Here's a review of Red To Kill that won't make your eyes glaze over . . .
RED TO KILL (Hong Kong; 1994) D: Billy Tang Hin-shing
Lest anyone think his RUN AND KILL licked the bottom of the exploitation barrel, director Tang soon after excreted this astonishingly tasteless Category III endurance test that makes the earlier work look like I HAVE A DATE WITH SPRING! After her father dies, mentally-challenged young Lily Chung is moved into an apartment complex where one floor is a government-subsidized rehab center for like-minded cases. Bad enough she and her new friends must endure the accusatory remarks of the “normal” residents (reflecting prevailing attitudes toward Hong Kong’s disabled as second-class citizens), but also the depraved advances of workshop co-ordinator Ben Ng, who’s also a ripped ‘n ragin’ serial rapist and necrophile of the wackiest sort. When he brutally rapes her after her pretty red dress and undies drive him nuts (the after-effect of a childhood trauma, don’tcha know), then walks free at the subsequent trial because she’s declared an unfit witness (!), social worker Money Lo decides it time to punch this bad boy’s tickets, but gets more than she bargained for when her deliberately slutty come-ons rocket him right off the deep end. Perhaps that tablesaw might ease the negotiations! Excessive to say the least, and balanced with a strange sentimentalism, but those who expect no subtlety (or deep characterizations) will probably find much bad taste to savour. Most of the cast assay retardation by tilting their heads, jutting out their lower jaws and rolling their eyeballs, while Ben Ng, thespian extraordinaire of Category III psychos, never misses an opportunity to stick his bare ass front and center before going beaters on a mannequin or pouring ice down the front of his thong. And while Chung does little to further the plight of the developmentally disabled in Asian societies, she does spend much of this jawdropper in the altogether. Waaaahhh!
Took a few photographs at this year's Toronto International Film Fest, mostly of directors at the Q&As, but I'm no stargazer, so for the most part these were snapped from right where I sat, in one or two attempts, in darkened theaters. What you see is what you get. Or what I got. Or something.
Above, Soi Cheang discusses his brilliant new Hong Kong thriller ACCIDENT. He spoke in Cantonese but rarely needed the questions translated, and yakked with a few locals in the lobby for several minutes afterward. ACCIDENT is produced by Johnnie To, and it's actually superior to VENGEANCE, To's own entry in the festival. Cheang is flanked by an unidentified translator.
John Hillcoat (second from left) fields questions about his bleak end-of-the-world drama THE ROAD, possibly nervous that Bob Weinstein was sitting in the audience shooting uncomfortable stares at him. To the right of him are Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen (turns out he's quite the long-winded one). Robert Duvall appeared at the outset, but couldn't stick around.
Michael Moore sits with Fest programmer Thom Powers (I think!) for a very engaging Q&A session for his new documentary CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY at the prestigious Elgin Theatre. Also in attendance were Moore's father, several striking miner's from Northern Ontario, and a coterie of hired "protesters" who marched down Yonge Street decrying the evils of Wall Street. Moore's new doc digs up the deep-seated and tangled roots of the current economic crisis in America (and by extension the world), with his typically leftist sense of humour. The film also showcases recently-unearthed footage of Roosevelt giving a speech that, had he lived to implement the plans he puts forth in it, might have altered the course of American history away from the current disaster.
Johnnie To joins fest programmer Colin Geddes and a translator on stage at the Ryerson to perform a little autopsy on VENGEANCE, his slick thriller starring French pop king Johnny Halliday, who also appeared at the beginning of the film, but couldn't stick around. An expectedly sumptuous visual experience even if it isn't top-tier To, with lots of little touches (beyond the casting of Hallyday) that will remind you of French cinema of the 60s and 70s, as well as an epic gun battle on a field full of cubes of discarded newspaper and cardboard that serves as To's homage to Akira Kurosawa.
Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza take the stage with Colin Geddes after scaring the shit out of the Midnight Madness with their pumped-up sequel [REC]2. They don't build up to the good stuff in this. They don't have to because the first film was the backstory. This starts with the good stuff and never slows down.
No, not Disneyland, stupid. Pacific Mall in Markham, Ontario, Canada, just north of Toronto. If you die without having visited Pacific Mall, you will very likely burn in hell.
Here's a couple of articles culled from a local rag fancied by the hoi polloi, the first from 2006, the second from 2008, when promises of even bigger Asian malls started being made (if not necessarily kept):
Newly installed in a gleaming Shanghai suburb by her frequently absentee businessman husband (Yu Rong-guang), 18-year-old newlywed Vivian Chan (who’s far from 18 years old) continues her email relationship with an “online husband” who apparently understands her better than the real thing. She also strikes up a platonic, real-world entanglement with a ski bum (Alex To) she meets in her computer class. And then there’s her shamelessly nosy new friend from next door, who looks after that house with her shiftless boyfriend. When Viv’s internet paramour starts exhibiting stalker tendencies, the list of suspects is, obviously, a short one! Though it reflects an increasingly affluent and techno-savvy mainland Chinese audience, the film nonetheless toes the communist party line that maintains the internet can’t be trusted in the hands of mere citizens, a message ultimately delivered by a reformed Viv to her class of rosy-cheeked primary-school pun’kins (who are presumably rosy-cheeked because their classroom evidently has no heat!), one of whom counters that “surfing the web” would be OK because she knows how to swim! Awww. In revealing Yu’s character plays no role whatsoever in Viv’s predicament, the filmmakers flatly suggest that bored wives of wealthy Chinese businessmen would be a lot better off if they weren’t so darned uppity, and yet at the same time, scenes between Alex and Viv—as they frolic through sparkly shopping malls, restaurants and tourist attractions—look like something out of a Korean soap opera, a reminder to wealthy Chinese businessmen, one supposes, to keep an eye on their assets.
"Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy. And they were each assigned very hazardous duty. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me."
"My name is Bond. Just Bond"
And these are Bond's Angels.
Chung Wing, Annabelle Lee Hiu-tung, Wong Kit-ying confront a bad man in CRIMINALS
While many fans of the glory days of Hong Kong cinema were, by 1999, bemoaning its dwindling post-handover output and all but writing it off in favour of the latest fads from Korea or Mainland China, someone was making sure the gap between the golden age and the modest resurgence we've been enjoying these past few years was being filled.
Mind you, he filled it with shit, but he still filled it.
His name was Jacky Wong (or as he was more popularly known in the credits of his movies, Jacky Wong), and it was no doubt due in large part to his money, as well as his company, Winners' Workshop, that the HKMDB lists over 40 productions (including plenty of Category III goodies) on which he served as presenter. ALL OF THEM IN 1999! And the HKMDB is still missing several titles from his resume. I know. I see scores of them whilst fumbling through the dump bins.
I suppose this is where I come in. An inveterate and unrepentant bottom feeder when it comes to Hong Kong cinema (or any cinema for that matter, as this blog has likely proven to the three people who read it), I'm all too content to rifle through boxes of two dollar VCDs in Toronto's many Chinese media shops while most normal online Hong Kong cinema buffs are heartily debating the aspect ratios and audio restorations done on the 32nd DVD release of Jackie Chan's POLICE STORY.
Well, I found a different kind of police story. Eight of them, in fact. Which brings us to Jacky Wong's BOND'S ANGELS series. A series most people probably never knew was an actual series, if they even knew about it at all.
Simon Loui, one of the most reliable character actors in Hong Kong cinema for many years, proves himself ever the trooper when flanked by his inexperienced co-stars in WHO'S THE ASSASSIN. It's thanks in large part to the then-ongoing efforts of Loui and his hard-working compatriots that the Hong Kong industry survived the lean years from 1999 to 2004, wherein bottom-of-the-barrel productions like these kept a lot of people gainfully employed. These movies are generally dreadful, it's true, but their importance should not be overlooked. I've had the first entry, SWORD OF DAMOCLES since its VCD debut back in late '99 (from whence springs the first review below). It's not a very good film, and was hardly worth the eight bucks I paid for it. In the years 'twixt then and now, I'd seen the same cast on a handful of very similarly-designed VCD sleeves, but the thought of spending another $56 to complete this possible series was a handy deterrent. But thanks to the good folks at the Wa Yi Trading Co. stores (one downtown, two up north), and their continuing divestiture of old VCD's at rock bottom prices, I've managed to complete the set for the grand total of about $16.
Anyone who's seen even one of these pictures would probably tell me that I paid about $15 too much. I don't know; the series kinda grew on me after awhile, I actually started to care about these girls—especially when spunky Kaka got her leg caught in a bear trap, poor thing—and while I'd rate none of 'em higher than a 3 out of 10 (see below) there's a certain wistful feeling that were it not for the heroic efforts of people like Jacky Wong and his brethren who pumped out shot-on-video product like there was no tomorrow for a good three or four years while Hong Kong cinema was on the verge of extinction, we might not have Hong Kong cinema at all today.
Alright, perhaps that's a bit too wistful—and deluded—but since no website I can find (including the venerable HKMDB or the Hong Kong Film Archive!) has bothered to attach a chronology to all the pieces of the Jacky Wong filmography, I decided to do at least some of the dirty work myself.
And while this series may not have generated a best-selling Farrah Fawcett style nipple poster, or changed the way girls feather their hair, it's not without some merit. Some, I said.
Let's start with...
A SWORD OF DAMOCLES (1999) First of far too many Bond’s Angels video features, a largely interminable collection of straight detective stories from Winners’ Workshop, a prolific outfit better known for an seemingly endless stream of shamelessly padded Category III sex flicks that appear to exist for few reasons beyond providing employment to washed-up 80’s directors and uninhibited starlets of dubious talent, and steady product for a recently-re-opened chain of former porn houses in Hong Kong. In shifting gears for an audience that doesn’t wear trenchcoats, however, the company has divested itself of the only thing worth watching in most of its movies to date: gratuitous female skin, thus making their trademark padding all the more unbearable, even as the production methods have taken a turn for the (slightly) better. When the prized Holy Spirit Sword is nicked from a Hong Kong auction house by thieves working for power-hungry businessman Wong Tin-dok, the security chief assigns its retrieval to Simon Loui’s newly opened private detection agency, consisting of himself and three “Angels,” sporty and sassy Kei-kei (Chung Wing), brainy and sensible Ley-kwan (Annabelle Lee) and bouncy and ditzy Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying), who soon uncover a plot—through a laughable amount of intuition and following people around—by the businessman’s aide (Ng Shui-ting) to copy the sword for fun and profit. But the sword has a habit of empowering the worst in those who possess it, causing the audience to view them through green and red filters as they thrust their arms skyward, mad with power. The real saving grace here, (as in the myriad sequels) is the sense of immediacy (not to mention history unaffected by artifice) afforded by shooting virtually without a budget on the real-time streets of Hong Kong in plain view of hundreds of passers-by! Written by the director. Followed by BLOODY LIE. 2.
BLOODY LIE (1999) When his cousin is charged with the murder of a PR girl, Bond (Simon Loui) entrusts his detective Angels (Chung Wing, Annabelle Lee and Wong Kit-ying) to hound a pair of likely suspects—a wealthy playboy (Raymond Cho) and a dirty cop—using their uncanny powers of conjecture, post-hoc reasoning and following suspects around in a conspicuous manner for very long stretches of time. To justify the title, there’s a lie detector scene in this film that runs over twenty-two minutes and extablishes virtually nothing, broken only by a brief sequence of the girls eating lunch and frolicking. By the time the girls are allowed to administer yet another lie detector test to a suspect, and Kiki (Chung Wing) whips out a gun to extract the truth—in a police station!—you’ll be hoping this might be the last Bond’s Angel’s film. But you’d be wrong. Followed by BEWARE OF THE STRIPTEASE. 1.
BEWARE OF THE STRIPTEASE (1999) Evidentally sensing that we needed them after trudging through BLOODY LIE, the Bond’s Angels are back! Resigning from the agency after boss Bond (Simon Loui) notes her gullability in a performance appraisal, private dickette Kiki (Chung Wing) takes a freelance gig searching for the runaway daughter of a successful clothier who bears an uncanny resemblance to the ex-boyfriend who ate a slug from then-rookie-cop Kiki’s pistol after he kicked her around and caused her to miscarry their baby when the then she wouldn’t hush-hush his daddy’s weapons dealing. Surprisingly, it turns out he’s not the same guy—not by a long shot—but it takes the diligent efforts of old pals Ley-kwan (Annabelle Liu) and Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) to convince her that this case goes far beyond a missing teenager. OK entry in the series is typically high on needless exposition and scenes of people walking around, and low on action until the kung-fu finale, but maintains just enough momentum to sustain interest for fans of this kind of video junk. Climactic character twist involving one of the villains is a silly surprise. Incidentally, the “striptease” of the title is largely justified by an unconvincing mash-up of footage with which the director tries to convince us that Kiki is getting loaded in a striptease joing while a caucasian peeler works it onstage. Followed by CRIMINALS. 2.
CRIMINALS (1999) Tasked with finding a politician’s stolen car, Bond’s Angels face a dramatic conflict of interest when boychaser Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) unknowingly falls in love with a key player in the auto theft ring, a suave hood (Teddy Lin) with Ekin Cheng hair on a desperate, murderous climb to the top. Perhaps sensing a dwindling interest in this generally plodding series, production company Winners’ Workshop have paid more attention to the details in this passably suspenseful installment (though they still skimp on the action). The screenplay, for once, holds up reasonably well to scrutiny and thankfully doesn’t require two thirds of the movie to be needless padding, while Wong’s flaky Yuk-yee gets the most shading of any character in the series to date. The cliffhanger ending is also an inspired touch. Followed by WHO’S THE ASSASSIN. 3.
In this scene from WHO'S THE ASSASSIN, the new Bond's Angels extract information from really-super-nice-guy Mr. Ting, played by one of Hong Kong's most venerable players of hissable villainy Karel Wong, whose very presence playing a nice guy in any film should qualify as a spoiler. Notice the deft handling of Wong's lengthy, complicated expository dialogue in this scene.
WHO’S THE ASSASSIN (1999) With one of Bond’s Angels shockingly blown to pieces at the end of CRIMINALS, and Lei-kwan (Annabelle Lee) packed off to the U.S. for cervical cancer treatment in the first few minutes of this followup, ace detective Bond (Simon Loui) pairs insolent, hot-headed Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) with Lei-kwan’s newly-arrived sister Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai) to solve the murder that climaxed the previous episode, while new hire Kaka (Cheng Chi-hung), Bond’s niece, gets tangled up with adulterous college flame Marco (Karel Wong), who may very well be the playboy psycho behind the recent murders of two women. Think these two plots will cross? Replacing two main characters in any series is no easy feat, even in no-budget dreck like the Bond’s Angels franchise, but if nothing else, the producers took pains to equalize the range of acting talent across the lead roles—they all suck about the same now, but each deserves at least a few points for trying their best under such catchpenny circumstances. Modest creative gains made in the previous film, and the potential for clever twists, are squandered: in the end, the killer is exactly who you figure it will be despite hoping that the filmmakers have been toying with red herrings along the way. Followed by CRUEL ZONE. 1.
CRUEL ZONE (1999) After countless entries, the Bond’s Angels series finally puts its heroines through the wringer in this followup to WHO’S THE ASSASSIN, the next entry after NUCLEAR WEAPON. Mind you, it’s still a dull slog, but it’s a marginal improvement over many previous installments. Ace detective Bond (Simon Loui), who’s done virtually no detecting of any kind in the series so far, sends the new Angels (Wong Kit-ying, Miu Yin-wai, Cheng Chi-hung) to look after a buddy’s flat on Lantau Island by convincing them it’s a resort vacation (!). Right around the time that Kaka (Cheng) gets her leg caught in a bear trap, it becomes apparent that not only are the locals a wee bit strange, but a psychopath has targeted the Angels because a) Tse-kwan’s sister Lei-kwan put his sister behind bars in BLOODY LIE and b) his wife ran off with a private detective, so he’s just got this thing against private detectives, and he’s selected Tse-kwan as the subject of several days’ torture around the island! Like all of its predecessors, CRUEL ZONE is half-baked with four parts padding to one part plot, and the villain’s plan relies almost entirely on dumb luck, though considering the sleuthing abilities of these gals, that arguably makes it a very clever plan. Followed by CYBER WAR. 2.
In their seventh film, CYBER WAR, Bond's Angels are finally given the opportunity to kick around a few bad guys. With choreography even!
CYBER WAR (1999) Still dazed from her experience in CRUEL ZONE, Angel detective Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai) decides its time to head back to the states for some rest. With little work and one less friend in her dayplanner, man-bait Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying), suddenly cognizant of how coddled she was by her former colleagues, decides to get involved with computers, ultimately joining a handsome techie (Edward Mok) on a visit to a Beijing computer expo, where the momentary loss of her passport puts her on the FBI’s most-wanted list back in Hong Kong! Now Kaka (Cheng Chi-hung), and Tse-kwan, who just couldn’t stay away for long, must help clear Yuk-yee’s name, which, since the Bond’s Angels series is as cheap in its seventh installment as it was in its first, means plenty of soundless scenes of the girls asking actual strangers for directions (or the time!) in the hopes we’ll be convinced this is anything like an actual investigation! Ranks with CRIMINALS and CRUEL ZONE as one of the better entries in this generally ridiculous series, but that’s not saying much. 2.
NUCLEAR WEAPON (1999) Somebody’s blowin’ up stuff all over the city, and that puts Bond’s Angels on the trail—to love! In this followup to CYBER WAR, Yuk-yee (Wong Kit-ying) swoons for the bumpkin-ish pal of her mainland cousin, while Ka-ka (Cheng Chi-hung) romances an athletic stranger who bumps into her on the street, and Tse-kwan (Miu Yin-wai), ever the sensitive one since her misadventure in CRUEL ZONE, becomes infatuated with . . . the bomber! But it’s cool; he’s a repentent type who’s really being menaced by the man who taught him bomb-making to take revenge on the police for jailing his father years earlier on a trumped-up explosives charge. The Bond’s Angels series goes out on a comparitive high note in this modestly suspenseful (if typically contrived) installment, and finds an ideal Special Guest Star in Chan Kwok-bong as the bomber with a conscious (and a few surprises for the girls). He’s easily the most fully-realized character the series has ever produced, and his presence has a noticeable effect on all three leading ladies. Still, this is probably best enjoyed if you’ve somehow managed to survive the first seven features. 3.
D: Herman Yau Lai-to. W: Herman Yau Lai-to, Yang Yee-shan.
Ten days in the lives of a cross-section of Mongkok sex workers, led by weary "mamasans" Candice Yu and Athena Chu, in an industry on the wane, as they contend with the nightly rituals of club life—petty rivalries, pathologically abusive customers, gangsters, drug abuse—and the the daily rituals of survival: dysfunctional relationships, deadbeat sugardaddies, syphillis, AIDS and (the worst threat of all) mainland Chinese girls who'll offer steep discounts and fresher faces just to keep sending money back home.
Director Herman Yau reteams with liberal feminist social anthropologist and author Yang Yee-shan (his co-writer on this and the excellent FROM THE QUEEN TO THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE), working from her 2006 bestseller of the same name (previously published in 2002; and yes, it sits on my shelf!), a collection of mostly hard-luck stories mined during a year spent shadowing the denizens of Hong Kong's sex trade and learning, for the most part, that a lack of common sense is often the working girl's (or guy's) most vicious enemy. That theme is successfully carried over to the film, but unfortunately, so is the author, in the form of alter-ego Yan Ng, a pie-eyed social worker whose increasingly didactic refrains about unionization as the key to basic human rights and protection for prostitutes is met with a fairly predictable volley of sad-sack stories (both past and present) from the workers themselves, even though Yau's softballing of their often difficult, directionless lives ultimately supports the social worker's contention.
The slice-of-life concept would make this an appealing ensemble piece for nearly any performer, although some of those here are a little too green to put across the devastating emotional complexities required by the script. Signature moment is probably a lengthy, late-film diatribe belted out by a hard-working, righteous mainland hooker (newcomer Misia Chan) when she's informed that her sterling reputation may have just been jeopardized when jealous co-worker Chu released a syphillis-infected cloud of urine on her in a hotel swimming pool.
The biggest career leap, such as it is, is handled by Patrick Tang, as a popular gigolo who smoothly services housewives and mistresses, verbally vents his frustrations on his female colleagues, and saves for a sex change operation for his transsexual lover (Don Li). Tang, Li, and most of their young castmates do alright (if not exactly stellar) by the sexual frankness of the words they're fed, but there's a conservatism in the sexual imagery (which is almost always depicted under the covers, behind closed doors, or from the shoulders up) that actually undermines the filmmakers' drive to depict the unpleasant realities of the trade. Where 80's and 90's Hong Kong films about gigolos and whores often used nudity and sex for sheer exploitation value, to not see it used for political value in an issues-driven film such as this is somewhat of a copout, no doubt to keep the cast from having to dig too deep. Yau and his team compensate by composing an authentic milieu of night clubs, karaoke rooms, micro-brothels and a medical clinic in which the cast can function in an almost improvisatory way, one that echoes Michael Radford's DANCING AT THE BLUE IGUANA (2000) to such a degree that there's little doubt Yau used it as an inspiration.
Official music video for Kary's song 座右銘 from LOVE @ FIRST NOTE
Product placement reaches staggering new heights—by all known international standards of the practice—in Dennis Law's LOVE @ FIRST NOTE, an electronic-press-kit-with-a-plot masterminded by Hong Kong music impresario Paco Wong, the head of Gold Label Records. The cast is a virtual catalogue of top-shelf Gold Label talent, and no effort is spared slowing a barely-there narrative for music-video-worthy performances of their top hits throughout the film.
Cantopop lovers will obviously find much to savor here—and the music is excellent of its kind—but even those disinclined to one of Hong Kong's biggest exports should give this a spin; it's bound to be dissected by future marketing professors for its sheer media-savvy chutzpah. This isn't just about someone holding a can of Coca-Cola in their hands, though it does happen here. It's about the person holding the product actually being a product themselves!
The biggest beneficiary of this super-slick infomercial is undoubtedly relative newcomer Justin Lo, an American-born singer-songwriter with a powerhouse delivery not often heard from the ranks of Hong Kong's superficial pop dispensary. Lo plays a slacker composer living with his seamstress mom who fears he might be losing his life-long best friend Kary Ng, a pseudo-goth record shop clerk who lives with her guilt-ridden alcholic father (Lam Suet), to wealthy shop customer Alex Fong, a shy, friendless singer who bemoans all the "money whores" in his life (including his parents!) while charging rare Barry Manilow and Fleetwood Mac LPs to his Visa Black Platinum card and driving around in his vintage Porsche 911. "Boarding school was my orphanage," he boo-hoos in order to make us think that maybe, just maybe, real-life pop stars aren't about the money after all.
The reverence for Cantonese pop music and the oh-so-genuinely-sensitive souls who perform it runs deep in this: nearly every time someone sings—and it happens often, in trendy nightclubs, cramped apartments, community centers and pay-as-you-go recording studios—there's inevitably a cut (or two, or three) to a listener on the verge of tears from the overwhelming wonderfulness of it all.
In keeping with the branding theme, Ng's former groupmates from Cookies make gratuitous appearances here as well: Stephy Tang and Theresa Fu play ditzy rivals who switch sides when nominal villain and rival singer Keith Lee treats Ng like dirt after she snubs his advances, and Miki Yeung quite literally hovers speechless around the margins of countless scenes because...well, they just had to get her in there somewhere!
In addition to the six songs performed by Justin Lo, three by Kary Ng, and one each by Alex Fong, Elisa Lim and Ping Pung (Kary's other pop band, consisting of Wong Tin-ho, Jerry Lee and Jan Lee, the latter pair younger brothers to the film's composer Mark Lui), those synergistic pixies at Gold Label made damned sure to include cuts by house titans Edmund Leung and Ronald Cheng (both of whom share hosting duties with Alex Fong on the hit starlet-bait TV show "Beautiful Cooking," and then cast Leo Koo, whose own career was revived by the company in 2003, in a key cameo role.
And the nine girls who pop up in those throwaway "bathroom" scenes? I smell another pre-fab idol group on the horizon...
Music Video for Justin Lo's song 決戰二世祖, heard during the opening of the film (video does not contain footage from the movie; it's just catchy, that's all)
One can only assume that music veteran George Lam, who is not on the Gold Label roster, was brought in for a cinematic passing of the torch to this new generation of candy-coated superstars.
Written, as such, by the director, who manages to slip in a shameless plug for his upcoming thriller FATAL CONTACT. Producer Herman Yau also served as the film's cinematographer, and it benefits immensely from his work.
I. C. KILL (1999) D: Mihiel Wong Chung-ning. Y2K jitters conjure up yet another ghost in the machine in this moderately (but surprisingly) witty, suspenseful videogramme that has slacker Michael Tse fearing for his life after roommate Jason Chu intercepts a date with his pretty new internet ICQ chatmate (Liz Kong) and turns up face down at the Ma Liu Shui pier in Sha Tin shortly thereafter. Tech-dumb detective Vincent Wan sizes up the clues, discovers a small chain of victims—including an embarrassed, defensive young female survivor in the hospital—and deduces that the perp is, in fact, a vengeful ghost with a firm deadline for Tse’s departure from the mortal coil. Taking their cue from last year’s phenomenally successful RING pictures from Japan—not for nothing is this film’s bogeywoman named Hiroko—director Mihiel Wong and writer Andrew Wu, who shared these duties between them last year on their debut project B. FOR BOYS, think cinematically on a home video budget and come up with a (very) rough gem distinguished by smart blocking in visually interesting locations—aided in no small part by cinematographers Ng Wing-sin and Lau Wai-kwan, and art director Ginnie Fung Suk-fun (the lamp in Tse’s apartment radiates golden-orange like something from a Wong Kar-wai movie)—and two lead characters that are generally more rounded, both in the writing and the performances, than one usually finds in this corner of the shot-on-video arena. The picture’s most notable asset might very well be it’s unvarnished depiction of computer user interface and online chat sessions (watch the video), something far too many filmmakers unnecessarily “enhance” with phony graphics and sound effects. It should be interesting to see what Wong and Wu are capable of should they return to shooting on film.
BLACK MAGIC 2 (Hong Kong; 1976) D: Ho Meng-hua Heeding what I can only assume was a public outcry for a followup after the success of the previous year’s wild dark arts exploitationer BLACK MAGIC, director Ho Meng-hua, writer Ni Kuang and their mischievous horror elves not only come up with a more intricate story that repurposes most of the earlier film’s leading players, they crank the freak-show dial way, WAY up.
Lam Wai-yiu, Ti Lung, Tanny Tien Ni
More gore! More nudity! More zombies! More lesions, skin ulcers and blood worms! More lactation! A miscarriage! Wait a minute...ewwww! The opening credits haven’t even rolled before a topless native girl is devoured by a fairly convincing crocodile, after which a frizzy-haired old wizard (Yeung Chi-hing) guts the beast to retreive a cherished bangle for her grieving family. Things get decidedly more outlandish from there as skeptical Hong Kong docs Ti Lung and Lam Wai-tiu take wives Tanny Tien Ni and Lily Li on vacation to what a title card informs us is “A Tropical City,” where they run into all sorts of gooey Southeast Asian mysticism at the hands of suave sorcerer Lo Lieh.
Lo Lieh
From his basement lair, Lo whips female pubic hairs and breast milk into powerful zombie potions, controls his creations via giant metal spikes pounded into their heads (the removal of which expedites the decomposition process in Hammer-style dissolve-o-vision), and doesn’t take kindly to city folk sniffin’ around the rotting corpses of his victims. Not only does he turn Li into an walking husk after luring her from the group, he casts a love spell on both Ti’s wife (Tien) and his colleague (Lam).
Lily Lee
Shaken free of Lo’s remote-controlled adultery by a rightfully perplexed Ti, Lam’s subsequent race to rescue his own wife from Lo’s clutches ends rather poorly for both of them, leaving Ti to seek out the services of wily old wizard Yeung, who helps him break Tien’s spell by extracting live worms from the oozing sores on her back. After he loses a subsequent battle of the hex dolls with an agitated Lo, Yeung bequeaths his own eyeballs to the young hero, who’s not a little nauseated that he has to eat them to gain the arcane powers needed to take on Lo and his battalion of druid-robed zombies.
The increased budget is not only evident in the quality and abundance of the movie’s visceral special effects, including some fairly effective process work during the fiery finale, but also in soft, atmospheric lensing by Cho Wai-kei and an eerie, detail-rich production design by Chan Ging-sam that works as hard as the actors to play up the popular Hong Kong perception of Southeast Asian countries as literally crawling with all manner of evil and exotic threats. Definitely one of the all time great Hong Kong horror pictures, with a few bits of Yuen Cheung-yan’s martial arts play thrown in for good measure—dig that kooky fight atop the gondola lift— and a flavorful music score by Frankie Chan Fan-kei.
I'm told you can pick this up on DVD in Region 1 from Media Blasters some time in the Fall, but when I want to see a movie—especially one as hyped as this one has been over the years—I don't like to wait. And like others in the know, I grabbed a membership at www.jaman.com—a LEGAL online distributor of a phenomenal selection of international cinema—and downloaded it myself, an act all the more necessary when IVL/Celestial apparently withdrew it from their release schedule for some godforsaken reason. And while I'm glad I didn't wait, I'll still pick up the Media Blasters edition when it streets or better yet, when it inevitably ends up in one of their price-reduced three packs that follow about a year or so after they release the titles individually.
THE PLOT (Hong Kong; 1991) D: Chui Chik-lim (as Teddy Yu) Greedy, traitorous Simon Yam usurps the throne of a weapons syndicate, only to contend with freshly-paroled rival Sun Chien and an abundance of undercover cops in the organization (dude needs to run better background checks!). Cheapo actioner strains plausibility at regular intervals, and lacks a strong leading character: puggish Sun Chien and Emily Chu, as one of the cops, vie for the honor but cancel each other out, leaving the impeccably-apparelled Yam to steal the show. Highlight action sequences, co-choreographed by Sun Chien, pit him against a Japanese hitbitch (To Gwai-fa) in a shanty-trashing deathmatch, and the entire cast against each other in a sprawling shipyard shootout that goes on for nearly 12 minutes straight!
Nightclub wrestler To Gwai-fa meets with disapproval. Bet your local Amvets ain't got a show like this!
BRAVEFUL POLICE (Taiwan/Hong Kong; 1990) D: Hon Bo-Cheung This lesser-known Kara Hui vehicle should probably stay that way. It's a soapy thriller that looks like it was shot for free and sends the veteran martial artist to Tokyo where, with the help of a plucky prostitute (Yip Ka-ling) and a sexy lady wrestler (To Gwai-fa; don’t ask), she takes down the syndicate that’s squeezing her restauranteur uncle. Lotsa yap about displaced Taiwanese folk sticking together (all the girls hail from the island), but the only real highlight comes when Kara yanks the bikini top off a snooty roundeye peeler and tosses her into the audience at one of those only-in-a-Hong-Kong-movie nightclubs where well-dressed society couples gather to furiously applaud spastic stripteasing—and female wrestling—like it was a night at the friggin’ opera! Stay home. New wave band Berlin performs “Take My Breath Away,” though I’m fairly certain they’re not aware of it.
The only reason you'll probably get this movie in the first place!
FATAL TERMINATION (1990) D: Andrew Kam Yeung-wah
Dark, serpentine action thriller, sharply written by Lee Man-choi and Pang Chi-ming, from one of the colony’s most unsung filmmakers. Andrew Kam, co-director with Johnnie To of the Heroic Bloodshed classic THE BIG HEAT (yeah yeah, I know. . .) and, later, the excellent HEART OF KILLER, shows his singular knack for taming an abundance of lead characters and converging plotlines into a lean piece of work.
To hide his middleman dealings with Arab terrorists and a vicious gun dealer (Phillip Ko, who also co-produced) from hound-dog Political Division investigator Simon Yam, dirty customs chief Robin Shou frames, then kills fellow customs officer Michael Miu. The dead man’s sister (Moon Lee, in a career highlight performance) and her husband (Ray Lui), both Special Forces operatives, begin their own investigation, but soon find their lives virtually destroyed by the bad guys.
The movie plays like a nicely stripped down version of some of the great American police corruption flicks of the 70’s, although the Yanks rarely contrived finales in which all the principals go at each other with cars, copters, grenades, machine guns and rocket launchers on an open battlefield! Of interest: FATAL TERMINATION contains one of the most frightening stunts I’ve ever seen in a Hong Kong movie, as a bug-eyed gwailo goon holds Moon’s little girl by her hair outside the window of a visibly speeding car with Moon on the hood desperately trying to punch through the windshield. The story goes that the kid was never in harm’s way and that the “arm” was actually a strong steel contraption, but it still makes for one of those jaw-dropping, “holy shit!” moments that separate the cinema of Hong Kong from any other.
"Kooky" cops Louis Fan and Patrick Keung (two names that don't exactly scream "hilarious!" playing characters named F-Bomb and Mojito) are hired by the estate of a millionaire to shield his prized daughter from her shifty relatives, who are soon murdered one by one in the tycoon's opulent mansion after arriving there for the execution of the will. Writer Michael Yeung and director Amen Wu play out their mystery with a winking, Dutch-angled cartoon sensibility, most shamelessly embodied by the hero detectives: every line of dialogue they speak, every movement they make, is accompanied by the broadest possible gestures, including funky little dance steps and outsized facial contortions like googly eyes or flicking tongues. In the end, this liberal coating of "wacky" fails to make us forget that this is a formulaic whodunnit. Thankfully, Fan participates in several well-choreographed and crisply edited martial arts fights, including a climactic style-versus-style doozy in a garage with henchman Sze Hung-bor, and these make the title worth at least one viewing.
. . . or, The Subject Was Hymenoplasty! A "social disease" film in the fine tradition of U.S. roadshow exploitationers like DAMAGED LIVES (1933) and SEX MADNESS (1938) and MOM AND DAD (1945). In other words, a conservative moral issue fueled by ripe dialogue and fronting an endless parade of "square-up reels" on the part of both the characters and the filmmakers. In other words, sex, son, and lots of it!
The title's misleading though: there are actually two barren virgins put through the wringer here, both of them misunderstood and driven to sins of desperation by the harsh expectations of an unjust society. One, Kwai-len (Kim Gee-mei) is a Hong Kong divorcee with an impenetrable hymen who flees an abusive husband in Hong Kong to live in Japan with the other barren virgin (Lam Yue-kit), a close friend not coincidentally named Mary whose leaking vagina has her terrified that her fiancee's archconservative (and apparently clueless) Singaporean parents—and maybe even her fiancee—will think she's used goods on her wedding night. Quelle horreur!
Repping offense in this gynecological soap opera is Mary's friend Ruby (Heung Chuen-cheung), a likewise appropriately-named scarlet woman who models naked or nearly-naked with snakes, motorcycles, spearguns, banana-yellow surfboards and other phallic metaphors, and snacks on a buffet of promiscuous boyfriends, including one (Chan Kai-jun) who discovers a surprise package on a Caucasian tourist but doesn't let it spoil the fun!
Heung Chuen-chung with accessories.
The barren-esses, meanwhile, turn to the nightclub scene to raise the exorbitant cost of Mary's outpatient hymenoplasty, with Kwai-len substituting her "iron bar" hymen for Mary's less protective barrier right at the brink of nookie with a sleazy old fart.
Despite a Category II rating and distinctive lensing against often dramatic Japanese locales, the abundant toplessness and full frontal nudity here tend to mitigate against any pretense of social responsibility, which was probably the point to begin with. Marbled with the kind of stale, hokey comic relief that one expects from a film of this genre, regardless of country of origin, and the characters ultimately reap their just rewards, as they always have in films like these: some enjoy postnuptial frottage with their abstinent manly men, while others face the direst of consequences (thanks in part to a gweilo "transvertile") in a throwaway bit that reeks of prevailing ignorance about the subject.
But hey, tits galore! as David Friedman might say. And the opening credits—all three minutes, fifteen seconds of 'em—unspool over footage of the Main Street Electrical Parade at Tokyo Disneyland, almost as if to prophecy the innocence that will be lost soon after, but more likely because somebody wanted to get their home movies up on the big screen. The last 90 seconds of this film truly must be seen to be believed.
And remember. It could happen to you. And you. And you!
When her cop boyfriend (Wilson Lam) puts her supposedly reformed triad father (Foo Wang-tat) behind bars, trading company exec Joey Wong aims to rid the organization of it's dirty ties, but chief goon Jimmy Lung Fong—in a deliciously over-the-top portrait of scumbaggery—has plans for a very hostile takeover. To ensure her cooperation, he rapes her, videotapes the deed, and sells copies to his pals when he's not whipping her, insulting her, killing her relatives, making her watch him have sex with hookers and reveling in her utter defenselessness (which actually lasts longer than logic would dictate).
Lam's conflicted detective is ultimately painted as an ineffectual, emotionally constipated hero-by-accident, which doesn't exactly win back his girl, but hotheaded partner Max Mok—whose unrequited love for Wong is sketched in montage while he sings karaoke to a soaring Dave Wong Kit power ballad (illustrated above and below—thanks YouTube!)—doesn't fare much better when he goes above the law to get things done.
In fact, the filmmakers strongly suggest that triad "troubles" take care of themselves, though to prove it, they go a little nuts in the second half, with catharses and plot twists and fight scenes—including a king sized gang-on-gang chopper battle that spills through a restaurant's windows and into the street, presumably so a fire hydrant can be broken open to make everyone look even cooler fighting in a downpour—piled on at such a ferocious clip that a viewer's emotional circuits might need rewiring after all the yanking around.
Drew this gal in a hurry about four years ago and for the life of me, I can't remember what movie she's from. All I know is this: it was a Hong Kong movie, shot on video, real cheap. She was a cop, the kind where the actors just sorta show up in their own clothes, dangle a badge holder around their neck from a little chain, and run around the back alleys of Hong Kong with toy guns shooting each other. It must've been late, 'cause I liked this girl's get-up enough to whip out my pencil and start doodling, but a few short years later, I stumble across the sketchpad, and it's driving me nuts wondering who she is and where she was, and why I took little artistic licenses—not sure if she was wearing a belly shirt, definitely wasn't wearing dog tags, and the face is in no way a likeness—to make her and the movie that much harder to ID. But here she is, smudges and all. Click on her and she should sharpen up. Her big-ass North Face-style jacket, the camouflage cargos and the boots are about the only things that I know are in the ballpark. Maybe someday I'll be able to stick a shot from the movie up here so folks can see if I missed by a mile . . .
FLASH POINT (Hong Kong/China; 2007) D: Wilson Yip Wai-shun
Re-teaming of the director and star of SPL and DRAGON TIGER GATE is an extra lean, meaty police revenge thriller that treads familiar ground but builds to a protracted action climax that's sure to please fans of mixed martial arts, a school of increasing interest for producer and action director Donnie Yen, not to mention one of the most popular and profitable sports in the world at the time of the film's release. Story has venemous Vietnamese brothers (Ray Lui, Collin Chou and Xing Yu) hardballing their way into territory controlled by Hong Kong gang boss Ben Lam and his compatriots. The near-mortal wounding of Lam convinces the other three to seek justice from Organized Crime & Triad Bureau detective Donnie Yen, a one-man tornado to wants these guys disposed of in the worst way. Yen apparently finds his badge a little restrictive and his deep cover operative (Louis Koo) increasingly at risk of exposure. When gang honcho Ray Lui (in a solid comeback performance) is finally captured, the brothers start eliminating witnesses and eventually sniff out the mole in their midst. Koo survives their attack, but they kidnap his girlfriend to ensure that his memory fails at the trial, and when Lui walks free, Yen's snatches the guy up for delivery to the big showdown. In time, bodies are pushed beyond the limits of known human endurance, just as they have been in Hong Kong action cinema for decades, and Yip's camera swoops and glides to capture the elegant ferocity of these duels without a flurry of smash-cut editing constructing the fights for him. What Hong Kong cinema needs is more movies like this to balance the current lean toward romantic comedies and show that the former colony's film industry hasn't lost touch with the martial artistry and screen action design that have placed it on the international stage
THE EXODUS (Hong Kong/China 2007) D: Edmond Pang Ho-cheung.
The opening shot, a slow, meticulous dolly backwards down a hallway, says it all. It begins with a tight closeup of a pair of alluring female eyes in a photograph. The subject of the portrait is revealed to be Queen Elizabeth II, and beneath it stand two men in swim trunks, goggles and flippers who light up smokes and casually redirect a Hong Kong police officer who has unwittingly entered the doorway at screen left. These must be cops, pre-1997, and as the frame continues to open up, we notice two, then three, then four of these "frogmen" beating a suspect with mallets and phone books as he struggles violently to flee.
"All the hatred of this world are caused by men," claims one of the film's female characters, but as evidenced by this gorgeous opening shot, much of it happens under the watchful eye of condoning women, and in pondering the question of why the female almost always outlives the male, as well as what they talk about when they go to the ladies' room together, writer-director Edmond Pang, along with co-writers Cheuk-Wan-chi and Jimmy Wan Chi-man, have crafted a sleek black comedy that, strangely, doesn't manifest most of its inherent dark whimsy until well into the final reel.
Nagged by a condescending mother-in-law who only sees value in a man who runs his own business, and long ago demoted to a desk job as a reward for interdepartmental whistle-blowing, bored and complacent Tai Po police sergeant Simon Yam—who we later learn was the redirected officer in the opening sequence—begrudges a favor to a fellow officer and agrees to take a statement from a peeping Tom (Nick Cheung), who foams profanely about a top-secret organization of women plotting the elimination of the male species, one unsuspecting rube at a time. Yam thinks little of it, until the report disappears from the evidence room and the suspect one-eighties his story after a visit from a prickly female senior officer (Maggie Shaw). Eager to learn why such a patently ludicrous story would need to be hushed up, he soon comes to the realization that Cheung was telling the truth!
Artfully directed and photographed (by Charlie Lam Chi-kin) with an emphasis on static, contemplative frame compositions the seem to grow organically from the modernist yoga-zen architecture that dominates the locations, but the concept begs for a playfulness that the filmmakers seem to avoid until the last ten minutes of the picture. The build-up is played with such a straight face that sequences which all but confirm the existence of the assassination club pass with nary a raised eyebrow. Perhaps that was the point, but the shift in tone is nonetheless jarring. Yam underplays nicely throughout, as if his character knows all too well how ridiculous his mission might seem to those looking in. Fine music score by Gabriele Roberto features exceptional piano solos by Aiko Takai.
Kudos to Colin Geddes over at Kung Fu Fridays for uncovering this little gem on Youtube. It's a segment of "Movie World" hosted by venerable Hong Kong film critic Paul Fonoroff, and it deals with the dubbing of English movies into Cantonese and Hong Kong movies into English back in the halcyon days of the late 80's. Best of all, those of use who first experienced John Woo's seminal THE KILLER in its English dubbed incarnation can finally put faces to the "voices" of Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee.
