Tsai Chin Movies

Violent Playground opens with a few West Side Story style shots of a Liverpool street gang, commandeered by a very nasty-looking David McCallum. We're going to be seeing a lot more of McCallum before the final fadeout: His sister (Anne Heywood) is in love with an upright police officer (Stanley Baker). The film plods along predictable grounds until the climactic rumble sequence, which is as good as anything ever seen in Hollywood "J.D." picture. Violent Playground didn't get much American play in 1957, principally because there was a glut of such films at the time. The picture received a new lease on life in the early 1960s to cash in on the Man From UNCLE popularity of David McCallum. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, an American agent for the OSS after the war, hides a large treasure in Czechoslovakia for a Nazi general. The general commits suicide before getting the jewels. The general's top aide then convinces the American to help him get them back. They enlist the aide of the general's daughter, a hooker and find the valuable stones. Later the Yankee and the hooker are double-crossed by the aide who was working with the prostitute's roomie. The roommate then kills the aide, and escapes on the Munich Express. The agent also boards the quickly moving train. He almost has his hands on the box of jewels when it slips from his fingers and falls into the rushing river below. As the cops arrive and take the roommate away, the agent and the general's daughter decide to start a new life together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Britain's Merton Park Productions briefly put its Edgar Wallace series on the back burner for the 1965 sci-fier Invasion. Per its title, the film involves a massive invasion of earth by extraterrestrials. Keeping within its tight budget, the film depicts only a handful of the invaders, who are fended off by the staff of a small hospital. Head doctor Edward Judd, who is caring for an imprisoned alien, decides to protect his patient from the invaders, who plan to kill the prisoner before he can betray them. Armed with little more than his wits, Judd saves himself and his charge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's first English-language production was also his only box office hit, widely considered one of the seminal films of the 1960s. Thomas (David Hemmings) is a nihilistic, wealthy fashion photographer in mod "Swinging London." Filled with ennui, bored with his "fab" but oddly-lifeless existence of casual sex and drug use, Thomas comes alive when he wanders through a park, stops to take pictures of a couple embracing, and upon developing the images, believes that he has photographed a murder. Pursued by Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), the woman who is in the photos, Thomas pretends to give her the pictures, but in reality, he passes off a different roll of film to her. Thomas returns to the park and discovers that there is, indeed, a dead body lying in the shrubbery: the gray-haired man who was embracing Jane. Has she murdered him, or does Thomas' photo reveal a man with a gun hiding nearby? Antonioni's thriller is a puzzling, existential, adroitly-assembled masterpiece. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

James Bond heads East to save the world (and to learn how to serve saki properly) in this action-packed espionage adventure. When an American spacecraft disappears during a mission, it's widely believed to have been intercepted by the Soviet Union, and after a Russian space capsule similarly goes missing, most consider it to be an act of American retaliation. Soon the two nations are at the brink of war, but British intelligence discovers that some sort of UFO has crashed into the Sea of Japan. Agent 007, James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent in to investigate. After staging his own death to avoid being followed, Bond, disguised as a Japanese civilian, teams up with agent Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba) and his beautiful associate Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi). With their help, Bond learns that both the American and Russian space missions were actually scuttled by supercriminal Ernst Blofeld (Donald Pleasance) in yet another bid by his evil empire SPECTRE to take over the world. As he battles the bad guys, Bond finds time to romance both Kissy Suziki (Mie Hama) and Helga Brandt (Karin Dor). You Only Live Twice was one of Sean Connery's last outings as James Bond. The next Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, would star George Lazenby as 007, and while Connery would return for Diamonds Are Forever, in 1973, Roger Moore took over the role. (Connery would play Bond one last time, in 1983's Never Say Never Again, which was produced outside the official series.) ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This extremely low-budget adventure was director Jesus Franco's second Fu Manchu film for British producer Harry Alan Towers. Christopher Lee returns as the Asian madman, who has developed a way to turn the oceans into ice as part of his plan to rule the world. Kidnapping famed Prof. Herakles (Gustavo Re), Fu forces the doctor to help him with his diabolical plan. When Herakles' health starts to fail, Fu kidnaps two more people (Guenther Stoll, Maria Perschy) for a transplant operation at his Istanbul headquarters. Fu's old rivals Dennis Nayland Smith (Richard Green) and Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion Crawford) come to Turkey to foil his evil experiments. Rosalba Neri, Jose Manuel Martin, and Werner Abrolat co-star in this poor fifth installment in the popular series. The film is so poorly conceived that -- although it was made in color -- the shipwreck caused by Fu is actually a black-and-white scene borrowed wholesale from A Night to Remember. For completists only, this disastrous entry also stars Herbert Fuchs and Tsai Chin, while Franco makes a cameo as a Turkish detective. Various versions run 92, 86, and 85 minutes. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This situation comedy finds rookie soldiers of the British Army trying to cope with military life while stationed in Malaya. Brigg (Hywel Bennett) is a young clerk who falls for the local school teacher Phillipa (Lynn Redgrave), the daughter of Royal Sergeant Major Raskin (Nigel Patrick). Brigg loses his virginal status in an encounter with the prostitute Juicy Lucy (Tsai Chin), while Phillipa also becomes sexually active for the first time. The film strikes a nice balance between comedy and serious drama as the soldiers are put to the test when a train wreck necessitates their involvement, and later several soldiers try to get sick leave by requesting circumcisions. Brigg and Phillipa finally get together when a bombing raid puts them in close proximity in this engaging military comedy. The Kinks' Ray Davies wrote the title track. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this martial arts action movie, a young kung fu master seeks vengeance upon the villains who murdered a prominent miner. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Director Wayne Wang and screenwriter Ronald Bass effectively interweave sixteen mother-daughter tales in their silken film version of Amy Tan's best-selling novel about the clash between generations. The film takes place in present-day San Francisco, concentrating on a group of late-middle-aged Chinese women. Ever since arriving in the United States after World War II, the women have gathered weekly to play mah-jongg and to tell stories, regaling each other with tales of their children and grandchildren, giving each other a sense of hope and renewal in the midst of poverty and hardship. The Joy Luck Club is made up of four women -- Suyuan (Kieu Chinh), Lindo (Tsai Chin), Ying Ying (France Nuyen), and An Mei (Lisa Lu). But when Suyuan dies, the three surviving members invite Suyuan's daughter June (Ming-Na Wen) to take her place. Along with the daughters of the other members -- Waverly (Tamlyn Tomita), Lena (Lauren Tom), and Rose (Rosalind Chao) -- June is a Chinese-American with only a passing interest in her rich cultural heritage. But through vignettes that switch back and forth in time, the daughters begin to appreciate the struggles of their mothers to start their families in the optimistic promise of the United States. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Taiwanese society is closely examined in this complex political drama that includes elements of black comedy. The underlying thesis is a call for nouveau riche Asian countries to expand their horizons and reconsider their traditional ways. The relationships within the film are quite convoluted. All the characters are somehow connected by blood, friendship, or sexual chemistry. The story revolves around Molly, a well-born young woman who helms a PR company which is backed by Akeem, her rich boyfriend (to whom Molly's talk show host sister was formerly engaged). Molly's best friend and personal assistant is Qiqi, a former schoolmate from the lower middle class who is to marry Ming, a low-level government employee. Larry, Molly's business manager and friend of Akeem, runs Molly's company. Feng wants to be an actress, and works for Molly while waiting for her big break (she also romances Larry). Birdy is an avante-garde playwright trying to produce his first commercial play. Things heat up when Molly reevaluates her life after firing Feng over a disagreement. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The strong anti-China beliefs of actor and political activist Richard Gere were evident in this Hitchcockian thriller that sought to expose the civil and human rights abuses of that country's legal system. Gere stars as Jack Moore, counsel to a large media conglomerate seeking to open trade relations with China, thereby delivering American television shows by satellite to the largest untapped market in the world. After an evening out at a nightclub and fashion show, Jack goes home with a beautiful model (Jessey Meng), then wakes up the next morning to discover her dead body. To his horror, Jack is accused of murdering the girl, who is revealed to have been the daughter of a high-ranking general. Assigned a court-appointed lawyer, Shen Yuelin (Bai Ling), Jack discovers that the repressive Chinese court system does not grant bail, encourages quick guilty pleas and executions, and looks upon him with disfavor for his Western moral turpitude. Finally persuading Shen that he's innocent, Jack and his lawyer embark on an investigation impeded at every turn by Chinese authorities, eventually uncovering a plot to discredit Jack and his company's entry into China. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

A Los Angeles cafe is the setting for this ensemble piece performed largely by a group of San Francisco stage actors. Mark (Mark Boone Jr.) is the cafe's reigning caffeine king, churning out lattes for a group of customers that includes bag lady Ma (Tsai Chin), portly Jerry (Michael McShane), widowed mathematician Jack (Jim Haynie), and on-again, off-again lovers Maria (Regina Byrd Smith) and Hank (Richmond Arquette). Another regular is Clayton (Wood Harris), a part-time delivery man who has abandoned a promising career as an artist. One day, while on his delivery rounds, Clayton discovers a strange young woman cowering in a mud puddle; stopping to help her, he learns that she has been residing there since getting dumped from a car by a callous boyfriend. After getting herself cleaned up, the woman, named Precious (Sarah Lassez), takes up with Clayton, and the two start living together. Meanwhile, back at the cafe, other unlikely romances form, Ma tosses off holy-fool wisdom, and Hank and Maria wallow in lusty indecisiveness. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Ridley Pearson, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer is a prequel to the goose-pimply 2002 TV miniseries Stephen King's Rose Red. In its efforts to "explain" the supernatural events in the earlier project, this made-for-TV chiller is set at the turn of the century, when the stately, sinister Rose Red mansion is constructed by powerful Seattle oil magnate John Rimbauer (Steven Brand) as a wedding present for his timid, submissive young bride, Ellen (Lisa Brenner). At first impressed by her husband's extravagance, Ellen eventually comes to hate and fear John, especially when learning a few unsavory facts about his past. Meanwhile, the mansion seems to be festooned with ghosts, possibly those of the many people close to John Rimbauer who have mysteriously vanished. Can the eerie moanings and manifestations be interpreted as a warning to Ellen that she, too, may some day disappear without a trace? This is the sort of film in which, after someone exclaims "I'll be damned!," someone else replies, "You already are." The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer originally aired May 12, 2003, on ABC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide