James Gunn, a well-known Hollywood director for Marvel series “Guardian of the Galaxy” and ” The Suicide Squad” is a fan of Hong Kong films too!
He joined ” 30 Days Films Challenge” and on day 16, it was about ” a film that is personal to you”, he picked a Hong Kong film ” Naked Killer” which was in theatre on 1992.
Day 16. In 1992 I saw Naked Killer in a theater on NYC’s Lower East Side. Director Clarence Fok’s category III Hong Kong film mixing genres, blood, action & sex in an anything-goes pastiche blew my mind. Chingmy Yau became my crush & Simon Yam the cool guy I wanted to be. pic.twitter.com/DC2YI8SurB
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 27, 2020
His tweet came with a caption : ” In 1992 I saw Naked Killer in a theater on NYC’s Lower East Side. Director Clarence Fok’s category III Hong Kong film mixing genres, blood, action & sex in an anything-goes pastiche blew my mind. Chingmy Yau became my crush & Simon Yam the cool guy I wanted to be.”
He also added Naked Killer set him off on an obsessive journey of collecting bootleg VHS tapes of HK movies not available in the States. Within 2 years he owned hundreds of them and studied them backwards and forwards.
Those Hong Kong films opened him up to filmmaking & storytelling completely outside the art film, grindhouse & American cinema he was familiar with and eventually to other Asian cinema as well. Neither Guardians of the Galaxy nor The Suicide Squad could exist in their current forms today without them.
He said although not a classic by many standards, but it’s an incredibly personal film for him.
Source : Twitter | China Press