Friday Gigolo

Director: Stephen Yip
Year: 1992
Rating: 6.0

During the last twenty minutes of this film, I just had to start laughing. Up until then it had followed the plot of the 1987 American movie The Bedroom Window somewhat faithfully with one big difference. Then, I guess the writers decided that the American ending just didn’t have enough pizzazz and they decided to do it HK style.
 

Simon Yam is a photographer during the week, but come Friday evening he earns a little extra spending money by renting out his services as a gigolo. He tells his client that he saves it up all week for this night to better satisfy his customers. She takes him at his word and they are soon testing out all of his furniture plus his chin up bar. At least that takes care of having to dust the furniture!
Afterwards she (Mondi Yau) hears some cries from the street and looking out she sees a girl being strangled. Upon seeing her though, the man stops and runs away and the girl does the same. The next day the murder of a female is reported and the description of the suspect fits the man she saw. She is married (as it turns out to Simon’s boss) and so cannot tell the police. Simon decides to pretend that he saw it and reports the incident to the police. Complications follow.

Finally, in the last part of the film all hell breaks out as a bunch of folks are out to kill Simon. But before that, they decide to really damage his pride first in an excruciating scene that had my palms sweating. They take Simon to the top of a long series of steps – tie his guilty party with a rope to a heavy oil barrel – and roll the barrel down the steps – while holding Simon down.

I kind of enjoyed this silly and very idiotic film. I am not sure too many other people would though. It goes from a sleazy Cat III film to a thriller to an absurd action finale. But all in good fun. And Simon no matter how ridiculous the movie still manages to look so cool.