(1980)
Dir - Yuen Chor/Ho Meng Hua/Tun-Fei Mou
Overall: GOOD
A composite anthology film made up of two previously abandoned projects from the Shaw Brothers, Haunted Tales, (Die xian), is a mostly enjoyable if still random hodgepodge. As a collection of two unrelated, nearly full-length stories
which had been shelved for various reasons, it makes for an unavoidably odd viewing
experience. Thankfully though, each tail delivers on their own terms. The opening and longer segment was originally to be titled "Hellish Soul" under the direction of Yuen Chor before Ho Meng Hua contributed re-shoots several years later, at which point it was known as simply "The Ghost". It has an unusual tone where the atmospheric visuals are never given time to conventionally settle in. This is due to the snappy editing which trims out much of the fat and just bombards the audience with one supernatural set piece after the other. The following "The Prize Fighter" from director Tun-Fei Mou has a different, cautionary agenda and is far less spooky by comparison, though it does deliver a memorable and macabre ending. Each installment dilly-dallies to varying extents, but this just proves that it was ultimately a good idea to cobble them into one collection with the footage they had.
(1982)
Dir - Jen-Chieh Chang
Overall: MEH
A Taiwan/Hong Kong co-production variant of the ole floating head krasue demon story, The Witch and the Flying Head, (Fei tou mo nu), is the second such supernatural gross-out movie from director Jen-Chieh Chang. Here, a beautiful woman, (of enough prestige to have lady servants willing to both die for and perpetually cry over her), gets duped into taking poison from a black magician who wants to marry her against her will, said poison causing her to turn into the fanged, disembodied head with its entrails hanging off of it. Fun, nasty stuff that is regularly punctuated by worms, snakes, and caterpillars riving around on the ground, on various piles of entrails, or, (in one instance), being puked up and launched onto someone's face. The plot points and performances are of the melodramatic variety with witches, sorcerers, and holy men doing battle while Hsiu-Chen Chen and Lau Seung-Him are just trying to live a happy life with their new daughter. Having such a minimal budget, the special effects are of course crude, but Chang utilizes enough deceptive camera angles to pull off the ridiculous concept without embarrassing split screen shots ala Mystics in Bali.
(1987)
Dir - Jôji Iida
Overall: MEH
The low-budget, special effects showcase debut from writer/director Jôji Iida is hilariously low on story, but it will assuredly appease gore fans as well as those who appreciate a barely full-length movie that comes in at under an hour long. Cyclops, (Kikuropusu), starts off with some text about Siamese twins and birth defects, plus some vague allusions to a mad scientist before we are introduced to even more scientists and a towering, smirking guy in a trench coat and sunglasses who needs to kidnap someone or conduct more experiments in order to deliver a baby or whatever. Since the running time is so short and Iida's script barely seems concerned with ironing out any of the kinks, it is best to just sit back and wait for the triumphantly gory finale which turns into an over-the-top, body horror nightmare. Bodies explode open revealing physics-defying other body parts and animated organs, only to morph into still more bodies that are all covered with blood and eventually reduce themselves to a pile of guts and lord knows what else, all of which crawls around with two barely human heads attached. There are also wicked close-ups of vaginal, bloody, single eye-sockets as the movie's title would dictate. Nothing to take seriously, but it is at least a partially successful DIY bit of gross-out movie-making.
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