There are very few votes and no comments on this movie. Maybe everyone just assumes this is some sort of sex comedy. It's not. Amy Yip plays a hooker who rises to madam of a "health" house who takes very good care of the girls who work there. She is protected by the cops and a godfather type guy. She has a baby and the baby grows up to be a preteen who battles with mom and then I'm guessing Pauline Chan who wants to marry her mom's arch enemy some evil guy who gets humiliated by mom and forced to live in Holland much to his dismay for eight years. He becomes rich and powerful and takes his revenge on Yip by raping the daughter on videotape and sending it to her fiancée so Pauline who is now a famous TV actress loses the fiancée and everything and kills herself in a off camera bloody way. Yip gets all her girls together and they beat the crap out of evil guy then Yip uses the same method her daughter used to kill herself to kill him. While this may sound pretty good there really is little nudity or sex here. Even if this was lets say a Lifetime movie there would be more eroticism then there is here. And here's the hard part. This has the famous white hard coded subtitles that make almost no sense to anyone who understands English and they disappear for several spoken passages. For those who speak Chinese I figure this movie makes a lot more sense. Basically this is worth a look see but I can't imagine watching it twice.
5 Reviews
Amy Yip shows her Talent
ebiros25 January 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This is the only movie with Amy Yip in a serious role. It shows that she was underrated as an actor, and can carry a movie on her own.
Amy Yip plays a role of a madam who worked herself up to that position through lot of hard work. She has a daughter, but her relation with her isn't quite working well. She has few good friends, and although people look down on her because of her profession, she lives her life with her own grittiness, and hard work.
Movie has Wong Jing's early style in that story has hard luck case character with story climaxing into a pandemonium.
Amy Yip looks beautiful as she usually does, and the supporting actors are also very good. Because of her exceptional physical good looks, Amy Yip wasn't given enough serious roles she deserved. This movie shows she had the talent to carry the story. She's pretty good in the business woman type of a role.
The movie could have been made with a bigger budget, and it would have been more fun. Wong Jing's usual expensive look and feel is missing from this movie. The movie makes me wonder what would have happened if Amy Yip was given a role like the lead in Naked Killer ( with more money angle to it ). But in any case this is a good movie and recommended for viewing.
Amy Yip plays a role of a madam who worked herself up to that position through lot of hard work. She has a daughter, but her relation with her isn't quite working well. She has few good friends, and although people look down on her because of her profession, she lives her life with her own grittiness, and hard work.
Movie has Wong Jing's early style in that story has hard luck case character with story climaxing into a pandemonium.
Amy Yip looks beautiful as she usually does, and the supporting actors are also very good. Because of her exceptional physical good looks, Amy Yip wasn't given enough serious roles she deserved. This movie shows she had the talent to carry the story. She's pretty good in the business woman type of a role.
The movie could have been made with a bigger budget, and it would have been more fun. Wong Jing's usual expensive look and feel is missing from this movie. The movie makes me wonder what would have happened if Amy Yip was given a role like the lead in Naked Killer ( with more money angle to it ). But in any case this is a good movie and recommended for viewing.
Dark biographical story
Leofwine_draca24 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD is a dark Hong Kong drama that follows the life and loves of Amy Yip, a waitress who ends up becoming involved with the mob and the girlfriend and wife of a number of unsavoury characters. Yip is usually found in lighter and sexier fare but she's pretty decent here when given the opportunity to do something with more meat in it, although her character's lack of appropriate ageing is problematic. The film is well made but an odyssey of misogyny and sadistic violence certainly make it an uncomfortable watch. There's a fair amount of sex and nudity but this falls shy of the explicit violence that Category III films were known for during this era.
Watchable, but very generic and mediocre...
paul_haakonsen13 July 2020
Granted, I had never even heard about this 1991 Hong Kong movie from writer Jing Wong and director Sherman Wong before now in 2020 when I was given the chance to sit down and watch it. Needless to say that with my fascination and love of the Hong Kong cinema, of course I found the time to watch it.
Well, "Queen of the Underworld" (aka "Yeh sang woo lui wong: Ha je chuen kei(") turned out to be a very generic and mediocre movie in terms of triad and crime movies from the early 1990s out of the Hong Kong cinema turned out to be. For better or worse, then this was as generic as they come.
The movie was definitely watchable, for sure, but it was by no means an outstanding or particularly memorable movie experience. Especially because the movie was just the type of movie where it was bordering on becoming a spoof because everything was so cliché and caricatured. It resulted in the movie losing a lot of realism to it and it was just one step away from sinking into becoming a parody on itself.
The movie did, however, have some nice enough acting performances by the cast, which included familiar faces such as Amy Yip, Paul Chun and Fui-On Shing. Just a shame that the script and storyline they had to work with was so bland.
I managed to sit through the entire movie, but I was only mildly entertained. As such, I am rating "Queen of the Underworld" a very mediocre five out of ten stars. If you have an interest in the seedy underbelly of the neon sprawl that is Hong Kong, there are far better Triad-based movies out there.
Well, "Queen of the Underworld" (aka "Yeh sang woo lui wong: Ha je chuen kei(") turned out to be a very generic and mediocre movie in terms of triad and crime movies from the early 1990s out of the Hong Kong cinema turned out to be. For better or worse, then this was as generic as they come.
The movie was definitely watchable, for sure, but it was by no means an outstanding or particularly memorable movie experience. Especially because the movie was just the type of movie where it was bordering on becoming a spoof because everything was so cliché and caricatured. It resulted in the movie losing a lot of realism to it and it was just one step away from sinking into becoming a parody on itself.
The movie did, however, have some nice enough acting performances by the cast, which included familiar faces such as Amy Yip, Paul Chun and Fui-On Shing. Just a shame that the script and storyline they had to work with was so bland.
I managed to sit through the entire movie, but I was only mildly entertained. As such, I am rating "Queen of the Underworld" a very mediocre five out of ten stars. If you have an interest in the seedy underbelly of the neon sprawl that is Hong Kong, there are far better Triad-based movies out there.
Here to set the record straight... This film was great!
jgbgraham25 December 2021
As of this writing all the reviews here say this movie is mediocre or worse and they couldn't be more wrong. Just because this film is not as over the top as Ebola Syndrome or Red To Kill does not make it any less of a wild movie by western standards. It absolutely deserves its place alongside all the other insane hong kong Category III films. I thought Amy Yip was incredible in this film, showing off talents I did not know she had. Helena's story was also fantastic and full of misery and grief. Some reviewers said this was generic but only in the way it is a mob/revenge movie and must play with those archetypes but I assure any curious observers that this movie has many scenes that set it apart and absolutely make it unique and worth watching.
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