Year: 1981
Director: Patrick Tam
Cast: Kuo-Chu Chang, Charlie Chin, Brigitte Lin
Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
As our sojourn through the movies I missed in previous Census Bloodbath years continues into 1981, we're swooping back into Hong Kong slashers in a major way. Ai Sha, AKA Love Massacre, was directed by Patrick Tam, an influential figure in the Hong Kong New Wave who was the mentor for international directing superstar Wong Kar-wai. Unfortunately, the copy that's currently available isn't quite up to snuff to allow us to fully appreciate this fact, so please take that into consideration in this review. The print is a bit blown-out, and while it's easy enough to appreciate the color and framing and whatnot, the white subtitles are completely swallowed whenever there is a bright white at the bottom of the screen, which is almost all the time.
Curse a director who knows how to use negative space!
When a romance this sizzling is interrupted, you really feel it!
The place where Love Massacre succeeds the most is, for obvious reasons, its general aesthetic. It's a beautiful film, from the opening shots that see a woman walking across sandy dunes, an isolating and alienating shot that sets up the plot quite nicely. He really does pump a lot of energy into using visuals to tell the story, which should seem self-evident when you're discussing a work of cinema, but after 8 million shot-on-video slashers really feels like a breath of fresh air. He uses superimposition quite well as a means of juxtaposition, drawing links between characters while highlighting their major differences at the same time.
There are also scenes that aren't quite so artistically challenging, like the POV shot on a roller coaster, but display an excellent sense for what might be the most fun to point the camera at. Tam also favors white backdrops interrupted by bold blocks of color, best represented by a dazzling museum scene that exists solely for this purpose.
Behold!
So yes, it's undeniable that the film is pretty to look at. But here's the thing. In general, it's not pretty enough to look at that it obviates the film of its incredible sins both as a slasher film and a melodrama. Hell, there are individual shots in Zoom In: Sex Apartments that are just as, if not more beautiful to gaze upon, so like... it's clearly not that hard to bring these particular visual ideas to life.
The less said about how the script functions as a drama, the better. The characters are given so little semblance of humanity that it's hard to care when they're being murdered, so why should anyone give a shit what they're up to in the meantime? Sadly, the superior filmmaking technique doesn't extend to the murder sequences, so they're extra empty. A filmmaker who is truly committed to making a murder sequence feel brutal and jarring can certainly accomplish that. Look at Angst, or literally anything made by Dario Argento before 1989. These scenes are just an afterthought, clearly thrown in to spice up the proceedings and hop on the bandwagon of the subgenre that was popular enough that American enthusiasts might even venture into watching a subtitled film (indeed, said subgenre is so popular that loser nerds like me are still seeking Love Massacre out 40 years later simply because the film belongs to it).
Love Massacre would certainly benefit from a really nice Blu-Ray transfer, but the bottom line is that the story it's telling is dysfunctional. Plot beats slip by with no clear connection to one another, culminating in a third act that doesn't so much draw the threads together as murder a bunch of the threads so we don't have to think about them anymore. I don't know that I would warn anyone away from the film. There's certainly enough on offer here to place it above the basement-level standard of many slasher films from this period. However, especially in 1981, there are literally almost two dozen films I'd point someone to first before recommending it.
Killer: Fu Chiu Ching (Kuo-Chu Chang)
Final Girl: Ivy (Brigitte Lin)
Sign of the Times: The girls have to find out about overseas occurrences from a newspaper. Ew.
Best Kill: One of Ivy's housemates has her head slammed in a door, which is pretty damn gnarly.
Scariest Moment: Ivy sees Chiu Ching sleeping in a coffin, and he slowly turns his face toward her.
Weirdest Moment: Chiu Ching paints a little kid's entire face purple.
Champion Dialogue: "When did you learn to smoke?"
Body Count: 9; character names will mostly be missing - I'm sure I could parse out who is who with careful study of the egregious subtitles (ie. massive contrast-editing on screenshots), but frankly the names don't matter much because none of the body count characters who die are relevant to the story in any meaningful way.
- Joy is killed in a car accident.
- Chiu Ching's wife is killed and dismembered offscreen.
- Housemate #1 is stabbed to death.
- Housemate #2 is strangled and hit with a teapot.
- Housemate #3 has her throat slashed.
- Housemate #4 is stabbed.
- Housemate #5 is drowned in a tub.
- Housemate #6 has her head crushed in a door.
- Chiu Ching is stabbed.
TL;DR: Love Massacre is reasonably pretty, but not enough to overcome its wan melodrama and tepid slashing.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1028
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