Devil Curse (1988) - To Lo-Po

I have a weird feeling of deja vu. The smug face of Herman Kwan, a bunch of actors ive seen before and dudes going to thailand gettings cursed by scorned thai chicks. I'm positive that I've seen parts of this before, but perhaps I gave up on it the last time. I gues the deja vu could be explained by the fact that this movie features the exact same cast and was shot the same year as Devil Sorcery, as well as a plot we've seen a thousand times before... HK cop gets cursed by lusty thai babe, screwing with his life after he returns to HK. As the babe starts stabbing voodoo dolls, our shitty protagonist begins hallucinating at work, eating roosters at night and his hands turns werewolfy from time to time. All classic symptoms of a Devil Curse! The devil in question is some sort of dumb doll stuck in a bird cage. If only our moron protagonist had listened to the wisdom of Herman Kwan, this whole movie could have been avoided. It is a pretty basic black magic affair, but a rather dull one at that. Culminates with the classic scenario ofHerman Kwan vs. evil Thai wizard. Also, features krasue, Herman Kwan's daughter messing with horny ghost cops, weird doll shenanigans, mannequin love and some cop drama involving a lowlife called "Doggy". I generally agree with how some dude on hkmdb described Devil Curse - "Mostly alternates between dull and confusing, with minimal entertainment value." It could have been far worse though, and the final duel is sort of funky.

The Beauty's Evil Roses (1992) - Lam Wah-Chuen

As I've been rather busy the last couple of months, I haven't found the motivation or time to watch much much at all. Stuck offline in the mountains for a couple of days, I eventually ended up watching some stuff found on my laptop hard drive. It should come as no surprise that the hard drive was filled with nothing but sexual curse-flicks I had long forgotten about. Picking one at random, I ended up firing up The Beauty's Evil Roses - a movie about... stuff I guess. While I have called other flicks incoherent before, I am not joking when I say that this movie most likely hold the dubious honour of being the least coherent film I've ever watched. I am also not joking when I say that there is not a single second of plot WHATSOEVER during the first 30 minutes of the film. It opens with some sort of weird sex scene where some dude is turned into a zombie (possibly?). It comes complete with a sleazy soundtrack that skips and jumps in all the wrong spots, indicating that the scene has been quite extensively cut. I assume some bush and possibly even some penetration had been cut out. Following this scene, we are presented with a photoshoot where some chick wiggles her tits at us for some time, before we move on two yet two more sex and showerscenes! Of course, these also featured the bizarrely jumpy music.

Stuff beginning to resemble plot eventually starts appearing after half an hour or so, when our protagonist enters a boxing ring and triggers a bunch of bad rape flashbacks in his sparring partner. Apparently protagonist-cop dude's wife goes missing or something and a gang of brainwashed, lesbian, biker witches are behind it. To be honest I had no idea what was going on or what the movie was about after 40 minutes, but as the biker witches started ranting about evil gods and tentacle beasts and shit I kept watching. After some more weird rape flashbacks and sex scenes the movie FINALLY turns into a rather straight-forward affair about hex duels and buddy-cops. The rape scenes could indicate that this was a sequel to some other smutty piece of trash, but realizing that it was not going to make more sense, I did not pursue this train of thought any further. A chap called “great priest” shows up, does some fancy magics with the help of some chick's underwear and dies. In the end it is made clear that the only way to beat the “evilest mage in Thailand” is to storm her shitty shed apartment, with akimbo UZIs and murder everyone. The Beauty's Evil Roses is a total mess of a film, but I guess its worth watching due to stuff. Also, features trippy space duels, knife-to-vaginas, revolver blowjobs and bizarre tentacle-stuff and did I mention the hundred sex scenes?

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.

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 :(

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!

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!

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!

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. 

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.