Hong Kong adheres to the cinema tradition of slasher- and ghost movies, making sure we recognize the youths are silly, horny, stupid, mean and therefore expendable. It's not done with much finesse (the Evil Dead roaming force-cam is poorly ripped off for instance) and the switch into the terror- and cheap gore ride isn't particularly riveting but director Lai Kai-Keung (Love, Guns & Glass) does startle a few times with a few fairly unsettling rape scenes by the ghost in the house and during the final 30 minute stretch of an already short movie, the experience isn't boring at least. Cast is useless though and so is most of the movie.

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Merely weeks before the wonderful The Seventh Curse premiered, Nam Nai-Choi unleashed more b-movie excess in the form of The Ghost Snatchers. Playing out like a zanier version of Dennis Yu's The Imp, it's clear while watching that Nam reserved most of the creative energy for his latter 1986 effort. The Ghost Snatchers does provide a steady stream of horror hijinxs though, with the low effects budget obviously not being a hindrance for the filmmakers to pour their all onto the screen. Having watched Nam's work throughout the years, you do sense that he's striving for horrific atmosphere. At the same time he's realizing the limited effects potential and provides a needed sense of fun about it. Few could do it as well...he should perhaps even be considered a master of the genre (should be noted that I thoroughly love this stuff also so perhaps I'm a bit biased). Stanley Fung (in lucky stars mode), Wong Jing, Joey Wong, Joyze Godenzi and Michael Chan stars. Charlie Cho and Wong Yat-Fei can also be spotted.

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KENNETH'S REVIEW: From a director that apparently made it his mission twice to combine Asian horror with hardcore porn (other flick of his is called Mind Fuck), Ghoul Sex Squad takes the hopping vampires into that realm indeed. Seriously low-budget and lacking much aspects to make it legendary, it's a short oddity at least. A priest takes his vampires across the landscape, they start running amok and into women but the priest himself is not shy about matters either. He even lets loose on one of the female vamps, essentially making this flick portraying necrophilia then. When in town to search for wine, priest gets it on more and the very minor panic portrayed (as X-rated scenes are in its place) by the presence of the vampires at least features two hilarious scenes. One sees a vampire (or rather the actor) desperately trying to hold on to his false teeth while another shows more vampire-man sex ending with a stream of blood shooting out of a vagina (creative way of sucking blood?). The surprisingly agile, stiff corpses proves to be an amusement too.

The hectic and everyday office life seriously changes when three friends (Carol Cheng, Joey Wong & Sandy Lam) finds a bag of money just sitting in the office. They decide to do the immoral thing and keep it, leading to paranoia, greed and all that comes with a story like this.

However it's light stuff from a feature debuting director Andy Chin (who would go on to helm Victory and Call Girl 92 among other things), shooting in synch sound and utilizing his female talent well. However there's more challenging stuff going on in Gift From Heaven. Many mentions of the hardships that are going to come in the 1997 handover occur, which is also the reasoning of the characters but on the whole, their choices are highly unsympathetic and they all kind of loses a lot by the end, despite the fact that this is still light fare. Chin handles himself well and the end result may not be spellbinding but Gift From Heaven proves to be a tiny bit more subtly deep than you might think. Derek Yee and Mark Cheng co-star while Wu Fung, Helena Law, Lau Siu Ming, Bowie Lam and Tats Lau (who also provides the fun score) also appears.

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It's obviously a gigolO revelation no matter what the on-screen title says and one of the few Category III smut-fests with an angle. Charlie Cho and Lily Lee appears in synch sound before us as the MC's of the piece, speaking of the great city of Hong Kong but the two soon switches focus to the world of gigolos that can be found all over the great place. In staged documentary fashion, the filmmakers go undercover to track the evening of one, interview anonymous men from the field while revealing the up's (attractive women) and down's (ugly women) of this possibly prosperous line of work. Director Ally Wong (To Where He Belongs) provides no distinctive fun with this documentary approach and when the staged short stories begin to pile up, The Gigoli Revelation merely becomes what it is, a cheap, softcore porn-time within Hong Kong cinema. Possibly it didn't want to sleep with all the other efforts of its kind though.

It's safe to venture into the sequel to Gigolo And Whore (as close un-PC of a title you can get) first as it has no story-connection. Andy Chin steps in as director, re-teaming with Veronica Yip for a second go at exploring drama territory after a marvelous collaboration on Call Girl 92. Yip however hasn't left her racy image thoroughly behind but Chin admittedly is more clever in the beginning with his excuses to feature nudity. Tongue in cheek half the time as he explores training methods and the world of gigolos with the best one at center, Simon Yam's character. But it's when trying to convert lesbian businesswoman Sherin (Rosamund Kwan) so that her rival Johnson (Alex Fong) can reacquire his company shares, that money desire gets switched for actual love. It's a tad corny and silly but Chin avoids certain traps skillfully. First the whole conversion plot isn't as offending as it sounds and while Yam is watchable in playful comedy mode, he then transfers nicely into the serious aura of the film. This is not Andy Chin at his serious best but despite predictability, performances take up the drama to sufficient levels. Also with Jackie Lui and Ng Suet-Man.

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The decline and troubles of late 90s Hong Kong cinema (among other things due to piracy) gets a broad but relevant comedic send up via the producing skills of Wong Jing and for the most part it's an entertaining mix of fun and relevance. Although the character names and obvious parodies on the likes of Star Wars is just that, obvious. Concerning a group of struggling characters out of the movie industry and how they are desperately seeking investors for a new product, the adventure concerns director George Lockers (Eric Tsang), producer Stephen Spellberg (Nat Chan, sporting the Tsui Hark look), writer Ko (Emotion Cheung) and actors Steven Chow (Gallen Lo) and Julia Robots (Suki Kwan), despite the names though and look of Nat Chan, the movie isn't really out to drag the name of concerned people through the mud (not in any obvious way anyway). No the economic struggles and the lows you sink to vs. a world of only a select few righteous characters remains largely at the forefront. Especially so with Emotion Cheung's Ko whose friend has resorted to selling pirated vcd's to survive and the relevance the movie has is that very economic struggle. Harm the super-low industry by stealing to survive. The dig at pretentious arthouse that gets the critics and awards-juries boners is a well deserved one too and even though director Chung Shu-Kai only has a mildly tolerable farce for his second half that involves Simon Loui training the group to be gigolos to secure financing, Gigolo Of Chinese Hollywood shows a keen eye for the current events close to it.

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Feared criminal Kim Teng-Jiao needs to be stopped and newly appointed policewoman Sima Mu-Rong (Polly Kuan) quickly gets cuffs slapped on him. The road to justice is long though as the official seal needed for the process is stolen and the trip to the crucial Leopard Bay is rife with ambushes and fights. Much of which is setup by the father of Kim. Help arrives in the form of Geng (Tien Peng) who merely wants revenge on Kim and doesn't care about what the law can do...

A fast paced and simple fight-fest, expect no surprises and that includes Union Film Productions coming through with a fine looking, efficient genre vehicle again. While there's not oodles of refined action (the production is one of those Taiwan ones that was a few years behind the great ones), the mix of high flying Wuxia style and quite grounded bouts in addition to the sheer number of them makes for easily digestible viewing. A viewing also anchored by trademark Polly Kuan fury. No surprise there either.

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KENNETH'S REVIEW: You've seen this story filmed before AND for exploitation reasons only before as well! So it's teenage girls drifting away from sunny life to shady life thanks to their own stupidity. No, there's no grand statements about the world around steering them into the wrong crowd and eventually prostitution. Just filmmakers behind the wheel wanting to squeeze as much out of the adult material as they can via bottom of the barrel material at hand (including the "talent"). At a few times quite effectively bleak actually thanks to the low budget but that's just a minor gasp of air the movie takes before drowning in its own crap again.

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To the catchy sounds of Canto-pop with the English verse "I, I, I was born in Beijing", we're lead into a John Chong scripted, cheap Category III drama. John is now at Media Asia, usually getting executive producer credits on movies not at all like The Girls From China. The on-screen treatment by director Barry Lee concerns the rise of a naive Mainlander (Isabelle Chow - Sex And Zen), financially and career-wise. She learns to use the city, leaving a trail of men behind. Many of them perverts and one a bit on the insane side...

Incredibly obvious with his intent of featuring jokes for Chow's character usually reserved for Amy Yip, Barry Lee goes goofy and unpleasant on us as he paints the picture of Hong Kong's perverse men getting in the way of a determined Mainlander. Certainly on the lower end of the moviemaking scale, I give director Lee credit for showing an intent to tell his story more often than not straight but the execution of it is a fair bit from ok despite. It's just flat material, made a little bit more colourful by some elaborate sex scenes. Lead Chow also shows some signs of acting chops but looking at her filmography (that also included eye catching titles such as Sleeping With Two Sisters and Peach Sex Noxious Star), that potential well of talent probably never got a chance to shine. Pauline Chan's participation was played up when promoting the film but it's barely a supporting role.

Eastern Heroes re-titled the film to Whores From China when released on video in the UK.