Passionate Killing in the Dream was made in 1992 when the biggest Category 3 (the equivalent for X rating and NC-17 in USA) boom was at its greatest and all kinds of ultra violent and erotic "oriental nasties" were made. There are many masterpieces, like Billy Tang's incredible Run and Kill and Herman Yau's unmatchable The Untold Story among many others. Category 3 pictures at their worst had/have nothing more to offer than mere violence and sex, but the greatest efforts are important (even though almost unbearably hard to take) classics which have many things bubbling under their surface. Passionate Killing in the Dream is not too great but it's not bad either. It is not too violent for mainstream and Western audiences and I think that the highest certificate/age limit was given only due to the nudity in this picture.
Passionate Killing in the Dream stars Japanese beauty and multi talent (actress, stunts, martial arts, etc..!) Michiko Nishiwaki as an artist and photographer who begins to see horrific nightmares and brutal murders taking place in those nightmares. Soon she discovers that those murders in her dreams actually happen in real life very soon after she's had the dream. With a help of a psychologist and police, she begins trying to solve the case and trap the murderer.
There is nothing extremely remarkable in this film, even though couple of scenes are well made and effective, and reminded me a little bit of Argento's work. There are many fight scenes in this films, which actually don't fit very well in this kind of horror oriented thrillers, but after all, we're talking about Hong Kong's extraordinary cinema in which everything is possible no matter what genre we're talking about. The music in this film is great and adds to the atmosphere and is sometimes pretty close to the great Goblin's music in Luigi Cozzi's classic Contaminazione and Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but one has to be pretty familiar with the music in these mentioned films in order to notice the similarities.
So this is not as intense and special as it could have been but worth watching for HK fanatics. The main star, Michiko Nishiwaki, is great and charming actress to watch and she has made stunts work in many mainstream hits like Rush Hour 2, Blade and The Scorpion King. The other actors in this film are OK but the psycho is nothing compared to the REAL psychos in HK cinema like Simon Yam and Anthony Wong.
Well, I think my expectations were little too high as I (once again) expected this to be very intense and disturbing horror thriller experience from the never equalled Hong Kong cinema. There are much greater Hong Kong films but also much much worse.
5/10
