Change Your Image
rmusung
Reviews
Gui hua hu (1991)
Cheap cat III erotica
Like the movie Erotic Ghost Story, this movie is based on the Chinese folklore of the three female fox spirits who gain their nourishment by seducing and drinking the blood of men.
Hawk Shi Yu is an apprentice Taoist priest who marries Emily Chu (it is difficult to believe that this is the same actress from Rouge). He saves the life of Chien Chien, the youngest of the three spirit sisters and she falls in love with him. Middle sister Lily becomes jealous and tries to trick Elder sister into breaking them apart so that she can have him, while Elder sister wants to kill him for his blood. A further complication to the plot are three children, who are hopping vampires, who come to the rescue of Hawk Shi Yu and Emily with the aid of Guk Fung, their big brother vampire. Finally Shi Yu's mentor, the Taoist priest, aids in vanquishing the spirits.
This is very confusing, cheap cat III erotica with very lengthy sex scenes concentrating on the buxom Elder sister but showing little variation or titillation. With poor cinematography and production values, it should only appeal to die-hard cat III fans.
Sha jian O niang (1995)
Attractive starlets
A misleading title is the introduction to this movie which has the unbelievable premise that a group of five attractive undercover police women will do anything to capture a drug baron. I do not know who or what is the raping murderer but there are plenty of sex scenes to keep your interest.
If you can overlook the poor production values and wooden acting, you will be compensated by plenty of full frontal nudity. Quite often in Cat III movies they will wheel in some anonymous chunky starlets chosen more for their bulk than for their aesthetic qualities (see Blood Sorcery for a particularly unattractive beauty) but this time they are passable and plentiful and that is the best thing about this movie to make it watchable.
The scene that sticks in the mind is where the undercover policewoman must make love to the drug trafficker to find out where the drugs are hidden. Talk about going beyond the call of duty and the look of disgust on her face is palpable. Agent 105 Orchard is the pick of the group and is quite attractive but her acting in the sex scenes is disinterested and consists of a lot of bouncing up and down but no interaction with her co-star
Apart from Lee Chung Ling it is difficult to identify the other actors.
Sing foh hang yu yim (1995)
These maids are no Joan of Arc
Set in Taiwan, these maids of passion are prostitutes who bare all.
At the beginning the movie looks distinctly unpromising. Kwan, a cocky young man, speaks to the camera explaining that, in order to succeed, you became a jockey at the Hong Kong Jockey Club or you went to Taiwan. In a theatrical performance in a brothel, he attempts to persuade the brothel madam Chi to give him a chance in the business. The madam was one of those little girl type characters, so beloved of HK movies, with a pout and whining voice ... surely she would not have succeeded in this business like that. He takes one of the girls May under his wing and turns her into one of the most successful girls in the business. He also falls in with a girl whose gambling addiction was her downfall and she too becomes a prostitute to repay her debts. Inevitably the two girls fall in love with Kwan.
But once the clothes are shed, like autumn leaves they keep on falling. The three females are young, slim and attractive but their performances are wooden. Actresses in Hong Kong cat III movies are chosen firstly for their willingness to participate in the more daring scenes, secondly for their physical appearance and then finally for their thespian talents
Gau ji (2004)
Where is Bette Davis?
1940's womens picture about the loss of beauty by a middle aged woman and her fear that she is losing her attractiveness to her philandering husband. To counter this, she takes some special dumplings with an unknown magical ingredient and, like Faust who sold his soul, there is an unexpected price to be paid. Very little happens in this slow paced movie by indie director Fruit Chan. The cinematography by Chris Doyle is lush but in the scenes of the poor apartment areas of Hong Kong, there is a surreal air of Hollywood studio glamour where everything is spotless and the normal hustle and bustle of Hong Kong is absent. The quest for beauty is a ride into the unknown.
She yao shen ling (1994)
Anything with Charlie Cho will be cheap and cheerful
Aimed squarely at the South East Asian market and filmed in Thailand, it concerns the King of the snake monsters who is trying to change into human form. His adversary is Charlie Cho who owns a popular restaurant which specialises in snake soup which cures various health problems such as rheumatism, and the consumption of snake meat has given Charlie lustful urges which he satisfies on a number of local girls.
The King of the snake monster tries to protect his snakes from the restaurant's snake collectors but is defeated by a Taoist priest. However with the help of Charlie's daughter, he is successful in gaining human form and this leads to the final battle with another priest
Poor acting, a cobbled script, low production values, risible special effects ... it reminds me of Australian movies. The extensive use of amateurs in minor speaking roles must have seemed a good idea at the time but their wooden performances are painful to watch
Difficult to believe that it was made in 1999, it is so poor
Sing nou (1993)
Nothing special as Chinese police come to Hong Kong
Although made in 1995 the production values are poor betraying its low budget origins. The teaming of HK stalwarts Waise Lee and Wu Ma, mugging outrageously, ensure that the acting is competent although I am still trying to identify Yukari Oshima.
The plot was confusing but involved a team of two male and one female Mainland police coming to Hong Kong to catch a group of kidnappers bringing women in for immoral purposes. Their Hong Kong counterparts are Waise Lee and Lee Lai Yue, the sister of Loletta Lee. The broad comedy at the expense of the unsophisticated mainlanders is laid on, including the old stale joke that they cannot use a toilet properly and that they leave it in a disgusting state. Did I tell you how they use a vibrator to brush their teeth.
Softcore scenes are inserted at various stages to depict the hapless plight of the kidnapped women who are forced into sexual training for their future
The finale is a lacklustre battle as the freed women overcome their captors and the mainland and Hong Kong police rejoice in their partnership before 1997.
Yin yao hao qing (1992)
A word of warning
Firstly this movie contains graphic shots of transsexuals so if you are offended, you have been warned. Otherwise it it a mishmash of violence, kungfu and sex and concerns a gun smuggling operation in Thailand. Carrie Ng of 'Naked Killer' fame must have taken the money and run as her role of a housewife who is kidnapped is minor and the main attraction of this movie are the kungfu fights between the Chin brothers which are spectacular.
Ging bin (1996)
Powerful psychological mystery
Upon its release this movie caused a minor sensation as it was the first time that Irene Man a Hong Kong television actress had appeared nude on the screen. Herman Yau, the director of 'The Untold Story', grabs our attention from the first scene as the body of a woman comes crashing down onto the roof of a car and this sets the scene for a powerful psychological mystery. Although rated only a cat IIB movie there are scenes of sex and violence and I am surprised that it did not get a cat III rating. Be warned that there two scenes of violence which may prove disturbing.
Xiang Gang jian sha ji an (1992)
Graphic depiction of rape
This is a little gem of a movie like the underrated 'Six Devil Women' and is not widely known. It is another entry from the golden era of Hong Kong cat III movies and tells the story of a series of brutal rape murders told through the eyes of one of its protagonists Kang.
SPOILERS
At the beginning of the movie a raped and murdered body is found and Kang is arrested. The police investigation is shown in all its brutality and during questioning, his life is told in flashback. It begins with his parents' separation and his unhappy childhood. He falls in with a group of unsavoury petty criminals and quickly joins their lifestyle of crime and prostitutes, and things get no better when he discovers that a prostitute being used by his friends is his mother. His life improves when his best friend Chi returns from the United States, he meets a sweet girl Kitty and he tries to make an honest living by washing car windscreens. A series of misfortunes plunges him into violence and the inevitable climax
In summary, if you can handle the quite graphic depictions of rape, it becomes a sympathetic display of circumstances that lead an individual to a life of crime. The movie pulls no punches and there are sensationalised scenes of sex, rape and violence but it does not go over the top like the psychopath in Dr Lamb.
Bu wen nu xue tang (1994)
If you liked Porky's
Raunchy teen comedy in the tradition of a long line of films ranging from Porky's to American Pie in which we have a group of horny adolescents both male and female desperately trying to get laid and the males ogling their female classmates.
A high school boy releases a ghost from its 400 year imprisonment in a jar. The ghost must atone for the sins of a philandering past by performing a good deed otherwise he will not reincarnate. Mix in the shower scene from Porky's, an evil developer who wishes to close their school and sell the land and a basketball game to save the school and you have a movie to appeal to your typical teen audience.
In summary, there is a lot of nudity, sex and comedy done in a lighthearted manner and it is a fun little movie.
Shen Zhen gong lu qiang che jie sha: Liu mo nv (1996)
Engrossing crime drama
Shenzen is the California of China, a place where you go to get rich quickly. Located just over the border from Hong Kong, it was designated as a special economic zone free from the normal Chinese bureaucratic rules and it was designed to stimulate economic growth. Poor people flocked here from the countryside in the hope of making their fortunes and a gang of ten men and six women have hit upon a money making scheme by stealing cars. The women would stand by the road side and hitch a ride and then lead them to their fellow gang members who would take the cars and sell them in Shenzen to the newly rich entrepreneurs.
Like those crime movies set in the 1930s (a la Bonnie and Clyde) the only way out of a life of grinding poverty and boredom for a young pretty girl was crime or marriage to a rich man. Diana Pang (nicknamed by the Hong Kong press as Mystical Breasts) gives a surprisingly effective dramatic performance as Man Nap caught in this web of greed. The movie transcends its cat III status and delivers a entertaining crime drama.
SPOILER
I found the scene of capital punishment at the end of the movie to be quite disturbing as executions in China have none of that sanitised quality found in most Western movies which remove them from reality. They are simply taken out into a field and shot by firing squad.
Sam dou yau wak (1990)
A wonderfully silly softcore cat III romp.
The director Ho Fan set out to produce a movie with as much nudity as he could squeeze into it and he succeeded. The opening scene sets the tone. A blonde topless nurse tends to her patient in a most unconventional manner (think of Benny Hill or the Carry on gang) while African natives dance in the background.
The plot is so slight as to be non-existent. Confirmed bachelor Man Suen, a university professor, must get married by the age of 35 otherwise he and his playboy brother Ray Suen won't inherit his father's fortune of 50 million dollars which will then go to his uncle. He is unaware that his colleague, the prim Miss Cheung, is in love with him and that she dreams of being rescued by her super-costumed hero. His brother has met a young heiress and his uncle has hired a sexy siren to prevent his marriage. This is the setting for the three lead actresses to display a surprising amount of softcore nudity and they are very attractive eye candy.
I would recommend it as the movie is warm hearted and inoffensive and in the end true love triumphs, so who could ask for anything more. It did reasonably well at the box-office and led to a sequel, Temptation Summary 2, which lost a little of its innocent air and was slightly more sophisticated
Qing ben jia ren (1991)
Veronica Yip, queen of the Cat III, has a long shower
At the beginning of the 1990s there was a deluge of Cat III movies in Hong Kong as the producers tried to satisfy the public's insatiable appetite for these movies. The queen of the Cat III potboilers was Veronica Yip, riding a wave of sexploitation titles and this was her most famous effort.
The movie begins with every office worker's fantasy: the woman working naked at her desk. And that it what it is. Our perverted villain has visions of a colleague naked at her desk but we the viewer see it for the fantasy that it is. Having been aroused by her alleged provocative behaviour, he rapes her and she is killed in the ensuing struggle. Later that evening at a hostess bar (which is a mandatory scene in most Hong Kong movies) he is amazed to see the dead woman's look-a-like and he plots a scheme to explain her absence by having Minmin (Veronica Yip) submit a letter of resignation in her place. Things do not go according to plan when Minmin recognises her saviour, from an attempted assault of the previous night, to be the boss's son and changes her mind and accepts the job. Some action is provided by a rival firm attempting to sabotage our hero's firm by robbery and kidnapping. After many trials and tribulations and the legendary ten minute shower scene, our Cinderella is united with her prince.
To summarise: there are lashings of nudity and sex, if that is what you interested in. As well, the movie has a certain innocence in that there are cardboard baddies and the hero easily disposes of them in formulaic kung-fu fights, and in a shoot-out between the police and the gangsters there is much shooting and like children playing cops and robbers they are shot without much blood or being hurt. This is a perfect example of a Cat III movie.There is gratuitous nudity and the plot is slight, seeming only to hang the sex scenes on to and in the end it is a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes.
Yi boh lai beng duk (1996)
One of the classic Hong Kong Cat III movies
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Anthony Wong stars as a psycho who becomes infected with the Ebola virus. The film begins with Wong having a fling with his triad boss's wife. Unfortunately his boss returns in the middle of the affair and in the ensuing carnage, he kills his boss and the wife and an offsider and is prevented from killing their daughter by a neighbour. Ten years later we in are Johannesburg where he is working in a Chinese restaurant hiding out from the Hong Kong police. Being paid very low wages, he is bullied by the owner's shrewish wife but retaliates by peeping on them while they make love. On a meat buying trip to the native countryside he rapes a native woman who is dying and is infected by her with the Ebola virus. Luckily he is one of the rare few who is a carrier and is unharmed by the disease. He murders the owner and his wife and in a scene reminiscent of his previous film "The Untold Story' turns them into a menu dish for the restaurant. Returning to Hong Kong with money stolen from the restaurant owner he spreads the Ebola disease widely.
The film is full of graphic violence and bristles with sex and sexual violence but has a cartoonish air which dissipates the misogony. These three intertwined themes run throughout the movie and provide the climaxes to acts one and two. Bullied and set upon, he revenges himself by killing his boss and raping his wife in both instances.
In this film Wong is the archetypal loser. He is in a low paid job and he is unattractive to women both physically and financially. Through a stroke of fate by contracting the Ebola virus and killing the restaurant owner, he is able to both to escape his predicament by using money to buy women and revenge himself upon an uncaring society by spreading the disease.
When classification system of Category III was introduced in Hong Kong in 1989 it restricted entry to these movies to those 18 years and older. It was designed to allow movie makers to produce movies with adult topics under the principle that adults should be allowed the freedom to see what they wanted and at the same time to protect minors in the areas of sex, violence, language and drug use. Under the freedom that they were granted, for about four to five years Hong Kong movie makers used this as an excuse to push the boundaries of what was acceptable and directors like Herman Yau and Billy Tang produced a number of controversial exploitation movies. On their coat tails other producers used the Cat III label to include sex and violence in their movies as marketing tools but usually in a pedestrian and boring manner. Yau and Tang were craftsmen who could shock but in a creative way which was not offputting. Yau's "The Ebola Syndrome" is similar to his "Untold Story" in that it is full of graphic violence but its over-the-top tone makes it far more of an enjoyable experience.