Similar to some of Mau Dui-Fai's (aka T.F. Mous) other films, his 1980 entry released by the Shaw Brothers studio, Lost Souls, is on the surface a down-and-dirty exploitation flick. But Mau is known for trying to employ pathos and emotion into what might otherwise be efforts that spend their running time pandering to the raincoat crowd. Here, though, whether it was due to the Shaw Brothers' rigid standards or Mau's relative inexperience as a director, the results here neither really shock nor inspires the audience.

The story centers on a trio of Mainlanders trying to illegally emigrate into Hong Kong. They manage to make it into the territory, but quickly find out that Hong Kong isn't the land of gold and diamonds they've been told about. In fact, it's the sort of place that treats humans, especially ones from the Mainland, as commodities to be treated as one pleases, if they have enough money. Finding themselves trapped in a virtual cattle car by a sleazy gang waiting to sell them to the highest bidder, the friends soon realize they have only one very violent and dark way to make their escape.

Taken on just the base elements it sets forth as an exploitation film, Lost Souls certainly offers up its' fair share (and then some) of the ye olde naughty bits displayed in to your ocular sockets in various states of ecstasy and/or distress, but yet it still all feels stale and strangely bland. Sure, at times Lost Souls is very uncomfortable to watch, but there's nothing here that jolts the viewer on the scale of some of Mau's other films like Men Behind the Sun or classic Category III gore-fests like The Untold Story.

It is interesting to note though -- as some other reviewers have pointed out -- how the prisoners (who outnumber the firearm-less gangsters five to one) do not turn against their captors until the sexual violence turns towards the males of the population. I'd like to think that Mau was making a maybe not-so-subtle dig at the not-so-subtle homoeroticism presented in many classic Shaw Brothers pictures, instead of just wanting an excuse to throw in a creepy cinematic portrayal of sodomy ripped from the pages of Deliverance's playbook.

Since the video nasty portion of the proceedings aren't anything all that special, Lost Souls' other shortcomings jump to the foreground. For the most part, Mau Dui-Fai is not a director known for getting great performances out of his actors, and that is again the case here. Part of this might be due to the conventions of the genre at the time, such as putting one of the villains in a wardrobe that was apparently stolen out of Daisy Duke's closet, but the viewer really never develops an affinity for the protagonists or hate for the adversaries. The movie throws a lot at the audience, but nothing seems to end up sticking into their collective cinematic consciousness.

RATING: 5