Her Vengeance (1988) - Ngai Choi Lam

A group of buddies head to Macao for some fun at the local casinos and can-can joints, and decide to end the night by brutally raping Pauline Wong. After a completely ludicrous scene at a doctor's office where she discovers that she has contracted AIDS (what's up with AIDS and lowbrow Hong Kong flicks anyways?), she decides to go all out in search of vengeance. She abandons her blind sister in Macao and head to Hong Kong in search of the raping asswipes (which includes Shing Fui-On). Once there she teams up with a wheelchair-bound Lam Ching Ying and falls in love with a nerdy journalist. Her Vengeance is a pretty straightforward revenge story of the luridly rapey kind. Not my favorite genre, but all in all it isn't too bad. Both Pauline Wong and Lam Ching Ying are excellent in this. The endings is absolutely nuts with wheelchair-fu, crossbows, fishhooks and acid baths. I guess I should come to expect this sort of shenanigans from Ngai Choi Lam flicks.

Wicked City (1992) - Peter Mak Tai Kit

I'm just going to start off by mentioning that I watched this under the pretense that it was the 1987 anime. I had no idea this thing even existed up until yesterday. For some reason, this Hong Kong live action version of the anime is set to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China. This doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, so I guess it is was done to draw some crude parallels between the threat of invading demons and the PRC. Hong Kong is flooded with a new demon drug called "happiness" and two buddies from the "anti-monster squad" has to close down the operation. In-between making demons explode, we find cops sobbing about how demon-ancestry is getting in the way of being promoted in the corps and an awkward human-demon love story. Wicked City features a bunch of odd stuff really - dudes fighting clocks, people banging pinball-machines, monsters riding planes 9/11-style and some ludicrous fights towards the end. The second half is pretty entertaining, it could probably work for a movie night. Apparently produced by Tsui Hark.

The Order of the Black Eagle (1987) - Worth Keeter

After being promised Orson Welles, nazis, explosions, baboons and "Adolf Hitler as Himself", there was no way I could not watch Order of the Black Eagle. In addition, my curiosity was peaked by the fact that it is described as a "pseudo-parody"on wikipedia (what does that even mean?!). Duncan Jax, super spy and baboon caretaker, has to stop neo-nazis in a generic South American country from achieving world domination. You see, the local top nazi and Orson Welles-impersonator, has managed to come up with a dubious plan involving "proton beams" and satellites, in-between eating whole chickens in his temple ruin-lair. Also, he has stored Hitler in cryogenic sleep in the basement, but that's really just a side treat and not relevant to the plans of world domination. Needless to say Duncan Jax and "Boon" the baboon has to set things straight, and do so by means of covert operations and shooting everyone in the face. The Order of the Black Eagle is a relatively ghastly affair in most ways, with constant interspersed closeups of "Boons" two only (and appalling) facial expressions. Ghastly but also rather entertaining. Give it a go if you want to know why baboon actors isn't "a thing".

Bewitched Area of Thousand Years (1991) - Lai Wan

Long time no see! I have no plans to stop watching junk anytime soon, I've just been lazy with updates. A bozo enters a cursed snake temple after having repeatedly and explicitly been told that it is a terribly bad idea by the local witchdoctor. Of course the witchdoctor was right, and the poor sod soon finds himself under the spell of a snake devil! He turns into a weird-ass snake fiend (with snakes for hands) and bothers the local aborigines for the next twenty years or so, until he by chance attacks his long lost daughter. This leads to some textbook Taiwanese possession shenanigans mixed up with confusing elements of family and/or love-drama. As usual it all culminates in a showdown where the local taoist/wizard/witchdoctor sets things straight by means of animal blood. Bewitched Area of Thousand Years is on the bottom end of the mediocre-scale. It is a straightforward (albeit cheap-as-dung) Taiwanese black magic feature about vicious snake devils. The copy I watched offered less than optimal viewing conditions, as it was dubbed in Thai with badly cropped subs in English. Furthermore it seems to have been ripped from a Thai VCD sourced from a shoddy tape or something. In general the movie looks astonishingly cheap. Great stuff for the snake devil crowd.

Indio (1989) - Antonio Margheriti

Indio is Margheriti's 54th film according to IMDb and one of his last jungle flicks. Brian Denney is building a road through the jungle and has decided that it should go on top of every native village he can find. When Dennehy brings in the bulldozers and guns to raze Indio the injun's village, enough is enough. Indio is pissed off and luckily he just got back from his dayjob as a murdering über-commando. Indio slaps some traps together, rigs logs with dynamite and fucks people up with a blowpipe. Dennehy eventually calls in backup in the form of a band of commandos dressed as a barbershop group from hell. Indio's action bits are not too bad actually, there's even some originality here, the problem is that the breaks between these bits are a tad too long. Indio is a pretty straightforward rambo ripoff and the plot can't really carry the flick by itself. It's definitely not spectacular and it's not terrible, it's just sort of slow.  Marvelous Marvin Hagler makes a short appearance in this, but is apparently the star of the two sequels! Give it a go, or don't, it's not like I know what I'm talking about.

Slash (1984) - Jun Gallardo

When the daughter of a CIA dude gets kidnapped by the Vietcong along with some important documents (or something), Romano Kristoff/Slash is called in to save the day! To get shit done he brings an absolutely idiotic-looking supergun, that somehow also is a pair of binoculars, a GPS, a sonar and a rocketlauncher. Slash actually has a cooler/more explody cover, but the one above illustrates the ludicrous nature of Slash's dumbass gun much better. There's lots of angry screaming, quite a bit of shooting, huts explode all over, Slash robs farmers of their morphine and a helicopter explodes in slightly unconvincing fashion! This thing is pretty much mediocre in every way, but it's never really boring. Quite watchable!

Crossbone Territory (1988) - Danilo Cabreira

There's nothing worse than a cheap as shit movie taking itself seriously. You can feel that these poor guys set out to make something truly good, while at the same time witnessing their complete failure in doing so. I don't think I've ever cared less about a rag tag band of jungle commandos (although Phantom Soldiers comes to mind). In Crossbone Territory a bunch of commandos stroll around in the jungle in the most boring way imaginable, while stepping into traps and getting shot at every other minute. It is generally a very shooty flick, but as everything reeks of complete shoddiness at all times, it becomes impossible to care about any of it. According to the explanatory text+freeze frame at the end (it ends on a "serious" note) it was about the battle of Khe Sanh. This was probably made clear earlier in the film too, but after 90 minutes of people walking through bushes and nonstop shooting, my brain had began to block things out. By the final battle scene, Crossbone Territory was nothing more than audiovisual noise to me. It doesn't help that the music is absolutely ghastly at times either. It basically sounds like a bunch of terrible piano players are fighting to play different Phillip Glass pieces on a single piano. Painfully tiresome.

Jungle Wolf 2 (1988) - Neil Callaghan

Return Fire AKA the sequel to Forgotten Warrior and Jungle Wolf. Dear god, why did they expand the Jungle Wolf franchise? I find it mysterious that there was a market for Ron Marchini flicks in general. First of all, Jungle Wolf is not in a jungle this time around, but rather some sort of industrial lot filled with pipes. Not a whole lot is explained, he's back in the US or something and is immediately pursued by thugs. It is all set to music lifted straight from a bad 50s thriller and immensely uninteresting. The badguy is sort of cool though, as he kills some dudes in the office of his evil drug lair and insists that the bodies should be left there to make an example. I guess smell is not an issue. Adam West is in this flick for some reason, but it's all for nothing though, seeing as Jungle Wolf 2 is fucking horrible. I guess I'll have to watch Jungle Wolf 3 now, just to get it done. Be gentle Marchini.

The Forgotten Warrior (1986) - Charlie Ordoñez

Whoa whoa whoa, hold it right there! I seem to have had my Steve Parrish-canon confused. Apparently the character Steve Parrish appeared in this movie - Forgotten Warrior - before he was in Jungle Wolf. The nonsensical flashbacks in Jungle Wolf suddenly makes more sense. Forgotten Warrior is also miles better than Jungle Wolf. Steve still wears his trademark sleeve-regenerating yellow shirt, but this time around he actually shoots people, throws his ninja stars and wears a ridiculous conical hat! Steve is left behind after the Vietnam war and ekes out a living in a tiny village. He gets married, has a kid and teaches the whole village generic martial arts. Things are looking pretty swell, but, as we have learned by watching Jungle Wolf 1 & 2, Steve's wretched dick is cursed. Every woman he touches ends up dead. Eventually ghosts from the past appear (see: murdering American soldiers), his village is blown up and his wife is raped and killed. Classic Steve. Forgotten Warrior is actually pretty awesome. It has cinema's greatest stick fight and is not an utter borefest like the sequels. I still wonder why they made a four-movie series about Steve though.

Jungle Wolf (1986) - Charlie Ordoñez

Such a promising title, such a promising cover, too bad Jungle Wolf is an utter waste of time. Steve Parrish - the yellow-shirted Jungle Wolf - heads into the jungle to rescue an American ambassador. We're told that we're in South America, but for some odd reason it looks a lot like the Philippines. Soon there is a montage where Jungle Wolf loads up on guns, knifes, swords and ninja stars, accompanied by the films amazing title track promising us that Jungle Wolf is "Back-Back in action!". Of course, this is all a ruse intended to set the viewer up for disappointment. You see, mr. Jungle Wolf use the mentioned hardware in the dullest fashion imaginable. He basically strolls around i the jungle for 40 minutes punching people with his guns. The only time he uses his ninja star is to cut a piece of rope, wielding the thing like a knife. For some inexplicable reason a rebel chick and an obese, machine gun-carrying dimwit (Paco), is tagging along on Jungle Wolf's quest to eradicate my interest in movies. Paco is actually fairly entertaining, but sadly he is given way too little screen time. Watch this if you want to see a bored-looking chap punch people with his rifle and lob grenades at trees for what seems like an eternity. Don't even get me started at the horrible freeze-frame ending. I guess Jungle Wolf has a handful of so-called "moments", but in general it is a rather ghastly affair. The best thing about this flick is that it has a prequel! The worst thing about this flick, is that it has a sequel (or at least something posing as a sequel).

Jungle Heat (1988) - Ratno Timoer

I'm back and have found my way back to the jungle! After doing a rewatch of Jobic Wong's goddamn amazing Jungle Heat, I figured it was about time I checked out it's Indonesian namesake. Turns out Ratno Timoer's Jungle Heat is fucking great too! Starring Peter O'Brian from Rambu ("in his most eloquent and interesting" role according to his obviously fan-written wikipedia article) and badass Advent Bangun (Timoer's Devil's Sword). With all these signs of quality, it's a mystery why I haven't watched this sooner. In an opening scene oddly reminiscent of Braindead, it is established that we are dealing with savage cannibals and a treasure. A certain Dr. Albert is after said treasure, but fucks up immensely, is nibbled to death and has his baby daughter fall into the hands of the cannibals. The cannibals proceed to raise her as their queen after they botch their attempt at sacrificing her to the gods. Skip a few years ahead and an adventurer named Lola have gotten hold of Dr. Albert's map. After discussing the map in Indonesia roughest bar (rape-attempts and fights galore), she teams up with Peter O'Brian and head into the jungle. What follows is every jungle actioner trope in the book. It's basically nonstop action up until the last 30 mins or so, when the narrative creeps to a standstill with cannibal marriages and awkward love scenes. Just before the end Ratno Timoer seem to have realized that some HIGH OCTANE was needed though, and people start killing each other and/or exploding. YES!

Lust for Freedom (1987) - Eric Louzil

Without Lust for Freedom there would probably not be any Torbovision! Almost exactly one year ago we were bored and decided to watch some shit together on IRC. Luckily this movie came up first and didn't blow. For the grand jubilee we did a rewatch and it turned out it was as good as ever! A bunch of southern gentlemen have figured out that they can make tons of cash by arresting chicks at random and make snuff flicks. Sadly/luckily our protagonist soon finds herself in the clutches of the vicious wardens. Lust for Freedom is an ultracheesy woman in prison flick, set to the music of Grim Reaper. It might be more correct to say that it is set to Grim Reapers two tracks "Lust for Freedom" and "Rock you to Hell", and that both are repeated again and again. At one point they just restart "Rock you to Hell" from the beginning every time there's a change of scene. Furthermore, Lust for Freedom might be the most narrated film ever made, with the bored-looking protagonist chiming in on every single occurrence onscreen. Features an excellent gallery of characters, including my favorite: Judd the raping indian. What a find this was!

The Imp (1981) - Dennis Yu

Just stumbled upon this by looking at a some great-looking screenshots some time back. The Imp is a black magic ghost feature, that somehow doesn't feel cheap! It is competently shot, with amazing visuals throughout. The story is so-so, but that is forgivable seeing as the atmosphere is excellent. A dude finds a new job as a night watchman at a high-rise office building, but soon discovers that something is off after an unpleasant meeting with loads of eerie, green fog in an elevator. The building is obviously haunted, but it seems his pregnant wife is involved somehow too. As his coworkers begin to drop dead, our protagonist seeks help from the local geomancer. The Imp features lethally bad feng shui, zombies, ghosts in red clothes (the worst kind) and lots of green smoke. Great stuff. I am starting to think that Kent Cheng only gets cast in movies where he ends up being miserable and/or dead. Poor Kent Cheng :(

The Beasts (1980) - Dennis Yu

I was reminded of this flick after watching one of Dennis Yu's other (and superior) films The Imp. I actually saw it half a year ago, but forgot to mention it here. To be honest, I had almost forgotten about this movie altogether and I'm sure that says something about it's quality. The Beasts, aka Flesh and Bloody Terror (jeez), is another retelling of the fairly lame Last House on the Left story. Happy youngsters head out in the wilderness, gets raped by a bunch of "disco boys"/HK hillbillies, pissed off dad shows up for revenge.  Not terrible or anything, but not deserving all its hype either. Kent Cheng plays a baldy among the disco boys and never gets to go to Holland. Poor Kent Cheng :(

Soul Brothers of Kung Fu (1977) - Wa Yat-Wang

Bruce Li and venom, Lo Mang, arrive in Hong Kong as refugees and attempt to eke out a living doing odd jobs. Their tendency to get into fights every other minute complicates matters though and soon they have to deal with both gambling debts and pissed off mobsters. Li manages to win a martial arts tournament and become a kung fu sensation, but this just infuriates the mob boss further. Shortly after the tournament, Li's girlfriend is killed by murderous rape-gweilos and Li is left badly wounded. Li fine tunes his fighting skills with SCIENCE (by punching glowing dolls) and sets out for bloody revenge. Along the way they pick up youngster Carl Scott, who apparently had a short career in the Hong Kong movie industry. It should be mentioned that the different editions of this flick vary quite a lot. Soul Brothers of Kung Fu aka Last Strike is a fairly violent flick, but most of the violent bits are missing from the german widescreen print. Be warned that there's a bunch of death finger nut stabs and X-ray heart puncturing you could miss out on! Furthermore, Carl Scott is strung up and killed (!) in the widescreen print, while he's alive and well at the end of the pan and scan editions. While Soul Brothers of Kung Fu has a place on the cheaper side of film making, it's really not too bad. The choreography is nice, the plot is relatively concise and Li punches a ton of dudes in the nuts. Enjoyable!

Bruce Lee in New Guinea (1978) - Joseph Kong Hung

Bruce Li heads to New Guinea (specifically "Snake Worship Island") on an anthropological expedition to avoid having lunch with his annoying cousin. He's there to find the snake tribe who are supposed to be cool jungle dwellers, but soon discovers that they are run by the less cool devil sect these days. The devil sect are into snakes, black magic and punching intruders in the face. Li ends up falling in love with the local snake princess, and is cursed by her in return (she means well though). Back in Hong Kong Bruce discovers that he turns into a snake if he's touched by other women, and heads back to New Guinea to sort his shit out. New Guinea sort of looks like a Hong Kong rock quarry in this to be honest, and the soundtrack is lifted straight from Once upon a time in the West. It's a truly ridiculous film with dudes in monkeysuits, curses and banana theft. Bolo Yeung and the googly-eyed chap from Hex after Hex makes an appearance and I'm fairly certain I've seen the devil sorcerer before too. All the good bits of a black magic flick with the addition of decent fights. Exquisitely silly and generally amazing!

Thou Shall Not Commit (2001) - Chan Kin-Tak

I grabbed a copy of this as it had Wong and lightning bolts on the cover. As an added bonus I had never heard of it before and it does not seem to be on IMDb. I set my expectations to zero and stepped into the world of bad cantosynth soundtracks. Thou Shall Not Commit opens with a cheap as sin Dick Dale cover of sorts, and has one of the  lousiest soundtracks I've heard in a while. The movie is about adultery obviously and is a bad one at that too. An unknown narrator's wife and her lover dies in a ludicrous hostage situation at the beginning of the film, before the film skips to the killer getting released from jail a few years later. The killer is taken in by Wong, who claims to know his dad. They bond and from hereon most of the film is told through flashbacks. Of course the film has "twists" and yawns luring around every bend, with cheap editing to boot. It sort of feels like one of those overly convoluted and poorly executed film student flicks. It ain't all bad, but it isn't a mystery why this thing isn't on IMDb either. An odd duck.

Challenge of the Tiger (1980) - Bruce Le

Challenge of the Tiger is another Bruce Le-directed film, featuring both him and the always charming Richard Harrison. As an extra bonus Le also got hold of top musclemen Brad Harris and Bolo Yeung, in addition to  sex queen Nadiuska! Le seems to know exactly what his audience are after and as a result Challenge of the Tiger is aces from start to finish. A pair of scientists develop the ultimate spermicide and figures it would be a terrible idea if it got into the wrong hands. Of course a bunch of hoodlums storm their office at the very second they utter these words, murders them and decides to blackmail the free world with it! Soon (possible) Nazis, the Vietcong and the CIA clash over the "formula". Le does his usual thing while Harrison tags along to sleep with every dame he lays his eyes on. The plot is all nonsense of course, but the fighty bits are tight and there's tons of it (at one point Le fights a bull!). If you were to remove all the fighting you would basically be left with nude tennis, sex scenes and some silly dialogue to connect the fights. Le's direction is actually fairly sober too, and the film never becomes the mess that Black Spot was. Excellent stuff with a neat soundtrack!

The Dragon Lives (1976) - Wong Sing-Lui

The amount of alternate titles for some of these Lee ripoffs is staggering and often the same titles appear on several films. As a result I actually spent quite some time trying to figure out exactly which flick I had just seen and I am not sure if I'm much wiser now. The title screen said The Dragon Lives at least, it stars Li and I'm fairly certain it was released in the period between 1976 and 1978. The movie is some sort of bizarre biopic, that presents us with an alternative reading of Lee's life. I think the only part of this that actually happened is that Lee died young. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure if he did so screaming with laughter following a prolonged (it's long) sex scene... The gist of the story is that Li goes to the states and becomes a star, but is disgusted with their racist portrayals of Chinese people. The views of this flick's director are equally murky however, as the black bad guys in this are portrayed as degenerate creeps. As Li puts it at one point: "I had to teach those monkeys a lesson"... You disappoint me, Li :/ While the fights are not too bad and not entirely tedious, the rest of the flick sort of is. There's some ludicrous stuff going on in the seemingly endless fight at the beginning, a nice parody of Shaw Bros productions and a nutty training machine, but it's mostly just Li arguing with various movie producers. A mediocre movie all in all, with an excellent soundtrack.

Clones of Bruce Lee (1980) - Joseph Kong Hung

Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bruce Lai in the same movie, and all of them even plays Lee! As the proper Bruce Lee is rushed to the hospital and confirmed dead, a wacky gwailo decides to make three clones of him to fight crime. After being taught a lesson in fighting by Bolo Yeung they set out on separate missions of asskicking. Of course they kick the required butts and finally unite their powers to fight a mad Thai doctor, who has raised an army of bronze supermen. Also, there's nudity. Theoretically I should have been entertained by this movie, the concept of triple Lees battling robots seems pretty hard to screw up. Joseph Kong Hung however, somehow managed to make it into flick devoid of entertainment value that at 90 minutes feel like the Neverending Story. There are few if any highlights worth mentioning - the fights are dull, the nudity is dull, the dialogue is dull, the baddies are dull, the showdown is dull, the Lees are dull, the camera work is dull, etc. At one point it seems like the baddies themselves have had enough of this stinker, as they begin to commit suicide by eating poisonous grass instead of fighting the Lees  (this scene is actually fairly entertaining though). Bolo Yeung had a chance to end my suffering 20 minutes earlier in what I expected to be a final showdown, but of course the Lees defeat him by basically boring him to death. Hats off to Joseph Kong Hung for managing to make this story into a total yawn inducer. Zzzzz.

Curse (1985) - Pang Ling

Another black magic flick from Pang Ling, the man behind Brutal Sorcery! I had no idea this was made by the same guy, as I mistakenly had looked up the info for the 1988 Curse. A woman is in big trouble, seeing as she literally pissed a powerful wizard in the face in a past life. Needless to say, the wizard was less than happy about this incident and cursed the shit out of her. Every man she marries becomes unhealthily horny and eventually drops dead from exhaustion. As one mother-in-law puts it, the husbands become "too much engaged in marriage life". It takes ten husbands before our lead begin to realize that something is not right... Constantly dying husbands isn't enough for the pissed off (ehehehe) wizard though, so he also makes sure that a ghost rapist moves into her flat. Eventually she grows tired of all the raping, and Herman Kwan enters the fray. Kwan does his usual taoist priest routine and makes everything right (not really) with the often used Kwaidan-method (employed in Hex and Powerforce among others). Kwan explains that our lead is suffering due to the "cause and effect theory", which is his way of saying it was a bad idea to piss on that wizard way back when. Curse basically jumps from one ludicrous scene to the next (with pointless shower-scenes in between), and is a pure joy to watch. There's krasue, odd rituals, funky special effects, hopping vampires and raping ghosts. At one point a wizard drinks blood straight from a cow using a straw, before  annihilating some unruly vampires by spitting it on them! Glorious!

Black Spot (1991) - Bruce Le

Black Spot is a 90s action flick directed by and starring the one and only Bruce Le! Having grown tired of running drugs, Le has retired to a relaxed life as a fitness guru in Hong Kong. Of course, his bosses wants none of it, and before you know it Le is on the run from gangsters in Paris (of all places)! According to an IMDb user this was supposedly a bit of a hit in France. Escaping halfway across the globe wasn't such a good idea though, as the French authorities force him into going undercover for the very gangsters he's running from. What follows is an insane cagefight against a sheep-killing giant, and a ton of jumping around in Southeast Asia with lackluster explanations of what's going on. Le's direction leaves Black Spot as a confusing mess of a film, which is somewhat of an accomplishment considering how thin the plot actually is. The drug smugglers are generally fairly bad dudes, while Le is a paragon of virtue standing up for the rights of poor opium farmers. Black Spot does have a bunch of action and shit though, so you'll probably manage to be entertained. All in all an OK flick. Also, Lo Lieh makes an appearance in this for some reason!  

Powerforce (1982) - Michael Mak

In Powerforce Bruce Baron and Bruce Li team up to rescue a princess or something! While that sounds pretty awesome and all, it's about all I understood of the plot. Baron is lounging in a pool with some skanks, before he receives (by means of fortune cookie) his princess-mission. Said princess has been kidnapped by an Orson Welles impersonator, seeing as he needs her country's chromium oxide for his nuclear power plant/space program/cocaine production/appetite. His motives are never entirely clear, but to make up for it he has an army of ninjas and an evil karate lair. Apparently, Baron's powerforce isn't enough by itself, and he has to get some help from Li's Dragon Force - a sorry trio  of fighters that are into weird snake rituals. There's a bunch of shit happening in this flick, some of it is quite entertaining too (exploding ninjas all over the place). In the end it gets a bit tiresome though, seeing as you have no idea whats going on or why shit is happening, while the movie drags on for way too long. OK-ish.

The Imp (1996) - Ivan Lai Gai-Ming

Before I watched this I was told The Imp was mediocre shit and not really worth a look. While I can understand the reasoning behind such a description, I managed to enjoy myself while watching this. A reporter starts having visions of her twin sister getting murdered and sets off to a mountain "village" to investigate. The village consists of a shitty hotel, a temple of sorts and is surrounded by a jungle or something. It's not entirely clear where we are supposed to be, seeing as there are wild savages living nearby which the subtitles keep referring to as "aboriginals". The journalist teams up with a movie crew shooting a documentary in the area and tons of sex ensues. There's sex, nudity or something a long those lines every five minutes basically and barely room for plot at times. The plot is paper thin though, so no worries there. Watchable slasher junk with ridiculous madmen, backyard labiaplasty, gimps and plenty of blue lighting. More fun than the purely sex-based catIIIs at least. Made by the dude who did The Blue Jean Monster!

A Lamb in Despair (1999) - Tony Leung

A gloomy weirdo returns from the US and figures he should start kidnapping chicks, keep nude slaves and stab people from time to time. Apparently he's been acquitted of some similar shenanigans over in the states already, and this pisses off an equally gloomy journalist played by Anthony Wong. For some reason Mr. weirdo was in the US army and now flaunts his dog tags all over the place. Apparently this  is a bad thing and Wong is not pleased. There's some flashbacks with child abuse (don't throw cigarettes at your kids unless you want them to turn into weirdos), before it ends with some nutty facemorphing nonsense. A few weeks have passed since I watched this to be honest, and my memory of this thing is somewhat blurred. I guess the fact that I've managed to forget so much about this in such a short time, speaks volumes about whether you should bother watching it or not. Utterly forgettable.

Devil Sorcery (1988) - Do Gong Yue

Devil Sorcery should have been called Baldie finds a Bride. A bald chap is having a shitty time during his sorcery internship, as his boss likes to poison him for fun and ruin his nights out by appearing as an apparition in Baldie's pints. In turn Baldie relieves himself by sleeping with his master's wife. Of course he is busted almost immediately, stabs his master to death, runs off and finds himself cursed. The curse in question giving Baldie bad body odour and facial sores, in addition to turning him evil or something. From hereon out he spends his days trying to not get his smelly self kicked out of restaurants, summoning laughing krasue in the jungle and kidnapping chicks. He finally ends up cursing the poor bar-girl girlfriend of the film's protagonist/random sideplot dude, and Herman Kwan is called in to save the day. As usual, Kwan contributes with little more than a couple of short rants about eight trigrams and closeups of him smirking. Actually, its not even Kwan who saves the day in the end, as the master sorcerer - who I assumed was dead - stumbles off a bus right before the final showdown, points a finger at baldie and immolates him on the spot - THE END. Kwan didn't even have to bring out the dog's blood for this one. I reckon this thing had a lot of nudity removed, seeing as there was a bunch of shower scenes that was so soft and blurry it was unclear whether someone was even in the shot. No deviation from the standard black magic plot whatsoever, but still quite amusing!

Devil's Woman (1996) - Otto Chan

Devil's Woman is somewhat of a perfect example of what I think of when I see cat III mentioned. It manages to mix themes like rape, black magic, cops, Southeast Asia and comedy together in typical Hong Kong fashion. Baldie Elvis Tsui stars as a badass cop, who becomes clairvoyant after getting mixed up in some hex business. This time we are dealing with busty actresses worshiping "Sedan", if we are to trust the subtitles. I assume we in fact should not trust the subtitles, as they surely are referring to "Satan", and not a car type. At least we're not dealing with Carla-worshipers! Top loony wizard, Ben Ng appears too, and it should come as no surprise that he's the one casting the rape-hexes in this flick. Elvis is in deep shit in Devil's Woman, calling in sick for work due to blue balls, having a bloody fetus blasted at him by means of shotgun, getting raped by ghosts and having no girlfriend :'( Thoroughly entertaining cat III romp! Yay!

Devil's Box (1984) - Tommy Chin

Devil's Box stars Simon Yam as a ridiculous-looking, longhaired movie director fighting a box! To the box's defense it is a haunted devil box, but as far as evil antagonists  go, boxes rank pretty low in my book. The film does have a nice eerie soundtrack at times, but it's still a mediocre and disappointing affair with snores lurking around every corner. Check it out if you feel like watching Simon Yam stroll around in his office, read papers, watch movies and look puzzled for 80 minutes. It's a bit unclear when this thing was made, as I see both 94 and 84 mentioned. Judging from the actual movie though I think it's safe to assume it's not from the 90s. It has that unique look of something shot in a shed for small change.

Dead Curse (1985) - Chong Biu Man

The police murders a bunch of chicks worshiping a deity called "Carla", and stops them from sacrificing a kid. Sadly, the witch got a blood curse up her sleeve and the poor copper finds himself hexed at the end of their encounter. As we all know by know, hexes are no laughing matter and our protagonists soon find themselves in a bit of ghostly troubles. The cursed copper in question is not really the protagonist though, as the Carla worshipers seem more interested in offing his sister and her young daughter. Seeing as the sister is a reporter, the film dabbles with ghost photography. The photos proving the existence of Chinese ghosts should have gotten her the Pulitzer, but sadly the photos have to be burned. At one point taoist priest, Herman Kwan, enters the story, and proceeds to sort shit out by throwing yellow paper and doggy blood all over the place. Dead Curse has all the stuff I appreciate in these black magic flicks - human sacrifices, Carla-worshipers, ludicrous possessions, boobies, bikers, kiddie ghosts pretending to be E.T. and haunted pepsi cans. Relatively coherent and enjoyable!

Sentenced to Hang (1989) - Taylor Wong

Three buddies  comes up with a kidnapping scheme to get rich over a couple of beers. They fail miserably however and ends up killing the poor, kidnapped schmuck. Still hungry for cash they kidnap another gent and ends up killing a bunch of more dudes to stay out of jail. Of course, as revealed in the title their scheme does not go as planned. From what I gather, Sentenced to Hang was one of the first (or the first) movie to receive the CatIII rating, but its really nothing like its wilder brethren from the 90s. For once, I think "sober" actually might be a good description of a CatIII, as this is more of a thrilling drama than a shocker. Sentenced to Hang is actually a quite decent flick though, and is definitely worth a spin! Poor Kent Cheng.

Awakening (1994) - Cha Chuen-Yee

Whoa, Simon Yam and Anthony Wong anno 1994, both starring in the same ghost romp! How could Awakening possibly be bad? Actually, it sort of is. Awakening is all over the place and basically nothing makes any sense, seeing as the explanations are all subbed in nonsense-English. I guess it sort of "delivers", but its hard to pay attention as you're basically watching random segments with cryptic and unintelligible connections to each other. At its core, Awakening is a movie about how Yam screws up everything for Wong's successful feng shui business. I'm not going explain this in detail, but the plot involves past lives, horses, hairy babies and sex changes. Anthony Wong have also refined cheating on his wife into a black art and calls it "Double Practice". I sort of tapped out during the last 30 minutes and gave up on trying to make sense of it all. Therefore I'm not even going to make any attempt of explaining what happened in the end, but it included crosses, crossdressing, wonky sound effects and shouting brides from hell. I think I read somewhere that this flick supposedly was quite "coherent", they must've been either native speakers or mad though, because "coherent" is the last word I'd use to describe Awakening. There are laughs to be had, but in the end its basically a jumbled mess of a film about magical redecorating about 45 minutes too long. 

Mark of the Devil (1970) - Michael Armstrong

Witch-process history lesson/torture porn starring Udo Kier (Mr. Burnvictim, Reggie Nalder)! Pure exploitation that manages to cut from naked chicks getting ripped apart in the rack, to naked chicks in steamy lovescenes. Basically a lot like Witchfinder General, but with more naked chicks and violence. There's a plot in there between all the chicks getting burned, tongues getting ripped out and screaming, but it's not really worth any attention whatsoever. Anything non-exploitative this thing does, Witchfinder General does better. Watch them back to back and you'll get the best of both worlds!

Rape and Die (1983) - Lee Wing-Cheung

I can't remember why I wanted to watch this flick, but the title is probably at least partly to blame. Rape and Die is a complete mess of a film, and while I didn't expect a masterpiece, I didn't expect this either. Rather than a snoreinducing, softcore CatIII effort, I was presented with a confusing triad, coming-of-age, social drama with rapey elements. A poor girl is struggling as her mom is a prostitute, her stepdad is a creepy rapist and her father sleeps with her classmates. She attempts to solve her problems by becoming a prostitute herself, but that somehow manages to make her life even more shitty. Features the seediest backalley abortion clinic I've seen, ludicrous disco dancers and weed as a rapedrug. In the end the moral of the story is something along the lines of "threat your mother right". An odd but mostly uninteresting film.

Pony Trouble (2005) - Warren Lynch

Having figured this would be some enjoyable proto-brony horse-junk, I gave Pony Trouble a shot. Horrified, I soon discovered that I was WAY too sober to watch this thing, but kept at it anyways. With that said, I don't think you would survive the dosage of booze/glue/opiates this movie demands of you. I somehow managed to watch the entirety of this thing, and it is one of the least coherent peaces of trash I've ever seen. On the one hand you want to stop watching, because it is both confusing and utterly awful, but on the other it is sort of fascinatingly inept. The fact that someone figured that this was a great idea for a movie and spent time making it, is utterly mindblowing to me, because the idea is so incomprehensibly dumb. Every ten minutes it sort of looks like it might turn into a porn (which would be a great improvement), but it never happens and somehow manages to disappoint you even further. This film made me question how I spend my free time and was a truly harrowing experience. Please do not watch this, there is nothing to be gained from Pony Trouble :'(

Torbovision Video Mixtape (2013)

Out now!

The Beheaded 1000 (1993) - Ting Shan Hsi

While I've currently placed The Beheaded 1000 in the black magic category, it is not really in the same category as lots of the other films I have labeled as such. Where the usual black magic stuff from Hong Kong has an unhealthy obsession with curses, The Beheaded 1000 is mainly a story about ghosts. Notorious real-life asshole, Jimmy Wang Yu, stars as an executioner nearing his retirement/1000th execution, when things go awry and a gang of pissed off ghosts decides the time for vengeance has come. There is quite a lot of stuff going on in The Beheaded 1000, and the film features a plethora of sub-plots and plot derailments. At times it is a neat film, at others it is painfully boring. Eg. an hour in or so, the director suddenly ventures into the territory of tragic, Chinese melodrama, even though his sub par actors clearly were not up for the task. It is a truly awful and seemingly everlasting 30 minutes. While I usually prefer to watch the most complete editions of films, The Beheaded 1000 is a film that begs to be cut. I realized in retrospect that I ended up watching the long Taiwanese version of the movie, and that there also exists a far shorter Hong Kong version. On the other hand, the Hong Kong cut is supposed to have been cut too much and cut badly. The film in general is (sort of) worth a look though - it does feature lots of wacky special effects, beheadings, haunts and the guardian of hell chasing mischievous ghosts - but be warned about its bad pacing.

Blood Sorcery (1986) - Do Gong Yue

An older gent steals a jade statuette from Burmese savages and finds himself cursed. The same fate is shared by an adulterous war-photgrapher taking a break from the Vietnam War in Thailand. The war scenes are excellent stuff, seeing as they make it clear that the Vietnam War primarly consisted of tanks firing at each other in large open fields and WW2-like beach landings. The film also features the usual share of vomiting and eating of worms, odd things that explode and love affairs in Thailand. I'm not entirely sure what's up with Blood Sorcery. The ending is utterly abrupt and leaves much to be desired when it comes to explaining how (and whether) the chaps actually defeated the vengeful Burmese father. Luckily, the neat music that followed the nonsense in question, made me forget about minor issues such as plot. Mostly though, it is an oddly sober and coherent film, but at the same time it manages to be a film about Burmese death curses and ever-bleeding wounds. In form the film is more reminiscent of the more boring black magic entries, rather than mad balls-to-the-walls features like Eternal Evil of Asia. Still, there's something about Blood Sorcery that keeps you watching, at least I don't regret giving it a go!

Mad Mad Ghost (1992) - Billy Chan

I watched this back-to-back with Magic Cop, and was happy to discover that this was equally, or even more, brilliant! Lam Ching Ying moves into a haunted house, along with a bunch of snotty students of taoism and ghost-slaying. It turns out the ghosts haunting the place is a miserable married couple - the husband only able to show his love for his wife through clenched fists. I have reason to believe the film contains the most entertaining domestic violence I've ever seen on film ("Hit means love" <3 ). It is of course an utterly silly film, with a ghost going discodancing while claiming to be Madonna, at one point. A ghostbusting, mormon foreigner-duo is also at play here too, trying to get their hands on some gold hidden in said haunted house. They generally sour things up once they bring their machine guns to the party, but luckily Lam solves the crisis with the power of song. Seeing as neither Lam or any of the other characters can sing worth a damn and the lyrics go on about how we all can be united as "chinese ghosts", it makes for a quite memorable sequence. Comedy gold!

Seeding of a Ghost (1983) - Yang Chuan

Phillip Ko finds himself in a bit of trouble after he's wrongly accused of raping and killing his sweetheart. The real culprits somehow manages to go free, and after failing to dish out some manual revenge, Phillip turns to the dark arts for help. The preposterously hideous (Southeast Asian) sorcerer suggests that the perfect spell for the occasion is "seeding of a ghost". Phillip somehow finds proposal reasonable and agrees to dig up his dead wife, in addition to impregnate her rotting corpse (poor Phillip Ko). The price to pay for such shenanigans is harsh obviously, but at least the sorcerer keeps his word and wreaks some real havoc on the culprits. The end is quite odd, seeing as the result of the spell is a betentacled hellspawn with a human head inside its mouth! Said hellspawn continues to fuck up a dinner party real bad, before the film ends. Quite fun!

Eternal Evil of Asia (1995) - Chin Man-Kei

A bunch of dudes head to Thailand for some light hearted, prostitute-related fun. They soon stumble upon a wizard in the form of Ben Ng, as they haven't seen Red to Kill they mistake him for a friend. One of the poor chaps has his head transformed into an actual dickhead, while the bunch witness a mad magic duel involving sorcerors flying around fucking each other mid-air to perform the powerful "mating hex"! All of this is great of course, but the film really picks up its pace after Ben Ng's sister is gangraped by the Hong Kong-crew accidentally (love-potions are a bitch to do right). Revenge obviously has to be had and what follows is a dazzling display of hexes, absurd deaths, invisi-blowjobs, golden buddhas and other kinds of nonsense. The end result is a wildly entertaining rape-revenge-comedy-romp, that cements Ben Ng as Hong Kongs wackiest raper. Glorious!

Blood Ritual (1988) - Lee Yuen-Ching

After starting off with a human sacrifice, Blood Ritual lectures the viewer on the rising popularity of "evil religions". While it remains somewhat unclear why youngsters has taken an interest in senseless killing and blood rituals, it is made certain that doing evil and wearing gaudy snake/skull-amulets is no good. Blood Ritual is mostly a dull affair, featuring endless tirades about evil religions going nowhere, the most uninteresting bar-fight in history and cheery furnishing montages. While it's a film that begs to be ignored and mostly feels like a total waste of time, it does have a couple memorable scenes. For example, a scene where the shitty protagonists are ambushed in a parking lot comes to mind. Worshippers of evil dress up as women and lobs a dead baby to the cops, before attempting to kick their asses. I'm not entirely sure how they had assumed this plan of theirs would pan out, but at least it backfires hilariously. An awful film.

The Devil's Sword (1984) - Ratno Timoer

Another balls-to-the-walls Barry Prima adventure film! I'm actually struggling to find a decent way to describe this flick, seeing as something new and amazing is happening constantly in it. A super sword is crafted from a meteor, two warriors trained by the same master set out to get it, conflict ensues. One being the gentle and noble Barry Prima, the other being an evil bastard in the form of Advent Bangun. Of course there's also a plot involving a horny witch, who sends out evil crocodile-men to kidnap male sex-slaves. There's a wide array of baddies, including a gnarly-looking cyclops that appears to be made from paper and assorted garbage. The choreography in the numerous fights is generally pretty bad, but the concepts are neat. The Devil's Sword has the feel of the high adventures of Conan, while still retaining that sweet Indonesian flavour (the flavour of magic!). Contrary to what the German cover above would have us believe, Conan or his sword does not appear in the flick. Still, Bangun is flying around on a levitating rock, Barry parties with horny crocodile queens and everyone else are busy getting their heads chopped off. Truly amazing!

The Warrior and the Ninja (1985) - H. Tjut Djalil

Barry Prima is back as my favorite Dutchman-slayer, in what I believe is the third installment of the warrior-series. This time Barry teams up with a religious ninja chick calling herself the Black Squirrel (protip: if you want to be feared, name yourself after a cute rodent)! The Dutch colonists decide to use the same tactics as in the previous films and team up with a bunch of magical bad dudes. A wrinkly, old sorcerer that is carried around in a chair and literally stares people to death, a shitty witch that literally lose her face and, my favorite, a pissed off, constantly shouting muscleman with iron skin that emerges from a volcano at the beginning of the film. There's not a single scene including this guy, where he doesn't crush innocents and at the same time shout/growl nonsense about wanting revenge. He's also indestructible, super-strong and burns people to cinders by touching them. However, the raging volcano-hulk somehow manages to get his ass handed to him by Barry mid-movie. This makes the final fight between Barry and - behold! - a lame noble with no superpowers whatsoever, somewhat of an anticlimax. While the available prints of this look pretty bad, the film is well worth a look. Nonstop sorcery and fighting, Indonesia-style!

Hex (1980) - Kuei Chih-Hung

A Shaw Bros effort that somehow manages to rip off both Les Diaboliques and Kwaidan at the same time! An awful husband is killed and dumped in a lake, wife is scared to death by his "ghost". Of course, this is just an elaborate setup so that the real haunting can begin. The film flips the tables on you a couple more times though, but is somehow still quite uneventful for long periods of time. Hex is also a film made to please those of you that thought Kwaidan suffered greatly from its lack of boobs. The blind Hoichi is replaced with a chick wiggling her tits at the screen for half an hour or so, before she too looses her ears. I guess this made the story easier to relate to for the Hong Kong audience or something. The visuals of Shaw productions of the era always looked amazing, Hex being no different, but the film as a whole is a rather forgettable affair. I hear the sequels are spectacularly silly though.

Magic Cop (1990) - Tsang Kan-Cheung

Magic Cop is the film you'd get if you shot Miami Vice in Hong Kong and filled it with hopping vampires. If the premise of hopping vampires smuggling drugs somehow didn't peak your interest, it is the ever cool Lam Ching Ying who has to put an end to their wicked ways. Features tons of wacky sorcery, fights, sun mirrors and evil Japanese ninja-witches. Somehow the threat of magic is seldom domestic in Hong Kong... Great choreography and generally very enjoyable. Well worth a look!