Teenage Hooker became a Killing Machine

Third Window Films

Web: http://www.thirdwindowfilms.com

R2 DVD

Teenage Hooker became a Killing Machine is a strange, perverse, bizarre yet enthralling experience. It is obviously an underground low budget film produced on digital video, yet overcomes its origins with a superb soundtrack, surreal scenes and an innovative and creative film style.

It begins with some ten minutes of credits which is a bit strange, you would expect these at the end of the film and by the end of them you are desperately waiting for action and that is what you get. A teenage hooker goes to high school by day and sells herself on the back streets of Seoul by night, her specialty is “voluntary date rape” (no political correctness here !). After one such experience, she is confronted by one of her teachers whose grandmother has been ranting and railing as the hookers sexual trysts have been waking her up at night. He is a sinister man with bad skin, a twisted demonic face and a rather maniacal laugh. He offers to overlook the annoyance of her behaviour so long as he can have a "50 grand special", they then dance in the street and follow each other on bicycles through the park.

After a hot scene of lovemaking, she declares, in her own way, that she loves him and is pregnant!! She says that while she has been charging her ethics and biology teachers for sex and even her stepdad, she must love him as she has always given him freebies !

However, it seems he has something less than loving in store for her. While she is asleep she dreams she is shot and her baby is blasting out into the air, a gory and bloody nightmare to say the least. When she awakens, there are three strange men with him in the room and together they cut her into pieces. All these scenes are accompanied with superb music, including some quite beautiful operatic tracks, which gives the film a truly surreal feel.

She is then put back together (symbolized by a quirky scene with a strange old lady on a sewing machine) and she becomes a robotic killing machine.

As the gore and bodies mount, the film becomes more and more surreal. The climax is especially amazing, she, in true Frankenstein style, confronts her creator. At first she cannot shoot him as she is “programmed to follow his commands”, but as his wife enters and advises that he has been promoted to principal of the School, she breaks his control. It is said “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned” and she blows his genitals off from a special gun which was created in place of her vagina. In true gender reversal, she then places her genital gun in his mouth and blows his brains out !

This is a truly weird horror experience; it creates a superb mood through creative filming and an unusual soundtrack. The violence and gore are not as extreme as they first seem, it is more that the use of strange angles, editing, music and surreal touches create a textured mood so the imagination can kick in and fill the gaps. It has a dark, vicious and sarcastic sense of humour and at times seems like a mixture of Robocop and I spit on your grave with some comedy to boot !

I greatly enjoyed this strange film and I am sure that many horror buffs looking for something truly unusual will find it a underappreciated piece of South Korean cinema.