Rating:

7

AKA: Daughter of Darkness 2

Year of release: 1994

Genre: exploitation

Running time: 96 min.

Director: Ivan Lai

Script: Gwai Book

Stars: Cheng Yim Lai, Ben Ng, Liu Kai Chi, Ho Ka-Kui

Rated III for crude humor, sexual content and gory violence

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Daughter of Darkness II

I think it's safe to say that we can put Daughter of Darkness II into the "only in Hong Kong" file. What we have is a dopey comedy, softcore porn and slasher film all revolving around the slaughter of a family. In other words, it's a perfect exploitation flick. It's as low-budget and slap-dash as they come, but for fans of the genre, finding a movie like this is a rare treat.

The film begins with the discovery of the aforementioned slaughter, and a dim-witted cop (Liu Kai Chi) trying to solve the case. His, shall we say, "unconventional" methods include having all the men in town masturbate into pots and his buxom deputy getting a vaginal exam so he can rifle through a doctor's files. As you might guess, this consitiutes the comedy portion of the movie. It's very loud, obnoxious and over-the-top; I normally don't like this style of comedy, but for some reason it works in Daughter of Darkness II and I found myself chuckling along.

Around the half-hour mark, the movie switches into the softcore porn portion, as Liu discovers a mysterious stranger (Cheng Yim Lai) burying her husband, and she begins to tell him a story. Like a lot of softcore porn stuff, this part of the movie begins to wear thin after a while. Even though Cheng is pretty good-looking, once she takes off her clothes for the third or fourth time, the thrill starts to lose its' effect.

Thankfully, at about a hour into the movie (despite how low-budget Daughter of Darkness II is, it does have some good pacing and editing), the slasher part of the movie kicks in as Cheng (ala I Spit on Your Grave) is kidnapped and raped, and then takes revenge on her attackers. There is some truly brutal stuff in this part; things that I had a hard time sitting through. Most notably, a scene where Cheng's privates are violently cleaned after the rape, and a shocking part where she performs an abortion on herself are some of the few scenes in cinema that make me cringe. It's stuff like this which makes recent so-called "horror" movies pale by comparison.