Beauty’s Evil Roses (a.k.a.
Beauty Evil Rose)
Director: Lam Wah-Chuen
1992
Running Time: 79 minutes
This film has long had a reputation as one of
the more obscure but intriguing Cat III movies made in the days when HK still
knew how to make fun sleazy entertainment! I am not actually sure why I put
this off for so long as I enjoy a good sleaze fest as much as the next guy
but I just never got around to it. But I finally dusted it off, turned down
the volume (as I was staying at my parents and was correct in assuming there
would be lots of moaning!) and watched it the other day. For much of its
short running time the film is nearly incomprehensible with it jumping around
quickly from character to character and plot to plot but interspersed within
are more than enough crazy sexual shenanigans and general weirdness to satisfy
most connoisseurs of bad tasteless Cat. III films.
It begins as all good films do with a woman walking into a cop’s office and
doing a strip tease to entice him and then turning him into a compliant zombie
slave that will do the bidding of her mistress, the evil Dai Jeh (Wong Wing-fong).
Dai Jeh ruthlessly runs a female cult of leather clad motorcycle riding sweeties
who use sex as a weapon of destruction. What their aim is isn’t exactly clear
but they certainly have it in for the male species and find happy fulfillment
in one another in lengthy lesbian entanglements with painful sax muzak playing
in the background. In her splashy red themed lair decorated tastefully with
skulls, chains, candles, bondage ropes and a throne, Dai Jeh dishes out both
her anger and her favor on her underlings. Whipping here is both for punishment
and pleasure. Behind her power is black magic (imported of course from Thailand)
in which she can project an alien looking creature down the throats of others
to control them.
Various good guys are out to stop her - A Kang (Chung Jan-wang) who is looking
for his sister who has joined the cult, his girlfriend Mannie who wants a
career in nude modeling (we wish her luck) and policeman Cheng (a young Alex
Fong). They hire a Taoist priest to combat her black magic but clearly he
isn’t from the same school as Lam Ching-ying's priest as he needs Mannie’s
underwear to weave his spell and seems to enjoy curing topless female victims.
In the end – this being a Hong Kong film – it all meanders into a chaotic
kung fu shootout that seemed just right. Or as one of the cult cuties said
to A Kang “Let me see how great your penis is”.
As a note of interest according to the HKMDB credits, the director Lam Wah-chuen
has had a multifaceted career. His directing credits are few – this, Devil
Girl 18 (how have I missed that one?) and a couple others but also 2002’s
Runaway Pistol which I thought was very dark and very good. But as a cinematographer
he has some amazing credits – Made In Hong Kong, The Longest Summer, Bullets
Over Summer, Diamond Hill, Juliet in Love, Little Cheung, Women’s Private
Parts among them – he is clearly a favorite of director Fruit Chan and other
indie directors. He also composed the music for many of those films. Interesting
guy.
My rating for the film: 5.5