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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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.

Released in 1995 but with a 1993 copyright on the print, Peter Ngor's brutal drama raises eyebrows from time to time but isn't much of an effective portrayal of the four girls. With the usual written arcs about coming from abusive homes, you can't and Ngor also refuses to root for any of these numb teenagers. Numb in a sense that they've never been programmed with traits such as respect, humanity or knowledge of when they're being duped. So they're all going to hell, willingly early on even and ultimately Ngor doesn't make this much of an interesting cinematic exploration. Admittedly the cast of unknowns (Ngor is the most prolific of the performers!) have a certain fresh energy that lends itself well to the parts and Girls Gang is certainly an effective, tough watch when it concerns itself with being a bloodbath. Watch Spacked Out instead however.

It indeed was a time in the mid 90s where films about disillusioned youth, preferably girls, hanging out on the streets, doing drugs and having casual sex was a profitable moviemaking (Fruit Chan's Made In Hong Kong and Lawrence Lau's Spacked Out later displayed quality in this regard but not for the masses). Coupled with the fact that the Category III rating was well in use (although audio censoring could run rampant throughout a film), movies like Girls In The Hood could easily be made. Having said easily, I also mean cheaply and without much directorial focus, as evident by director Alan Lo's work here.

The template as per usual deals with youths coming from broken or abusive homes, knowing nothing but the street behaviour around them and as a consequence of that, they grow highly unsympathetic when projected on-screen. Which is fine and Girls In The Hood is indeed structured as a drama/social commentary...and as a softcore porn film. But Alan Lo doesn't rise above the drama genre trappings or the exploitation ones and delivers one shoddy product. It's barely sincere attempts at themes, depth or plot so this is just one downward spiral from beginning to end, referring mainly to the quality of the filmmaking.

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Produced by Jimmy Wang Yu and directed by Taiwan veteran Ding San-Saai (whose last film was also Jimmy's last to date, The Beheaded 1000), the fall of a tiny little empire is portrayed in Girls Of The Night. That empire is a hotel for prostitutes, new and old, all located on the outskirts of town. Enter innocence in the form of Ah Jiao (Ling Yam) but this virgin is tricked into believing she only has to make a temporary pit stop before being re-united with her lover again. There are also dreams of love within the group where director Ding asks if that love can even and should be allowed to exist. Jarring jumps in the narrative begins representing signs of a very episodic product where much seems to be said but zero means anything. Even episodes of sadistic, war-damaged Japanese customers and Ah Jiao being drugged for her debut with a one possessing great psychosis doesn't turn into any kind of status. Not even laughable or suitable for the exploitation crowd. The unbearable 100 minutes continues to drag itself in the mud, giving us escalated melodrama of the ridiculous kind (no characters, no character-drama...simple little equation) and undercranked action that seems more like a commercial afterthought further sinks the attempted, valid nature of Girls Of The Night BELOW zero.