| Cash Chin apparently did not feel like ending a streak of Hong Kong cinema tomfoolery within the Category III rating, actually arriving late in the wake of the "golden" era of unashamedly raunchy, vicious and rude filmmaking. Giving us one of the all time greats in The Eternal Evil Of Asia, moving on with the likes of Sex & Zen II, The Fruit Is Swelling and in 2000, Naked Poison, it is indeed unashamedly out there, cheap filmmaking and we thank him for it. Starring Samuel Leung (Lost Boys In Wonderland, Once Upon A Time In Triad Society 2) as an overly horny, bullied youth utilizing his grandpas snake serum to assume control over those who did him wrong, if you were to follow ground rules of filmmaking, you wouldn't have an unsympathetic character doing unsympathetic acts. There is a miiiiinor streak of good in Leung's Ng Chi-Min though, in particular his actual relationship with Chan (Gwennie Tam, very sweet but she doesn't survive the acting challenge when working with this material even) but this is still a subject consumed by power so with that scripted beat, director Chin adds the usual elements of softcore sex, sadomasochism and umm...usual body melting effects, Some off-beat humour also rears its head, wrapped in a competent package visually (Chin served as one of the cinematographers on the film). Naked Poison is really the definition of being jerked around but as late as 2000, the rating didn't get as depraved of a treatment as it gets here and there's an appreciation that could be directed towards that choice.
Choices of having quite inappropriate doctor characters and a gay detective enter at points does actually disrupt the throughline Chin presents. Sophie Ngan also stars and appears distinctly on the dvd cover for the film. A poster art that connects merely vaguely to the actual plot. |
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