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In addition to slick production values and unbelievable violence, which are common enough in Hong Kong action movies, Naked Killer rates off the scale on the old sleaze-o-meter. In it ingenue Chingmy Yau is recruited into a cabal of female assassins after she wipes out the office where her father's murderer works. This cabal exclusively kills men who "have it coming." Their enemies are another set of female assassins who kill the same targets but are lesbians to boot. Simon Yam plays the cop on the trail of the killers. He killed his brother in a shootout before the action begins, so now he throws up at the sight of a gun and is impotent.

There are obviously undercurrents of profound unease here. The number of scenes in which male genitalia are attacked is pretty high (including one scene in which a victim's testicles are discovered on top of a curtain rod) and the number of impotent characters forms an obvious motif. I've seen it argued that this is an expression of impotence and revulsion in the face of the communist take-over of Hong Kong, but somehow that doesn't wash. I think this is more a response to women. This is a deeply misogynistic movie in which strong women are treated simultaneously as sex-objects and castrating lesbians. This misogyny is striking and detatched in the best (or worst?) tradititions of exploitation filmmaking. It certainly keeps one's attention.