For Whom to Be Murdered

Midnight Whisper is a radio talk show in which listeners call in to discuss their lives. One evening a gentleman calls in to say that he has been in love with a woman for a very long time – but that his love seems hopeless – she has become the mistress of another man for the love of her daughter. The daughter then calls in to say that the man is lying and that her mother is a terrible woman. Finally, the next day the distraught mother calls in to tell her story. Kung fu diva Moon Lee Choi-fung star in this rare melodramatic turn as Lee Siu-hong, a troubled Mainland Chinese lass who runs away from home to become a Hong Kong prostitute. As her desperate mother (Josephine Koo Mei-wah) scours the colony's pleasure quarters, we see flashbacks of the girl's unfortunate past.

It's Meng Yuan-wen (star of The Master Strikes) versus Kuan Feng in this wild and wacky wushu saga of a priceless pole with a spectacular secret. A master martial artist's silly disciple struggles to save it from an evil white slaver, the slaver's duplicitous wife, and even his own bone-headed, but greedy, companion. Hsu Hsia choreographs the abundant action, as he had for both Five Superfighters and Drunken Master. The result is both sublime (for its kung-fu) and engagingly ridiculous.

Police corruption is the theme of this brutal harbinger of the bleak "new wave" crime thriller. Pai Piao, Danny Lee, and "Venom" Sun Chien star as idealistic police school graduates who run afoul of such vicious, murderous depravity that the cop who is killed first could be considered the lucky one.