80's Asian Horror Part Eight

XIE MO

(1981)

Dir - Jen-Chieh Chang

Overall: WOOF

Director Jen-Chieh Chang's first foray into horror is the barely tolerable Xie mo, (The Devil), which is one of several gross-out Hong Kong genre films from the era.  Sadly, this one thickly lays on the plodding melodrama and unlikable characters, with people yelling "Bastard!" more times than in a Paul Naschy movie and of course an obnoxiously crying woman who is married to the main scumbag and still loves him after he beats her, kills her father, runs the family business into the ground, and gloats about it.  Speaking of obnoxious, there is a kid named Ding Dong here who fulfills the horror movie trajectory of a youngster that you just want to throw off of a bridge.  On the "plus" side, the ten percent of the running time that is not dedicated to everyone's uninteresting squabbles features a whole lot of disgusting insect and snake vomiting, which seems to be the go-to outcome of black magic practitioners putting hexes on people.  So for those who can stomach the stomach-churning aspects, stupid little kids, hysterical wailing, repetitive dialog, and snore-inducing pacing, this might be worth a casual glance.

KUNG FU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
(1982)
Dir - Chiu Lee
Overall: MEH

 

Though there are wacky details galore in martial arts leading man Billy Chong's follow-up to the gratingly stupid Kung Fu Zombie, the resulting Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave, (Yin ji), still cannot withstand the monotonous pitfalls of other such movies.  It is no exaggeration to proclaim that there are at most eleven seconds between each fight scene here, as if the film itself is suffering from some soft of OCD affliction and simply must have choreographed battles constantly following each other to keep the bad thoughts at bay.  Said battle sequences are as elaborately ridiculous as fans would hope for and they are designed by stunt coordinator Chin-Lai Sung, who also appears as a black magician.  There are a barrage of characters present and all of them seem to be on equal footing as far as unnatural flipping and punching abilities go, so naturally there is no suspense or stakes in anything that is happening.  Not that this is a faux pas for the production since who in their right might could possibly care what the story is?  Something about Chong's dead zombie father tasking him with getting revenge on a guy who has to have two hearts from an orgasming couple set on fire so that the blood can be spat on his bare chest to make him invincible.  Also, Dracula shows up and a bunch of women warriors throw menstrual pads at the villain.

SEEDING OF A GHOST

(1983)

Dir - Chuan Yang

Overall: MEH

 

One of the latter entries from the Brothers Shaw and ergo done on a minuscule budget as the company was undergoing financial hardships in its later years, Seeding of a Ghost, (Zhong gui), unfortunately suffers from a molasses-leaking first half before indulging in full-on, gross-out body horror in the second.  The infidelity plot kicks right in as two married people engage in a passionate fling behind their spouse's backs, only for the woman to find herself at the mercy of two thugs who rape and accidentally send her flying off of a balcony to her violent death.  Because black magic almost always has to find its way into Hong Kong horror films from the period, the grieving widower enlists the diabolical services of a shirtless and sweaty practitioner of the dark arts and everything that happens from that point on is a hilarious bombardment of outrageous, off-color gore.  A guy pukes up worms, another guy eats brains out of a coconut, a guy has sex with an animated/animatronic corpse, and a woman gets pregnant with a revenge spawn right out of John Carpenter's The Thing which has a human head inside of its mouth.  If not for the sluggish start, (which overuses an unconvincingly cheap police station, boring sex scenes, and various characters all knowing kung fu), the movie would have been a home-run in supernatural ridiculousness.