Jing hun ji (1989)

... aka: 驚魂記

... aka: 蜘蛛に抱かれた女

... aka: 경천대모살

... aka: Betrayal

... aka: Deception

... aka: Psycho

... aka: Web of Deception

... aka: Woman with a Spider

Directed by:

David Chung

Twists and turns galore in this sleek, stylish thriller that gets major mileage from the casting of three of the best Hong Kong / Taiwanese actresses of their day in major roles. Jane Lam (Brigitte Lin) seems to have it all. She's a successful, wealthy, high-powered lawyer who's co-partner of her own firm. She wears the best clothes, drives the best cars and lives in a beautiful mansion. And she's planning on soon emigrating to Canada to continue her prosperous career over there. However, not everything is as it seems. Jane is actually having some financial issues and is being forced to relocate because rivalry is increasing and she's unable to keep up with competition. She also broke the law back in her early days and, with help from her unscrupulous, money-hungry broker Mimi Chow (Elizabeth Lee), stole some money. Somehow someone has found out about it and Jane receives an anonymous blackmail letter, made from magazine clippings, demanding she fork over a million dollars or else she'll be exposed. That in turn will ruin her reputation, destroy her career and and spoil her chances of traveling abroad. The extortion attempt is also having a detrimental effect on her job performance. She procrastinates on assignments, fumbles accounts and her clients are starting to walk. It's time to investigate matters if she's ever going to save herself.

Jane becomes suspicious of all those in her inner circle, but most especially those she works closest with, and none of those are any closer than her workaholic personal assistant, May (Pauline Wong Siu-Fung). Though May has been an excellent assistant, skilled and highly-efficient at her job, Jane has decided to pass her over for promotions and opted to take the less-experienced though more formally educated Fanny (Hau-Ling Chan) along to Canada with her instead. In a last ditch effort to get the blackmail money together so she can make a clean escape, Jane has Mimi sell all of her stocks and bring over a million dollars in cash to her home.

It turns out that Jane's initial suspicions about May were justified. She is the one blackmailing her, though she's not exactly a monster either. She's merely conflicted, hurt and bitter about working her ass off for someone for years as a dedicated assistant only to get shafted and be out of a job at the end of the day. May's good-natured best friend and roommate, Queenie (Joey Wong), has problems of her own and is soon in need of some fast cash herself. Her unhinged identical twin sister Cat (also Wong) has just been released from prison but some of the lowlifes she used to work for know she's out and send a thuggish loan shark (Chi-Fai Chan) out looking for her. Cat owes them 300,00 dollars. It's either pay up, be forced to go back to work smuggling drugs or end up dead.

Seeing how May knows Jane has the cash hidden in her home in a cabinet, she clues Queenie in on how she can get her hands on it. Jane is scheduled to attend a party that night, so May will leave the door to Jane's basement unlocked. That way May can sneak in, get the money and make a clean, quick escape. Unbeknownst to the scheming ladies, but Jane has moved the money to another hiding spot and she's overslept and running late for the party when Queenie arrives. The two ladies get into a struggle and Queenie is killed when she's stabbed with a letter opener and then falls onto an axe blade. Not knowing who the intruder is or whether or not she's dead, Jane flees upstairs and locks herself in her bedroom. Fearing her thievery will be exposed if the cops become involved now makes things a tad complicated.

Having secretly trailed her sister there, Cat manages to hide her sister's body in a armoire in the basement and sneaks out before being noticed. Vowing revenge, she cuts her long hair and impersonates her sister; posing as a masseuse to regain entry into Jane's home. From there on out this takes on the shape of a home invasion thriller, with our lead females constantly trying to hide money, the corpse and their true intentions as the corrupt broker, some home security installers and Jane's police inspector pseudo-boyfriend, Henry Li (Waise Lee), pay sporadic visits.

Boasting an astonishingly labyrinthine plot, where the characters are in a constant state of betraying or being betrayed, pretending to be people they're not, switching allegiances, having last-second changes of hearts and indulging in all kinds of deceitful behavior, it's kind of amazing just how well this thing manages to hold together. There's just something wonderfully invigorating about all of the split second close calls, cat and mouse games, carefully calculated dialogue exchanges and sometimes ridiculous yet usually unexpected plot contrivances that start to accumulate and keep the film in a constant state of momentum. 

So let this be a lesson to future filmmakers: If you're going to make a twist-filled suspense film full of unexpected detours, you may as well go all in on it. Director Chung does precisely that, does it with style and, most impressively, does it primarily within the confines of a single home. Credit also goes to Fa Lui for the smart script, though he strangely never wrote another film after this one. And, of course, this wouldn't work nearly as well with lesser talents in the lead roles and the interplay between the three fabulous stars is sharp and entertaining, with each given a chance to shine both together and individually. The icing on the cake is the super-stylized visual presentation, with lots of neo-noir touches, great use of backlighting and handsome, super-saturated blue hues used during the night scenes.

This was the sixth and final film as director for Chung, though he'd continue on until the mid-90s as a director of photography. Despite seven total nominations (and two wins) for his cinematography from the Hong King Film Awards, and four nominations (two wins) from the Golden Horse Film Festival, in just a decade's time, he abruptly retired from film altogether in 1995. Hark Tsui, the same year he worked on John Woo's The Killer and just a few years before he made Once Upon a Time in China, was the producer.

There was a limited U. S. theatrical release from Fox Lorber in 1989 followed by an English-subtitled VHS release from Rainbow Audio & Video. Later DVD releases from companies like Deltamac / Fortune Star, YesAsia and others also have English subs. Considering the easy availability of the film and the fact it has so few votes on movie websites, Deception appears to have mostly been forgotten over the years.

★★★1/2

Biao ge dao (1987)

... aka: 表哥到

... aka: Biu go dou

... aka: Cousin Arrives

... aka: My Cousin the Ghost

Directed by:

Ma Wu

Te-Ta Wu aka Cousin Big (Richard Ng) runs a restaurant in the Chinatown district of London and has been cutting costs by serving unsuspecting customers pigeon under the guise of it being "roast spring chicken." Well, I guess at least it's not cat. Cousin Big has imported in his lazy, hot-tempered, cleaver-wielding cousin Mako (director Ma) to be head chef but the two are constantly butting heads. During an argument, a couple of immigration officers overhear Wu revealing that Mako is in the country illegally. They apprehend him and he's expelled by the government and forced to fly back to Hong Kong. The luckless Mako then goes to work as a cook for a large banquet hall, where he discovers the woman he thought was his girlfriend has dumped him to marry another guy (Tien Ching). Mako's four younger male cousins; Chou Hsiao Yung (Kenny Bee), Q (Hoi Mang), Pao (Tai-Bo) and, uh, "Fat Maid" (Chi-Kit Li), also work there as waiters and all of them live together in an inherited home, along with an older, mysterious female boarder named Rose Wang (Wan-Si Wong), who claims to work as a "beautician in a funeral parlor" and has paid up rent for six months yet is hardly ever there.

The cousins, who all get fired from their jobs after a mix-up involving rat poison, receive a letter in the mail from Cousin Big. He's finishing up business in the UK and is going to be moving back to Hong Kong. He hopes to move in with them and will be bringing all of the money he's saved up to invest in the family. Before he arrives, the young cousins attempt to evict Rose, but she's not going away so easily. After all, she's actually a ghost and has unfinished business to attend to. Back in her human existence, she was a spinster bridesmaid on her way to a wedding when she, bride-to-be cousin Gi (So Yip) and the groom were all killed in a car crash.

Seeing how Rose was the bridesmaid but never the bride, she's never been able to experience love, something she would like to do before shuffling off to the afterlife. When she and Cousin Big meet it's love at first sight, but can a ghost and a moral actually be together? Well, that issue is swiftly taken care of via a convenient plot twist that reveals that Cousin Big too is dead (he drowned in the Thames River back in England) and is himself a green-blooded ghost. The difference is that he doesn't yet realize it and is in some kind of transitional limbo state between the living and the dead. When the other cousins find out what Cousin Big truly is, they're advised to not let him find out or else he'll never be able to be reincarnated into another body.

The jealous ghost of Gi turns up and she too is lookin' for some lovin', though if she doesn't find it soon she'll have to spend the rest of eternity alone. Not wanting a human mate, she sets her sights on Q, bewitches him and tries to make him commit suicide in a variety of ways, including hanging himself from a ceiling fan, bashing his head against the wall repeatedly and electrocuting himself. Can his friends save him? Will Rose and Cousin Big be able to live together in wed-dead bliss?

While not badly budgeted or produced, this cliché-ridden, poorly-structured and forgettable HK ghost comedy still never rises above the average. As per usual, it tries to have a grounding point of sorts in the more mature older characters (Ma Wu running around with a cleaver acting crazed notwithstanding) while the younger ones behave like annoying buffoons and Three Stooges rejects slapping each other upside the head the rest of the time. This one isn't very funny, is very light on horror content and has no notable make-up effects or stunt work (just lots of ghosts gliding around and floating), but does feature some mediocre visual sfx like ghosts pulling their heads off. The best bit is a clever effect when a bicyclist in a movie starts to ride right off the TV screen.

Aside from an amusing choreographed window cleaning routine, most of the other gags are puerile and include someone eating a piece of iron-charred human flesh, putting stinky underwear in someone's face, pulling a thermometer out of a babies ass and sticking it in a mouth, one of the cousins offering his ass up to his horny elder to keep him from being seduced by a female ghost, a guy trying to sexually assault an unconscious female and a fight over an inflatable sex doll. There's also a long comic scene where Gi "dances" with Q and throws him around a room while the Ghostbusters theme song plays. The ghost and afterlife rules this keeps throwing out there are hard to keep tabs on and seem as if they just made them all up as they went along.

Clips from the obviously far superior horror-comedy MR. VAMPIRE are seen on a TV screen where there's also an uncredited cameo from Pauline Siu-Fung Wong. Other small roles are played by James Tien (asshole restaurant manager), Teddy Kip (a chef), Billy Ching (waiter) and veteran character actors Gwa-Pau Sai (who appeared in well over 800 films made between 1946 and 1995!) and Mang-Ha Ching as Cousin Big's potential in-laws. It was produced by Sammo Hung.

Rather surprisingly, this Bo Ho Films Co. / Golden Harvest release was a box office hit in Hong Kong and managed to rake in more money than most other films of this type. There was a VHS release through Ocean Shores and a 1999 DVD release through Mega Star, which comes with English subtitles. Definitely not priority viewing.

★★