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Lady In Black |
List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $13.46 |
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Reviews |
Features:
Description:
Kung fu veteran Sun Chung (Avenging Eagle) crafted this deliciously lurid 1987 melodrama of spineless yuppie ambition and implacable wifely revenge. The story line is a melange of gothic and noir motifs culled from James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, Stella Dallas, and even The Phantom of the Opera. The sniveling bad guy (Tony Leung Kar-fai, from The Lover) is a sleek, handsome architect who is also a gutless wimp and a shameless social climber. As the picture opens, he has persuaded his devoted wife (Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia) to swipe some cash from her workplace to cover his gambling debts. But old habits die hard, and the sleazy business betrayals and "debts of honor" to mobsters continue to pile up. On a last-ditch trip to Thailand, to try to cadge funds from a kindly uncle, Lin accidentally slips over the side of the lurching ferryboat--and her husband deliberately releases her clutching hand, consigning her to the deep along with all his sordid secrets. But is she really dead? Who's that mysterious hooded figure lurking in the shadows? There are subplots to burn, featuring abused old people, abandoned children, plucky best friends, unctuous plastic surgeons, nefarious business rivals, and a deus ex machina bargeload of Vietnamese boat people. Lady in Black isn't an action picture, exactly, but it was still one of the most flagrantly entertaining Hong Kong movies of the 1980s. --David Chute
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