Overlooked Cat III gems

[pjshimmer]

What are some underrated Cat III movies that are actually quite good, in terms of content? And by that, I don't mean the Cat III content, but the overall content.

Two titles that I thought were good are:

-Devil Angel (Taiwan, 1995)

-Perfect Education 3 (Japan/HK? 2003)

Do you have any recommendations?

[Brian Thibodeau]

A couple for now:

TWIST (1995), with Simon Yam and Danny Lee. One of the better slick crime thrillers Danny Lee was churning out in those days. Plenty of good reasons for the Cat. III rating beyond nudity.

FATAL PASSION (1990) Quoting from last year's digital rummage thread (after much digging)

. . . I finally watched the Category III thriller FATAL PASSION a couple days back. What an awesome movie! It's a total rip on FATAL ATTRACTION, but imagine if Glenn Close's character had a crazed, jealous assassin for a boyfriend! That's Alex Man in this flick. Nancy Chang plays the Close character, but since this is a Hong Kong flick and the damaged relationship between the hero (Eddie Cheung) and his mousy, far-too-forgiving wife (Cher Yeung) therefore can't be left with a question mark hanging over it the way it was in the American film, Nancy Chang gets iced about two-thirds in so Alex can go nuts with a cunning abandon. This has to be one of the few movies where a character who's completely on fire is able to get in a car and drive it at another character! Take that, Johnny Blaze!

[mrblue]

Here's a couple:

Doctor Vampire - a nice variation on the "ghost/vampire busting" genre that mixes in supernatural elements from both the east and west.

A Day Without Policemen - Simon Yam plays a cop trying to protect a small island's residents from a group of Mainland criminals.

Sentenced to Hang - the first movie to get a Cat III rating, it tells the "true" story of the last people to get the death sentence in HK.

The Runaway Pistol - drama that focuses on how one gun changes various peoples' lives.

Lethal Angels - recent low-budget attempt to resurrect the girls-with-guns genre.

There's a bunch more I could post -- the Cat III rating often gets put on movies for minor infractions, they're often not the sex/blood fests you might expect -- but I'm at work right now :b

[Brian Thibodeau]

Lethal Angels - recent low-budget attempt to resurrect the girls-with-guns genre.

This one's actually rated IIB, though some DVD sleeves misleadingly featured a Cat. III triangle, perhaps to boost sales? Certainly wasn't anything in the film that would garner the rating.