Since the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong, Category III enthusuiasts have been wondering if the films will stop coming out. While there are certainly less of these "roughies" coming out now (especially when compared to the genre's heyday in the early 90's, where Cat III movies comprised about 30 percent of total releases) the ones that do come up seem to offer up more and more of the "naughty bits." However, most of the newer Cat III movies -- this one included -- seem to forget that you actually need a decent script or story to go along with the gore.

The story here (based on a real case that ended a month before this movie's premiere) has a young girl (Kwan) fall in with the wrong crowd, a group of low-rent Triads led by Lai, because of her growing drug addiction. The Triads basically torture her throughout the movie, until they finally kill her by accidentally poisoning her. I guess they've seen The Untold Story a few times, and so they get rid of the body by chopping it up and eating the pieces (and in a gag that got the filmmakers sued by Sanrio, they put the skull behind a stuffed Hello Kitty).

This movie certainly earns its Cat III rating. There's lots of sex, violence, gore and explicit drug use. But there's really nothing else here. The direction is lackluster, the script is weak and unoriginal, and the acting almost on the level of sleepwalking. Despite all the nasty bits, there's nothing really great about those parts either. I've seen more shocking things on a good episode of The X-Files. Basically, the movie is just boring, despite its tendency to throw everything at the viewer.

A couple of notes: the director, Bennie Chan, is not the Benny Chan who directed films such as Big Bullet and Man Wanted. There is another film based on this case that was released on the exact same day as this one called There's a Secret in My Soup, which is supposedly better than this movie.

A review of the VCD for this movie can be found here

Back to Movie Review index