Absolutely Fantastic

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

I'm so used to low budget Hong Kong movies from the 70's being chopsocky martial arts flicks, that I was very surprised with how Breakout From Oppression panned out. As opposed to being an action film, this one is in fact quite clearly a horror-thriller. The story centres on a girl who is released from prison after serving time for a serious crime. On release, she is given a job at a newspaper. She starts a relationship with her new boss which leads to jealousies from a couple of her female colleagues, one of which turns out to be more than a little bit psychopathic.While I would never claim this film was especially good – it's really no more than mediocre – it did make for a very welcome change to see a non-martial arts Hong Kong flick from this era. The story is quite functional but there are moments of interest sprinkled along the way such as a crazed woman with a knife, a man imprisoned in the basement of a house, another man beaten to death by a wrench, a spring roll laced with broken glass being fed to a child, a bar of soap replete with razor blades and that old staple – the push bike with no brakes! The complex events eventually come together and climax in a demented finale on a beach, which includes a cat fight and a beheading. So, there is certainly a reasonable amount going on in this one, so even though it isn't executed especially well, it does benefit from going down a psychological route as opposed to another Hong Kong flick about people kicking and punching each other.

Fonda Chiu (Fonda Lynn) is released from prison and goes to work right away for a newspaper with no experience. The reason she was in prison is revealed later and ties into the characters. She works with Sheena (Lona Chang) a crazy 17 year old who is jealous of Fonda's relationship with Simon (Alan Tam).The film was poorly dubbed. The story line was simplistic and not very entertaining. Available unrestored on a 50 DVD pack.Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

Sha chu chong wei translates to 'Breakout from Oppression' in English. It is an action-horror film from Hong Kong. This is not a film that is overrun with martial arts as the poster shows. It's actually a fairly creepy psycho slasher film to my surprise.I got this film in the Mill Creek Drive-in 50-pack. I didn't think much of the movie when I first started watching the film but I found the film to be "ok"... not a terrible horror film. It's not great but it is surprisingly watchable - pretty good.It's got a strange but groovy 1970s soundtrack. Some oddball scenes. An overall eeriness once you get into the story good and one crazy psycho jealous woman that is killing people slasher style.The movie does have entertainment value for horror fans. It is a surprisingly fairly interesting film.5/10

Fresh from an eight-year prison stint after falsely being convicted of the the murder of her married lover, Fonda Chiu (Fonda Lynn) gets a new job as assistant editor of a newspaper, moves into a nice house in the country and tries to have a fresh start, vowing to keep her criminal background a secret. Everything's looking up for her socially, professionally and romantically, as she's making new friends, doing well at her job and begins dating her nice and understanding boss Simon (Alan Tam). Unfortunately, Fonda has also attracted the attention of a vengeful psycho who goes out of their way to make her life a living hell. Said nutjob is a jealous 17-year-old psycho-bitch named Sheena (Lona Chang), who works for the same newspaper as a secretary, victimizes her wheelchair-bound granny and tortures a male prisoner (the missing newspaper president) in the cellar of her home! Sheena also twists the head off her doll, kills animals (including chopping off chicken heads and hanging Fonda's pet monkey), tries to seduce Fonda's new man, beats someone to death with a flashlight, beats another guy over the head with a wrench, stabs a guy to death with a butcher knife and feeds a child a spring roll laced with broken glass! To make matters worse she's clever enough to implicate Fonda for her crimes, turning friends and coworkers against her.The version I saw was the one released on one of those 50 movie packs by Mill Creek Entertainment. The dubbing is pretty awful and the picture quality is equally bad, as they used a flat-looking, washed-out VHS-level print. However, the story itself is entertaining enough to make this worth watching regardless. It's also very fast-paced and seldom drags. The weaving of the current storyline with flashbacks is confusing at first, but the film adequately ties up all the loose ends by the end and is done with some competence. In other words, it all starts to makes sense if you hang in there long enough. The film also boasts quite a few entertainingly weird moments, such as when a shrieking monkey appears out of nowhere or when Fonda and a photographer (Jacky Lim) visit a crime scene and are suddenly attacked by some random madwoman with a butcher knife.Perhaps the most startling thing about this film is that if it were indeed made in 1978 then a very famous slasher movie completely ripped off the ending and hasn't been called on it. Ever heard of Friday THE 13TH? Here we get the female lead vs. the psycho on a beach. There's an overturned canoe nearby. They fight with oars. The psycho gets on top of our heroine and starts beating her head into the ground, and finally the leading lady grabs a machete off the ground, runs up to the psycho and chops her head off. The shots, editing and even use of slow-motion are completely identical and Fonda is even seen floating in a canoe the next morning when the police arrive! If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the year for this film is incorrectly listed here. I even think I heard snippets of Pino Donaggio's DRESSED TO KILL (1980) score being used, so this film was likely made sometime in the early 80s as opposed to 1978.