(1982)
Overall: MEH
While not as grating as Che Dau Che which this serves as director Chi-Hung Kuei's immediate sequel to, Xie wan Zai xie, (Hex After Hex), still adheres to the same juvenile, absurdist shtick. Taking place where the previous film left off yet thankfully leaving out said movie's obnoxious main character, this one has Lan-Hsi Liu as an adorable, arbitrarily prankster ghost who shacks up with a physically fit stuntman for no decipherable reason besides possible boredom. She proceeds to playfully manipulate a shady real estate owner who is pushing her new boyfriend plus all of his fellow tenants out of their apartment complex, yet she does so by keeping her motives entirely to herself which only unnecessarily aggravates matters. All for the sake of on-paper "comedy" though as it provides the movie with one nonsensical, immature set piece after the other where everyone performs in fast motion as prat falls, body odors, genitals, and various other low-hanging fruit gags are utilized. These quickly grow annoying and the frantic pace still ends up feeling its length, but there are also moments that are so bizarre that they garnish genuine chuckles. This includes Lan-Hsi turning into both a Yoda puppet and Darth Vader, plus a "Huh?" finale where a statue animates, reveals itself to be a slot machine, and then start puking up gold coins.
(1982)
Overall: MEH
A typically wacky and messy supernatural horror concoction by the Shaw Brothers and director Chih-Hung Kuei who cranked out many such oddities in the latter half of his career, Curse of Evil, (Xie zhou, Che jau, Jinx), is the studio's twisted take on the old dark house film. Here, the inhabitants of an overstuffed abode who almost exclusively refer to each other by their titles as opposed to their actual names all squabble, cry, gossip, get raped, and get murdered in aggravated fashion as a family secret about servants posing as relatives, (plus some stuff about piranha-like frogs and a reptilian like demon that lives in the bottom of a well), seems to be at the center of everything. Not that On Szeto or Chin-Hua Tan's script spends much time logically explaining any of the events, even with a convoluted expository dump and flashback at the very end. It is one of those confusingly plotted trainwrecks that throw so many indistinguishable characters at you while rapidly editing between scenes that the viewer is scarcely aware that there was a mystery to be unfolded in the first place. Again, common for a Shaw Brothers production of the era whose primary agenda is to throw a bunch of nonsensical nudity and disgusting gore, slime, and vomit at the audience to keep them howling.
(1983)
Overall: GOOD
If The Holy Mountain was Rocky IV and Housu at the same time, the result would be The Boxer's Omen, (Mó, Magic). A film as wildly clashing as this is bound to raise some eyebrows as well as cause discomfort to many brains that are trying to make sense of the tonal shifts, but even though it feels like several different movies desperately duck-taped together, it is consistently bananas enough to endure. A bonafide laundry list of "what in the goddamn fuck?" things like toy bats and spiders, vomit, puss bubbles, alien babies, munching skeletons, glowing tattoos, severed heads attacking with silly-string entrails, live eels getting barfed up, maggots crawling out of eye sockets, and a resurrection ritual involving a crocodile with too many other gross and batshit crazy details to explain or comprehend here all make an appearance before the film is even halfway done. These moments do a solid job of carrying the comparatively slow third act through before the ending once again revs up the wackiness to alarming proportions. As his penultimate film, director Chih-Hung Kuei was granted an adequate budget and pulls no punches in utilizing it to concoct one of the most feverishly strange genre movies to make it out of any country.
No comments:
Post a Comment