The greatest kung-fu masters of the Hong Kong cinema are men - Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung, Bruce Lee... The few women who have succeeded to carve themselves a place alongside them - Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock among them - were always very careful to keep their clothes on. Only one kung-fu master, Tamara Guo, has dared to put on display her sexuality alongside her fighting skills by appearing buck naked in serious kung-fu fight sequences. Unfortunately, Asian audiences rejected this daring concept. Her second film, ''Women On The Run'' (1993), directed by Corey Yuen and David Lai, was a huge flop, and Tamara Guo would never work as a lead actress in films again. And yet, the film itself is excellent. It's fast-paced, with terrific action sequences, complex characters and enough plot twists for a dozen movies. It wasn't the poor quality of the film that turned the mainstream Asian viewers off, but the daring concept of mixing kung-fu with female sexuality. There are two scenes when Tamara Guo has nude kung-fu fights. The first comes early on in the movie. Working as a prostitute, she lays naked in bed while her client relieves himself into her martial-arts trophy. Seeing this, she angrily attacks and beats the crap out of him, until her pimp arrives and he slaps her in the face. She is clearly a better fighter than her pimp, but she barely defends herself. It's a very erotically-charged sequence, with a naked woman fighting against two fully-clothed men. At first she is all-powerful, but then she's completely defeated. A similar sequence occurs again later in the film. Tamara and her friend Farini Cheung are ambushed by a gang of rapists. Farini is easily defeated, but Tamara manages for a while to beat the crap out of her attackers, even after they rip off all of her clothes. It's quite a sight, a naked girl fighting for a very long time completely surrounded by a dozen fully-clothed men. But eventually, they manage to overpower her and she gets raped just like her friend. Both of those scenes are very disturbing. Not because Tamara looses her kung-fu fights to more powerful opponents, but because she looses even though she is clearly a superior fighter. The message is clear - she is a woman and men are more powerful. There is no place for a courageous actress like Tamara Guo to compete against the male masters of the kung-fu genre. She cannot be allowed to use her sex-appeal and to put her nude body on display in order to compete with Jackie and Jet. They might loose.
