Category III: The Untold
Story of Hong Kong Exploitation Films
Director: Calum
Waddel
2018
Rating: 7.0
In 1988 Hong Kong began applying a ratings system
to their films in a similar manner as that in the USA - ones allowable for
a general audience, films not meant for children under 12 and films for 18
years or older. This last category was termed Category III and over the years
that label took on a notoriously lascivious meaning and became both an enticement
to some but also a brown bag warning to stay away to others. To use more
of a Western concept, they were exploitation films - and certainly some were
but others were great films that just pushed the boundaries of film. The
characteristics that would get a film labeled as Category III were - nudity,
simulated sex, violence and gore and certain Triad films that showed true
rituals.
Of course most of these elements had existed in Hong Kong films going back
to the Shaw Brothers films of the 1970's when audience numbers began to wane
and they began introducing films with a fair amount of nudity and simulated
sex and horror films awash in gore. But in the mid-80's people began getting
concerned that films were ramping up the violence - the John Woo films - and
gore with, as the film points out, a Mainland film called Men Behind the
Sun. So the Cat III was born and to some degree by doing so they created a
film industry that wanted to be marketed as a Cat III film and gave producers
the freedom to do so.
This documentary gets into all this and covers all the landmark films that
fell into this category. In the sex and nudity world there were the Sex and
Zen series, the Erotic Ghost films and the Chinese Torture Chamber Story films.
As they point out correctly these were well made films with great production
values and never really to be taken seriously with lots of comic moments.
Unlike the ones branded Cat III for violence. Those were very serious and
gut churning at times. Brilliant films in their way but you were in for a
hard rocky road. The best known of these were The Untold Story, Ebola Syndrome,
Red to Kill, Run and Kill, Dr. Lamb and Daughter of Darkness. Then others
that are not to my mind extreme films but for one reason or another were pegged
Cat III - Naked Killer, The Raped by an Angel series, The Story of Rickey,
Eternal Evil of Asia, Robotrix and Viva Erotica - and then ones I don't get
at all why they received a Cat III rating - Happy Together, Nude Fear (because
the word Nude is in the title?), School on Fire and Blue Jean Monster.
The Golden Age, if you can apply that term, of Cat III films was 1991 -
Sex and Zen - to 1996 - Ebola Syndrome. As Hong Kong got closer to 1997 and
the Handover and then certainly after that event producers pulled back from
these exploitation elements and HK films got much more tame particularly
in the nudity aspect though violence was still certainly an important aspect
as with the Johnny To films. And now with the Mainland financing so many
HK films and the prohibition of exhibiting Cat III films in China, they have
dwindled to a very few.
The documentary has some knowledgeable people talking about this - Bey Logan,
Sean Tierney and others - as well as two Hong Kong stars - the great Anthony
Wong who along with Simon Yam made a career for a few years playing
psychos - and Josie Ho. This is a good starting point for people interested
in these sorts of films - and then go watch them. Great stuff from a vanishing
age.
