The Blue Jean Monster (1991) 88 Films Blu-ray Review

Verdict

3.5

Summary

Wildly violent and gross at times with wacky humor, The Blue Jean Monster is as violent as the original Robocop (and similar in a lot of ways, too), but it also behaves like a spoofy comedy, so tonally the film is all over the place. It gives star Fui-On Shing a nice starring role in a part he was very suited for, and while the movie careens from silliness to balls-out violence, it somehow has a watchability factor that remains valuable.

Plot:

A cop dies on duty, but comes back to life, leading to complications.

Review:

Tough as nails cop Tsu Hsiang (Fui-On Shing) has a lot on his plate: A nagging, pregnant wife fit to give birth any moment, an annoying sidekick nick-named Power Steering (Wai-Kit Tse), and a job as difficult as humanly possible. A group of bank robbers pull off a violent heist (they kill all witnesses), leading Hsiang on a pursuit to an abandoned work site where the cop does a pretty impressive job of cornering the entire gang single-handedly, but fate sidelines his bust: one of the bad guys manages to drop a ton of scrap metal on his head from a crane above, killing him. But just before his spirit leaves his body a bolt of lightning electrifies the metal and reanimates him from the afterlife, giving him just enough juice to keep on living, though his body is basically a rotting corpse from then on. He no longer feels pain, or enjoys the sensation of eating or sex, which gets complicated for him as he goes home and tries to keep living his life. His wife doesn’t realize that he’s basically dead (and she razzes him for not being able to get it up in bed) and all the food he eats oozes right out of his wounds on his body, which leads to some gross situations where his sidekick ends up eating food that has already recycled itself out of his gaping wounds. When his energy runs low, Hsiang must electrocute himself like a car battery to keep running, and over the next few days he uses his undead strength to go after the gang that killed him, and hopefully he’ll survive long enough to see his baby born because this guy can’t keep jump starting himself …

88 Films has just released a Blu-ray edition of The Blue Jean Monster, and it comes with a foldout poster, an interview, a reversible sleeve, and a slipcase. I was unfamiliar with this title, so kudos to 88 Films for introducing it to a western audience in such a stellar edition.

Bonus Materials