Blue Jean Monster
This is a sentimental and touching story in a
very peculiar sort of way. Shing Fui-On, who almost always plays a bad
guy (as in The Killer) for a good reason - he is very big and very ugly,
gets a chance to portray a good guy cop. Unfortunately, early in the film
he gets killed while chasing after some robbers, but an electrical storm
brings him back to life. His body and brain are able to keep moving with
the help of occasional electro-shocks and it takes him a while to realize
that he is in fact dead. Clues like his food coming out of a bullet hole
in his stomach help him figure it out eventually!
Amy Yip makes a short amazing cameo as Death Ray
a prostitute that is hired by the cop's wife (Pauline Wong) to stop him
from going the gay way (too long to explain). In a classic scene, Amy attired
in a red bunny costume has her breasts burst and saline flies hither and
thither. Another Yipster - Gloria Yip - is also on hand to add to the chaos.
Shing only wants to see his baby born before he
really dies for good. In one bizarre but astonishing scene, his wife has
to give birth quickly in order to fit through a window before a bomb goes
off. This is a really crazy, strange and wonderful film.
My rating for this film: 8.0
For some pictures of Amy's classic
cameo click here
Reviewed by YTSL
Early on in our friendship, this site’s webmaster
sent me a VHS tape of this Ivan Lai helmed offering along with the injunction
that “You can’t really call yourself a Hong Kong movie fan until you’ve
seen it!” Despite the pressure heaped on me, I resisted doing so
for some years. Although Brian might chalk this down to my being
a stubborn so and so, it actually was this then neophyte reviewer’s fear
that she would not be able to handle the weirdness openly hinted at by
the effort’s peculiar titled plus premise that put her off checking it
out for as long as she did.
In any case, it was only after I had viewed some
five or six hundred other Hong Kong films that I finally felt able to give
THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER a fair whirl and consequently enjoy viewing this
often truly bizarre movie as much as I ended up doing. Furthermore,
as another Asian filmophile friend of mine had suggested, some bonus entertainment
points really can be derived from seeing the immensely recognizable Shing
Fui-On and the versatile Pauline Wong portraying a caring married couple
in this 1991 effort post previously witnessing their acting much less loving
towards each other in the earlier plus much grimmer “Her Vengeance”.
Additionally, there’s this often absurdist work’s presenting veteran viewers
with the atypical spectacle of character actor Shing -- whose “Big Silly-Head”
nickname attests to his having far from standard movie star looks -- in
a leading role, plus playing a heroic cop and generally good natured soul
who’s prone to “whither before [his] wife” to boot.
All in all, one of the few regrets I have with
regards to this entertaining offering is that Pauline Wong ended up once
more without as much screen time as an actress of her caliber deserves.
For, instead of choosing to focus for the most part on Shing Fui-On’s sometimes
quite henpecked Tsu character and his heavily pregnant wife, Chu (who Ms.
Wong essays), the movie’s makers also devoted considerable space in their
work to two younger individuals who they perhaps presumed that viewers
would find to be on the cute side. The actually somewhat annoying
Power Steering (who is played by Tse Wai-Kit) is the orphaned son of a
friend of Tsu who lives with the film’s main pair of adults. The
apt to be too independent minded Gucci (portrayed by Gloria Yip) is the
girlfriend of this lad who, fairly early on into THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER,
finds herself being held hostage by a group of violence prone bank robbers
(one of whom comes in the form of Sunny Chan) and then turns out to be
the person who has hold of their valuable stash for the bulk of this offering.
On one level, the eccentrically monikered Power
Steering’s primary reason for being in the picture seems to be to provide
extra amounts of light relief to an effort that actually has a surprising
amount of serious emotional moments along with farcical plus other just
plain head-scratching ones, not to mention action and gross out scenes
galore. For plot purposes though, his main role appears to be that
of the fellow responsible for ensuring that the man who a series of fateful
-- and, frankly, unlikely in real life! -- events caused to turn into THE
BLUE JEAN MONSTER and Gucci end up crossing paths, and more than once.
Albeit indirectly, Power Steering also caused
the entrance into THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER of an infamous individual.
The legendary busty Amy Yip’s “Death Rays” character was reputed to be
irresistible to heterosexual men. In one of those “only in Hong Kong
movies” types of developments, this femme fatale is requested by a desperate
Chu to seduce her husband after she -- who had refused to have sex with
him during the entire length of her pregnancy -- had walked into a room
and witnessed what she interpreted as her husband and their home’s other
male occupant engaging in homosexual acts. In this rightfully renowned
effort’s probably most well known scene however, the (now) uncommonly strong
Tsu not only effectively proceeds to provide evidence of his inability
to get sexually aroused -- and thus provide an answer of sorts to his own
question of “Am I human or a ghost?” -- but also ensured that “Death Rays”
prized assets hitherto would never be looked at in, as well as look, quite
the same way again... ;D
My rating for the film: 7.5