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Her Vengeance
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (20th July 2025). |
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The Film
 Ever since the death of her gangster father, Kit-Ying (Possessed II's Pauline Wong) has worked as a manager at Macao's Lisboa Casino. One night, she has a run-in with a quintet of gangsters lead by Brother Biu (A Moment of Romance's Hon Yee-Sang). When she refuses to back down and kowtow to their boorish behavior, they stalk her after work and gang rape her in a graveyard. Ying tries to move on with her life but experiences pain and bleeding which a doctor (The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter's King Lee King-Chu) diagnoses as a severe sexually-transmitted disease which will "rot" her womb and kill her if untreated; whereupon Ying is encouraged by her blind sister (Wild Search's Elaine Jin) to seek revenge "eye for an eye" style. Ying travels to Hong Kong to seek out Hung (Warriors Two's Lam Ching-Ying, who also served as martial arts director with King Lee King-Chu), sworn brother to her late father who has been running a hostess bar since the loss of his legs. Although Hung warns her to let it go – having been forced himself to be on good terms with the local protection racket – he agrees to keep her around and gives her work as a waitress (rather than a hostess) in the bar and rooming with hostess Susan (A Chinese Ghost Story's Sit Chi-Lun). Ying also strikes up a friendship with local newspaper man Siu Ho (Police Story's Kelvin Wong) but rebuffs any romantic interest due to her condition. When one night she spots one of her rapists Long Fellow (Ebola Syndrome's Shing Fui-On), she takes Susan's place as a hostess and lures him to a secluded spot to "rape" him back. Ho becomes suspicious when the man turns up dead since he was a suspect in an armored car robbery and was last seen by himself in Ying's company. As Long Fellow's gang goes on a rampage against rival gangs in search of his killer, Ying targets her next victim Mountain Chicken (Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky's Chan King) but he manages to escape with an acid-scarred face. When Biu and his surviving gang members strike back against those Ying cares about, Hung takes it upon himself to help her in honor of her father and sister, revealing that he is still a lethal fighter even in a wheelchair. Classic Hong Kong cinema, particularly that of the eighties even before the Category III classification, has not been known for being politically correct or even in good taste, and rape has served in many occasions as a plot mechanism or even just a gratuitous touch outside of actual rape-revenge films. While Her Vengeance certainly revels in the details of its opening brutal rape sequence and other carnage by the villains, the rest of the film proves empathetic to its protagonist while also presenting the very human costs of her titular vengeance. The thugs clearly resent her standing up to them, only clearing off when her male manager and security steps in and one of their side operations consists of drugging women and starring them in pornographic films. Attempts by sympathetic male characters seem well-intended yet hypocritical in also suggesting that they themselves would not back down as they ask of her while even the kindly gynecologist who examines her assumes her STD is the result of promiscuity rather than sexual assault. Ying's family and friends seem to exist solely to be victims of retaliation yet these are still believable plot developments in such a revenge story and in the end, her vengeance becomes a necessity for survival that ultimately brings her no satisfaction. The fates of the villains are satisfyingly gruesome, with the comic relief coming in Hung's demonstration of his wheelchair kung fu, and a climax consisting of some booby trap trickery that anticipates the antics of Home Alone if its villains did not have the recovery power of The Three Stooges, and the relative brevity of the running time seems less like compromise than economical storytelling. Chua Lam had started out at Shaw Brothers during the seventies and would be the hands-on producer for several of Golden Harvest's eighties hits from The Seventh Curse and Erotic Ghost Story from Her Vengeance director Lam Nai-Choi to the likes of City Hunter and Mr. Nice Guy. 
Video
Given limited theatrical release in Hong Kong in unrated form before the classification system, Her Vengeance's subsequent release history has been rather convoluted with the existence of separate Category III and less-explicit but slightly longer Category IIb versions (82:31 and 89:54, respectively) losing some nudity and violence but also featuring scene extensions obviously shot at the time of production but deemed unnecessary in the original assembly – a television version with some dialogue variations and an appended "crime does not pay" ending, and laserdisc, VCD, and DVD editions of varying completeness using the Category III version as a base but either including or excluding some violence or nudity (for instance, the laserdisc is missing the porn shoot sequence while the VCD includes it but is missing some violence included on the laserdisc). Earlier this year, Vinegar Syndrome in the United States put the film out on Blu-ray – in a double feature with Devil Fetus that included both cuts, and 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray utilizes the same masters for both cuts of the film. Refreshingly, neither version appears to have needed standard definition inserts to be be complete and the transfer reveals the film to have been of a high technical standard with well-exposed night exteriors, some striking color choices including a sequence where the colors are swallowed up by a red filter in front of the lens and a blue-tinted fantasy sequence. Grain only becomes particularly noisy during the film's instances of slow motion and a few rare stylistic free frames. 
Audio
Both cuts feature a Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that is entirely post-dubbed by different voice actors with the usual fight foley effects and a few gruesome impaling and slicing effects. The score of Philip Chan (Dragon Lord) features the familiar KORG keyboard samples prevalent in late eighties and nineties synthesizer scores regardless of nationality (even the climactic sequence in which Hung picks a record on the bar's juke box turns out to be a synth cue rather than a pop or rock number). Optional English subtitles on both versions are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
The Cat III version is accompanied by an audio commentary by Frank Djeng, New York Asian Film Festival in which he reveals that the film is not simply "inspired" by I Spit on Your Grave but actually an uncredited remake of the successful 1973 Shaw Brothers rape-revenge film Kiss of Death that starred Chen Ping (Vengeful Beauty) as a textile worker who is sexually assaulted by five men and Lo Lieh (Five Fingers of Death) as a crippled fighter as well as the drugged girls being used in pornography subplot. Djeng attributes the film's failure at the box office to coming just before the Category III boom and describes the differences in the cuts of the film (as well as noting that the STD was only specified as AIDS in the television cut). He also provides background on the cast, noting the steps that Wong took to get away from being typecast as the "Ghost Queen" after appearing in Mr. Vampire including a Penthouse magazine shoot, and suggests that the sensitivity in the film's depiction of female characters can be attributed to female screenwriter Shirley Woo who had also scripted The Peacock King for director Lam. The disc also includes the film's theatrical trailer (3:52) and a still gallery. 
Packaging
Not provide for review were the rigid slipcase designed by Chris Barnes, the reversible sleeve featuring original Hong Kong poster artwork, a collectible postcard, and a 40-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the film by Frasier Elliott, Matthew Edwards, and C.J. Lines.
Overall
While rape scenes and bad taste are not unusual in Hong Kong action and exploitation films, Her Vengeance revels in its brutality but also demonstrates a sensitivity in the portrayal of its female characters.
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