Not to be confused with Bloody Friday a.k.a. The
Single Girls a.k.a. Private School (1974 / trailer)
or Bloody Friday a.k.a. Blutiger Friday (1972 / trailer). The trailer to this Hong Kong flick here in question is not currently available online,
but for that the film itself is easy to find at YouTube.
(Spoilers.)
Friday Killer, the German title of this obscure Asian police "thriller", is
actually more appropriate than the common English-language title, Bloody Friday, as the flick is not
about some Friday that turns out to be exceptionally bloody but, rather, tells
the tale of a motorcycle-riding serial killer who strikes every Friday night.
The killer starts off by doing away with working women of the night, but after
killing an undercover policewoman the motorcyclist graduates to women in
general, including (the only victim the viewer never sees) the female director
of a Catholic girls school where some of the virtuous young girls might
actually earn their pocket money by working the streets after school hours. (A
mostly extraneous point suggested but never followed up in the movie.)
Opening with a lone woman terrorized and chased
through the narrow streets of deserted Hong Kong — are the streets of Hong Kong
ever truly as empty as those in this film? On a Friday? — before she gets
knocked upside the head with a pole and left for dead. (Which she is.) Then we
meet the free-spirited Maggie (Loletta Lee a.k.a. Rachel Lee, pictured above
from a different film, of Heiße Katzen
in der grünen Hölle / Angels with
Golden Guns (1981/ trailer],
Hoi sam gwai / The Happy Ghost [1984 / trailer], Geung see suk suk / Mr Vampire IV [1988 / trailer], Yin yue jiang shi / The Musical Vampire [1992/ trailer] and Chat ho chai goon / Nightmares in Precinct 7 [2001/ trailer]), who comes
across less as free-spirited hooker than simply bat-shit crazy. Subtlety of
characterization does not raise its head in Ms. Lee's thespian endeavors in
this movie; indeed, if the acting in Hong Kong films in general tends towards
the theatrical, her performance tends towards terribly theatrical (emphasis on
terribly).
The motorcyclist killer — Oh! Spoiler! – killers
have nerves of steel and an ability for gravity-defying motorcycle driving that
puts even Tom Cruise (see: Mission
Impossible II [2000 / trailer])
to shame – as does Ko, actually, but he's just less-skilled enough that it
makes a difference. The person on the bike also has an amazing ability to see
all things in advance: he escapes Ko in the first big chase because of all
sorts of hilarious traps clearly set up in advance to stop anyone from chasing
him. Also, the killer obviously sits and waits far in advance of his killings,
as proven by scenes like when the cyclist suddenly pops out from behind a wall
of boxes inside a truck or sets up a trap in the middle of the street to trick
Ko and Maggie. (Which leads up to a fight in a warehouse full of empty boxes
that, in turn, resolves in such a way that one suddenly realizes that the film
might not end to the advantage of the vain and cocky lead.)
The cops in Friday
Killer are pretty much all idiots. Mostly hotheaded or incompetent, they
are always surprised and overwhelmed when the killer shows up, sort of like
Asian Keystone Cops with guns and kung-fu fighting skills. None of them ever
seem to follow basic police procedure or conduct any real investigative work, as
almost no clue is logically pursued. And while it seems easy enough to organize
stuff like 100 plainclothes on the street and 80 sharpshooters on the roofs up
above, none of them ever calls for backup when they should, even if they still
have their cell phone in their hand. Invariably, they also always wait way too
long to draw guns — indeed, Ken waits so long to draw his that it could be
argued that he is more responsible for the death of his girlfriend than Ko.
As insinuated earlier, the resolution of Bloody Friday is startlingly bleak,
enough so that it almost redeems the movie. Up until a few minutes before the
final showdown, one really has a hard time digesting that the film is obviously
indeed going for a downer ending. And what a downer, indeed.
Nevertheless, on the whole the movie remains what
it is: a mildly interesting and intermittently enthralling ridiculously plotted
slice of Hong Kong product with mostly well-staged but barely plausible set
pieces, a typically outdated view of manliness and women, an unlikable and
inflated hero that is hard to find much sympathy for (at least until the final
scenes), and some truly bad acting — really, Lee's live-for-the-day turn as Maggie
is beyond annoying, although one does begin to like her as a person towards the
end when she ratchets down her performance and shows some believable
characterization.
The final revealed motivation(s) of the killer(s)
are, of course, the stuff of movies and defy any and all believability. Indeed,
one motive involves a revenge-seeking, previously law-abiding person to suddenly
do a 180% turn and resort to multiple murders (including an innocent coworker)
just to get revenge, while the other motive, well, we're still trying to figure
that one out.
Verdict: better than nothing, but don't bother to
search this one out. You might be better off and have more fun with a Drunken
Friday… Or a Stoned Friday… Or a Hallucinogen Friday….
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