Census Bloodbath: Say No To The Dress

Note: I have recently done another thorough audit of the list of 1980s slashers that I use to supply the titles for Census Bloodbath. Every time I do this, the 1980s has somehow produced even more movies since the last time I checked, despite having been over for more than three and a half decades. However, this is a living, breathing document of every possible slasher from the decade, so adding titles to my watchlist, while frustrating, is a necessary part of the process. Even when I'm midway through!

Unfortunately for my sense of accomplishment, 26 of the new titles that I have added to my list come from before 1986, which is the current year that we are working on. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to sprinkle these reviews in as I push forward with 1986, or if I'm just going to watch all the deeply obscure 1980-1985 titles that I have unearthed first. But this is one of them!

Another Note: Although the copy of this movie I watched had (slightly dodgy) English subtitles, I do not have translated credits for this Cantonese-language movie. So I've only credited the one character I'm sure about. That said, I'm pretty sure Michelle Yim and Yue Wong play the female and male protagonists Ping Chung and Wah respectively.

Year:
1984
Director:
Yung-Chang Li
Cast:
Wai-Man Chan, Michelle Yim, Yue Wong
Run Time:
1 hour 27 minutes

Plot: Dress Off for Life (which is the presumably poorly translated title of Hong Kong's Yi tuo qiu sheng) follows a former boxer named Chan Kuen (Wai-Man Chan), who is now an impotent recluse. This leads him to attempt to sexually assault various women, then kill them when he can't perform, making the subtext of the slasher film just plain text in a particularly sordid fashion.

On the case are buddy cop duo Mr. Mak and Wah. When dancer Ping Chung witnesses the killer fleeing the scene of a murder one night, he targets her both as a potential threat and an object of desire, dragging her unwillingly into the heart of the police's investigation.

Analysis: It has become more or less accepted wisdom among the slasher set that Canada had an amazingly high batting average when it came to their 1980s slashers. However, Hong Kong is probably a close second in terms of non-American slasher makers. While I haven't yet found an all-out classic at the level of My Bloody Valentine or Happy Birthday to Me, I would go to bat for any number of Hong Kong slashers as hidden gems, including Night Caller, He Lives by Night, and Phantom Killer.

For a bit of the time, it seemed like Dress Off for Life might join their ranks. It has many of the hallmarks of the genre-bending Hong Kong slasher set, including a buddy cop angle, wacky comic relief, and some kung fu fights (including a brawl in a lumberyard that includes one of those classic moments where an opponent holds out his hand and flips his fingers in a "come on" gesture).

However, it also had an unusually strong grip on its slasher elements. While many Hong Kong slashers might be described as police procedurals with slasher movies grafted onto them, this is very much the reverse. In fact, it feels like a pretty direct rip-off of William Lustig's Maniac both in the way it presents its killer (he lives with a bunch of mannequins and sex dolls) and centers him in the narrative.

Unfortunately, Maniac this ain't. The only thing that it has managed to retain from that 1980 movie is its sense of unrelenting, misogynistic nastiness. This is a grimy, brutal, grim film that doesn't have enough meat on its bones for it to feel like a satisfying artistic effort. It's just 87 minutes of being dragged by the hair through a gutter.

Plus, as much as it leans hard on slasher tropes, it can't execute them very well. The kills are mostly offscreen, and exactly half of them involve guns. Essentially, every murder sequence is a violation of the spirit of the slasher in some way. This disappointing element is paired with the fact that many of those scenes begin with an attempted sexual assault that is depicted in exactly the way you worry a 1984 movie might depict it, which just makes the whole experience exhausting.

Dress Off for Life can't avoid some of the genre-hopping that was endemic to Hong Kong movies of the 1980s, so it occasionally livens up enough that it remains mostly watchable. But getting through a movie is vastly different from enjoying it. 

This movie is repetitive (Ping keeps escaping the killer, then he pops up wherever she goes next like clockwork), it cuts away from what could have been its best scene (Wah escaping being tied to a hook that is dragging him toward being eviscerated by a sawmill), and SPOILER ALERT they go ahead and casually kill Ping in front of her son, B, at the very end of the movie without bothering to try and make that moment emotional in any way. END SPOILER ALERT Not a recommend!

Killer: Chan Kuen (Wai-Man Chan)

Final Girl: Officer Wah

Best Kill: There's no competition here, and by that I mean there are no contestants. I guess the dancer Lily's offscreen gun death, while violating two cardinal slasher rules, at least has a buildup that is tense and visceral, in which Chan Kuen covers her head in cloth so she can't see what's coming. So I guess that wins? Gross.

Sign of the Times: I love the makeup on the first victim.

Scariest Moment: A sex doll in Chan Kuen's apartment starts speaking to him and making fun of his impotence.

Weirdest Moment: A dildo comes flying out of a woman's purse when the bus she's on hits a pothole.

Champion Dialogue: “It's lucky that I have finished my piss."

Body Count: 12; not including a woman who is stabbed in an alley and taken away (still breathing) in an ambulance, who we never see again but who presumably survives her injuries.

1. Carline is stabbed offscreen.
2. Canal Woman is killed offscreen.
3. Male Witness is stabbed.
4. Mr. Mak is shot.
5. Lily is shot in the head offscreen.
6. Carjacked Driver is shot offscreen.
7. Cop #1 is killed offscreen.
8. Cop #2 is smack about the head with Chan Kuen's arms, which kills him.
9. Squad Cop is shot.
10. Chan Kuen's Ex-Wife is killed offscreen (at some point earlier, but she's not discovered until now).
11. Ping Chung is shot.
12. Chan Kuen is shot by B.

TL;DR: Dress Off for Life is not unwatchable, but it's a grim slog and one of the least lively slashers to come out of Hong Kong in the 1980s.

Rating: 4/10