| This Category III exploitation flick has been described on other websites and in books as "vile," "tasteless" and "a pile of sh*t," so I was pretty surprised at actually how tame it is -- at least in the world of Cat III movies. The story has Chingmy Yau as a law student who to pay the bills does modeling gigs, with her current job being a commercial for some product called "Fatty Milk" (I suppose it loses something in the translation). The commercial attracts various suitors, among them smarmy Triad boss Simon Yam and creepy businessman/serial rapist Mark Cheng, whose cases Chingmy has been studying in class, since it seems he is always somehow able to "convince" his victims not to testify. Chimgmy rebuffs Cheng's attempts at seduction, so he rapes her best friend instead. As with the past cases, Cheng avoids prosecution, so Chingmy enlists Yam's aid in order to lure him into a trap to get revenge.
This leads to the "tasteless" ending, as put forth by "Asian Cult Cinema" author Thomas Weisser, whom I would suspect would probably enjoy this movie if it didn't have any involvement with Wong Jing, whom he seems to have a vendetta against. Anyway, yes there are some fairly graphic rape scenes in the movie, and this being a Wong Jing project, there's a fair amount of potty humor and jarring changes in narrative. But is the film "vile"? Taken on its' own, I would say yes -- to an extent. I don't enjoy watching rape scenes, but if they are not put in a movie solely for titillation, they can serve some sort of purpose. At the very least, they can deliver the shock value that fans of the genre have come to expect. And, frankly, compared to other Cat III movies like Red to Kill, the rape scenes in Raped by an Angel are pretty tame. In fact, the most sexually charged scenes in the picture come from a striptease by Chingmy, where she doesn't show any skin (the privilege of viewing Chingmy's goodies was reserved for Wong Jing at the time).
While it doesn't even really come close to its ancestry to capturing that classic exploitation feel, Raped by an Angel is still a pretty enjoyable movie, especially if you are a fan of Chingmy Yau or Simon Yam. |
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