Strange and affecting, this low budget quickie is just that little bit different and well worth a watch. With a running time of only sixty minutes, I was astonished at the length of the opening credits and indeed, thought maybe I had fast forwarded to the end! The movie soon gets going, however, and then it is sex, violence gore and opera all the way. Not just opera, either, the imaginative soundtrack also includes, local and western rock as well as Cambridge's King's College Choir. Some of the goriest moments get the most beautiful music and by the end the combination of erotic and bloody visuals and harsh and inspiring sounds combine to help create an irresistible nightmare fantasy. I became irritated by all the cackling laughter but despite this enjoyed this the more it went on.

This is a curious little film by Korean director Gee-woong Nam, basically an underground low budget feature, that combines surreal and cyberpunk imagery with the classic revenge plot. There are some interesting decisions in the visual aspect of the film which could be described as either good or bad depending on your taste, however it suffers from poor pacing and an unsynchronized soundtrack and you get this feeling that maybe the film makers should have spend a bit more time in the editing room.The story is about, well, the story is about exactly what the title implies. A young schoolgirl turns hooker in the night, playing around with customers in some rather perverse scenarios, date rape, she calls it. Basically the customer pays to, chase, confront and have sexual intercourse with the girl, unfortunately when that moment occurs in the film they begin to... do their thing nearby the house of a lady who later turns out to be the mother of our unlucky heroine's schoolteacher. The teacher confronts the girl, the girl strikes a bargain, followed by a weird dance scene, followed by the date rape thing again, followed by a scene where the girl says to the teacher that she loves him and then it gets interesting. I won't spoil that much, put from that point on the film picks the pace, gets pleasantly weirder, more interesting and outright violent. The ending was a bit random though.Visually the film is impressive considering its budgetary limitations Gee-woong pulls quite a few rabbits out of the hat and succeeds in making the film feel, if not by much, at least a little artistic. The shootout scenes are handled well enough showing of some impressive camera work, during the last few scenes. Some use of light, and wonderful design concepts further strengthen the film's appeal. The score on the other hand, like that ending felt random, tracks from different genres and time periods interwine and while that is hardly a minus, what bothered me was that these tracks, most of the times, hardly felt right. Just didn't fit the mood in the specific scene.It's a short little film with a long title and you can't really hate it, knowing how hard it must have been for these people to write, shoot and edit the footage into an enjoyable if a bit forgettable 60 minute surreal/cyberpunk/revenge film.

It seems that Director Nam Ki-Woong must have been watching Tsukamoto's Tetsuo films when he wrote and directed Teenage Hooker Became a Killing Machine. Which plays as a low-budget homage to Shinya's 1989 Cyber-punk classic with a bit of the famous Korean revenge style type flicks mixed in. Just as in Tetsuo, Nam opts more for visuals and atmosphere than a coherent plot line. Which is not necessarily a bad thing though... you don't watch films named "Teenage Hooker Became a Killing Machine" for the plot.But the plot goes something like this (as best I could tell). So-Yun Lee plays a teenage hooker who is mentored by her teacher (Dae-tong Kim). Their relationship is not a platonic one, and after long her teacher impregnates the nameless high school girl. In order to avoid controversy, the Teacher kills the girl's baby and then enlists his brothers for a immensely disturbing murder scene involving a double-handled saw! Anyway, Teenage Hooker is then rebuilt (by whom is unclear) into a mechanical Killing Machine. After her first mission, the girl goes on a revenge spree going after her murderers and the sadistic Teacher.As mentioned, the plot is truly insignificant. The real reason you watch films like this is for the brilliant visuals and the exploitational aspects. Both of which Teenage Hooker has plenty of. Shot in a multitude of grainy hues, the film seems to straddle the line between art and trash. Some scenes are exquisitely crafted, which is quite an accomplishment considering the extremely low-budget nature of the film. It seems to be shot on digital video, but what it lacks in production values it makes up for in imagination.While I enjoyed the film on various levels, mostly for the visual nature and the shear ambition of Director Nam Ki-Woong's vision, the film has one crucial flaw. It's not long enough. At it's 60 minute run time, including a very long-and bizarre-opening credit roll, Teenage Hooker doesn't have enough time to expand on the theme's it produces. Some scenes seem a bit rushed and I wished the filmmaker would have lengthened the film a bit in order to let the revenge storyline gel in the viewer's brain.Teenage Hooker is what it is though and maybe I was expecting to much. But what it is, is a fun, trashy, and visually arresting flick worthy of a view. Especially if you take into factor the low production value's (most other director's wouldn't have done half as good a job with twice the money) Director Ki-Woong did a good deed bringing this bizarre vision to life.

Really low budget film shot on DV. Plot is simplistic version of La Femme Nikita, they match shot for shot with the test that takes place in the restaurant, except she doesn't dive threw a laundry shoot. Overall interesting film, the DP to a great job using DV to his advantage. Plus a dancing sequence in the alleyway is great, I agree with another commentor "Travolta and Thurman watch out(Pulp Fiction)