RED SPELL SPELLS RED (Hong Kong 1983)

Poster (Thailand)

Country: Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 11/09/1983
Box Office: HK $4,106,595.00

Director: Titus Ho Wing-Lam
Script: Amy Chan Suet-Ming
Action Director: San Sin
Producer: Stephen Chan Chue-Kwong

Cast:
Kent Tong Chun-Yip          
Poon Lai-Yin (Stella Lok)
Ga Lun          
Wan Ting-Fong          
Hussein Hassan          
Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai (Film crew member)
Wong Tiong-Hock          
Leung Hoi-Tin          
San Sin (Taoist)
Choi Kam-Lung          
Mahyon Ismail          
Mun Yiu-Wah (Film crew member)
Yu Yiu-Leung          
Fong Yue (1) (Villager)
Wong Hung (1) (Villager)
Jackson Ng Yuk-Sue (Taoist's man)

Distributor: Yat Gwong (Hong Kong)
Production Manager: Chik Yiu-Cheong
Sound Recordist: Chang Hua
Script Supervisor: Amy Chan Suet-Ming
Planning: Stephen Chan Chue-Kwong
Lighting: Tse Ban
Makeup: Choi Siu-Jan
Story: Nikko Creative Department
Props: Hui Wan-Hoi
Cinematographers: Wong Wing-Lung, Chen Yung-Shang
Editor: Wu Kee-Charm
Presenter: Edward Hoh Yue-Yip
Assistant Directors: Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai, Yu Yiu-Leung
Composers: Shing Wai-Yip, So Chung-Shing (1)

Filming Location: Hong Kong

NB: Above credits info borrowed from HKMDB

Bootleg DVD available from Far East Flix.

REVENGE OF THE CORPSE (HK, 1982)

aka THE BLOOD THIRSTY DEAD



Unfortunately, I don't have this Shaw Brothers HK horror movie. Until very recently all there was was a very rare fullscreen VHS release but now there's a fully restored version. Unfortunately, Celestial have only released it in that expensive box that you can only buy in Singapore (I think!) and you can't copy the films from it. Boo-hoo!


[unfortunately the video I posted here was removed from YouTube]

CORPSE MANIA (Hong Kong, 1981)

Good quality video-cd from Celestial.

review by GÜNTER MÜLLER

"You may regret it, but you'll never forget it" says the back cover of the VCD release. Quite appropriately, I dare to say.

CORPSE MANIA, what a fantastic title! Just say it loud, three times (in a mirror if you like). Let it melt in your mouth. Mmmmmmm, tastes like chicken.

And the movie behind this title! Directed by Kuei Chih-hung (who made the awesome THE KILLER SNAKES, HEX and THE BOXER’S OMEN as well as the shitty and boring HEX VS. WITCHCRAFT und HEX AFTER HEX) in 1981 for the Shaw Brothers studios, CORPSE MANIA begins like an average krimi with a touch of necrophilia thrown in for good measure. Yep, a calm, inconspicous young man has quite a special taste in women: he likes ‘em dead. The factor of disgust bounces up to new heigths when the director shows us naked corpses of women, covered from head to toe with countless (I guess, carefully, some thousands) crawling maggots, and he has the camera exploring every single body part…

Click here for some pics of those disgusting, crawling, revolting, slimy maggots! [sorry, no can do! /Jack]

But then, suddenly, things become totally different. Because about in the middle of the 78 minutes long flick CORPSE MANIA mutates unexpectedly into an exciting giallo!!! Sounds funny, but that’s how it is. And now Kuei Chih-hung is in his element and proves to be in top form. A disguised killer is on the loose, wearing a black coat, a black hat, a white scarf (that covers the lower parts of his face), big sunglasses and – of course – a sharp knife. The only thing missing are the black gloves… then it would have been the classic image of a giallo killer. Now the film shifts a few gears higher, because the killer comes down handsomely and slashes himself through the cast what results in a few wonderful and gory set-pieces: a gory stabbing in a car pleases the heart of the giallo fan, but that was only the beginning. What follows are: cut throats (one of them is slashed under water), smashed heads, and of course a decapitation must not be missing also. The ending is a surprise too, just how it should be.

Two more things: what do you ask a blood-soaked man with a slashed throat lying in front of you? The correct answer is: “Are you okay?” And watch out for the jaw-dropping scene where a blood-filled dummy is thrown from a rooftop. It crashes head-first into the concrete and we actually get to see the face of the victim which is so grotesquely mutilated that it’s hard not to throw up the popcorn.

Mr. Kuei Chih-hung… thank you very much for this great experience named CORPSE MANIA. With this you have more than made up for disastrous slips like HEX VS. WITCHCRAFT. :D
-----------------
First published in 2006.


RELEASES:

DVD
There is a reportedly great English subtitled reg. 1 dvd. Unfortunately it only carries the wrong Chinese dialect (i.e. Mandarin).

VCD
The Hong Kong vcd from Celestial (pictured above) has the correct Cantonese audio (and Mandarin too) and is also subbed in English. Unfortunately it's out of print.

With many HK films you can check which dub is the intended dub at the Hong Kong Film Archive website; Corpse Mania.

THE BOXER'S OMEN (Hong Kong, 1983)

VCD / HK / letterbox / Cantonese & Mandarin / English subs

Awesome, wild and crazy (crazy like in no-holds-barred wacky!) horror film from SB.

NB: the entry on HKMDB is wrong. The original Chinese dialect isn't Mandarin but Cantonese. Maybe someone made that entry after having bought the reg. 1 DVD thinking the US company would do things right. Well, they didn't! The DVD carries the wrong Chinese dialect, the right one is Cantonese. There's also some brief English dialogue in the film. In the Mandarin dub this is just dubbed into Mandarin. The HK video-cd from Celestial has both audio tracks and the picture quality is awesome for a VCD. Someone ought to make a fan dub with the reg. 1 DVD and add the correct audio.

CENTIPEDE HORROR (Hong Kong)

One of the holy grails of dark and nasty Hong Kong horror!!!

From top: US Chinatown VHS, HK laserdisc, German bootleg DVD. There are no official DVD releases anywhere. There's one company in the US who claim their bootleg is an *official* DVD but it's not. It's a boot sourced from the LD or VHS.

LEWD LIZARD (Hong Kong, 1979)

Here's another entry to the genre that I've labelled the "Dark and nasty Hong Kong horror movies of the 80s". They're not all actually from the 1980s but they all have that vipe, that tone of dark HK horror movies. Hell, they're not all even from Hong Kong! I definitely think THE DEVIL and WITCH WITH FLYING HEAD belong in that category and they're actually from Taiwan.

PLOT LINE:
The main character is a bad dude who takes revenge on women by putting live *sex lizards* in their knickers and thus they orgasm to death!!!

LEWD LIZARD is a very rare, nasty Hong Kong horror movie from 1979, and let me warn you right away; if you couldn't stomach KILLER SNAKES because of the cruelty to animals then... there's a good chance you're not gonna like this one one bit either! I watched LEWD LIZARD a long time ago via a VHS dupe I got from a tape-trader and I didn't wanna re-watch that old crummy tape cos it looks like it's a fourth or fifth generation dupe. So when I began preparing for this new blog I looked around for a better copy and found... practically nothing!! LEWD LIZARD has proven to be thee most difficult HK horror film to track down. There's NOTHING out there. No old video tapes, no old video-cd's, no laserdiscs, not anything! Anywhere! All I found was two bootleggers who were selling bootlegs of it and from their description it seems it's a copy off the same old crappy VHS that they've got (same description of tape roll at the beginning of the film).

Anyway, I ordered a copy and, uh, I'm afraid this DVD-R bootleg looks about the same as my old video dupe did! But at least it has (crummy!) cover art. LMAO. 


EDIT (years later): I was finally able to upgrade! Someone in the US got in touch with me and they had a FIRST GENERATION VHS copy off an original VHS tape!!! So now I own a DVD-r off that tape. It's slightly better than the old bootlegs (and big thanks to said person in the US). But still no news of a release in ANY format.

DEVIL FETUS (Hong Kong, 1983)

VHS / Hong Kong / FS / Cantonese audio / English subs / alternative edit to DVD & VCD versions


DEVIL FETUS
aka MOH TOI
aka MO TAI
Hongkong 1983
Directed by: Lau Hung Chuen
Cast: Lui Sau Ling, Ngaai Dik, Lo Pooi Pooi, Lau Dan, Ho Pak Kwong, Leung Saan, Gam Wing Cheung...
Running Time: 88 min.

by GÜNTER MÜLLER
If I’m informed correctly DEVIL FETUS should be easily available on VCD, in wonderful widescreen, both in subtitled and unsubtitled versions! I also own a DEVIL FETUS tape, that has English subtitles, but sadly is a horrible full screen version. It should go without saying that the subtitled widescreen disc is the way to go. [Note: Devil Fetus is now available on a fully uncut, letterboxed DVD in Hong Kong/Jack] All those versions seem to be fully uncut too, by the way. DEVIL FETUS is rated Category III, and to be honest, I can’t explain why. Sure, it’s gory and bizarre, but I think it won’t get a CAT III rating if released today. And if you’re expecting gratuitous sex and/or explicit sexual violence because of the rating - you definitely are wrong! There are a few spoilers ahead so read at your own risk!

The film opens with a girl who buys a statue in an auction, from where at night a monster gets out of, and it does exactly what monsters out of statues usually do: it rapes the girl (parallel’s to the excellent THE RAPE AFTER (1983) are obvious; accidentally, both movies were made in 1983!). At this time you think that the girl will produce an offspring that jumps out of her womb and kills various people in many gory ways, right? Wrong! The confusing story deals with possessed people, dogs and furniture, who attack various characters and try to finish them off. They don’t succeed most of the time. Then why is this one called DEVIL FETUS, you wanna know? Don’t ask me, I have not the slightest idea. But who needs a fetus when the movie is as entertaining as this one, with a few outstanding set-pieces and gory highlights?




Such as a man who rips the decayed flesh on his face away and reveals crawling and writhing worms underneath. A girl who vomits live worms (also seen in CENTIPEDE HORROR (1982) and SEEDING OF A GHOST (1983), yuck!). A nice dog who is possessed and attacks a man, and in the fierce struggle gets killed with a sword (I do hope not for real!) Later, it (the dog) is eviscerated and another possessed guy munches on his guts in best Italian cannibal movie fashion (I again hope not for real!). A big bird (an eagly maybe) is killed by cutting its throat (this sadly IS for real). The absolute highlight: a man is trapped in a small room, when suddenly the walls are closing in on him. It’s nice that one side has a glass window, so we are able to witness the slow crushing of his head in wonderfully gory fashion! Yeah! This scene is incredible! One of my favourite head-crushings of all time, even better then the classic sequence in the unrated THE TOXIC AVENGER (1985). And then there is the showdown where the monster appears out of a possessed man (it rips his skin away), gets decapitated, but a few heads grow instead of the old one, and all of ‘em are decapitated too. The last shot is one of the most wonderful in Hong Kong horror cinema history, with a severed head - after attacking a woman - being killed with a sword and then the head starts to decay before our very eyes via stop-motion! This effect looks a bit cheap and phony, but it is very inventive and incredibly charming (think of the stop motion scenes in THE EVIL DEAD (1982) and BASKET CASE (1982), and you get the idea). Well done, folks! Give me more of this! With scenes like that, who cares if the movie makes any sense (which it doesn’t)? Certainly not me!

DEVIL FETUS is maybe one of the weirdest movies I ever had the pleasure of watching. There’s so much going on, and little of it makes any sense, so you sit there, shaking the head, and wondering what the hell is going on. A very entertaining, bizarre and gory horror movie from the wonderful 1980s, not to be missed! I think I will never forget the excellent head-crushing and the last image (of the severed decayed head ‘rolling’ towards the camera and grinning into it) when the credits start to roll...

DEVIL FETUS was Lau Hung Chuen’s debut movie as director. He followed it with THE GHOST INFORMER (1984), A CHINESE LEGEND (1991) and THOSE WERE THE DAYS (1996) among others. Beside being a director, he made himself a name as a very competent cinematographer. His credits include UNDECLARED WAR (1990), QUEEN’S HIGH (1991), THE SWORD STAINED WITH ROYAL BLOOD (1993) and THUNDERBOLT (1995). The producer of DEVIL FETUS is a certain Lo Wei, well-known as the director of the Bruce Lee starring THE BIG BOSS (1971) and FIST OF FURY (1972).
The review is based on the unsubtitled VCD. I didn’t bother to watch the subtitled full screen tape again, sorry. There’s too little time anyway.

Review by Günter Müller first posted on his now discontinued "Weird Asia" site.

DEAD CURSE (Hong Kong)

VHS / Japan / letterbox / Cantonese audio / Japanese subs

BLOOD RITUAL (Hong Kong, 1989)

Laserdisc / HK / unfortunately slightly cut (the video version of the same release is fully uncut! Go figure!)

[click LD scans for bigger size]


VHS from France

KILLER SNAKES (Hong Kong)

[Click scan for bigger size]

Check out this old Something Weird VHS cover for this dark and nasty Hong Kong horror flick. I think it's a pretty cool cover. Nowadays you don't need to track down a copy of this rare video tape as there's a great looking HK DVD, fully letterboxed, in Mandarin and uncut (well, apart from some reel-end frames missing. Reportedly) and there's also a US DVD (apparently the latter isn't looking as good as the HK one!). However (again; reportedly) the Something Weird Video tape contains the reel-end frames that are missing from the DVDs.
(The scan comes courtesy of Stephen Gladwin from a post at Cinehound)

BLACK MAGIC 2 (Hong Kong, 1976)

aka REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES












And finally... the absolutely ATROCIOUSLY AWFUL new cover for the film:



I REALLY REALLY don't get it!!! Why use such a terrible cover when they could have used the original:



FRED ADELMAN'S REVIEW FROM "CRITICAL CONDITION":

BLACK MAGIC 2 (1976) - I've been waiting quite a few years to get my hands on an uncut version of this film ever since I saw a chopped-up edit of it in theaters (distributed by World Northal Corp.) and on bootleg VHS under the title REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES. Now, thanks to the fine folks at Celestial Pictures, we can all see this film the way it was meant to be seen: Fully uncut and with English subtitles (replacing the horrendous English dubbing on earlier edits). The film opens with a bunch of topless women (all nudity was cut from the edited version) splashing around in a river when, all of a sudden, a huge crocodile grabs one of them and chows down on her. An elderly white-haired witch doctor hangs a live chicken on a hook above the river and begins chanting. The crocodile grabs the chicken and becomes hooked, as the witch doctor pulls it to shore and stabs it in the eyes, finishing the crocodile off by gutting it and pulling the contents out of it's stomach, which includes a tin can, a sandal and the unfortunate dead girl's bracelet, which he hands over to her family. We then switch to two professional city couples, who take a trip to "a tropical city" to research spells and to discover if they have any validity in modern society. Something tells me that they're not going to like what they uncover. They stop at a nightclub (a disco band plays a funky tune while a girl in a sequined bikini dances on-stage), where we watch an evil black magician (Lo Lieh; THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER - 1974) bring a beautiful woman back to his mansion, leads her into a secret room, strips her naked and then reveals that she has a giant spike embedded in the top of her skull! He slowly pulls the spike out with a pair of pliers and the beautiful girl rapidly turns into a decaying corpse. The two couples, the male members both being doctors, visit a hospital where the patients have strange skin ulcers, all said to have been caused by spells, especially the dreaded "Green Venom Poison Spell", which causes lesions that look like human faces. The black magician becomes smitten with Margaret (Tanny; HUMAN LANTERNS - 1982), the wife of one of the doctors, and puts a spell on her by stealing a drop of her blood, hanging a dead cat in her yard and pouring a potion made from her blood on one of his huge collections of wax effigies. Margaret's husband, Zhensheng (Ti Lung; 10 TIGERS OF KWANG TUNG - 1980), becomes worried for his wife's health and safety when she disappears each night. She is under the control of the black magician, who creates a potion using her freshly-shaven pubic hair (!), to make Margaret produce breast milk, which he will drink every night to keep his youthful appearance. Every night, Margaret sleepwalks to his mansion, where he sucks on her titties and then makes love to her (including some backdoor action!). When Zhensheng finally catches on to Margaret's nocturnal visits, he also discovers that she is suddenly nine months pregnant! She has an emergency c-section, where a mutated stillborn baby is delivered. Folks, this is only the first thirty minutes of the film. What comes next is truly beyond proper description and is best witnessed first hand. This is another weird and entertaining Shaw Brothers production, directed by demented genius Ho Meng-Hua (credited as "Horace Mengwa" on the abortive English language prints), who also directed the original BLACK MAGIC (1975; which stars many of the same actors here, but in different roles), as well as THE OILY MANIAC (1976), THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977; a.k.a. GOLIATHON) and THE RAPE AFTER (1986). The screenplay, by I Kuang (THE KILLER SNAKES - 1974), gets increasingly more bizarre as the film progresses, as we watch the black magician (whose name is revealed as Kang Cong!) perform his various spells (usually love spells for some poor schmucks that invariably go very, very wrong) obtaining blood or a personal item from his victims, which he uses to make potions to pour over his wax dolls or on the many dead, rotting corpses he keeps in the basement of his mansion. He then hammers a giant spike into the tops of their heads and, presto!, instant zombie with a youthful appearance. There's so much more insanity on view, including grave robbing, dead cat whipping, breast milk squirting, stop-motion disintegrations, skin lesions containing slimy worms and a zombie attack in the finale that is as surreal as it is horrific. There's also the prerequisite battle between the good magician (the white-haired witch doctor from the beginning of the film) and the black magician, where the black magician drives giant nails into his own cheeks and hands while the good magician rips out his own eyes and gives them to the hero for protection! I won't even mention the fight on a moving tram car that offers some of the chintziest blue screen work in recent memory. There's also tons of nudity and sex on view, all of it missing from the English language version; so much so, that it plays like an entirely different film. This is twisted horror in the best sense and gets my highest recommendation. A second in-name-only sequel, the Indonesian QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC (1979), followed. Also starring Liu Hui-Ju, Lily Li, Lin Wei-Tu, Frankie Wei and Yang Ai-Hua. A Celestial Pictures DVD Release in a beautiful widescreen print. Not Rated.

Jack:
As always a warm thank you to Fred for letting me use his reviews as I wish. Thanks.

The screen grabs are courtesy of Ian Jane of Dvdmaniacs.

DEVIL SORCERY (Hong Kong, 1988)

I watched DEVIL SORCERY last night. It's directed by Do Gong-Yue who also did BLOOD SORCERY two years previously. Like BLACK MAGIC 1 & 2, SEEDING OF A GHOST, CENTIPDE HORROR, DEAD CURSE, and most of the other movies in the dark and nasty horror movie genre from Hong Kong in the 1980s it deals with black magic and a wizard who does evil deeds in his own favour.

The wizard gone astray in DEVIL SORCERY was really a student of a good wizard but the good life went down the toilet for him when he decided to get it on with his master's wife, and when the good wizard came home unexpectedly he stabbed him and stole half of his magic gear. Anyway, it all takes a while to kick off but once it does it's a roller coaster ride that's for sure. Just like in CENTIPEDE HORROR there are scenes of a girl chucking up live centipedes with the rest of her dinner but in this one it's definitely in more gross detail. DEVIL SORCERY is in the same vein like those other flicks but it's easy to see it was made on a lower budget than the Shaw Brothers produced films (eg. Black Magic + Seeding) but don't let that put you off. It's pretty entertaining.

The only version available is the DVD pictured here which comes to us from down Malaysia way. The company Dragon Jester have released quite a few Hong Kong horror movies that aren't released anywhere else on DVD. It's weird to think that the only HK releases of these films are on VHS, LD, and VCD, but not on DVD, and that you have to venture to Malaysia to get DVD releases of these old (and forgotten) HK horror movies. Oh well. Fortunately we have 1) internet shopping, and 2) the cool store Sensasian! :-) Not the best in the genre but pretty entertaining!

The DVD is fullscreen, has Cantonese and Mandarin audio, and optional English subtitles. The picture quality is atrociously bad. It looks like it's lifted from a VCD or VHS. But as I said; it's the only version there is so I can certainly live with that.

[first posted in 2009]

EDIT: someone mentioned to me that the DVD is censored for nudity. I watched it quite a while back and have no recollection of this but I'm sure he's right. But, again, this is the only DVD out there so the choice is yours.

BLOOD SORCERY (Hong Kong, 1986)

aka THE CURSE



You can click on the above Japanese scan for full size. The other two are unfortunately only in small crappy size.

I've actually never watched this so I have no idea of how good or bad it is. Fortunately I got hold of the Ocean Shores VHS a while back (I ordered the TaiSeng version directly from their company at some stage but it turned out that altho they had tons of VHS titles listed on their site they didn't actually have any of them anymore!). It's directed by Do Gong-Yue who also did THE DEVIL SORCERY from 1988.

SEEDING OF A GHOST (Hong Kong)

Back in the early 90s I was a tape-trader and some of the films I had to get via tape trading were from that genre I like to call the "Dark and nasty horror movies from Hong Kong from the 1980s"! And one of the most legendary HK horror films among horror fans was... SEEDING OF A GHOST!!!

[VHS/Hongkong/fullscreen/in Cantonese/English subs]

(click scan for proper size!)

SEEDING OF A GHOST was never released on video neither in the UK nor the US, or anywhere else outside of Hong Kong (or Hongkong as they used to spell in back in the day in HK). Later it came out on HK VCD as well but it wasn't till quite recently that it was finally granted a DVD release. I'm not sure if there ever was a laserdisc release.

Anyway, the VHS soon disappeared and you had to resort to tape trading in order to get one. And getting a tape off an original tape was almost as difficult. Often you had to settle for foggy 3rd, 4th, or 5th generation dupes! Sometimes the colours kept disappearing. And you wonder why I spit in the face of fanboys who complain that perfect DVDs are "terrible" simply because they have something like one or two scratches to the print. :/ As far as I remember my VHS dupe of SEEDING was fairly alright, but when the DVD media became common and I got the chance of getting a DVD bootleg obviously I jumped at it right away headfirst. And now as I said there's a perfect DVD outta Hong Kong.

But enough of this baloney; The sole reason for this post is that after all this time I have finally got hold of the cover from that original legendary Ocean Shores VHS release!! No, I don't have the tape but my good mate Peter "Kothar" over at Cinehound has provided me with a scan. Thanks mate, I appreciate that!!!

SEEDING OF A GHOST was produced by Shaw Brothers and was originally meant to be the second sequel to BLACK MAGIC however SB decided otherwise. I believe it was due to the high level of gore and nudity in the film.

Dark & nasty HK: BRUTAL SORCERY (1983)

VHS / Japan / format? / Cantonese audio / Japanese subs / uncut


VHS / Ocean Shores / FS / English dub / no subs /cut at least one scene


Video-cd / Ocean Shores / FS / Cantonese & Mandarin dub /no subs / cut in at least one scene






Thanks to the very nice Cinehound members who provided me with these awesome covers!

BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA (Hong Kong, 1983) [review]

aka BLACK MAGIC WITH BUTCHERY
directed by Lo Lieh



by JACK J

Two adventurers find a mummy in a grave in Thailand. They open the mummy's head and take out the brain. One of them, Ben, brings it with him back to Hong Kong in a little wooden box. Once back home in HK Ben wants to use the brain to gain wealth. The brain has some kinda power and by using black magic Ben can get it to help him reach his goal. But as in so many other 'black magic' films from HK the main character is truly a bad egg, and Westerners often find it hard to deal with a film that doesn't have a good looking hero who at the end would score some equally good looking chick!

Well, as I said Ben uses the brain to become rich but as so often when you sell your soul to evil forces there is a price to pay: When Ben has got his wealth he must return the brain to where he took it. And as it is also often the case, our 'hero' doesn't wanna fulfil his part of the deal. And so heaps of weirdo stuff take place due to the brain being pissed off with Ben: Ben's family find dead dogs and monkeys 'round the house. While Ben is driving his car blood suddenly gushes down the front window. The evil brain changes to a bigger size and hides in the fridge!

There is also some amazing wild and gory scenes containing quite a bit of the old gooey red stuff: Ben chucks up pieces of brain, the pieces collect themselves into a full brain and then tries to escape a good magician who tries to zap the brain with, like, a zapping spell! Ben is also attacked by the brain that then opens his head so that his own brain is spurting out everywhere and down his face like gooey porridge! And heaps of other wild stuff happen!




The flick is directed by Lo Lieh, who also acted in the BLACK MAGIC films, and also in HUMAN SKIN LANTERNS. The style of BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA is smiilar to that of BLACK MAGIC 2 (and probably also BM 1 and HUMAM... but I haven't watched those, unfortunately!) and THE RAPE AFTER.

These are movies with black magic and gross-out stuff that you don't find in any Western films; there is an almost nasty feeling that follows you thru the whole movie! All these films are highly recommendable! They also steer away from the hopping vampire/ghost movies in that they are played straight. There is none of the otherwise well-known HK slapstick humour. The only funny scene in BMWH is entirely due to the version I watched wasn't shown in its letterboxed original format but had been changed to the tv format, which meant that in one scene you see a knee sitting at a table talking to a hand on the other side!

The subtitles were, well, lets just say they were a bit hard to read, with words missing at the beginning and at the end of lines, odd grammar and ehh unusual spelling. But on the other hand, this here is a Danish fanzine and who be am I to slag other pepples off for doingg inkorrect inglish! But anyway, when a film is as good as this who gives a fuck!

Version reviewed: Hong Kong release in Cantonese with Chinese and Englisjh subs.

First printed in #1 of my zine BANNED IN BRITAIN in 1994.





Brian at Cool Ass Cinema blog also just reviewed the film and the poster scan in this post is borrowed from his review (and he got it from Hong Kong Movie Data Base, LOL). The VHS cover scan is from Lars Jacobsson.