Blood Ritual
Director: Lee Yuen-ching
Year: 1989
Rating: 7.0
Put your seatbelts on. This film proclaims its
Cat III intentions from minute one as a woman, only in her red shoes and
white socks, runs frantically through an abandoned building with a posse
of men in white slowly tracking her down. But there is no clicking her shoes
to save her. They catch her and lay her on a table fully exposed and cut
out her heart. Holy shit. I have barely sat down. Am reaching for a snack
and this guy is holding her bloody heart up in victory. Ah, for the days
when Hong Kong could make films as wild as this one. Distributed by the respectable
D&B studio. Those days will never be back. Thankfully, there is still
a record of them on digital. This is brutal with bit off fingers, severed
arms, mashed people, dragged by motorcycles, incredible stunts that hurt
to watch and the occasional nudity - a weird dinner party with the women
topless and the close to porn at the end. There is even a Blue Velvet moment.
But in between are a few laughs and lots
of action provided by Norman Tsui and Dion Lam choreographed by Tsui Siu-ming.
Hard hitting as a cement truck. Back at the police station, the cops are
being lectured about the rise of evil religions that entice new recruits
with easy sex. And sacrifice. What is a Friday night without a human sacrifice
and an orgy. One of the cops is a real advocate of the freedom of religion
and takes out his gun and shoots the professor and gets drilled to the wall
with return fire. No more Friday nights for him.
Meanwhile, Tsui has just been released from
jail and first hits a brothel where the prostitute calls him cheap before
going to his locker and receiving a note from his old friend, Dion, telling
him, here is some money, a suit and some old condoms. Oops. Too late for
the condoms. Dion is a private detective whose client Mr. Fung (Chan Chung-kin)
has asked him to investigate his daughter Janet (Josephine Lam) who is spending
too much money. He thinks she is involved with the triads. Worse.
We know she is a baddie after she fires
a guy in the corporation for nothing and then as she walks up the stairs
in her home, she disrobes dropping her clothes as she ascends with two poor
maids having to pick them up. A bubble bath awaits her. But she really is
evil and sends her Cult after Tsui and Dion time after time with some great
intense action scenes. Then there is the comedy of course! Tsui has rented
a room from Ng Man-tat and his wife Siu Yam-yam better known as Yum Yum Shaw
in her much younger days in soft porn Shaw films. Their daughter is the feisty
Caca (Gina Lam) who is always at odds with Norman and later gets involved
in all of this when she swallows a finger and has to throw it up. I
don't want to oversell this film, but it is no-holds bar from beginning to
end. Gina quit the business soon after this film. Probably still had the
taste of finger in her mouth. The debut and last film of director Lee
Yuen-ching.
