She Starts the Fire (Pen huo hu lang, 1992)

Hong Kong Panorama Corporation Ltd. 2020 DVD edition, region 3



Somehow i found the stupid humour in this stupid film to feel like a Hong Kong New Year slapstick comedy.
Just remember to disconnect your brain for about 89 minutes or so.

Burlesque nonsense humour about the pretty girl Wendy (Chingmy Yau Suk-Ching) arriving to Hong Kong to live with her
only relative alive, her sloppy drunkard of an aunt, Big Beer (Deannie Yip).
Big Beer is an unliked nightclubb hostess manager and an old prostitute on the skids. She's getting fired by her clubowner boss
if she can't come up with new attractive girls. At this point Wendy arrives and her auntie begs her on her kness to please help
her for just 2 days and work as a hostess at the club, and immediately Wendy becomes the most popular girl at the club.

Wendy lives in a house with her aunt Big Beer, her aunts Landlord Charles Xiao (Lawrence Cheng Tin-Shui), his choleric sister
Tracy Xiao (Carol Cheng Yu-Ling). The reason being that Charles is to timid to evict Big Beer for not paying her rent in 2 years.

The gangster Cannon likes her too and kidnaps her and Big Beer and will Charles save her ? However, Wendy is equipped
with powerful
telekinetic and magical powers and she can start fires and make things happen with her spells.
Stupid nonsense but i enjoyed it. Why ? Because I'm an Idiot. It was not a pretentious French film with middle-aged people
sitting around a table eating, drinking and talking, enjoying the sound of their own voice, so it has to do. Bring it on!

Future notable crime action director Dante Lam (The Beast Stalker, Fire of Conscience and The Stool Pigeon - read more
about these great films on my Hong Kong and Chinese Film Page) worked on this film as an assistant director and can be seen
in a small role. A film made the same year as this comedy and also produced by Wong Jing and with Chingmy Yau in it was the
cat. III sleaze masterpiece "Naked Killer" directed by Clarence Fok, and with Carrie Ng as a lesbian killer.

This DVD presents the film in anamorphic widescreen and with a cantonese audio DD 2.0 with english subtitles, trailer and card

 

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