The Seventh Curse (1986)

The Seventh Curse (1986)
Chinese Title: 原振俠與衛斯理
Translation: Yuen Zan-Hap and Wisely

Starring: Chin Siu-Ho, Maggie Cheung, Dick Wei, Chui Sau-Lai, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Chow Yun-Fat, Sibelle Hu Hui-Chung, Ni Kuang, Chor Yuen, Yasuaki Kurata, Wong Jing
Director: Lam Nai-Choi
Action Director: Yuen Bun

This is one of those films that could only be made in Hong Kong. It is a bizarre mixture of occult horror, gross-out graphic violence, and 80s Hong Kong action beats, with a helping of (dumb) comedy and nudity for good measure. I learned of it from Asian Cult Cinema, but never made any effort to find it because the book’s description made it sound like a nauseating gorefest. It is that, sorta, although the film moves at such a fast clip that it never stops to dwell on the gore.

The film opens at a party attended by a pair of adventurers—Yuen Zan-Hap (Chin Siu-Ho, of Fist of Legend and Masked Avengers) and Wisely (Chow Yun-Fat, of A Better Tomorrow 2 and Hard Boiled)—and a famous author (legendary screenwriter Ni Kuang). The movie suddenly cuts to a hostage situation somewhere else in town, where the police (led by Yasuaki Kurata in a non-fighting role) enlist the assistance of Yuen to play a fake doctor (he is a doctor of something) and attend to a hostage who has just had a heart attack. Although a policewoman (Kara Hui in a cameo) is supposed to accompany him dressed as a nurse, she gets knocked out by a reporter, Tsui Hung (Maggie Cheung, Police Story and The Heroic Trio), who dons her clothing. Once inside, things go south, but Yuen manages to detonate a flash bomb, which allows the SWAT team to storm the place.

What does this have to do with the rest of the movie? Nothing, other than introduce Chin Siu-Ho’s and Maggie Cheung’s characters.

Back at home, Yuen is about to engage in sexy time with his girlfriend (Fairlie Ruth Kordick, of In the Line of Duty IV and Live Hard) when he is assaulted from behind by a mysterious man named Black Dragon (Dick Wei). After a scuffle involving kickboxing and broken furniture—standard 80s action fare—Black Dragon informs Yuen that his Blood Curse has been activated and that he needs to go to Thailand before it kills him. He also warns Yuen to abstain from sex, but Yuen ignores him and suffers a ruptured blood vessel in his leg as a result.

Yuen goes to see Wisely and tells him the story of how he got cursed. A year before, Yuen was a medical trip to the boonies of Thailand. While walking around and taking in scenery, he came across a bathing beauty, “Betsy” (Tsui Sau-Lai, of Killer’s Nocturne and The Last Blood), who is a princess of the Worm Tribe. Later on, he and the other adventurers come across a ritual of the Worm Tribe in which a man and a woman are chosen to be sacrificed to the “Old Ancestor,” a reanimated skeleton monster. Yuen saves Betsy from the monster, although the evil sorcerer Aquala (Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, of Butterfly and Sword and Girls Unbuttoned) has his flunkies kill the entire team, including the leader (Ken Boyle), by pouring a potion on him and causing him to explode into a mess of maggots. Betsy and Yuen are cursed with the Blood Curse, but Betsy prolongs the latter’s life by cutting her tits open and giving him a parasite to swallow…TF???

Back to the present, Wisely tells Yuen to do back to Thailand and find the Black Dragon. Yuen goes there and is followed by Tsui Hung, who is rich enough to hire a team of mercenaries to go with them into the jungles of Thailand. They eventually meet up with Wisely and his mercenaries. And then things get weird.

The Seventh Curse is not very scary per se, but it is graphic and full of slimy monsters and horrible deaths. The film moves at a mile a minute and crams A LOT of material into a scant 83-minute run time. The breathless pacing means that some over-the-top death scenes that many cameramen would spend time leering at are treated in almost an offhand manner, because there is more madness to portray. Then again, this is the sort of movie that has the balls to place actually children under a two-ton stone grinder (even Western horror movies are loathe to kill of children characters).

The monsters include the Little Ghost, a fetus-like monster that can burrow into a victim’s body and pop out of the stomach; the Old Ancestor, which is a well-designed skeleton rod puppet; and the second form of the Old Ancestor, which looks like the winged version of the Xenomorph that got its own toy, but never actually showed up in the movies(!!!).

There are a handful of fight scenes, choreographed by Seven Fortune Yuen Bun, best known for his numerous Tsui Hark collaborations. The choreography itself is pretty standard 80s kickboxing, of the sort you’d find in a Sammo Hung or Corey Yuen movie of the same period. Chin Siu-Ho and Dick Wei are great martial artists and get a decent showcase for their talents—and this is a rare good guy role for Dick. During the opening hostage sequence, Chin Siu-Ho gets to trade blows with Johnny Wang Lung-Wei, who plays the head of the terrorists. Then Dick and Chin get to throwdown, with people getting thrown through tables in the most painful looking ways possible. Near the end, both men have to fight a bunch of Thai monks atop of a giant Buddha statue, which ends on a visual cribbed from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

People expecting Chow Yun-Fat to do a lot in this movie will be disappointed. His Wisely character (also the subject of The Legend of Wisely and The Cat) is mainly a glorified cameo, showing up early on and whenever black magic exposition is needed. Nonetheless, most people who stumble across The Seventh Curse will never forget the finale, where Chow Yun-Fat shows up out of nowhere in order to blow up a Xenomorph-esque demon with a rocket launcher. That sort of randomness is just the perfect way to end an equally random movie.