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Paul Fonoroff

HOLY WEAPON and RAPED BY AN ANGEL.

ANY student of trends in Hongkong cinema need look no further than the oeuvre of Wong Jing, not only the territory's most prolific producerdirector-writer but one who has perfected the art of finding the lowest common denominator in any genre.

The first quarter of 1993 saw the release of such Wong productions as a Jackie Chan action comedy (City Hunter ), a Chiau Sing-chi farce (Fight Back to School III ), an Aaron Kwok fantasy romance (Millionaire Cop ), and a Jet Li martial arts picture (Last Hero in China ).

Wong tackles two more popular trends this month in films which thematically have nothing in common, but taken together illustrate the stagnant state of the movie scene in the pre-summer doldrums.

Costume martial arts epics have been a dominant trend for the past year, and the market has been so flooded with look-alike pictures that their box office value has dropped considerably. A sub-genre, the all-star, comedy costume farce, is growing equallystale.

  Holy Weapon (on Regal circuit), following in the footsteps of this year's Eagle Shooting Heroes: Dong Cheng Xi Jiu, All's Well Ends Well Too, and the Wong-scripted Flying Dagger, provides further evidence on how formulised this kind of film has become.

  The recipe: gather some of Hongkong's biggest stars, dress them up like martial arts heroes of yesteryear, and spoof some of the conventions of old Cantonese movies.

 Not a bad formula, but in Holy Weapon the whole exercise seems like one of those ''paint by numbers'' kits, the script lacking any underlying motivation other than to follow a popular trend.

 The Chinese title, Seven Princesses of Martial Arts, is a reference to the seven young teen idols of Cantonese movies in the 1960s. Holy Weapon begins promisingly, with a credit sequence that cleverly spoofs old-time movie openings.

But the film-makers fail to follow through on these elements of nostalgic satire, turning the film into a grab bag of styles and jokes that has little to do with teen idols, Cantonese classics - or anything, for that matter.

The princesses fight the forces of evil, represented chiefly by Simon Yam Tat-wah as an over-the-top villain - as distinguished from his over-the-top triad leader in this week's other new film.

     They are searching for the secret of the all-powerful ''virgin sword'', a feat requiring seven women to band together. The premise seems tailor-made for an ensemble piece, but the unevenness of the script - or, more likely, the difficulty of arranging all the stars on the set at the same time - means there is little feeling of a group of ladies uniting to attain a goal.

    The cast includes three of Hongkong's most prominent actresses: Do Do Cheng Yue-ling, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Michelle Yeoh (Yeung Chi-king). But they are not seen to their best advantage.

  The juiciest role goes to comedienne Sandra Ng Kwun-yue in a variation of her trademark loudmouthed shrew. Her character is called Yam Kim-fai, named after the late Cantonese female superstar who specialised in male roles.

The most intriguing aspect of Holy Weapon is its gender-benders: the mustachioed Yam turning into a ''real'' woman; the buffoon played by Dicky Cheung Wai-kin undergoing a drug-induced sex change; Yeoh spending half the movie masquerading as a man.

 But rather than providing a humorous reflection on what is a tradition of Chinese stage and screen, Holy Weapon never uses these components for much more than cheap sex gags.

THERE is plenty of cheap sex on view in Raped By an Angel (on Empire circuit), directed by Lau Wai-keung. This is billed as a follow up to last year's Naked Killer but has little in common with its predecessor, other than some category III sex scenes anda generally puerile depiction of adult relationships.

  The film has gone through several Chinese title changes. Legal Rape was shot down by the censors, as was Super Rape. The final title is simply Rape - as good a description as any for this tawdry tale of a handsome lawyer (Mark Cheng Ho-nam) who victimises young women and manages to get away with it. That is, until he tangles with law student-model Chingmy Yau Suk-ching and her triad boyfriend Simon Yam.

Actually, the courtship scenes between Yam and Yau are quite amusing. There is a lot of tongue-in-check humour when the gangster announces he is in the movie business. ''Nowadays, a gang leader has to have a movie company if he wants respect.'' But far from being a light comedy, Raped By an Angel is another in the spate of sexploitation pictures. The movie's message is ostensibly ''rape is bad'', but any moral is belied by the titillating treatment of forcible sex.

  The newspaper advertisements proclaim Mark Cheng's performance as bolder than Tony Leung Ka-fai's in The Lover. True, he bares all, but Marguerite Duras need not worry about plagiarism.

 If the picture has a socially redeeming aspect, it is ironically in its promotion of safe sex. The rapist makes a point of using a condom every time he attacks, except the one time he is tricked into raping a woman who has AIDS.

   All of this is depicted in such a sensationalistic manner that, unlike its anti-hero and his victims, Raped By an Angel is sure to enjoy a healthy life on Hongkong screens.



Wong's new weapons fire well-used bullets