The Inspector Wears Skirts is a series of movies revolving around a team of all-female police trainees, led by Inspector Wu (Sibelle Hu) and her American colleague and partner, Madam Law (Cynthia Rothrock). Inspired by the Police Academy series, The Inspector Wears Skirts and its sequels are close to a Gender Flipped remake with more emphasis on comedy and slapstick aspects, and with plenty of Action Girl actresses - mostly familiar faces from late 80s and early 90s Girls with Guns movies, such as Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan, Kara Wai, Michiko Nishiwaki, and the like showing up in random installments of the (mostly short-lived) franchise.
Sibelle Hu is the only actress who showed up in ALL entries of the main installment, while Cynthia Rothrock shows up alongside Hu in the first two movies.
Moon Lee and Cynthia Khan regrettably show up in only one of the movies, The Inspector Wears Skirts IV. Their one-on-one fight
is pretty much the most memorable moment of the entire series in general.
The series contains the following movies:
- The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988)
- The Inspector Wears Skirts II (1989)
- Inspector Wears Skirts 3: Raid on Royal Casino Marine (1990)
- The Inspector Wears Skirts IV (1992)
- Operation Pink Squad (1988) - spinoff
- Operation Pink Squad 2 (1990)
Tropes applicable to the series:
- Action Girl: The police recruits spends much of the franchise training to be elite officers, but right at the start of their respective movies, the seniors (played by veteran B-grade Action Queens Sibelle Hu, Cynthia Rothrock, Moon Lee and the like) are already capable ass-kickers and fighters.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Justified, since most of the characters are police trainees, with the supervisors being played by veteran action stars kicking most of the ass when they're dragged into action.
- Badass Crew: The trainees, with the senior inspectors (usually Inspector Wu) being in charge.
- Boyish Short Hair: Madam Wu and Madam Law.
- Ensemble Cast: For the entire series anyway, practically every Action Girl actress of 80s and 90s Hong Kong cinema shows up in the franchise, including Sibelle Hu, Cynthia Rothrock, Moon Lee, Michiko Nishiwaki, Kara Hui, Ann Bridgewater, among others.
- Fake-Out Opening: The first movie opens with an assault by machine-gun wielding ninjas. After a lengthy shootout with Madam Law and Inspector Wu taking out all of the ninjas, the movie then moves into the corny comedy-drama it actually is.
- Gratuitous Ninja: The Action Prologue of the first movie, for some inexplicable reason, had ninjas attacking the embassey building, for some reason, which Madam Law and Inspector Wu had to thwart.
- Groin Attack: Done by most of the ladies throughout the series. The first movie's opening scene notably had Inspector Wu kicking one of the ninja in his gonads, with his exposed eyes squinting to emphasize on how badly that hurts.
- In the fourth movie, during a training exercise the comic relief character gets shot in the dick by paintball pellets.
- Hand Cannon: Madam Law's preferred weapon is a Magnum which is almost as large as she is.
- Jungle Warfare: The climatic final scene in the second movie has the recruits being pitted in combat against terrorists in a thick jungle region. With plenty of Booby Trap and ambushes.
- Mighty Whitey: Madam Law is depicted as this in entries of the movies whenever she shows up, being an American Inspector and specialist who's in charge of "whipping the trainees to shape". Inspector Wu's superiors often emphasizes on her seniority and experience as a leading enforcer of the States' police department as well, as did the trainees who stops goofing around whenever Madam Law shows up.
- The first movie emphasizes this trope, with an extended scene where Madam Law plays a "terrorist" in a combat training exercise, and for the recruits playing the "police" attacking her all at once. Madam Law beats up every single recruit in under two minutes. Before berating them for being "inexperienced rookies".
- Military Salute: Happens throughout the series, in one of the movies Inspector Wu addresses a group of marching recruits with a salute, and the entire team of recruits - all 40 of them - salutes back simultaneously.
- Naked People Are Funny: The second movie inexplicably had the pervy mess cook of the police precinct being punished by taking his bath in a tub... outdoors. In front of maybe twenty of the female trainees.
- Rollerblade Good: For some inexplicable reason, the first movie features the recruits in a rollerblading disco during their break night, where they end up performing an extended musical montage while rollerblading.
- Shooting Gallery: Shows up in all of the movies, usually for the trainees to bond over shooting and showing off their skills.
- Shout-Out: The opening scene of the fourth movie is a reference towards Police Story, with Inspector Wu chasing after a double-decker bus and trying to get inside. There's also a fight later inside a multi-story shopping mall much like in the other Jackie Chan movie.
- Shower Scene: In the second movie, with all of the recruits taking a shower in the same stall.
- Slashed Throat: The ninjas in the first movie does this to a few security guards during the embassy assault scene.
- Super Window Jump: Inspector Wu in the fourth movie, jumping out a window on the fourth story of a building after realizing it's booby-trapped with grenades.
- Taking You with Me: The last ninja attacker in the first movie's opening scene tries to blow up the embassy with grenades on both hands after being shot, but Inspector Wu and Madam Law prevents him from doing so, with Wu throwing a rope around him and Law grabbing and pulling the other end of the rope. The ninja ends up being hoisted into mid-air and exploding harmlessly on his own.
- Training from Hell: Happens to the trainees in the first two movies, including a scene where the trainees had to run along a thick rope around a racetrack.... which is doused in gasoline, with Madam Law setting one end on fire and the trainees have to run like crazy before the flames end up roasting them.Madam Law: "I bet you’ve never run so fast all your life… Excellent."
- Vacation Episode: The third movie, which is largely set on a cruise ship. The trainees led by Inspector Wu had to infiltrate the vessel to investigate an arms deal taking place on board, but the situation quickly turns into Die Hard on a luxury cruiser where the trainees have to save the day.
- Would Hit a Girl: Most of the villains of the series.
