Blue Jean Monster
Director: Ivan Lai
Year: 1991
Rating: 8.0/7.5
This is a sentimental and touching story in a very peculiar sort of way.
Shing Fui-On, who almost always plays a bad guy (as in The Killer) for a
good reason - he is very big and very ugly, gets a chance to portray a good
guy cop. Unfortunately, early in the film he gets killed while chasing after
some robbers, but an electrical storm brings him back to life. His body and
brain are able to keep moving with the help of occasional electro-shocks
and it takes him a while to realize that he is in fact dead. Clues like his
food coming out of a bullet hole in his stomach help him figure it out eventually!
Amy Yip makes a short amazing cameo as Death Ray a prostitute that is hired
by the cop's wife (Pauline Wong) to stop him from going the gay way (too long
to explain). In a classic scene, Amy attired in a red bunny costume has her
breasts burst and saline flies hither and thither. Another Yipster - Gloria
Yip - is also on hand to add to the chaos.
Shing only wants to see his baby born before he really dies for good. In
one bizarre but astonishing scene, his wife has to give birth quickly in order
to fit through a window before a bomb goes off. This is a really crazy, strange
and wonderful film.
My rating for this film: 8.0
For some pictures of Amy's classic
cameo click here
Reviewed by YTSL
Early on in our friendship, this site’s webmaster
sent me a VHS tape of this Ivan Lai helmed offering along with the injunction
that “You can’t really call yourself a Hong Kong movie fan until you’ve
seen it!” Despite the pressure heaped on me, I resisted doing so for
some years. Although Brian might chalk this down to my being a stubborn
so and so, it actually was this then neophyte reviewer’s fear that she would
not be able to handle the weirdness openly hinted at by the effort’s peculiar
titled plus premise that put her off checking it out for as long as she did.
In any case, it was only after I had viewed some five or six hundred other
Hong Kong films that I finally felt able to give THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER a fair
whirl and consequently enjoy viewing this often truly bizarre movie as much
as I ended up doing. Furthermore, as another Asian filmophile friend
of mine had suggested, some bonus entertainment points really can be derived
from seeing the immensely recognizable Shing Fui-On and the versatile Pauline
Wong portraying a caring married couple in this 1991 effort post previously
witnessing their acting much less loving towards each other in the earlier
plus much grimmer “Her Vengeance”. Additionally, there’s this often
absurdist work’s presenting veteran viewers with the atypical spectacle of
character actor Shing -- whose “Big Silly-Head” nickname attests to his having
far from standard movie star looks -- in a leading role, plus playing a heroic
cop and generally good natured soul who’s prone to “whither before [his]
wife” to boot.
All in all, one of the few regrets I have with regards to this entertaining
offering is that Pauline Wong ended up once more without as much screen time
as an actress of her caliber deserves. For, instead of choosing to focus
for the most part on Shing Fui-On’s sometimes quite henpecked Tsu character
and his heavily pregnant wife, Chu (who Ms. Wong essays), the movie’s makers
also devoted considerable space in their work to two younger individuals who
they perhaps presumed that viewers would find to be on the cute side.
The actually somewhat annoying Power Steering (who is played by Tse Wai-Kit)
is the orphaned son of a friend of Tsu who lives with the film’s main pair
of adults. The apt to be too independent minded Gucci (portrayed by
Gloria Yip) is the girlfriend of this lad who, fairly early on into THE BLUE
JEAN MONSTER, finds herself being held hostage by a group of violence prone
bank robbers (one of whom comes in the form of Sunny Chan) and then turns
out to be the person who has hold of their valuable stash for the bulk of
this offering.
On one level, the eccentrically monikered Power Steering’s primary reason
for being in the picture seems to be to provide extra amounts of light relief
to an effort that actually has a surprising amount of serious emotional moments
along with farcical plus other just plain head-scratching ones, not to mention
action and gross out scenes galore. For plot purposes though, his main
role appears to be that of the fellow responsible for ensuring that the man
who a series of fateful -- and, frankly, unlikely in real life! -- events
caused to turn into THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER and Gucci end up crossing paths,
and more than once.
Albeit indirectly, Power Steering also caused the entrance into THE BLUE
JEAN MONSTER of an infamous individual. The legendary busty Amy Yip’s
“Death Rays” character was reputed to be irresistible to heterosexual men.
In one of those “only in Hong Kong movies” types of developments, this femme
fatale is requested by a desperate Chu to seduce her husband after she --
who had refused to have sex with him during the entire length of her pregnancy
-- had walked into a room and witnessed what she interpreted as her husband
and their home’s other male occupant engaging in homosexual acts. In
this rightfully renowned effort’s probably most well known scene however,
the (now) uncommonly strong Tsu not only effectively proceeds to provide evidence
of his inability to get sexually aroused -- and thus provide an answer of
sorts to his own question of “Am I human or a ghost?” -- but also ensured
that “Death Rays” prized assets hitherto would never be looked at in, as
well as look, quite the same way again... ;D
My rating for the film: 7.5