Medium Rare

VERDICT: 1.5 stars out of five

Year of Release: 1991
Country of Origin: Singapore
Language: English
Running Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
Director: Arthur Smith
Producer: Graham Moore
Screenwriters: Margaret Chan, Rani Moorthy
Cast: Dore Kraus, Jamie Marshall, Margaret Chan, Rani Moorthy

If you must make an exploitation flick, at least commit to it, especially when your title is a tacky pun. You make a thriller about a white man who styles himself as an Asian medium. Without a trace of irony whatsoever, you call it Medium Rare. I expected high camp. You disappointed me.

Medium Rare is very, very loosely based on one of Singapore’s most notorious true crimes. In 1981, self-styled faith healer/medium, Adrian Lim, and his two “holy” wives killed two children in a bizarre occult ritual. They then dumped the bodies in suitcases and left them in plain view near where they lived. Lim and his accomplices were quickly arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to death. They were executed in 1988.

That’s some … meaty material right there. Even fictionalised, this stuff is pungent. Yet this movie settles on a bland story about an American journalist named Beverly Watson (Jamie Marshall) who’s in town to research an article on Asian mysticism for a news magazine. She meets and is seduced by Daniel Lee (Dore Kraus), a Eurasian medium, and finds herself descending the rabbit hole of occultism. There’s debauchery, there are exotic rituals, there’s a murder, and finally Daniel goes off the reservation when he decides to sacrifice two kids for no reason at all. To be sure, little that happens in the movie makes sense, and I’ll get to that in a bit. For now, I’m baffled as to why the plot has very little trace of its sources.

It’s strange that this movie goes out of its way to avoid any clear connections to the actual case. Why? Was it trying not to offend the locals? Perhaps it wanted to avoid the appearance of cashing in on one of the most distasteful crimes to ever happen in prim and proper Singapore. But if that was the case, why make the movie at all? Even so, I would have overlooked that if the filmmakers came up with an inspired alternative. However, it turns out to be so timid, with results that are so forgettable, so generic and so cookie-cutter, so by the numbers that it’s hilariously most effective as a promotional advertisement for the Pan-Pacific Hotel (one of the sponsors, by the way).

Medium Rare feels very amateurish, even though it had a million dollar budget, which was pretty generous back then, and is still so for Singaporean films, even today. But it neither looks nor feels it. The script was reportedly written in two weeks and the movie filmed in a month. Adding to that was the behind the scenes drama where the original director, scriptwriter and star all dropped out before the cameras rolled. The remnants of the shooting script were then cobbled together by the two local actresses who appear in the movie, Margaret Chan and Rani Moorthy. The cinematographer, Arthur Smith, doubled up as the director. And then it appears like they rushed into production. The results are, shall we say, less than polished.

Where do I start? Firstly, for a local film, this doesn’t feel Singaporean. At all. The lead actors are Caucasian, the director is Caucasian, the Asian actors are relegated as supporting players only, and it’s definitely seen from a Western perspective. If it wasn’t for the views of the Singapore skyline, the exotic temples and the distinctly non-Caucasian extras, this could have been anywhere. Nobody lives in an HDB flat, for crying out loud. Daniel himself is based in one of those high class black-and-white mansions. Even Daniel’s low-class Chinese wife (Margaret Chan) lived in a Peranakan shophouse. Furthermore, the filmmakers expect us to believe the locals will follow a Caucasian whose teachings hijack Taoist and Hindu religious beliefs? Just who are you trying to kid? Orientalism is strong in this one.

I got to give it props for having a diverse multi-racial cast, though. I just wish they gave good performances. Dore Kraus is good-looking but forgettable. So is Jamie Marshall. The local actors … oh, dear. They are primarily theatre actors and nobody told them not to act as if they’re on the stage. That kind of showy performance style just doesn’t translate into film. It’s cringe-worthy to watch, especially when they’re also saddled with dialogue that bears no resemblance to the speech patterns of anyone in Singapore.

The biggest issue I have is with the script. It should never have been filmed. It makes the scriptwriters look like amateurs who have no idea how to write a movie. Or basic storytelling for that matter. The scenes don’t add up – they’re just a string of vignettes strung up haphazardly to resemble a story. It feels very much like they’re making stuff up as they go along. Sub-plots exist for little reason than to pad out the running time. Characters behave in ways that defy logic or cause and effect. They might as well be cardboard puppets manipulated with string.

For instance, when we first meet Daniel, there is no hint that he is no more than a horny con-man. Suddenly, as if a switch is thrown, he becomes a machete-wielding murderer. Then there’s the sub-plot of the sister of Daniel’s holy wife. She inexplicably decides to investigate the sleazy medium by breaking into his house in the dead of night, without informing anyone of her intentions, and armed only with a flashlight. Why would she do such a stupid thing? Later, as an afterthought, there is thrown in a hint of the supernatural – Beverly starts getting prophetic visions. What the hell?

It’s sad because there is a good movie somewhere in the mess. Medium Rare has all the ingredients of a hammy horror/thriller B-movie. Too bad it’s wishy-washy. It doesn’t know the tone it’s going for, never figures it out. It chickens out on the sex, violence and mature themes inherent in the material.  Whatever promise it had had been thrown into a blender and homogenised into blandness. It’s such a train wreck that quite often, it’s unintentionally hilarious. But it could have been more than botched mediocrity. After all, it was the first full-length movie to be produced in Singapore since the 1970s, and in English to boot. It could have been more than a historical curio.