The Naked Killer (

1992

) ½

Hong Kong Cat III movies have a delightful mix of sleaze and prudishness. On the one hand, these films are absolutely degenerate, being loaded to the gills with nudity, sex, and bizarre (often violent) fetishes. Yet on the other hand, you have actresses that made a career in these films, very pointedly not taking off their clothes. Amy Yip (nicknamed Yip Tease) is probably the best-known example, but the star of today's film Chingmy Yau is a similar story (In addition to sleazy Cat III productions she would also star in more mainstream films like City Hunter (1993) and High Risk (1995)). Indeed, of the four main female characters in today's film, only one will actually appear naked (not coincidentally she is the only Japanese actress among them, and the land of the rising sun and virgin-raping tentacles does not share the same prudish views on nudity as the Chinese). The Naked Killer is more blatant than most of its ilk, usually, they simply disguise their actresses behind clever camera angles and cutaways, but here one girl will emerge from a shower and find herself magically clothed in between shots.

Having relatively little nudity does not mean that the film does not have room to be sexy. Indeed, the occasional prudishness of Cat III movies gives them an air of playful teasing that can, if anything, make them sexier. Sometimes an actress very carefully not showing you her tits is more erotic than actually letting them flop out. Of course, sex appeal is just scratching the surface of a film like The Naked Killer. It also benefits from being absolutely bonkers and infectiously fun!

Take for instance, how the film introduces us to our protagonist, Kitty. We see her in a barbershop, shamelessly flirting with her hairdresser. The hairdresser has a girlfriend already, but he is a faithless rake and is more than happy to ditch her in favor of Kitty. When said girlfriend bursts in and tells him that she's pregnant, Kitty tells her to get an abortion and the hairdresser starts to beat his girlfriend saying he will help her abort the child. Kitty then castigates the hairdresser for trying to cheat on his girlfriend and repeatedly stabs him in the genitals before fleeing the scene. The most bizarre part is that all this is supposed to establish Kitty as an ambiguously heroic figure. The film will certainly treat her like that going forward, but I find it hard to shake the feeling that we're dealing with anything other than a total lunatic.

Unluckily for Kitty, the other patron at the barbershop is Inspector Tinam of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. In a sane world, Tinam would burst he for assault with a deadly weapon or at least call an ambulance for the asshole barber whose down one testicle or his poor pregnant girlfriend who just got pummeled. Instead, he follows Kitty out, gives her a stern warning like he's just caught her running a stop light, and proceeds to engage in a rom-com meet cute. Indeed, by the end of the conversation, Kitty asks the detective out for a date.

Tinam is professional enough (and smart enough) not to accept a date with this girl. However, Kitty is not the type to take no for an answer, so she turns up to Tinam's precinct claiming to have been sexually assaulted. At first, Tinam is worried that she is accusing him of the crime, but it turns out that she is saying that Tinam scared off her would-be rapist. This girl's courtship routine is something else, and between the phony story about the would-be rapists and the genital mutilation, it seems to mostly revolve around making Tinam too scared to say no. It works, and Tinam begrudgingly goes out with her. What's rather surprising though is that the pair hit things off nicely.

The plot is only going to get wilder from here, so buckle up. When Kitty goes back home after her date she finds her father accidentally murdered by a businessman named Bee, who was screwing her bitchy step-mother. Bee escapes into the night but Kitty, demonstrating all the restraint you would expect from someone who just castrated a rakish hairdresser, gets a gun and goes to shoot up Bee's office. I have no idea what industry Bee is in, but it must be an exceptionally rough trade because every desk jockey in the building is packing heat. Kitty acquits herself well and makes her way passed the hordes of armed middle managers and scrum masters to Bee's office where she kneecaps him and shoots him twice in the ass. It's too bad that she's overwhelmed before she can finish the job.

For a man who has been shot no fewer than three times, Bee seems like he's in remarkably good shape. So, rather than seeking desperately-needed medical attention, he decides the best use of his time is to get revenge on Kitty by raping her. I guess he's a bit shy though because he dismisses most of his guards from the room, leaving just one hanging around. It's very thoughtful because if there were any more goons than that, Kitty wouldn't be able to easily overpower them and escape. Who says chivalry is dead? That's a lucky break for Kitty but even luckier is the fact that she's not the only one who wanted Bee dead, and her attempt on his life coincided with the arrival of an assassin named Sister Cindy. Sister Cindy helps the wounded Kitty escape the building and takes her back to her palatial home, where she gives Kitty a choice between becoming her protege or death (Sister Cindy can't very well have anyone recognize her face except for fellow assassins after all).

Up until this point, The Naked Killer could be described as a relatively normal Hong Kong action movie from its period. Sure, the plot is more than a little unhinged, the pacing is rapid even by the standards of the time, and the characters frequently behave improbably. However, the events of the plot still feel like they take place in something approximating reality. After Kitty begins her assassin-training though, the film crosses the line into the surreal. The film will lapse suddenly, and without warning into dream sequences that at first fool you into thinking they are reality. Disconnected scenes taking place at different times in different locations are spliced together like they are happening concurrently and the characters are watching each other. Indeed, the transition reminds me of the halfway point genre shift in Mulholland Drive (2001), both in how incomprehensibly bizarre the films get once the shift occurs and in how the characters start indulging in gratuitous lesbian sex scenes. Indeed, the change in identity from Mulholland Drive (2001) is also present here, as when Kitty meets Tinam again she pretends to be a different person who has never met him before. It could be just a coincidence but I'm starting to wonder if David Lynch was borrowing ideas from The Naked Killer in addition to Vertigo (1958), it wouldn't be the strangest cinematic antecedent in his filmography.

As Kitty is drawn into the world of female assassins, she encounters Princess, the former disciple of Sister Cindy, and her submissive girlfriend/partner Baby (the aforementioned Japanese actress who provides the bulk of the film's nudity). Princess is immediately drawn to Kitty, wanting to possess and dominate her, turning her into another assistant/plaything to compliment Baby. And when she gets an assignment to kill Sister Cindy and Kitty, Princess doesn't balk at the chance to mix business and pleasure. The homo-eroticism here is refreshingly masculine in its appeal, with the girls caressing and fondling each other in a way that is plainly meant for the (presumably) male audience's approval.

In the veritable fugue state that constitutes the film's third act, Tinam tries to discover the truth about Kitty's identity guided by, of all things his erection. You see, ever since Tinam accidentally shot his brother, he has been unable to hold a gun without becoming physically ill (impressively he still carries one around with him at all times holstered) or get a hard-on. The one exception is with Kitty during their brief courtship. So when he meets her again after she has become an assassin and finds himself standing at attention again, he knows that despite her protestation she really is his lost love.

This story of male impotence runs the risk of feeling bolted onto a plot that centers so much around its female characters. Yet, I think Tinam's impotence works well, as his role in the plot is to overcome his own shortcomings and rescue Kitty from the sapphic world of the lady-assassins, despite the fact that at first she plainly does not want to be rescued at all. Indeed, without Tinam it's difficult to see how Kitty's arch could reach a satisfying conclusion. It's fitting then when the film ends in a (literally) fiery embrace with our two leads passionate making out even as they die. One last explosive orgasm before the credits roll.

The humor on display throughout the film alternates between crude and grotesque, with the most memorable joke being a severed penis that accidentally displaces a detective's breakfast sausage, which he absentmindedly eats, even though it is cold, raw, unseasoned, and human. Between this and The Untold Story (1993) and Ebola Syndrome (1996) it's starting to look like accidental cannibalism is a mainstay of Hong Kong dark humor. Remarkably though, these jokes translate well across the cultural divide, as gross-out humor is one genre of comedy that truly knows no nations or cultures. I am quite confident that these jokes will land anywhere there are seventeen-year-old boys or older folks who are seventeen-year-old boys at heart.