Evil Instinct
Director: Barry Ju Wai-gwong
Year: 1996
Rating: 6.0
This film gets off
to a great start with a few sexy and yet amusingly tongue in cheek scenes
that had my hopes high for what might follow. To some degree the follow through
fell short, but the sexy ludicrously over the top performances from the two
female stars made the film a bit of a hoot. The director is clearly attempting
to put a stylish imprint on the film that mixes elements of Naked Killer,
a smidgen of Chungking Express and the Hollywood film Basic Instinct – and
in a low budget way he is not entirely unsuccessful. For a trashy little
film - this hits some good spots – and it holds a few jolts to the very end.
During the opening credits – Diana Pang Dan does a little dance in stiletto
heels and a boa constrictor – and at one point she turns and smiles at the
camera as if to say lets have some fun with this silly nonsense. In the next
scene Diana and her co-worker Carrie Ng are sitting in a pick-up bar giving
off enough come-on high voltage smiles to light the place up. If you had
a weak heart or weak knees you would not want to get too close to these women
– they just smell of sex and danger.
This doesn’t stop homicide detective Bowie Lam – who wanders over for a bit
of a chit chat and soon the girls are flirting with him – both above and
below the table. Before he has a chance to say “your place or mine” Carrie
Ng has him in the backroom of the bar, but in the middle of proceedings he
gets a phone call telling him a murder has been discovered. Don’t you hate
people who always have to answer the phone; their house could be on fire
and they would still pick up the phone – “it might be important”. As it turns
out the body has been dead for three days – so it easily could have waited
another fifteen minutes!
Bowie Lam is able to link the killing to a few other murders and all the
murders are linked to an insurance company. Not too surprisingly, it turns
out that Carrie and Pang Dan both work there - not that I have met any insurance
salespeople that look like they do – or dress like they do – or are willing
to do just about anything to close a sale - but if I did I would sure have
a lot more fire insurance than I do now.
But who among the three female insurance agents could be doing these murders.
Pang Dan who is attempting to steal Ng’s clients by any means possible –
even performing a little S&M horsy ride - or Ng who has snake fantasies
and keeps plunging a needle into her ear or another woman who ties up her
clients and ministers to them. Damn, I should have gone into the insurance
business!
As I mentioned before this is all very trashy – lots of sexual situations
– but so trashy that it has a certain weird charm – and the ending scenes
will get under your skin – snake or not.
