Shing Fui-On is one of those character actors you see time and again in mostly the same kind of roles. He is a big, quite ugly looking guy and is cast often as a violent thug or as bumbling thug or as any other kind of thug. His latest role was in the Pang Brothers flick THE DETECTIVE (maybe I'll write about that one later on, but it didn't impress me so much), but he is more than 30 years in the business, and has appeared in a lot of trash and some classics. A BETTER TOMORROW II, TIGER ON THE BEAT, PRISON ON FIRE and THE KILLER are the most illustrious entries on his filmography, but BLUE JEAN MONSTER is, well, different.
Firstly Shing plays the lead and a good guy in this one – well, sort of, at least. He is Tsu Hsiang, a cop, devoted husband and expecting father. Being played by Shing, he also is quite violent, when he hunts criminals. While pursuing a very dangerous group of bank robbers, he is killed, but that isn't the end of him. With the help of a cat, a lot of electricity and the wild imagination of the script writer, he comes back to life. Or better said: to the Frankenstein kind of pseudo-life. Tsu now has only two goals: stay alive long enough to see his child and punish the evil gangsters who killed him.
Hm, so it is a straight horror thriller with a monster on the rampage, right? Wrong! Sure, there are a lot of bloody killings (mostly not by Shing), but this is mainly a comedy. Tsus wife (Pauline Wong) gets the wrong idea about his behavior and thinks, he became guy, while his crippled young sidekick and his cutie pie girl friend (Gloria Yip) are convinced, he is a ghost and try to exorcise him. Crazy hi-jinx occur, including a cameo by Amy Yip and her two biggest assets, a lot of bad puns, offensive jokes about sexuality and handicapped people, wild plot shifts and explosive stunts.
Exploitation to the max, this a quintessential movie to understand, what made Hong Kong movies so unique and enjoyable in the late Eighties and early Nineties. There is no clear distinction between comedies, dramas, action thrillers and horror movies. Just throw everything into the blender and don't forget to add the kitchen sink! Sorry to offer an old cliché, but BLUE JEAN MONSTER is really a roller coaster ride of a movie. Never a dull moment and a lot of fun to watch. And (sorry: another corny phrase) sadly they don't make 'em like this any more. And that's a shame!
