Naked Poison
The big tease is over. Send up the balloons. Light
the torch. Tell your friends and neighbors. After fruitlessly buying a
number of vcds with Sophie Ngan outrageously and libidinously displayed
on the cover art only to find nothing comparable inside, my patience has
finally paid off. Big time. Sophie revealed. Was it worth it? Oh ya!
In many ways this film has “low budget” proudly
sprayed across it like psychotic multi-colored glow in the dark graffiti,
but it seemingly and even more so unseemly proudly wallows in its low brow
aspirations like a drunk in a tub of cheap rot gut wine. The film smothers
you like a sticky odious sheen from someone else’s nightmarish and overly
ripe wet dream. The film spins and twists a story of unrelenting perversity
like a slow dark crawl through a fetid claustrophobic sewer. It is trashy,
explicit, vile and rather fun!
Pasty and callow looking like a sleepy eyed albino
cockroach, Samuel Leung crawls silently through the world – unnoticed and
uncared for – but often unmistakably aroused (which the camera enthusiastically
focuses on) while voyeuristically watching another couple have kinky sex
or fantasizing in the privacy of his own mind. One evening he chortles
happily as he watches his herbalist grandfather die from a snakebite –
as he can now fiddle around and experiment with potions to his loins content.
At work Samuel is belittled by his boss and humiliated
by the boss’s mercenary secretary/mistress Sophie Ngan. He experiments
first on his female neighbor – slips a little potion into her soup – and
then the next thing you know she is overheating – her hormones literally
multiplying like a runaway virus - and she needs to be sexually pleasured.
Samuel is only too happy to comply – and even better – after they are finished
she forgets the whole incident. But like love, this drug is deeply addictive
and if not supplied daily the person will soon wither away like a leper
in a Ben Hur movie. Soon the neighbor is a love slave, chained on a leash
and sleeping under his bed while waiting for her next fix.
Next up is the deliciously nasty Sophie Ngan and
soon she is writhing around on Samuel’s lap like a snake on a hot grill
and she is soon shedding her clothes like an uncomfortable outer skin.
Samuel should be a very happy man – but he continues to push the limits
of his powers and soon things get a little out of control. Gweenie Tam
is the love interest (pictured on the cover wearing a snake as a fashion
accessory) who begins to realize her boyfriend just might not be Mr. Right.
Utilizing queasy colors, distorted close ups and
askew angles, director Cash Chin Man-kei creates a sense of being trapped
in an iron coffin with decaying body parts. Samuel Leung is quite good
at bringing out not only his character’s pulsing perversions but also manages
to evoke a lost sense of his humanity that makes him somewhat sympathetic.
My rating for this film: 6.0 for the film,
10 for Sophie Ngan’s charming performance