Ross Hagen in Wonder Women

(This post is part of the 2^nd Annual Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon hosted by Films From Beyond The Time Barrier)

In the early days of cable, Wonder Women (1973) was a Saturday afternoon staple, an amazingly entertaining movie that crossed Dr. No with The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

Ross Hagen plays Mike Harber, ex-CIA and LAPD, hired to locate a missing jai-alai player kidnapped by resident evil genius Dr. Tsu (Nancy Kwan), who is harvesting athlete’s body parts as transplants for her aging, wealthy patients. Doing Tsu’s dirty work is a crew of leggy Amazons outfitted in the shortest nighties possible (imagine Bambi and Thumper from Diamonds Are Forever as members of The Pussycat Dolls).

Dr. Tsu sends her minions to stop Harber, including Linda (Maria de Aragon) whom he picks up in a bar with some lame come-on lines. She tries to kill him the next morning, leading to a furniture-smashing, door-splintering knockdown battle and the film’s centerpiece, a seven-minute chase on foot and jeepney through the streets of Manila. Words cannot do it justice (although it does contain scenes that might be upsetting to some viewers).

But there’s more: a raid on Dr. Tsu’s heavily guarded island lair, Harber and the doctor participating in clothed “brain sex” and a facedown with Tsu’s lurching, grunting failed experiments before she escapes and Harber rescues the kidnapped jai-alai player.

Your brain sex headband or mine?

Hagen’s performance at times is low-key enough that he comes off like a sleepwalking James Bond, but maybe he played it exactly right. An experienced actor whose career began in 1966 with minor roles in seemingly every western and adventures TV series of the era (including a regular stint on Daktari) would know to not hit the pedal too hard while navigating through a careening, over-the-top movie like this.  

Or maybe he was drowsy from the heat. Wonder Women was filmed in the Philippines, apparently during typhoon season, and some outdoor shots seem to just drip humidity. As the film’s producer, Hagen arranged for a local hotel ballroom to be converted to a soundstage for some interior shooting.

Hagen returned to the Philippines in 1975 to star, again with Nancy Kwan, in Supercock, which despite its title is a PG-rated romantic/adventure story about championship cockfighting, legal then and now in the Philippines. The title is just the start of an endless barrage of double-entendres; Kwan – surpassing the brain sex scene in Wonder Women as a possible low point of her career – says of Hagen’s character after meeting him and his world-class fighting rooster, “He has the biggest cock I’ve ever seen.”

With his aviator shades and safari-jacket wardrobe, Hagen is nearly cosplaying Lee Majors in Wonder Women, but he’s a solid presence throughout this silly, totally entertaining movie. In a nearly five-decade career, Hagen was a B Movie triple threat as actor, director (1979’s The Glove with John Saxon and Rosey Grier) and producer. To my mind, he’s a first-ballot B Movie Hall of Famer.