User Reviews

You've seen this one before. The beautiful Ellen Chan plays a fired police cadet who nonetheless gets hired by the department as an undercover officer to infiltrate the world of Fook Tin, a young, rich playboy, who happens to be involved in drug trafficking and possibly murder. In record time, she is living with him. Soon, she also doubts he is the bad person her colleagues are so sure about. Right off, this is a film for fans of Asian cult cinema, the brand of movie that has nudity, violence and, most of all, thin story lines. If you're interested in that genre, feel free to add two stars to this review. The subtitles are understandable but, at times, unintentionally funny (at an art gallery, someone asks if a painting is a Woho-presumably a Warhol). The film, however, has good pacing, its not very long, and had a fairly shocking scene or two, especially near the end, that made me wish to see this through to the end. Ellen Chan and Michael Wong, who plays Fook Tin, are pretty good together. So, its your decision. I think you should check it out, unless you abhor violence in film.

Ellen Chan plays Debbie, a rookie cop on her first undercover assignment. She is looking into links between a suave billionaire (Michael Wong of BEAST COPS fame) and the grisly murder of another undercover cop. She falls for the charming rich guy but may be taking on more than she can handle...

The DVD box promises sex and violence, and unlike many Category III films which only tease, this one delivers a full load of each, wrapped around an exciting romance between attractive leads. One major complaint is that Michael Wong, who has a great voice, is dubbed into Cantonese by an actor who does not. There was no English dub made - odd since Wong is an English speaking Chinese-American.

FATAL LOVE is a pretty generic thriller that barely deserves it's CAT III rating. Mediocre sex and violence, decent but un-eventful story-line, and a dull ending make this one a pass in my book.

The story concerns an undercover female cop who is investigating a rich businessman suspected of drug-dealing and murder. As she gets closer to her target, she begins to fall for him, but also learns that he may be a depraved sexual killer and has to weigh her feelings for him against who he "may" actually be.

The concept is decent, unfortunately FATAL LOVE just seems to fall short on every level. This could have been an interesting film...it just isn't. The performances are decent but nothing too memorable, and the end of the film feels more like an afterthought than a resolution. There is also a decent amount of sex but only one or two mediocre scenes of violence - pretty disappointing for this type of film. A pretty generous 5 out of 10 - there is far better CAT III fare out there...

Kin Lo's Fatal Love (1995) is from the later days of the infamous CAT III boom of Hong Kong cinema. Fatal Love stars Michael Wong and Ellen Chan in a tale in which a young female police (Chan) gets a dangerous job to hunt down a suspected killer rapist Wong who is also a well-liked business man with rather good looks. So he may or he may not be the sadistic killer that likes to do sick things to the innocent female victims of his..The film is a traditional mystery thriller with the elements that were the reason it was made for in the first place, the CAT III elements, that are graphic sex and violence.

The film is pretty effective at times as it has an atmospheric, as usually in these HK films, soundtrack that includes low and menacing sounds to make the imagery and forthcoming terror even more horrible and unpleasant. One can just remember the opening frames (and sounds) of Hermay Yau's harrowing The Untold Story (1993) to get a great example of this terror created through sound and also unique camera techniques. But overall Fatal Love is nothing special as a totally serious film as it is so commercial and gratuitous in its excesses.

The sex and nudity is plentiful as can be expected and the ending is definitely unforgettable, totally and severely mean spirited that makes it hard to justify an existence of a film like this. Something that could be expected only from Hong Kong exploitation cinema. The amount of violence and gore is not too high but it is strong and its spirit very wicked.

Fatal Love is still slightly more above the most braindead examples of the boom, like Ivan Lai's two Daughter of Darkness (1993 and 1994) films or the same director's Peeping Tom (1997) to name just a few. Fatal Love doesn't have the typical "humor" or unbalance, it is pretty calm serial killer mystery all the way without any need to throw in the usual "funny" and noisy guy that plays with food and tells sex jokes and so on. Fatal Love is only violent exploitation cinema with low artistic and cinematic merits but it still could be much worse. 2/10

Fatal Love does suffer from a rather generic Cat III storyline, and the first half of the film is frustratingly uneventful, but fans of the genre should be more than satisfied with the movie as a whole, the latter half providing plenty of sleaze and mean-spirited violence.

The gorgeous Ellen Chan stars as rookie cop Debbie Fung, who goes undercover to investigate a handsome millionaire businessman (Michael Wong) who is suspected of drug dealing and the murder of eight girls. Predictably, Debbie (posing as MaryAnne) falls for the dashing man, who declares his love for her, despite having rumbled her mission. Is Debbie's new beau as wonderful as he seems, or is there a cold, calculating psychopath behind the suave facade? Let's be honest, this wouldn't be much of a Cat III movie if there wasn't...

The charmer reveals his true colours (to the viewer, not Debbie) during a drug deal, repeatedly stabbing a criminal in the stomach before dragging the dead man's girlfriend into a garage to sexually assault her. Afterwards, he leaves one of his men to deal with the girl, the lackey stupidly letting her go free after she pleasures him orally. Later, the woman watches as several men, armed with baseball bats, ambush her assailant, but the revenge attack doesn't go as planned, the businessman dishing out more pain than he receives. After giving the gang a thorough beating, he calls up some of his men, and, in a scene that definitely justifies the Cat III rating, makes the woman pay for her mistake and then punishes the subordinate who let her live.

Having sorted out that problem, he returns his attention to Debbie, taking her hunting, during which she suffers an injury. In a romantic gesture, he carries her back to his home, tends to her wound and cooks her breakfast - and then has his way with her, a steamy scene in which Debbie and the psycho bump and grind their way through several pages of the Kama Sutra (with the central heating set too high, 'cos they sure get super sweaty in a hurry).

Debbie realises her severe lack of judgement when she wakes up tied to a chair and her new lover tells her that nothing excites him more than seeing someone you love die; the psycho then forces a cocktail of booze and pills down her neck, after which she froths at the mouth like a rabid dog and slips into a coma. In hospital, the barmy businessman acts distraught as Debbie flat-lines - an incredibly downbeat ending, even for a Cat III movie.

6.5/10. It's a slow start, but it delivers the goods in the end.