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ALTERNATE SYNOPSIS:
Things happened to Yuan Cheng-ha, a famous doctor. When he was enjoying his exploration in the northeast part of Thailand. He came across a sacrificial ceremony, on which the wicked koradji was about to feed beautiful Bachu, the daughter of the late headman, to the vampire demon.Yuan saved Bachu but was stricken with the seven blood curses. Bachu used part of her soul to save him. But both needed Buddha’s Eye for the complete recovery.When back to HK, Yuan’s blood vessel started to burst. His friend and mentor Wales Lee sent him, along with a girl reporter Maggie and Bachu’s boyfriend back to Thailand to find Buddha’s Eye.The wicked koradji tried to stop Yuan. After fighting hard against the demon, Yuan succeeded to get Buddha’s Eye and be cured. The priest then tried to direct the vampire demon to attack Yuan and his friends. Wales Lee used his weapons to annihilate both the demon and the wicked koradji. |
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| This is one strange movie. It's part horror, part comedy, part supsense, part exploitation...you get the idea. If I was to compare it to another movie, I would say Evil Dead 2, but Raimi's work seems sedate compared to this (interesting) train wreck of a movie. It starts off at some high-class party (where a drunk and horny Wong Jing is among the guests) and Andy Lau telling a story to entertain the guests. Turns out he's some kind of doctor/professor/archeologist (the poor subtitles never make it clear exactly what the hell he does for a living, but he wears glasses, so he must be some kind of smart guy) who traveled to Thailand to check out a mysterious tribe. He runs into a beautiful girl and begins to follow her. The girl just happens to be the tribe's sacrificial virgin for the evening and being the hero that he is, Lau saves her, which pisses off the tribe. They capture Lau and impregnate him with some nasty worms which burst his blood vessels. The girl manages to save Lau (by feeding him one of her nipples!), but the curse is still in his system. After getting some advice from pipe-smoking occult expert Chow Yun-Fat, Lau heads back to Thailand to kill the tribe's god, known as "Old Ancestor" (which looks a hell of a lot like the creature from Alien, down to popping out of people's chests), with a bodyguard (Wei) and nosy reporter (Cheung) in tow.
Like I said before, this is a train wreck of a movie, but it's fun. Wong Jing's touch is obviously in here; everything but the kitchen sink is thrown at the viewer during the running time. The plot is a mess (especially with the aforementioned bad subs), the acting is pretty poor for the most part, some of the special effects are incredibly cheesy...but this is one of the most unique films you're ever likely to see. If you're tired of the usual action stuff, give this movie a try. |
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| What a bizarre film this is! The film starts out at a pointless dinner party, which radically jerks to an S.D.U. assault on a building full of terrorists and hostages. This scene serves no purpose whatsoever except to introduce two of the main characters, Chin Siu Ho and Maggie Cheung. Then another abrupt turn and Chin Siu Ho goes back home, gets ambushed by a witch doctor (Dick Wei), and starts having culvulsions which lead to parts of his leg exploding! Then we jerk to a scene with Chow Yun Fat, a professor in witchcraft (!), and we flashback to what caused this strange phenomenon. A year ago, Chin Siu Ho was chasing a pretty girl through the jungle while he was on an expedition, and violated an ancient black magic ritual. As a result, the head sorcerer cursed him. The girl manages to save his life from the first part of the curse by chopping off her nipple and feeding it to him! Uh-huh. Other magical spells and rituals are required to keep him alive through the rest of the curse, so he decides to go back to Thailand to visit Dick Wei and get his curse lifted. Bitchy reporter Maggie Cheung tags along, and Chow Yun Fat and his assistant Sibelle Hu follow shortly. Much kung fu black magic insanity takes place throughout a series of outrageous set pieces, leading up to a bloody confrontation with a nasty Alien-ish monster which Chow Yun Fat blows away with a rocket launcher. Then it's another abrupt jerk back to the dinner party and the credits roll. There's a lot of neat stuff going on in this film, but the editing and continuity are appalling! It also didn't help that the copy I saw was of poor quality and the subtitles were off of the screen most of the time. On the plus side, from what I could tell, the production value looked good, the sets were gorgeous, the effects were good (some of them were amazing), the stunts were exciting, and the kung fu was great. One particularly shocking stunt showed a stuntman getting hit by an out of control truck REALLY hard. That must have hurt - if it didn't kill him. It was really good to see Chin Siu Ho and Dick Wei in lead roles as good guys. They both have the charisma, presence, grace, and kick-ass martial arts ability to make it big in the industry, but somehow that never happened (which is too bad). Chow Yun Fat in an early throw away role is amusing, and Wei Ying Hung's and Yasuaki Kurata's microscopic cameos aren't even worth mentioning. Sadly, pretty Sibelle Hu had nothing to work with either (even though she's the most prominent character on the video box), but she did get to fire a machine gun at the end, which was pretty exciting. It's also interesting to see a cute and young Maggie Cheung in an early role as a traditional helpless and bitchy girlfriend (think "Police Story" here). She later somehow managed to break free from worthless roles like these to become a legitimate actress.
Memorable quote: "Take my advice, or I'll spank you without pants."
And I just have to throw this in. This is the largest head credit I've ever seen in a movie. Stranger yet that it's an English actor in a cameo role in a Chinese film, and it pops on the screen eighteen minutes into the movie. My friends and I still bust up over this. |
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Chin Siu-Ho stars in this hilarious excessive horror and action fantasy movie, replete with scantily-clad women, exploding bodies, slime-dripping ghosts, mysterious sorcery, and yet another SWAT team assaulting terrorists in a hospital. Mindless, sexist, ridiculous -- a cult favorite. Among other things, this movie demonstrates the absurd lengths to which the HK movie industry went to get Chow Yun Fat in a movie. It looks like Mr. Chow was contracted for about 10 minutes of screen time, but rather than giving him a normal cameo they give him the role of Wisely (the hero of a well-known series of horror novels by Ni Kuang, made into several films). He then hilariously appears several times in his advisory sifu role (complete with sagacious pipe-smoking), says to the hero "do this, I'll join you tomorrow" and then vanishes again until the next minute on-screen. Great fun.
HKFlix Rating: 8/10: (Arthouse Rating: 3/5. Entertainment Value: 5/5.) |
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