Nude Fear (1998)



	Nude Fear		Return to Review Archive - N
	Year:	1998	Kathy Chow Hoi-Mei
	Director:	Alan Mak Siu-Fai
	Producer:	Joe Ma Wai-Ho
	Cast:	Kathy Chow Hoi-Mei, Tse Kwan-Ho, Cheung Tat-Ming, Shiu Siu, Chan Kin-Wing, Lui Kwok-Wai, Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Matthew Chow Hoi-Kwong
	The Skinny:	A decent set-up only makes half a movie, and Nude Fear is a perfect example.
	Review by Kozo:	Having little to do with either nudity or fear, this serial killer thriller tells the story of Joyce (Kathy Chow), a frigid homicide detective who finds herself embroiled in an eerily familiar case. A woman is raped and murdered, her hands tied and her tongue cut off. Shocking as that is, the exact same thing happened to Joyce’s mother twenty years ago - a trauma that Joyce has never recovered from. Convinced that this is the same criminal, she investigates relentlessly, but things don’t add up. She and her team (including a subdued Cheung Tat-Ming) find that young killer Lee Ming-Chun (Sam Lee) is the culprit, but there’s no way that he could have raped and murdered Joyce’s mother. It seems there’s a mastermind behind Lee’s depravity: the very same man who killed Joyce’s mother and now has his sights set on her. Alan Mak’s thriller treads on the same ground as stuff like Dr. Lamb and The Untold Story, but it’s nothing like those movies because it lacks the over-the-top gore and horror that made those films so repulsive - and compelling. The result is something that proves engrossing, but only half of the time. The film starts on excellent footing, giving us equal doses of suspense and character development, but loses its way towards the end as events become implausible and disbelief sets in. The identity of the killer is never a mystery: it’s another cop played by Tse Kwan-Ho, and he handles the role with dignity and grace, which is amusing because it’s essentially a subdued Simon Yam role. Too bad the film couldn’t match his disciplined performance, as the sloppiness of the narrative proves frustrating. The increasingly ubiquitous and always attractive Kathy Chow is fine in her role, but her character has moments of sheer inanity. This is a film worth watching for the excellent build up - just bite your tongue as the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. (Kozo 1998)
	Availability:	DVD (Hong Kong) Region 0 NTSC Mei Ah Laser Widescreen Cantonese and Mandarin Language Tracks Removable English and Chinese Subtitles

		image courtesy of Mei Ah Laser Disc Co., Ltd.
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