Wild About HK Cat III's Part 1

 

• They're hard as hell to find in most cases. 
• When you do, the visual quality is usually less than average... at best. 
• The English subtitles, if even available, are often laughably translated.
• The most recent of them are over 10 years old.

And yet, I can't get enough of these gems. 

Recently, I have become a total addict for HK (As in Hong Kong)"Cat III" movies. "Cat III" is the Asian version of our NC-17... sort of. Depends on whether your talking sex or violence. Sex-wise, well... let's put it this way, a tame, a very tame, Skinamax flick would easily garner a Cat III rating. I'm not kidding. It's that restrictive, so if you see a Cat III-rated flick and it's just a sex romp, prepare to be underwhelmed. You have been warned. 

Violence-wise though, we are at the polar opposite end of the spectrum. Many of these movies are intensely violent, and often go into areas that even the harshest American films generally consider off limits and taboo. Politically Correct BS such as rape and child brutality.

Let's start with rape. I find it beyond ironic, as well as ridiculous, that in American films you can and will see women get harshly brutalized, savagely killed, and/or tortured to the extreme, on screen, but almost never will you see a female raped on screen. In the rare cases you do, it's usually presented as some Lifetime channel, super serious, can-this-woman-ever-possibly-recover-without-therapy plot device.

Asian film makers usually treat it as just another mundane criminal act, many times in a humorous vein! 

Now understand, I'm not downplaying rape as an intensely violent act, nor am I necessarily advocating it as a plot device. But let's be realistic here, even psycho killer dudes are still guys, and guys, well, they do love the `tang, right?

Even granting the occasional uber-nut who's all about the blood-n-guts and not the muffin, how realistic is it that in virtually all slasher/torture films, nubile hotties are systematically slaughtered and/or tortured, but never sexually assaulted?  

That's no issue in HK Cat III's. If you're a babe in one of these movies, it's just about a given you are going to be sexually assaulted, or at least, attempted sexual assault. Yes, there's still bloody murder and mayhem, but rape is simply a significant part of the process, which if quite logical if you think about it.

The other part is the violence against kids. At first this stuff threw even me a curve, because I just wasn't used to seeing such things on screen. It's not as common as sexual assault, thanks goodness, but it's there enough to make you go "whoa!" a few times. Films like "The Untold Story (1993)", "The Underground Banker (1993)", and "Run and Kill (1993)" (Man, that was a bad year for kids in HK Cat III's wasn't it?) pull no punches. I mean, none.

But, harsh as it is, non-PC material like that is part of what makes these flicks so cool. They'll go anywhere, anytime. And, if all that doesn't throw you off, then keep an eye out for the humor. Is it actually funny? Not really, but the fun part is that Asians will mix this very odd humor right in with the most horrific violence imaginable. Not just some of the time either. It's very much a staple of many HK Cat III films.

So, what makes a HK Cat III? Well, there's no set timetable, but their heyday was from the early 80's to the early part of this decade.

There are lists but remember, many of these are simple sex romps and those aren't really the ones I'm referring to here.

Next post on this I'll give you some of my faves in this genre.

Rant of The Day: Plagiarism & Other Stuff

It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I run across a site, usually a forum, where I'll see one of my stories posted. Not a huge deal, especially if the poster gives me credit, or at the very least, openly identifies the fact that they weren't the author. If they fail to do so, I tend to get a bit red-assed about it, and will openly call out the poster, who, usually, apologizes profusely, blah, blah, I forgive and life goes on.

That brings me to the incident at hand: I visited the TUGS website. Lo and behold I see the beginning first chapter or so of ABK 1 posted under the heading of "Kid Magician".

This time, the poster ignored my attempts to communicate, and so I contacted the site moderator. Pause here to make a point: My opinion is, if you post someone else's story and you don't specify that you aren't the author, that's basically the same thing as claiming it as your own. Others may disagree, but that's my opinion.

So anyway, I PM the mod, a person (I'm assuming it's a dude) named Zanev. He's polite about it, but says that he has no proof that I'm the original author, and would need proof, such as a copyright (!!??!) in order to remove the posts.

Well, first of all, my feelings were a little hurt, `cause I thought everyone in the DiD community knew who The Greyman was, but putting that aside, I was rather taken aback because I'd never had anyone question my word on something like this. In addition, logically, what sense would it make for me to claim a story as my own when it wasn't?

Well, as of this writing he hasn't removed the posts, but he did leave up my post setting things straight so I guess that'll have to do, but I decided to go ahead and re-post ABK. All of it, and in case anyone forgot that bad boy is 25 chapters long, and I don't write small chapters, so it's a big deal.

Coupla other things...

• I just don't get into the Olympics. Never have. I'll watch a little basketball... maybe... but that's about it. Since the original "Dream Team", which I did watch a lot of, I bet I haven't watched 10 minutes of coverage total.
  

• Want to give a shoutout to a named "Doc" who's THE poster of DiD vids on YouTube. This guy rocks, almost always getting the newest foreign stuff up in good quality. Problem is, damned YouTube keeps screwing with him, canceling his accounts and/or putting him on "probation", and he's getting tired of fighting the fight. That, plus not as many people are putting up new stuff too, and it's wearing him down. Let me ask that you guys go online and give the man some encouragement so he'll keep on posting.