a jive-talking snake, and a lot of farting. But Bambi is determined because she is a ferocious female freedom fighter! At least, that’s what the dub says.
Review
If the synopsis sounded incomprehensible just from reading it, imagine watching Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters and making sense of it. Granted, I can’t imagine the movie would make much sense with the original audio, but the “comedic” dubbing hurts it. Part of me wishes I could watch this movie with the original audio, but I doubt it would’ve helped. Troma wasn’t taking the film seriously, considering all the farts, sex jokes, and low-brow humor used in the dubbing. It’s like what the company behind the dub of the anime Ghost Stories did, only with fewer racial jokes. Unfortunately, because of the dub, it’s hard to follow along with what’s happening in the movie, let alone care. I’m not saying the original film was probably some lost masterpiece of Filipino cinema, but its plot could’ve been decent. Instead, what we got is a complete mess.
It’s hard to gauge the acting in this film, considering we aren’t hearing the actors’ original voices. Going off of their facial expressions and body language, it seemed like they were trying their best. Also, to give the actors credit, some of the fight sequences aren’t half bad, even if sloppily put together. There are some unintentionally hilarious moments from the original film, most notably a random mud wrestling fight. Also, some of the dubbing made me chuckle, mostly the Elvis impersonator and the weirdly out-of-place snake that speaks jive. But aside from some mild giggles, the rest of the movie is dull, and the humor falls flat. Lately, I’ve been trying to write longer reviews to explain things better, but honestly, there’s not much to say here. Overall, Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters is another movie whose title is better than the actual content.
Buy Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters from Amazon: https://amzn.to/46opywm.
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