“I want you to catch the psycho killer.” With these unmemorable words Melvin Wong sets a very dull movie in motion.

When otherwise capable actors are given a badly written script and static direction they will go with the path of least resistance—they will stand around and deliver lousy lines. There is a difference between acting and reciting lines and there is very little acting here. About half of “Beauty Investigators” is taken up this way. There are some decent but not outstanding action scenes, especially, of course, the fights between Yukari Oshima and Moon Lee but much of the movie is on the level of “Is it over yet?”.

Gam Chi Gei can neither act nor fight so she fits in quite well. As comic relief she is unfunny and her death scene is boring rather than tragic.

I saw the dubbed Cat III version with Sophia Crawford’s not very sexy shower scene—it is nothing more than a naked actress standing in the shower with the water on for a about 20 seconds. She is obviously toned and fit with significant gluteal development. This is referred to later in the movie when Billy Ching says that the boss’s mistress is a white girl with a big ass.

“Beauty Investigators” never gets off the ground. It has a mystery that gets accidentally solved with 30 minutes still to run, a villain who is more uncouth than frightening, dumb cops and dumber crooks. There is one car/motorcycle chase that is worth watching—in Hong Kong cars blow up when they crash, unlike in the United States where the cars in the movies don’t blow up until someone shoots at them. Several decent action/fight scenes plus a few that are so dark that you can’t tell if anyone is winning or losing. A very well played assassin whose weapons of choice are the poison dart and the garrote—she is actually not very good with firearms.

While I love the girls with guns, fatal femmes sub-genre, especially those that pit two worthy female opponents against each other, this one is most definitely NOT recommended, even for fans of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. It is a great example of why god gave us a fast forward button.