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烹夫 (1993)
My Better Half


Reviewed by: STSH
Date: 01/10/2000
Summary: Not your average b-grade porn

Puzzling. A film with the look of an A-grade production (gorgeous photography and colour) made with B-grade actors.
His flick has a few problems, and I can certainly see why Steve (first reviewer) found it confusing. There are three separate stories, which are separated by a title plate, which are NOT TRANSLATED GGGRRRRRRRR. The fact that one actress (Yue Chi Wai) appears in the first two stories gives the impression that the stories are supposed to be connected.
But a bigger problem is the dull pacing. The first story drags on and on, even making the lush sex scenes dull. Tsk tsk. Story two picks up the pace a bit, and story three is not half bad, if in a rather gruesome sense.
There are a few scattered nude scenes (some quite long) in the first story, brief nudity in the second, and lots in the third.
I have no particular reason to recommend this film, expect to say it is far from the average Cat III timewaster.

Reviewer Score: 4

Reviewed by: spinali
Date: 12/08/1999
Summary: NULL

It's WW2. Flora is an exquisite-looking whore who getsmarried to a respectable fishmonger (!), who she literally screws to death. His ghost comes back and tells her that the King of Hell will allow him to continue his earthly life if the couple can complete all the sexual positions in one night. They fail, and Flora eventually sinks to the level of giving quickies on sidestreets. All of a sudden, it's the '60s, with all new characters! Kwong is the sickly father of two young children who spends his spare time sweating in bed and spitting up blood. His wife, Yin, needs to raise $50,000 for his lung operation. A lecherous chicken-monger across the street works out a deal with her for sex, and when he's done screwing her, throws in two chickens which had been clucking in a corner of his apartment all along. Eventually the husband feels a little better and makes a move on his wife, all the while making strange seal noises. But he guesses the truth, slashes her to death, then stabs himself. There's a sudden change of scene to the modern day where a sexy, possessive young woman goes bonkers, stabs her husband, chainsaws the corpse apart in the shower, then drops his entrails and feet into a simmering pot. At the inquest, she gets off -- because all the evidence has been eaten! The (no doubt unintentional) cumulative effect of all this is something like Bunuel's Land without Bread, in which the atrocities multiply with proportionate levels of gallows humor. Just amazing.

(2.5/4)



[Reviewed by Steve Spinali]

Reviewer Score: 6