General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Her Vengeance (血玫瑰)

Her Vengeance (血玫瑰; Jyutping: hyut3 mui4 gwai1, literally "Blood Rose") is a 1988 Hong Kong rape-and-revenge thriller directed by Lam Nai-Choi and starring Pauline Wong, Lam Ching-Ying, and Elaine Jin.¹ Produced by Golden Harvest and Paragon Films, it was released in Hong Kong on October 7, 1988, and was classified Category III, the territory's adults-only rating.¹^•² The film is a remake of the 1973 Shaw Brothers production The Kiss of Death (毒女), with elements drawn from the 1978 American film I Spit on Your Grave.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	血玫瑰 (Huet mui gwai / Xue mei gui), "Blood Rose"¹
Director / writer	Lam Nai-Choi; screenplay by Shirley Woo Suet-Lai¹
Release	October 7, 1988, Hong Kong; Cantonese; 78 minutes (Cat III cut)¹
Rating	Hong Kong Category III (adults only)²
Hong Kong box office	HK$1,872,270 over a five-day run (October 7–11, 1988), 135th place for the year⁴
Principal cast	Pauline Wong Siu-Fung, Lam Ching-Ying, Elaine Jin Yan-Ling, Shing Fui-On, Billy Chow⁵
2025 home video	88 Films UK Blu-ray (July 28, 2025) with both the Cat III and Cat IIb versions restored; Vinegar Syndrome US double feature with Devil Fetus⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Fong Kit-Ying (Pauline Wong) is a public relations officer at a nightclub in Macao. Five drunken patrons cause trouble at the club, and after her shift they follow her and gang-rape her in a nearby graveyard; she contracts a sexually transmitted disease as a result.⁸ The five men are also the killers of her father, a connection she recognizes during the earlier confrontation at the club.⁸

After the assault she travels to Hong Kong, where her blind sister Fong Hung (Elaine Jin) encourages her to seek revenge. She takes a job as a waitress at the bar of Hung (Lam Ching-Ying), her sister's former boyfriend, a former triad member who is wheelchair-bound but still a capable martial artist; he shelters her but refuses to help her take revenge.⁶^•⁹ A chance encounter with one of her attackers (Shing Fui-On) gives her the opening she has waited for, and she begins hunting the men one by one, using methods that include stabbings with scissors, an acid attack, and improvised weapons.⁶^•⁹ The remaining men become alert to her pursuit, and the film builds to a bloody final battle in which Hung joins the fight, fighting from his wheelchair.⁸^•⁹

Versions and censorship

Two distinctly different versions of the film exist. The Category III version, long available only on the Megastar DVD, contains all the gore and violence and runs 78 minutes. The Category IIb version, found on the Joy Sales DVD and the Deltamac VCD, runs 85 minutes but is not uncut: it omits much of the violence and nudity of the Cat III cut while including some scenes deleted from it. No single "ultimate" version combining all material from both cuts has been released.¹ The theatrical release itself preceded the formal introduction of the Category III rating, and the film received the rating only retroactively.¹⁰

For the 2025 home video releases, the British Board of Film Classification passed the film 18 for sexual violence and strong bloody violence, with a running time of 82 minutes 30 seconds, classified on June 23, 2025 for physical media and streaming distribution by 88 Films Limited.¹¹ The BBFC content advice notes stabbings, slashings, an acid attack, a woman cutting off a man's ear, a gang rape, and a scene in which a woman jumps to her death from a balcony.¹¹

Reception and home video

The film earned HK$1,872,270 at the Hong Kong box office during its five-day theatrical run from October 7 to 11, 1988, placing 135th among Hong Kong films that year.⁴ On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.4 out of 10.¹

Critics have generally placed it in the rape-revenge tradition while noting its unusually grim tone. Reviewer Jon Peters describes it as a Hong Kong counterpart to I Spit on Your Grave and a faithful remake of The Kiss of Death, calling it "grim, humorless" and arguing that its view of revenge is bleaker and less cathartic than the genre typically offers; he quotes critic John Charles's description of the film as "suspenseful, disturbing, and largely humorless."³ The film is also known for its wheelchair kung-fu sequences, a distinctive element reviewers frequently single out alongside its violence.⁹

Director Lam Nai-Choi is best known for The Story of Ricky (1991), The Seventh Curse (1986), and Erotic Ghost Story (1990).⁹

After decades in which the uncut version circulated only on scarce Hong Kong home video, the film returned to circulation in 2025. 88 Films released a UK Region B Blu-ray on July 28, 2025, containing brand-new 2K restorations of both the uncut Cat III and Cat IIb versions, the original Cantonese mono track with remastered English subtitles, and an audio commentary by East Asian film specialist Frank Djeng of the New York Asian Film Festival.⁶^•¹² In the United States, Vinegar Syndrome issued it as a two-disc Region A set paired with Lam's Devil Fetus (1983), including a video essay by film historian Samm Deighan titled "Her Vengeance and Category-III Rape Revenge Films."⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1986 to 1989

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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