Hong Kong cinema really enjoys bandying around the word “rape”. I shudder to think what the total count is of Hong Kong films released in 1995 that feature “rape” in some form or another in the title. There seemed to be a big demand for rape-centric films in ’95, and Hong Kong movies studios answered that demand with a endless barrage of vicious, stupid as fuck films. Generally a rapey and obnoxious title means you’re (unsurprisingly) in for a rapey and obnoxious time, but sometimes the title is slapped on purely to lure in the boobs-and-violence-starved plebs… as is the case with this gigantic piece of shit…
THE RAPING MURDERER
original title: 殺姦Ｏ娘 (Sha jian O niang)
Hong Kong, 1995, Ka-Chi Lok
But really, the only reason for this film’s existence is shoddy sex scenes. The Raping Murderer piles on sex scene after sex scene. It reminded me of watching Rocky IV where the endless stream of montages are only occasionally interrupted by the tiniest bursts of dialogue. The difference is Rocky IV is awesome and montages featuring Stallone running up mountains and howling “DRAGO!” are great. Relentless poorly choreographed sex scenes where sweaty men spend most of their time kissing women’s legs, not so great. That said, the way the film jarringly transitions from sax-fuelled romantic scenes to animalistic, filthy fuckin’ is utterly hilarious. One scene harshly cuts from a bit of romantic light kissing to this…
The Raping Murderer fails miserably at being sexy. In the world of CAT III cinema, sex is always ludicrous and never has this been truer than in this stupid fucking movie. Sex makes no sense. Women gyrate violently over their partner’s knees. Blowjobs take place at least a metre away from where (I would assume) the penises are. Boobs and viciously shaken from side to side. Skulls rock back and forth like broken bobbleheads. You can almost hear the director (who I’m picturing as a pimple-faced teenager) off screen, “Shake your boobs more! Wobble your head around!”
In one exceptionally befuddling moment, a mid-coitus sweat-smeared lady screams a strange piece of sex talk, asking if she could bite her fuck-partner’s dick off.
For all its sex, and there’s a lot of it in its far-too-long running time of 95 minutes, The Raping Murderer is about as tame as CAT IIIs get. I couldn’t work out what the impressively offensive title had to do with anything. There’s a single scene where someone is raped and murdered. I’m pretty sure this scene is supposed to be a turn on, which is pretty distressing. The rape-murder comes out of nowhere. There’s no real purpose for it except, I guess, to justify the studio’s choice of title.
You may have noticed that I’ve said very little about the plot of the film. That’s simply because there’s nothing to say. I had to regularly rewind and rewatch scenes to try and make sense of the convoluted proceedings. At first I thought I was watching a heavily censored version. Several times scenes end right at their most climactic point. A sequence where one of our heroes escapes from the drug lords ends with her pointing a gun at her captor. It jumps forward in time and we miss all the action of her escape. In fact, I don’t think they even showed her being captured in the first place…
We’re shown flashbacks that serve no purpose to the plot. The story jumps from Hong Kong to Taipei to Tokyo and features a huge string of characters who disappear almost as soon as they’re introduced. I’m not even going to attempt to tell you who played what characters. I could barely work out who the main characters were. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure the film is pieced together Godfrey Ho style from a hodgepodge of unrelated shitty, unfinished films. It makes zero sense.
The Raping Murderer is borderline unwatchable. I apologise for even bringing it to your attention if you weren’t already aware of it. If you have already seen it, I apologise for dredging up any bad memories. No one is going to get anything out of this garbage. The best it can offer is a few cheap giggles in its haphazard sex scenes. But almost any CAT III can offer you that, so why would you bother? Don’t be fooled by its lurid title, The Raping Murderer is about as dull as Hong Kong cinema gets.
Availability:
While I’m generally an advocate for everything, no matter what its quality, getting some kind of legitimate release, in this case it’s not too much of a loss. The Raping Murderer will likely die a slow death on its out of print VCD never to be re-released.
