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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is taken stock of and The Evil Dead is foreseen, a pair of unlucky dopes are zestfully disemboweled and gong sounds summon the townspeople, "to the cafeteria, there's fresh meat!" Agent 999 of the Central Surveillance Agency (Norman Chui), after Rolex the bandit (Melvin Wong) on cannibal island. His gumshoe pose with fedora and cigarettes can't camouflage a certain dimness, his gift for kung-fu comes in handy when surrounded by goons in green masks and butcher aprons. A spastic pickpocket (Kwok Choi Hon) makes for a fluctuating sidekick, the village chief (Eddy Ko) hoards flesh while feeding the hungry populace slogans: "If you don't eat people, they'll eat you." Tsui Hark's kinetic A Modest Proposal, his camera wielded like a cleaver. A matter of regimes, government and church versus the anthropophagus lumpenproletariat, the intelligentsia keep meat chunks as book markers ("We scholars like exaggerations"). The thief has a clenched fist tattooed on his chest and attempts to bargain his capture with the hero, the sidekick meanwhile has his hands full dodging the amorous advances of a hulking crossdresser. The Lewis of Two Thousand Maniacs! is a model for slaphappy gore, slaughterhouse hooks pierce skulls but also tear the pants off the despot mid-melee. Fast and furious gags throughout—the agent asks for matchsticks so a torch suddenly fills the screen, he takes a machete to the hand until a change in angle reveals a limb already severed on the table. "We'll both be part of shrimp noodles soon!" Roller skates and firecrackers and a soot-covered Lincoln figure in the climactic free-for-all, the punchline transforms vegetarian maiden (Mo-lin Cheung) into "la reine de mon coeur au regard nonpareil," as the poet would have it.
--- Fernando F. Croce |