In May of 1975, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Phillip became the first reigning English monarchs to visit Hong Kong, which was then still a British Colony. Never one to let an opportunity go to waste, Golden Harvest obtained permission to film the Queen during her public appearances (albeit from quite a distance). Then they hired a couple of their biggest stars and a former James Bond to make a film about an attempted assassination attempt on the queen. I love that as a concept. I wish there was a whole series of films based around when royals visit faraway colonies. Unfortunately, the final result of this film is not good. It is a meandering, limp, rather dull mess.
Buy A Queen’s Ransom Blu-rayAn Irish Republican Army soldier named Geroge (former James Bond George Lazenby) hires an international cabal of criminals that includes Jimmy (the One-Armed Swordsman Jimmy Wang Wu) to assassinate the Queen during her visit to Hong Kong. The original plan is to blow up the underwater train tunnel she’ll be entering the city in, but the police learn of that plan. Then, they decide to blow up a restaurant she’ll be eating at, but once again, the police obtain that information. George kills one of his soldiers due to incompetence, but really, these guys are so bad at their jobs that you start wondering whether or not George isn’t working for MI6. There will be a twist in the third act, but it won’t be what you think.
While the crooks are bumbling about, the film also follows Angela Mao playing the Queen of Burma who has recently fled her war-torn country along with a lot of gold. And then there is Black Rose (Judith Brown), a prostitute whose bedtime occupation has given her the inside scoop on what the bad guys are planning.
All of this amounts to not a whole lot. It really does feel like they discovered the Queen was coming for a visit, got a lot of footage of her all around the city, and then threw together a film based on that footage. They did capture a lot of footage of her and boy, do they like showing it off. I suspect if you timed it, there is more footage of the Queen than there is of George Lazenby. The crooks barely do anything interesting, the cops mostly just sit around talking, and the bits of Angela Mao mostly seem superfluous.
There is an early scene where all the crooks are super impressed by how deep Jimmy can dive into the sea without a respirator (and while apparently chugging a couple of cans of beer). But we don’t see any of that. Presumably, there was no money for underwater cameras so we just see him jump into the water and then a moment later come back up. The entire film was cheaply made and it shows.
The third act speeds things up a bit. Our separate stories come together and there is a very cool action set piece that finishes it all off, but by that point, it is very much too late to make the entire film worth it.
Eureka Classics has given A Queen’s Ransom a nice-looking 2K transfer. It comes with two edits – the original Hong Kong version and a shortened international one (a goofy sex scene with Lazenby is excised and a few other scenes are tightened up a bit). Frank Djeng and Michael Worth give an audio commentary for the Hong Kong version while Mike Leeder and Arne Venema comment on the international one. Michael Worth presents a short featurette about the film and Lazenby’s career. Also included is a booklet with an essay on the film by James Oliver.
