gentle, humorous and human in nature; if he continues to grace our genre with these at­ tributes, he may yet become one of its most original and valuable talents. Vidmark is making CRONOS
available in subtitled Spanish and dubbed English editions. The subtitled version contains at least an equal amount of English dia­ logue, spoken by the actors them­ selves, whereas the same lines are dubbed in the other version by other voices, to keep the char­ acter voices consistent. Obvi­ ously, the subtitled version is the only authentic choice and it helps to delineate a certain “us and them” theme which is lost in the dubbed version. The dubbed edi­ tion also suffers from a confused stereo mix which, despite its la­ belling, offers no discernable “sur­ round” features. —TL
DEADLY DREAM WOMAN
1992, Network Kingdom Audio and Video UNK 282801 (Hong Kong), LD/D/MA/LB, approx. $90, 89 m 19s
Beating Johnny To Kei-fung’s Federico Luppi in a heart-wrenching scene from Guillermo del Toro’s promising debut, CRONOS.
(Aurora putting her undead Grandpa to bed in a coffin-like toy chest, with a doll and teddy bear for companionship) conjures memories of Victor Erice’s THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE; Jesus’ pathetic thirst for a drop of blood on the floor of a public bathroom reminds us of Udo Kier desper­ ately diving for the puddle left by a young girl’s defloration in ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA; Aurora’s concealment of the coveted im­ mortality machine in her teddy bear is a nod to NIGHT OF THE HUNTER; the movie’s richly Catholic, curio-cluttered mise en
scène owes much to the look of films by Narciso Ibañez Serrador (THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED) and Juan Lopez Moctezuma (DR. TARR’S TORTURE DUNGEON); and the so-called “Cronos” de­ vice itself, which houses a living scarab in its mechanism, evokes the insectoid, biomechanical nightmares of David Cronenberg, the Lament Configuration device of Clive Barker’s HELLRAISER, and the ancient, grinding gear- works of Michele Soavi’s THE CHURCH. Del Toro’s most origi­ nal moments, aside from his obvious love of horror, are
THE HEROIC TRIO to theatres, this lower budget female super­ hero saga goes a slightly different route by having its alluring masked heroine Nightingale Wong (Sharia Cheung Man) aid­ing, rather than abetting, Triad gang activities. Dispatched to HK from America to assist her gang­ ster foster father (Kwan Hoi-shan) in dealing with traitorous gang lieutenant Jaguar Lui (DRCINKEN MASTER II s Johnny Lo Wei-kwong), Nightingale gets caught in the crossfire when their meet­ ing is ambushed. The aftermath finds her mentor dead and Night­ ingale with amnesia. She is found and sheltered by a mother and daughter madam team, Witch Woman (Deanie Yip) and Ching
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