TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH

Well I’ve finally seen TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH,(Daehakno-yeseo maechoon-hadaka tomaksalhae danghan yeogosaeng ajik Daehakno-ye Issda)life is nearly complete, yet not entirely satisfied.

All I knew about this film from Korea was that it was about a teenage hooker dressed like a Sailor Moon Fetish doll that fucks for money, ends up doing her teacher who cuts her up into pieces… Someone sews her together again and programs her to become the ultimate killing machine. There was supposed to be hardcore gore and very very real nudity. It had all the makings of the GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, but then I saw it.

Early this morning I received a knock at my front door here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I open it to find a hopping hand sewn to a foot at the door signing happily to see me… It was.. CARTUNA!!! He apparently has escaped some Penal Colony to come see this private screening of TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH. He began signing in American Sign Language quickly at me, but with a Canuck accent… very odd, every sentence ended in the sign language for "Let’s throw back a beer!" symbol. Anyway he was hoppingly excited to see TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH. Oh man… So was I!

The film was made in 2000, but I still hadn’t seen it, ever since those reviews from Seattle I’ve been dying. Then when my Doppelganger saw it a couple of nights ago at its regular Atlantic Film Festival screening, pure unadulterated jealousy racked through my bloated carcass… MUST SEE FILM!

It had all the earmarks of a great cult film. A movie of certain brilliance.

We entered the screening room which resulted in air vapor radiating from our skin… Our body temperature was so much warmer than the air in this deep freeze of a room, that we steamed like shit on a North Texas pasture in January. Once our limbs went numb the movie started.

What a disappointment!

Ok, sure maybe my expectations were too high… Sure it had all the elements that my second paragraph describes, but what wasted potential. It shamelessly rip-offs directly scenes from LA FEMME NIKITA and attempts to spoof that film, while sacrificing the only potential brilliance of its own concept for the cheap and easy way. Because of the Besson references all I could think of, is what this exact movie would be like if directed by Besson with Natalie Portman in the role. DEAR GOD THE MIND REELS…

In fact watching this sort of half-assed style over substance hour long music video, all it does is make you hunger for the material to be done right. You’ll stare at the screen and imagine what folks like Peter Jackson or Quentin Tarantino or Luc Besson or hell… Even Roger Corman or any of the directors that worked for him would have or could have done with the same premise.

Now you do have some shocking images, but the film is so badly put together that it makes nearly no sense when you find yourself at a blown out teenage belly with an umbilical cord with a floating fetus at one end in a bathroom… suddenly flashing to a bad guy and his two effeminate mates in a swing while the girl in the vision is laying naked on an electrical bed. Now ordinarily this would not faze me as wrong except that it was handled just terribly.

A lot of my problems could be one of those cultural things… where it is just the difference between Western story-telling and that of South Korea, but the film had such desires in terms of exploitation, but the production just couldn’t live up to it. Director/Writer/Producer Gee-Woong Nam has made a film with all the desire to be a COFFY or SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, but none of the actual ability to deliver upon that. Is it painful to watch? Not really, just boring and long… and it is only 60 minutes long, but it still feels long. That’s a major problem.

How hot is the girl playing the Teenage Hooker? Well So-Yun Lee is very hot, but there is really no character there and the over-saturation and bleeding of colors ruins what performance is there and distorts the nudity that is shown. The teacher by Dae-tong Kim is just a freak show of terrible acting and is that makeup he’s wearing or what the hell is wrong with that face? I don’t know, but it is just strange.

There is some fun stuff here, but ultimately it was built up to be a better more complete work of exploitation for me. Check it out, it does have some fun in it, but don’t expect much, then you may get more than you bargain for, but go in expecting the moon and you’ll come out like me… disappointed and let down. You have been warned, I wish I had been…