Fallen Angels (Kar-Wai Wong, 1995)

The freaks come out at night / The freaks come out at night / The freaks come out at night / (the freaks come out!) I know, everyone and their Uncle Gary's third left nut like to start off their reviews of Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels by quoting Whodini's "Freaks Come Out At Night," from their 1984 album, Escape. But I'll be damned, it sure is apt as a motherfucker. You see, the whole movie takes place at night, and I couldn't have been more pleased. Oh, sure, daytime probably still exists in this film's neon-adorned universe. But Wong Kar-Wai has no interest in what goes on during the day. And why should he? His characters are, no doubt, all asleep during the day. And like I said, I couldn't be more pleased. Think about it. Who wants to watch Michelle Reis do stuff during the day? I know I sure don't. In fact, just the mere thought of Michelle Reis doing anything during the day makes my skin crawl. (Are you sure that isn't your seborrheic dermatitis acting up again?) No, it's definitely the prospect of watching Michelle Reis, oh, I don't know, mail a letter at ten in the morning. Ugh. (So, what you're saying is, Michelle Reis looks good while doing stuff at night?) Duh. Haven't you been paying attention? Yes, Michelle... Hell, the whole cast look good while doing stuff at night. And since legendary Hong Kong cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, is filming them, they look extra good.

However, none of the cast can hold a candle... (Yeah, yeah, Michelle Reis looks amazing. We get it.) You don't seem to understand. I want her body, I want her hair, I want her wardrobe... I even want her swaggering insolence. (Wow, "swaggering insolence," eh? I think just popped a lady-boner.) Tell me about it. I'm curious. Is your lady-boner currently pressing oh-so tightly against your panties? Wait, don't answer that. I'm just going to go ahead and assume that it is and move on.

Of course, I don't know if I want her overgrown bangs and disgusting smoking habit. But then again, taking away Michelle Reis's overgrown bangs and nicotine addiction would be a little like asking Eugene Levy to trim his eyebrows or telling Beyoncé to stop being so fierce.

While I'm not a big fan of smoking, there's no denying that cigarettes make movies more... well, cinematic. Okay, imagine this. What if someone, like, oh, how 'bout those pricks George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg, decided to go back and digitally remove every cigarette from every movie in existence? Exactly. It would render all those movies unwatchable. Well, if you took away Michelle Reis's cigarettes, you would not only ruin the movie, you would radically change the temperament of her character.

As for her overgrown bangs... Actually, I shouldn't talk, as my bangs are technically overgrown as well. You know what? Forget I said anything disparaging about Michelle Reis's bangs. What's that? You already have? That's terrific.

Since I recently decided to radically change my life for, hopefully, the better, I've noticed the need to do stuff outside in full view of other people has increased. What I mean is, I can't expect things to change if I continue to avoid other people. While I've made some progress on-line and in the so-called "real world," being social is extremely difficult for me. Well, as I watched the lonely characters that populate this film's nocturnal universe, I couldn't help but relate to their struggles to connect with... other people.

The film essentially follows three characters. An assassin (Leon Lai), his partner/agent (Michelle Reis) and He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a mute doofus who pretends he works at businesses that are closed.

It would seem that Michelle Reis sets up Leon Lai's "jobs" for him, so, that when he pulls out his guns and goes all Chow Yun-Fat on his targets, things go smoothly. Though, I don't think cleaning his apartment and masturbating in his bed while wearing fishnet and fully-fashioned stockings are really necessary. Or maybe they are. What do I know?

Either way, the shots of them setting up jobs, using public transit, navigating the gleaming rain-soaked streets with a noirish elan, hanging out in bars and doing other gangster shit are gorgeous beyond belief.

The film gets a dose of romantic comedy-style whimsy when Karen Mok, sporting reddish-blonde hair, shows up and forces Leon Lai to be his girlfriend. Okay, it doesn't exactly go down like that. But there's no denying it, Karen Mok does charm the pants off Leon Lai. And it's no wonder, she's a one-woman adorable symposium. Which is what I need to start doing. (You mean be more adorable? That's impossible... you're adorable as fuck.) Yes, I mean, no, I need to start putting myself out there more. In other words, I need to start acting more like Karen Mok in Fallen Angels, and less like... (The little kid from Room?) Sure.

Things go from being romantic to downright goofy when Takeshi Kaneshiro's subplot kicks in. Playing an aimless individual, who, like I said, pretends to work at closed businesses (he forces a man with a ponytail to eat ice cream at an ice cream stand... he doesn't work at), Takeshi, like the other characters, struggles with loneliness, and tries to alleviate it by being obnoxious. I know, being obnoxious sounds like an awful plan. But is it? See all those happy people doing stuff outside. Do you really think they got where they are by not being obnoxious? Of course they didn't.

Now, I'm not saying you should take it to the level that Takeshi does. Nevertheless, a little obnoxiousness doesn't hurt. After all, Takeshi does manage to sort of woo Charlie Yeung, an attractive yet easily agitated woman.

Stylish and brimming with vitality, Fallen Angels is... (Wait, are you done?) Yeah. I'm wrapping this sucker up. (What about Michelle Reis's outfits?) Like I said, I want to wear them all. But if I could only choose one, it would definitely be the shiny black dress with the massive slit she wears when we see her cleaning Leon Lai's apartment for the very first time. I also loved her black fishnets and black rubber gloves.  Anyway, this flick is pretty fucking great.

The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To, 1993)

If you stumbled upon this review of The Heroic Trio hoping to read a long-winded tribute to either Michelle Yeoh and Anita Mui, I'm afraid you have come to the wrong place. No, this here, my friend, is Maggie Cheung country. Oh, Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio, let me count the ways. Of course, I don't mean to imply that Michelle and Anita are unworthy of praise. But let's get real, people. This is Maggie Cheung we're talking about. When she's not wearing goggles, she's wearing a headband. When she's not throwing sticks of dynamite from a moving motorcycle, she's gunning down henchmen with a M-60 machine gun. When she's not showing the tops of her stockings, she's... Wait a minute, Maggie Cheung is always showing the tops of her stockings. Now, when I first caught a glimpse of Maggie Chung's stockings in Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio, I thought to myself: Great. If I ever decide to do a review of this film, at least I'll have something to talk about. Then it dawned on me. Maybe I shouldn't write a review for this film. I mean, people might start to get the impression that I'm some kind of pervert, one who is obsessed with seeing the tops of actresses' stockings in pornographic and non-pornographic movies.

Then it dawned me... again. I will not let what others think undermine my unique brand of idiocy. Embrace your fetishes with the full force of your salubrious nimbus and shun the self-doubt feeding monsters that only exist to cause people to lose confidence in themselves.

It would seem, however, that this particular movie was giving me the impression that it was determined that I review it. Sure, the movie as a whole is basically nonsensical trash/fluff (babies fall on spikes, flying guillotines are used, kittens are rescued). That being said, the producers must have known that by having the tops of Maggie Cheung's stockings be visible from start to finish that I would have no choice but to review it.

Every once and awhile, I'll think to myself: Why can't there be more movies that feature characters who wear stockings in a manner that allows the viewer to clearly see the tops (and a hint of garter strap) for an extended period of time? Well, I'm happy to report that The Heroic Trio is the first film to do exactly that.

Again, though, and I'm probably going to have to bring this up about six or seven more times, while I appreciated the copious amount of Maggie Cheung-centric black stocking-adjacent thigh that I witnessed in this movie, I thought it could have been sleazier.

Of course, I'm not just saying this because I wanted to see more of  her black stocking-adjacent thighs, I genuinely thought that the film could have featured more Maggie Cheung. Seriously, every time she's onscreen, the film radiates life, vitality, passion and junk.

Her introduction scene, for example, is downright bad-ass. You would think she was  Sylvester Stallone in Cobra or David Bradley in Cyborg Cop 2 judging by the way she takes over a sticky hostage situation. Armed with a shotgun, a fist full of dynamite and enough moxie to fuel a forest fire, Maggie rides up on her motorcycle, shoots a couple of punks, blows some crap up and rescues the hostages. Done, and done.

Noticing how efficiently she handled the hostage-takers, the Chief of Police (Paul Chun), asks Thief Catcher (her character's name is THIEF CATCHER!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha! That is so.... Ahhh, that's so weirdly awesome), if she can track down his infant son, who was snatched from the hospital by Michelle Yeoh's Invisible Woman.

As the film gets underway, we quickly learn that at least eighteen babies have been snatched this way. The reason why is quite simple, the Evil Master (Shi-Kwan Yen) wants to find the next emperor of China. Anyway, since the police are having no such luck stopping this baby snatching epidemic, they look to Wonder Woman (Anita Mui) for help.

Her introduction scene, while not as bad-ass as Thief Catcher's, does, once and for all, prove that pre-handover Hong Kong cinema is vastly superior to all other types of cinema. I know I've said this before, but the amount cool ass shit they (HK filmmakers) manage to throw at the screen is unbelievable. Running across a row of power-lines (in slow-motion), Wonder Woman, whose secret identity is married to Inspector Lau (Damian Lau), ultimately fails to prevent the Invisible Woman from stealing the Chief of Police's baby.

While taking the baby to the Evil Master's underground lair, the Invisible Woman has a brief dust up with... Yes! It's Anthony Wong!!! Playing Lau, a mute kung-fu master who guards the entrance to the Evil Master's lair, Anthony Wong loses a finger during his fight with the Invisible Woman (who wasn't invisible, she took off her invisibility cloak). And, in true Anthony Wong fashion, he picks up his severed finger, smells it, then eats it. Yum.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, the cops are dealing with a sticky hostage situation. Wait, where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah, this is the scene where we're introduced to Maggie Cheung's Thief Catcher. Wearing goggles, knee-pads, a leather jacket, fishnet hose and a playful smirk, Thief Catcher crashes the party, Cybergoth-style, and blows away the hostage-takers with a shotgun and few sticks of dynamite. Excuse me for a second, I need to take a breather. I mean, just the mere thought of this scene gives me the vapors. It's got everything: Goggles, leather, fishnets, knee-pads, a motorcycle, and over the top cartoon violence.

Hold up. Why is Thief Catcher stealing a baby?!? I thought that was The Invisible Girl's schtick? From what I gleamed from the dialogue, apparently the Evil Master is not only an evil master, he's a master manipulator. In other words, he's managed to convince Thief Catcher to do his bidding... I think. The plot can be confusing at times.

It's true, you can't really see the tops of Maggie's stockings during her much ballyhooed introduction. But that all changes during the baby snatching/warehouse fight sequence, one that pits Wonder Woman against Thief Catcher and The Invisible Woman. It's stocking top city from this moment on, baby.

Eventually teaming up to fight the Evil Master, Thief Catcher, Wonder Woman and The Invisible Woman are, simply put, an inspiration to little girls and perverted grown men the world over.

Seeing three strong female superhero-type characters battle one another got me a thinking about a recent article I read about the lack of female-centric comic book movies being made in Hollywood. Sure, they mention Catwoman and Elektra (both disasters, critically and financially) as one of the main reasons, but look at this movie, it was made way back in 1993, and it's a thousand times more awesome than any superhero movie Hollywood has ever produced. (Even Guardians of the Galaxy?) Ugh, I saw that and I didn't remember a single thing from it afterward.

You could also blame Sucker Punch for this estrogen deficiency. Oh, and thanks to it, we'll probably never a see another film where stocking tops and goggles are so front and center. Fucking Sucker Punch, is there anything you haven't ruined?

Oh, well. As long as I keep coming across gems like, The Heroic Trio, my thirst for films that feature strong female characters who wear stockings, knee-pads and goggles will never go unquenched. Did I mention that the film's theme song by Anita Mui is catchy as fuck? No? Well, it totally is. In fact, it rocks so hard, that I wouldn't hesitate to add it to my hypothetical DJ playlist.

Ebola Syndrome (Herman Yau, 1996)

Bloodied and battered, a haggard-looking, pee-stained Anthony Wong stands over his victims in triumph. Shortly after removing the tongue of his lover with a pair of scissors, Anthony Wong turns his attention to his lover's young daughter (who's hiding in a nearby closet). Interrupted just as he was about to set her on fire, Anthony Wong decides to take off, leaving the little girl covered in gasoline. If you're wondering who this Ebola stricken psychopath is going to kill next, do yourself a favour and stop... wondering about that. Are you sitting down? He doesn't have the Ebola virus. Well, not yet at least. But that's just the thing, if this is how Anthony Wong behaves when he doesn't have the Ebola virus, imagine what he's going to do when he does. Trust me, it's not going to be pretty. Oh, and I know for a fact that he's going to contract the Ebola virus. You wanna know why? It's simple, really, he's the star of Herman Yau's wonderfully vile Ebola Syndrome, yet another Category III sex and gore extravaganza that manages to make all other attempts at "cinema" seem totally lame by comparison.

If Anthony Wong didn't contract the Ebola virus in this movie, I would have (Yeah, yeah, you would have thrown a major hissy-fit.) You're goddamn right I would have thrown a major hissy-fit.

That being said, Ebola or no Ebola, Anthony Wong's Kai is someone you don't want to have on your bad side. On the surface, he might seem like a harmless goofball with a soft spot for shapely whores. But the second you hand him, oh, let's say, a pair of scissors, he's going to use them in a manner they weren't intended.

Seriously, though, don't ever hand Anthony Wong a pair of scissors. Now, I would love to tell Shing Fui-On (The Blue Jean Monster) this, but I'm afraid I can't, as Anthony Wong just killed him using the legs of a mahjong table. As the legs of the mahjong table began to crush his larynx, he probably thought to himself: Why, oh, why did I hand Anthony Wong those motherflippin' scissors?

You see, Anthony Wong is having an affair with Shing Fui-On's wife (Tsang Yin). And when Shing Fui-On (who is Anthony Wong's boss) and a friend catch them in the act, Shing threatens to cut off his penis. A blubbering Wong pleads with Fui-On on the behalf of his still attached penis. When that fails, Anthony asks if he can cut off his penis. This request clearly confused Fui-On, because he proceeds to hand over the scissors. I don't think I need to tell you what happens next.

Leaving Shing Fui-On's young daughter crying and covered in gasoline in her parent's Hong Kong apartment (in the mid-1980s), we jump forward ten years to find Kai working at a Chinese restaurant in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hired by the owners, Kei (Lo Meng) and his wife (Cheung Lau), as a waiter (a low paid one at that), they obviously never saw Herman Yau and Anthony Wong's previous collaboration, The Untold Story. If they had, there's no way they would have hired him. But then again, it's implied that Kei and his wife know about Kai's murderous past in Hong Kong. Meaning, they shouldn't act surprised if they suddenly find their genitals on the menu.

I am surprised, however, that the Association of Chinese Restaurants didn't try to have The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome banned, as they both manage to tarnish the Chinese dining experience.

Anyway, remember that little girl that Kai left covered in gasoline back in the '80s? Well, she's a flight attendant now. And guess where her next flight is headed? That's right, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The second the flight attendant enters the restaurant Kai works, she starts to feel sick. She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about this place causes her relive the day a crazed man killed her father with a mahjong table and cut off her mother's tongue with a pair of scissors. Though, it's obvious that she doesn't remember what Kai looked like, as she just asked him to direct her to the restaurant's washroom.

Even though she goes back to her hotel room, the flight attendant knows something sinister is afoot (she has nightmares about the place). Meanwhile, Kai is horny. After his attempt to pick up a prostitute ends in failure (Kai: "Fifty for a fondling?" Prostitute: "I only fuck white dudes... no yellow trash."), Kai masturbates into a hunk of pork (he uses a knife to create a makeshift vagina) while listening Kei have sex with his wife.

As expected, Kai puts the jizz-laden pork back in the fridge and serves it to customers the very next day. Oh, Kai, you're the most unpleasant character in film history.

Since the the local butcher shop refuses to give Kei a fair deal on pork, he and Kai drive into the bush to buy a pig from a nearby tribe of cannibals. Despite the fact the tribe's camp is littered with lesion-covered corpses, Kei and Kai buy a pig. On the way back, they experience some car trouble. While Kei works on the engine, Kai wanders off.

Noticing a woman collapse by a river, Kai approaches her. You won't believe what happens next. Oh, you do know what happens next. Well, aren't we demented today. Yep, Kai licks his hand and penetrates the unconscious woman with his penis.

Holy crap, how many orgasm faces is Anthony Wong going to make in this movie? I mean, he's already made three. Whatever, the unconscious woman starts to convulse and spits a milky substance in Kai's face.

To the surprise of no-one, Kai develops a fever. While out of commission, Kei and his wife argue about what to do with him. As they're doing this, Kai wakes up and kills them both; a third employee is killed after he starts snooping around.

If Kai didn't have Ebola, do you think he would have murdered them? It's hard to say. What's not hard to say is, Kai is a scumbag.

Chopping up Kei, his wife and the nameless employee, Kai turns them into "African pork buns" and serves them at the restaurant the very next day. Yum. And in doing so, gives everyone Ebola. Pretty soon people are collapsing and twitching all over Johannesburg.

Finding Kei's hidden stash of cash, Kai decides to go back to Hong Kong to cause more havoc. An Ebola carrier (he has the disease, but doesn't display the symptoms), Kai has no qualms whatsoever about spreading the virus. Did I mention he's a scumbag?

While living it up in the penthouse suite of a fancy hotel, Kai gets a hankering for some whores.

When room service fails to deliver him the whores he desires, Kai goes elsewhere for his whore-related needs.

Oh. My. God. Check out the whore in the tight red dress. Her shape is sublime. I'm guessing the "actress" who plays the thick whore in the tight red dress is Lori Shannon, as she's the only cast member who looks like a "Lori Shannon," if you get my drift.

When the prostitutes develop Ebola symptoms, the local authorities begin to search the city for the person responsible for knocking one of Hong Kong's shapeliest whores out of commission. But they shouldn't bother looking for Kai at that fancy hotel, as he has since moved in with old flame.

I don't know what's more disgusting, the South African autopsy scene or the sequence where Kai spreads the virus willy-nilly (the scene at the ice cream store is beyond gross). I'm gonna go with the latter. I know, it doesn't sound all that nasty on paper, but I nearly lost it when the band-aid on the finger of the ice cream store waitress comes loose while touching a spoon that had been in Kai's mouth.

One of the last Cat III movies to be made before the handover (all Hong Kong films made after 1997, if they want to play on Mainland, need to be approved by Chinese censors), Ebola Syndrome is distasteful, loathsome, hateful, nauseating, and sickening. In other words, it's one of the best Cat III movies ever made.