THE ACTRESS WHO BECAME AN ADULT FILM SENSATION
Chingmy Yau’s transition to Category III star in trashy features such as ‘Raped by an Angel’ and ‘Naked Killer’ shocked the city in the 1990s
A ubiquitous face in the 1990s, actress Chingmy Yau Suk-ching was initially known for supporting roles in mainstream films such as crime drama Lee Rock and the Stephen Chow Sing-chi costume comedy Royal Tramp.
But in 1992 she shocked everyone by starring in the Category III exploitation film Naked Killer,a potent mix of lesbianism, gross violence and crude humour.
Subway posters of a halfnaked Yau posing with an ammunition belt and pistol caught the attention of Hong Kong viewers and helped take Naked Killer, produced by lowbrow producer Wong Jing, international.
The film – and the posters, which are still revered by cult film fans – fired up the “Deadly China Dolls” perception of Hong Kong cinema that has always dogged the city’s film industry abroad.
The Post was as confused by Yau’s transition from respectable actress to Category III star as everybody else.
“Has Chingmy Yau forsaken Chinese costume films for throwing off her clothes in Category III teasers?” said Post writer Brendan Delfino in an article titled “The naked truth about Chingmy”.
“No, no,” countered Yau in an interview, “I’m not heading in the Category III direction. I’m just moving into different areas of acting. I’m not going to limit myself to making the same movies again and again. I’m trying different, more varied roles.
“Even though it’s a Category III film, little of me is seen in the sexy scenes.”
Yau actually did show quite a lot in the film’s “sexy scenes” – although she never showed everything in any of her Category III films.
“The trouble with a lot of sex and violence films is that there’s usually not enough of either,” wrote Rick Baker and Toby Russell in The Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies, which has a section devoted to Category III films. “However, that’s a dilemma that Naked Killer remedies with a vengeance.”
The sex scenes, some of which were trimmed for the international release, are soft porn, and a much-discussed “highlight” of the film is when one of the characters mistakes a dismembered penis for a hot-dog sausage.
Yau’s unrestrained performance quickly saw her become a sex symbol in Hong Kong, and she went on to make more Category III exploitation films like the tawdry and unsavoury Raped by an Angel. This nasty little film was billed as a sequel to Naked Killer even though the story bore little relation to it.
Category III films, which at the time generally mixed soft-core sex, extreme violence, gore and crude humour, were still relatively new in 1992, as the rating had only come into existence in 1988, but the genre was booming.
Along with the voluptuous Amy Yip Chi-mei, Hong Kong’s first modern sex symbol, and Veronica Yip Yuk-hing, the first Hong Kong actress to appear fully nude on screen, Yau become one of the genre’s top stars.
An alleged romantic affair with prolific super-producer Wong Jing, who made a mint by dabbling in all styles of trashy films, led to suggestions that Yau had no trouble snagging such roles.
Wong sometimes appeared in Yau’s films as an actor, and reportedly protected her, ensuring there were strategically placed props to make sure she wasn’t fully exposed to the cameras.
Yau’s Category III reputation did not hurt her career – in fact, it jump-started it, although she didn’t win a female following like Veronica Yip did when she went mainstream.
Yau was in many nonCategory III films, such as Jackie Chan’s City Hunter and the “trendy triad” film Young and Dangerous 2, and became one of Hong Kong’s most recognisable actresses.
She was even nominated for a best actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1996, for the romantic comedy I’m Your Birthday Cake, although she lost to the eminent Josephine Siao Fong-fong.
But filmmakers were always keen to capitalise on her looks, even for mainstream films. In an interview in 1996, the Post noted that in the promotional posters for her films, she often appeared in “suggestive or even semi-nude poses”, even if such scenes did not appear in the actual film.
The star was upfront about the reason: “I may look very sexy in some promotional posters, but from a commercial viewpoint, the purpose of that is to attract people’s attention. The image may have nothing to do with the plot. Commercial films have to sell.”
Yau, who said she had always liked to “show off”, started working as a model when she was at school and continued after she left. She appeared in around 100 adverts, publicising everything from food to cosmetics.
When the ad work dried up, she entered the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant and reached the finals. She dropped out before the competition ended and started working in the film industry.
“Even though Yau has been in a lot of iconic Hong Kong films she was almost never the lead in any of them,” cultural commentator and Post contributor Ben Sin said.
“But she was in so many Hong Kong movies during the industry’s peak times, she became one of the most well-known faces of that era. Anyone who watched Hong Kong movies during the 1990s would instantly recognise her.”
Yau did manage to achieve top billing in her last film, Stanley Kwan Kam-pang’s 1998 art-house drama Hold You Tight. She essayed a dual role with ease, and garnered a well-deserved Hong Kong Film Awards nomination.
Absent from the media for a long time, she recently received some press attention thanks to her youthful looks at age 54.
In this feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.