Rolling my eyes at the moral guardians reviewing this film on here, clearly it's not for them. Yes it's a disturbing movie and yes it does ape Natural Born Killers but honestly I enjoyed this more then that overrated film(does not help that Stone has gone completely mental in recent years)it's definitely not for the faint of heart as it has animal cruelty and a callous treatment of a differently abled woman that would almost certainly never fly today but as someone with autism i wasn't personally offended by it. I find the mortal conflict at the center of the film quite fascinating and I dug some of the cool and stylish directing and the violence. Overall I recommend checking this film out if you can get a hold of it, it's seemingly quiet rare.
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vexer66 October 2023
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Bogey Man24 November 2002Stephan Yip's CAT III rated exploitation film MAD STYLIST (1997) is among the worst and uninteresting Hong Kong films and "nasties" I've seen. It is equally sleazy and loathsome as Ivan Lai's DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS 2 (1994) and thus almost completely without its merits or any positive things.
MAD STYLIST stars Wong Hei as Dee who was bullied as a child and who has since tried to start a decent life as a hair stylist. He messes everything up and gets fired from most places he gets to work. Suddenly he meets her childhood friend and "protector" May (Hilary Tsui) who used to mutilate living animals as a child in order to scare the bullies away. They start a new life together and start to kill various people. Soon a retarded girl (Man Chung Han) witnesses Dee getting rid off the body parts and so he should kill her, too, but can he really kill that innocent and really harmless girl just like that even if sadistic May tells him to?
The film has also little roles by Michael Wong and Kent Cheng (why is he involved with this junk?) and they play naturally police inspectors trying to solve the mysterious murder cases as body parts appear in various places. The actors are pretty talented and do their roles with care but that's perhaps the only good thing in this film.
The film has absolutely no point other than exploitation in the sex and violence departments. It tries to be very visual and stylish but fails pretty miserably because the weird and twisted camera angles don't mean anything in the film, they are just there but there's no reason for their existence. Ivan Lai's PEEPING TOM (1997) is another example of this: the camera angles are all the time very twisted and "unusual" but it becomes very pointless and unnecessary as it doesn't depict the characters' emotions or anything else in the film's world, because there's NOTHING to be depicted because all the films want to be is exploitation, violence and sex. The director thinks the film is now very wonderful and even "artistic" but it requires much more than just wild angles for film to become a seriously noteworthy piece of cinema. The first scenes showing Dee in the street walking in the crowd in slow motion are genuinely pretty effective and work because at that point, nobody knows about his character too much and it creates a very ominous atmosphere to the scene and the effect is not used throughout the whole film.
The film includes also the retarded girl being captured by the killers and treated pretty much like a dog so the film is far from being "correct" on any level! Also the explanations and motives for the killers' acts are very ridiculous as the film tries to hide its exploitation status and tell something important about being bullied as a child and the traumas of that kind of experience. The violence and nudity is mediocre but still strong enough to secure the CAT III rating and nothing less and that's exactly why the film was made in the first place. I cannot appreciate this film more than 2/10 and I'm happy most other CAT III rated films are much more noteworthy and have many cinematic merits, too. -
fertilecelluloid30 January 2006Stephan Yip's "Mad Stylist" has a decent trailer that promises lashings of sex, violence and sleaze in the "Dr. Lamb"/"Untold Story" vein, but I urge you not to be fooled by it. The film is one of the most inept Hong Kong productions ever and is entertaining for about fifteen minutes. Being the tale of a vengeance-seeking hairdresser, it has black comedy appeal, too, but it never exploits its premise beyond the expected bouts of murder and torture, and even renders these dull. Yip is clearly a fan of "Natural Born Killers" because that is the film this turkey apes to the point of nauseum. Unfortunately, there is no context, no characterization, and no theme backing up the gratuitous stylings. Truly awful , and not in a good way, either.
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Bogey Man25 November 2002I forgot to mention some of the film's negative points in my original comments on this film by Stephan Yip, MAD STYLIST (Hong Kong, 1997). After all the bad and boring things the film manages to be, it even rips Quentin Tarantino off and very big time, too.
The music score by Leung Chi Wa is totally vile imitation and copy of PULP FICTION (1994) score that plays during that film's now legendary credits after the restaurant scene in the beginning. The MAD STYLIST music is almost like that, but has some different notes and little different rhythm and it all sounds horrible. And unfortunately that's not all.
During the film's murder scenes and gore scenes, the image cuts to anime/animation scenes in order to create something "surreal" and again stylish, and of course it is taken straightly from Tarantino scripted NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994), directed by Oliver Stone. The montage in the violent scenes is very similar (but not nearly as effective) as in KILLERS and these two rip off things make MAD STYLIST even more difficult to like at all. Not only it is a very affected and inept on most levels, it also tries to look and be as "cool" and as "pulp" as possible. Not a very good film this time dear Hong Kong, but fortunately this kind of disasters are not too usual and plenty.