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.

2 Capsule Reviews - Taiwanese oddities

Turbo Dragon (1985)
aka Dragon Gate Fighter; Dragon Rascal -
Director: Ke Cheng-Lin

This obscure oddity is essentially a Brucesploitation comedy made a couple of years after both Dragon Lee and Bruce Le had moved away from the sub-genre. It doesn't really have an actual plot, and about every 20 minutes or so, it becomes a completely different movie in terms of stuff that goes on onscreen.

Lung Tse (Pan Rui-Li, of Kung Fu Emperor and To Catch a Thief) is a talented martial artist who has a hard time landing and keeping a job. When we meet him, he's working as a priest (!?) who officiates weddings. He loses his job after he beats up the groom in order for the bride to run off with her paramour, some borderline idiot fellow. His next job is to work as a janitor for a fat rich guy (Lin Kuang-Chin, of Tiger Love and Deadly Strike). On his first day of work, he rescues the guy's daughter (Fu Chuen, of Chaste Virgin and Madam Yu Ching) from kidnappers. The boss gives him a job as the stuntman on a cheap Brucesploitation flick (with Wei Ping-Ao in the cast, no less). Lung Tse then gets a normal job at the guy's company doing...construction(?)...different things, while he cavorts around with the daughter.

Just as Lung Tse and the daughter are going to elope, the boss shows up with a present for him: a trip to Thailand...because...uh...reasons? I guess it was to give the boss time to think before Lung could run off with his daughter. Anyway, Lung Tse's martial brother is having some problems with the local crime boss, who is pressuring him to take the fall for gambling reasons. After refusing twice to intentionally lose, the brother is beaten up by the gang boss's secret weapon fighter (Chen Te-Wei, of The Idiot Swordsman) in retaliation and the guy, his promotor/girlfriend (Chang Hoi-Lun), her flunkies, and Lung Tse are forced to flee into the jungle and go into hiding. After an interlude involving cannibals, Lung Tse takes on the boss's hyper-muscular fighter as a means of shoring up accounts.

As I said, Turbo Dragon doesn't really have a story. It doesn't really have an ending, either. Stuff just happens until the main opponent is defeated, at which point the film simply just stops. And the movie just jumps around from genre to another: it stars as a modern action-comedy; becomes a send-up of Brucesploitation; a sappy romance; then something about corrupt ring fights; then jungle adventure; and the last reel becomes borderline science fiction as it's revealed that the Thai crime boss has a supercomputer that he uses to train his secret weapon fighter, not too unlike the apparatus that Eric Roberts uses in DOA: Dead or Alive--the subtitles disappear when they're explaining device, but it looks like it analyzes the opponents moves and it's implied that it downloads information into the person's brain during the fight...I think.

There is some fighting here and there. Pan Rui-Li is in Bruce Lee imitator mode in his fights, although he's not as fast or crisp as the real thing. The fight on the movie set is basically a recreation of the earlier fights from Way of the Dragon (the entire movie looks like a remake of that film). The Muay Thai fights are played more or less realistically, as is the case of these films. There is a fight between Lung Tse and the top warrior of the cannibal tribe that involves them chained to each other--how do Stone Age tribes have metal chains--and wailing on each with iron axes and rattan shields. And the final fight feels like a combination of traditional shapes and more modern sensibilities. The fighting on the whole is okay, but the movie is so nonsensical that it's hard to enjoy.

Evil Hits Evil (1983/1985) 
Director: Nam Ki-nam, Lucifer Lai

At first I wondered if this was a cash-in on Mr. Vampire from that same year, but the release date is early enough in the year that I think it was more of a belated cash-in on the likes of Kung Fu Zombie or Encounter of the Spooky Kind. It is also not very good, with its notability mainly being that it was Doris Lung's last role (ignoring cut n' splice films that reused footage from her movies).

The movie opens with the slaughter of Chen Fu (Kwon Yung-moon) and his family by a group of killers working for the evil Mr. Hung (Chan Sing). Mr. Hung is the richest man in the village and has no problem torturing and murdering anyone who displeases him, which was Chen Fu's downfall: Chen Fu was a groundskeeper at Mr. Hung's house and was guilty of ollygagging so he could listen to Hung's daughter (Doris Lung Jun-Ehr) playing the lute. That barbarian.

Some months later, the ghost of Chen Fu possesses the body of Lee Yao (Alan Liu), a woodcutter in Mr. Hung's employ. Meanwhile, Mr. Hung starts getting haunted by ravens. And the local night watchman has visions of ghosts. And some random passerby gets in a fight with a pair of nunchaku-wielding numbskull bandits who take orders from their pet dog. And Mr. Hung randomly tortures a couple to death. And a Taoist Priest (Robert Tai), tries to exorcise the ghost from Lee Yao. And when that doesn't work, they have a sorcerer's battle. And Lee Yao starts killing off the killers who murdered Chen Fu.

If you look at that last paragraph, you'll notice that it feels a little random. That is exactly how this movie feels: random. It never feels like it settles on a main character or plot line. It just jumps back and forth between different characters until the climax. Heck, the film kills off some of the main characters right before the climax, one of whom I thought was the viewpoint character. I thought Robert Tai's Taoist priest was going to be important, but he dies about halfway through and is replaced with some random female Exorcist and a pair of charlatan priests whom the film spends way too much time with. And I still don't know what was up with the passerby and the bandits: he disappears from the narrative, only to show up as a ghost at the end.

There is nothing to really be gained from it. The action choreography was supplied by Peng Gang of Shaolin vs. Lama fame, but this is definitely his weakest work. Kwon Yung-moon throws a few kicks here and there, including a scene where he kicks a monk's head off. But the rest of the fighting is not lit very well (typical Taiwanese movie problem) and just not very interesting. And most of the climax is Doris Lung getting ghost raped, The Entity style. That is NOT a fitting end to the career of one of the major kung fu divas. 

Capsule Reviews - 3 Ghost Movies

Ghost of the Mirror (1974)

Starring: Brigitte Lin, Shih Chun, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Chang Ping-Yu, Ku Wen-Chung, Chiang Wei-Min, Pai Lin
Director: Sung Tsun-Shou

This movie feels a bit like "The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag" from Pu Song-Ling's Strange Story from a Chinese Studio. That is, this feels a bit like the story that inspired A Chinese Ghost Story; The Enchanting Shadow; and any other movie based on the material.

Our hero is Young Noble (A Touch of Zen's Shih Chun), a young scholar whose mother (Chang Ping-Yu, of Imperial Tomb Raiders and Shaolin Wooden Men) has recently recovered from a severe illness. So severe, in fact, that it practically took her life. She was able to make a deal with the gods (or directly with Buddha) that her health would be restored in exchange for her (or someone by proxy) copying some Buddhist sutras some fifty times. The task itself has fallen onto her filial son, Young Noble, who finds an abandoned manor some ten miles outside of town to work in peace (and away from the influence of wome).

He settles into the manor with the company of a young apprentice, Qi Tung (Tuo Tsung-Hua, who grew up to play the main henchman whom Donnie Yen kills in Butterfly and Sword). They discover that the well is haunted by a female ghost, Su Su (Brigitte Lin, of Swordsman II and New Dragon Inn). Su Su just lies at the bottom of the well and mesmerizes men who look inside into falling in and drowning. When the Young Noble ignores her, she leaves the well and tries to seduce him outright. But he is too righteous for that and her master, the Poison Dragon, tries to possess her to kill him. That doesn't work and Su Su and the Young Noble start to fall for each other. But will their otherworldly love stand strong against the protestations of his pious mother and the evil of the Poison Dragon.

Ghost of the Mirror is a bit of a slow burner, although it gives you plenty of time to stare at a 20-year-old Brigitte Lin in period garb. The film builds to a tragic finale, although not quite in the way I was expecting. It does involve a giant dragon marionette attacking miniature buildings, so that was unexpected. My main issue with the story is the sub-plot that suggests that the ghost Su Su has an alternate personality, or horcrux (or something), in the form of a mirror that also fell into the well and has its own spirit (or something). Maybe it's Chinese Taoism metaphysics that I don't understand, but I don't think it added anything to the story.

The Ghost Snatchers (1986) 

Starring: Wong Jing, Joey Wong, Stanley Fung, Hsu Shu-Yuen, Joyce Mina Godenzi, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Shum Wai, Charlie Cho Cha-Lee, Tony Leung Hung-Wah
Director: Lam Nai-Choi
Action Directors: Yuen Bun, Wong Chi-Ming

Crazy Ghostbusters-inspired horror-comedy directed by Lam Nai-Choi, who later went on to direct the famous The Seventh Curse and The Peacock King. This sort of over-the-top WTFery is really up Lam's alley. That said, it pairs Wong Jing and Stanley Fung in front of the camera, so I assume that this movie is part of Fung's life's shame.

So, there is a building in Hong Kong that has some very bad Feng Shui. It was built on the execution site of a garrison of Japanese soldiers at the end of WW2 and their spirits are gaining strength from the fact that the building has "too much Yin" (and not enough Yang). In the first scene, a pretty lady (Hsu Shu-Yuen) is at a big office party when she gets assaulted (and stripped nude) by a corridor of "scary hands" (similar to when Sigourney Weaver gets attacked by Zuul). She shows up later on, now possessed by the ghosts.

Our main character is Bong (Wong Jing), a ne'er-do-well who somehow has managed to bag a hot girlfriend in the form of Hsueh (Joey Wong). His friend, Fan (Stanley Fung), manages to get him a job as a security guard at the same building from the first scene. Lots of weird things start to happening: Bong witnesses the pretty lady sucking the blood of the building owner (Shum Wai), a TV sprouts arms and legs and attacks him, his fellow guards start to get killed off, etc. They bring in an interior designer/Feng Shui expert, Ling (Joyce Mina Godenzi, looking her most va-voom-tastic), who is also a ghostbuster of sorts. She figures out that they have until July 14th to stop the Japanese ghosts before their power gets so big that they kill all the Yin individuals, including Bong and Fan.

This is one of those movies that I just have to write a paragraph about some of the weird things that happen and you decide whether or not you want to watch this. Do you want to see a man pull off his own face and rip out his own heart? Do you want to see a climax involving a protracted fight with an animated skeleton? Do you want to see Wong Jing run into a porno theater and stand in front of the screen for 30 seconds while looking for one of Stanley Fung's three (out of ten) souls? Do you want to see Wong Jing win at mahjong with the help of a low-rent Alf-looking imp? If you say "yes" to any of those questions, then Ghost Snatchers is for you.

Split of the Spirit (1987) 

Starring: Pauline Wong, Hsu Shu-Yuen, Wu Hsiao-Kang, Ku Kuan-Chung, Cynthia Khan, Peter Mak Tai-Kit, Chan Lap-Ban, Yang Yuan-Zhang, Yang Tuan-Sun
Director: Fred Tan

Okay, after the nuttiness of Ghost Snatchers, here's a supernatural revenge drama that takes itself quite seriously (for the most part). The film revolves around two women: Lu-Ling and Hwei-Chu. Lu-Ling (Pauline Wong, the pretty ghost in Mr. Vampire) is a huge figure in Hong Kong on the modern (or interpretive) dance scene. She has been dumped by her lover and is contemplating suicide. Hwei-Chu (Hsu Shu-Yuen, who was the possessed girl in Ghost Snatchers) is romantically-linked to a playboy named David Bao (Ku Kuan-Chung, of Web of Death and Clans of Intrigue). Bao has cheated on her before, although he now promises that he will end his philandering ways.

NOTE: This is one of those toxic relationships where he openly has cheated on her. But she tells everyone that she believes he has turned a new leaf and will now be faithful to her. But in private, she acts so suspicious toward him that you wonder why she forgave him in the first place.

Anyway, it is suggested that Lu-Ling was the woman that David Bao was cheating on Hwei-Chu with. And when he goes to Taiwan with Hwei-Chu, Lu-Ling tries to kill herself by overdosing on pills. She is saved by her nosy secretary, Amy (Chow Ai-Lei). While Lu-Ling is recovering, David Bao has Hwei-Chu killed and her spirit "sealed" in her place of death by a sorcerer named Master Li (Yang Yuan-Zhuang). However, their accomplice accidentally break the spirit mirror, meaning that Hwei-Chu's spirit is free to roam. Due to a huge coincidence and happenstance at the Taipei airport, Lu-Ling (who has recovered and is preparing for a special Taiwan performance) is marked for possession by Hwei-Chu. Hwei-Chu uses Lu-Ling's body to execute the men responsible for her murder.

And when Hwei-Chu decides that she wants more from Lu-Ling than just a temporary vessel, it wil be up to an observant photographer (Wu Hsiao-Kang), his spiritualist girlfriend (a young Cynthia Khan in a non-fighting role) and her mentor to save Lu-Ling.

Split of the Spirit will probably be creepy to people who don't watch a lot of horror. And even if it doesn't spook you, it gets points for being a Hong Kong horror that doesn't become a kung fu movie or broad comedy (or both) halfway through. The finale does get a bit crazy, though, with eye lasers and eye flamethrowers and badly-composited scenes of spirits flying through the heavens. And the film ends on an ambiguous note, although I don't like the sort of twists that suggest that everything you just saw did not happen the way you just saw it. When you the viewer are expecting one outcome and the opposite happens, the preceding event needs to be shown in a way that is ambiguous enough that you assume things happened a given way before "X" is revealed. A good example is the surprise ending of the film Life. This one doesn't pull it off like it should have.

The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

Starring: Phillip Ko Fei, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Wai Ka-Man, Johnny Wang Lung-Wei, Bolo Yeung Sze, Cheung Chok-Chow, Leung Hak-Shun
Director: Kuei Chih-Hung
Action Directors: Luk Chuen, Chu Ko

The Shaw Brothers were probably desperate to grasp any market share in the film industry by the time the 1980s rolled around. Lau Kar-Leung’s films were still generally doing well, but most of their other kung fu output (and most everything else) were struggling against Golden Harvest and Cinema City. They did find some degree of success in the horror genre and the totally nuts approach to graphic horror and overall weirdness extended into a lot of their late-period wuxia movies as well. Long story short: Shaw Brothers made a lot of crazy films during their final years.

One of them was a horror flick called Bewitched, which you might say was a spiritual successor to Ho Meng-Hua’s two Black Magic films (also made for the Shaws). That movie was a success, coming in at #6 among the Top 10 domestically-produced films that year. That was enough to greenlight a sequel, which came two years later. The Boxer’s Omen was that sequel and it ended up being most outrageous, (arguably) most disgusting, and just all-out bonkers horror film that the Shaw Brothers produced (although one might make an argument that Seeding of the Ghost deserves that distinction).

It takes a little while for us the viewer to find out how this and Bewitched are connected. The movie starts out at a kickboxing match between Chan Wing (Johnny Wang Lung-Wei, of Invincible Shaolin and Five Shaolin Masters) and a Thai fellow named Bu Bo (Bolo Yeung, of TC 2000 and Shootfighter). Although Chan Wing technically wins, Bu Bo pulls a dirty trick and attacks Chan from behind, doing some elbow and knee drops that ultimately break his neck, leaving his paralyzed. In Chan Wing’s corner is his brother, Chan Hung (Phillip Ko Fei, of The Loot and Shaolin Intruders). Chan Hung appears to be a boxer as well, in addition to a mid-level of Triad of sorts.

After finding out that Chan Wing will never walk again, Chan Hung decides to go to Thailand to challenge Bu Bo to a revenge match. But not before getting into some trouble with a Mainland gang vying for territory and then getting it on with his hot girlfriend (Wai Ka-Man, of Seeding of a Ghost and Rocky’s Love Affairs). The former point is interesting, because the gang gets the drop on him and the only thing that keeps his life is the magical intervention of a monk (Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong) whom Chan has never met before. The same monk visits him after his lovemaking session, although it appears only Chan can see him.

So, Chan heads to Thailand, where he barges in on a public event celebrating Bu Bo’s “victory”—amusingly enough, the spokesman for Muay Thai says that Bu was the rightful winner despite some prejudice from the Hong Kong referee. Yeah, okay. If you say so. Bu Bo gives Chan three months to prepare for the fight. One day, while sightseeing on the Mekong, Chan sees a Buddhist Temple. While those are a dime a dozen in the Asia, one of the arches is growing bright yellow, like he had seen in one of his visions. Intrigued, he visits the temple, where all of the monks know his name and somehow were expecting him. The head monk then explains the meaning of the visions.

The monk whom Chan Hung has been seeing is Qing Zhao, who was the monk that assisted Melvin Wong against the evil Thai sorcerer Magusu (Hussein Hassan) in Bewitched. When that film ended, Qing Zhao had destroyed Magusu with his Buddhist “white” magic and taken the little plush bat demon that emerged from his body. We then get a flashback sequence in which Qing Zhao performs a ritual to destroy the bat demon, which calls the attention of another Thai sorcerer, presumably Magusu’s superior. This guy performs a spell in which he mixes cobra venom with the preserved brains of a dead person and has a trio of oversized spiders (played by plush dolls) suck up the mixture. He then unleashes them on Qing Zhao, who kinda-sorta “dies.” The problem is that this spell not only is going to kill Qing Zhao, but it threatens to prevent him from achieving Enlightenment, upon which he is on the cusp.

So what does that have to do with Chan Hung? Apparently, he and Qing Zhao were twin brothers in another life so they have a karmic bond extending into this one. On one hand, Chan Hung is the only person who has the ability to defeat the sorcerer and save Qing Zhao from losing his chance at nirvana. On the other hand, that also means that if Qing Zhao dies from this black magic spell, Chan will die, too. Sorta unfair, isn’t it?

Chan Hung initially dismisses the story as a bunch of hokum and returns to Hong Kong. But shortly after he arrives, he has an episode in which he vomits an entire moray eel and decides that the monks may have a point after all. So, he returns to Thailand and agrees to become a monk in order to defeat the sorcerer…but will he be ready for the magical battle that awaits him? And when he learns that this new sorcerer has a trio of colleagues who are just as, if not more, talented?

The Boxer’s Omen is a phantasmagorical parade of the gory and gooey, with Chan Hung being unwillingly drawn into the Battle Between Good and Evil…between white magic and its opposite, sorcery of the blackest sort. It is a battle drenched in bodily fluids (especially vomit…oh, how much vomit is in this film) guaranteed to make almost the staunchest of viewers gag at one point. Ironically, the time I winced was when Phillip Ko Fei was slicing his own arm open in order to fill it with the Essence of Iron: that scene made me think of the uncomfortable Naked Blood film from Japan (shutters).

But beyond that, some feel that there is a spiritual side to the film, especially as the hero finds himself travelling to Kathmandu, Nepal. The main idea is about saving someone with whom you share a bond from a previous life and we learn a little more about the Monk Qing Zhao’s history of lives, including one as a Tibetan Lama. Part of the finale has Qing Zhao manifesting himself as the Lama from his previous life in order to fight their final foe: the Crocodile Witch. I’ll be honest though, I can see some people seeing a hint of spirituality in terms of the story being about one’s quest to guarantee another man’s salvation, but I think that ends up buried in knee deep in all the regurgitation, animal blood, slime, putrid brains, and everything else this film has on display.

I mean, this is a movie where a man stabs himself in the neck with a pair of needles and suddenly becomes a male version of the Penanggalan (from Mystics in Bali). This is a movie where a man bites the head off a chicken and spits the blood onto an army of crocodile skulls, which attack its opponent. This is a film where the characters kill a crocodile, remove its innards, stuff a dead body into it, and that body is reborn as a naked woman (full-frontal nudity and all)—although let me note here that the story never specifies if that body is of the one sorcerer who gets defeated and is being reborn as a man, or if it was of a female sorceress who needed to be resurrected anyway.

But with all the flying goblin heads and vomit-eating that defines the many magic sequences, everything else almost becomes unimportant. Yes, there are a pair of martial arts sequences (thanks to the bouts with Bolo Yeung), but they’re pretty standard and forgettable when compared to a man getting attacked by dozens of plush bats or a monk trying to kill a walking skeleton bat. There is a fair amount of full-frontal nudity—from both the reliable Wai Ka-Man and whomever plays the Crocodile Witch—although there is a good chance that the next disgusting magical ritual will be a total boner killer.

The Boxer’s Omen is recommended for Hong Kong cinephiles, although newbies may be put off from further explorations into HK horror if they have weak stomachs. This is for the gorehounds. The fans of the extreme. The ones who scoff at limp and weak PG-13 films made for teenie-boppers want something “real.” The sort of person who find the Terrifier movies to be endearing. The Boxer’s Omen is for the hardcore. It is not for the faint of heart.

Capsule Reviews - Early 1980s Asian Horror

The Queen of Black Magic (Indonesia, 1981: Liliek Sudjio)
aka: Black Magic 3; Black Magic Queen; Black Magic Terror 



This one was listed in Thomas Weisser's Asian Cult Cinema as Black Magic 3, included in the same entry as the two Shaw Brothers horror classics directed by Ho Meng-Hua. That would put this is the same bucket as Troll 2, which had nothing to do with the original Troll. It does make for an interesting comparison piece with films like Bewitched and the like from that era.

So, the village Lothario, Kohar (Alan Nuary), is a bit of an asshole. Just a few weeks ago, he was deflowering a pretty young virgin named Murni (Suzzanna, of Samson and Delilah and The Earth Gets Hotter) and promising to marry her. Now, he is marrying Baedah (Siska Widowati, of Escape from Hell Hole) the daughter of the village chief. After all, that would make him a shoe-in for the job as soon as his father-in-law retires. Murni is obviously distraught at Kohar's behavior, but that's only the start of her problems. At the wedding, Baedah starts suffering from hallucinations, including one of Kohar transforming into a walking skeleton and strings of flowers transformed into pythons. 

Kohar and his father-in-law call in the village shaman to fight whatever evil force is causing Baedah's hallucinations. However, the magician behind the scenes is more powerful than the shaman and kills him. The shaman's final word is "West". Kohar leaps to the conclusion that Murni was behind it, as her hut lies to the west and she certainly has a motive for wanting to sabotage the wedding. Kohar leads a torch-wielding mob to her house, burns the place down (with her mother still in it), and throws Murni from a cliff. She is rescued by a black magic magician who convinces her to learn his craft--which includes performing nude backflips--and get revenge on Kohar and the other villagers. Bloody killings ensue...

Different from Hong Kong films from that era, which showed us complex spells and enchantments being performed with live animals, fruits, bodily fluids, etc. this one eschews a lot of that. Whenever Murni or her teacher perform a spell, it is either through a voodoo doll or through gestures and incantations. Early on, we see the black magic magician using a voodoo doll to make Kohar impotent, although that is never revisted afterward. In any case, the results of these spells includes: bodies erupting into blood-spewing boils, a person being attacked by a swarm of bees, a man's neck rotting off to the point he pulls his own head off, and a man sinking into a rice paddy and getting his face eaten off by worms.

The most interesting aspect of the film is that resident "Religious Hero" is the Pious Muslim. To those who do not know, Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country and actually has the largest Muslim population in the world in terms of actual numbers: it is the 4th most populous nation in the entire world at 285 million people. So, Christians give us Catholic Priest Exorcists, Taoists give us their One-Eyebrow ghostbusters, and Buddhists have their enlightened monks. In this film, the ultimate weapon against black magic is "just being a good Muslim community": people should go to the surau and pray, Qur'an verses can protect against spells, and just being a good person is shield enough. It makes for a good contrast with how other religions in these sorts of movies fight the suprenatural: no extra manuals and rituals, or fighting magic with white magic, or monks bleeding golden blood with ghost-repelling properties. Just right living and knowing the basic scriptures. The minimalist take on fighting evil is notable, even if it makes for less visually-compelling cinema.

The Witch with Flying Head (Taiwan, 1982: Chang Jen-Chieh) 



Taiwan's answer to Indonesia's Mystics in Bali is a movie that is equal parts bonkers and melodramatic. Director Chang Jen-Chieh was reasonably well versed in kung fu cinema, having done projects like Eighteen Jade Arhats and Iron Neck Li, but with this particular story, it feels a bit too episodic. And when crazy things aren't happening, the movie is a bit of a slog.

The film opens with a Snake Demon sorcerer, Jia Chu-An (Ma Sha, of Fighting Life and The Nude Body Case in Tokyo), materializing at a nobleman's house and vomiting up a small snake that crawls into the latter's daughter's...orifice (I'm not sure which). This causes the girl, Zhen-Yu (Chen Siu-Chen, of Shaolin Invincible Guys) to go into a lot of pain. The sorcerer shows up with some medicine, which the girl's servants administer to her. Of course, this was all a ruse. The woman is transformed into a monster (or witch) who periodically sheds its head and viscera in order to find victims and suck their blood. This is the Chinese equivalent of pennangalan, or krasue in Southeast Asia. Jia Chu-An tells her and her dad (Hu Hsiang-Ping, Big Boss of Shanghai) that he will give her the antidote if she will marry him.

Instead of going ahead with the wedding, the dad brings in a pair of Buddhist monks (The Invinicble Super-Chan's Ko Yu-Min and Green Dragon Inn's Yueh Feng) to try to exorcise Zhen-Yu. Unfortunately for them, the magic (or poison) bewitching her is too strong and she ends up transforming again and killing the monks. So, Zhen-Yu's two servants, Chun-Hua (Jin Ling-Zhi, of The Fairy and the Devil) and Qiu-Yue (Chan Mei-Hua, of Dragon on Shaolin Tower), take Zhen-Yu out into the countryside so that she can't hurt anybody. On her first transformation, she kills a would-be rapist and draws the attention of a Taoist monk (Shao Lo-Hui, of The Evil Karate and The Death Duel). Although he isn't able to expel the poison, he is able to help her so that she will only transform once a month instead of every evening. He also give her a magic box that she can be sucked into during transformation so that she doesn't hurt anyone.

All of the above accounts for the first third of the film. The second act introduces a wandering scholar, Tang Ming-Kuan (Liu Shang-Chien, of Dragon Gate and Heroes of the Eastern Skies), who is marked for death by a pair of female snake spirits. These girls like to seduce men and then bite and devour them to absorb their Yang Energy (or something). Tang Ming-Kuan escapes from them and finds shelter with Zhen-Yu and her servants. Although the two fall in love, her dreadful secret, the two snake spirits, and Jia Chu-An promise to make their life difficult for them.

Like I said, the film has frequent moments of insanity broken up by the characters being too melodramatic for their own good. This is compounded once the little girl, Xiu-Zhen, shows up in the story and cries "Mummy!" so much that I just want someone to kill her. But if you can get past that, there is a fair amount of weirdness to recommend the film. Obviously, the idea of a flying head with her internal organs hanging from it is not one that anyone will come across in Western horror movies. We also get a grown woman vomiting live snakes, Buddhist monks getting their heads smashed or disemboweled, magical battles, aphrodisiacs turning men into snake-screwing sex machines, bomb-shooting Bagua mirrors, witches that spit lasers and flames, and even a smidgen of wire-fu.

The flip side is that some of the nuttiness comes with some animal snuff footage, like the snake with its head partially cut off (it makes sense in the context of the movie). That made me feel bad for the little guy. If you're willing through a lot of scenes involving crying women and some unjustly-killed reptiles, you'll get some screwy imagery and gore that you may not get in the States.

The Black Magic with Buddha (Hong Kong, 1983: Lo Lieh)



Despite being known mainly as an actor, especially one of traditional kung fu and wuxia films, Lo Lieh also dabbled in directing at times. His most beloved directorial effort is Clan of the White Lotus, although some people argue that it is more Lau Lar-Leung's film, given the quantity of action and his presence as the action director, than Lo's. This horror film, made at a time that films like Bewitched were popular, appears to be all of Lo's effort, as he produced this for his own short-lived production company. This film is a variation on the "Monkey's Hand" story that could be retitled "The Mummy's Brain" (albeit with no relation to Kharis and Tanna Leaves).

The film kicks off on the Indonesian side of the island of New Guinea (geography note: the other half the island is the country of Papua New Guinea), with a Chinese guy named Ben (Chen Kuan-Tai, of Iron Monkey and A Life of Ninja) following a guide to a cave where they find a coffin. Inside is a mummy, which the guide--also a shaman or magician of sorts--extracts the brain. He places the brain in the box and tells Ben that he can use the brain to make some wishes, but to destroy it with holy water as soon as he has what he needs.

Ben flies back to Bangkok--apparently he's a Diaspora Chinese living there--where we learn his plight: he is dating a girl, Annie (Candice Yu, of Death Duel and Buddha's Palm), who dad is a successful business. Ben is anything but, so dad (Boo Wibunnan, of One Way Ticket to Bangkok) and her brother, Kit (Pumi Patanayut), are opposed to their future marriage plans, especially Kit. Ben also lives with his bitchy sister (Choh Seung-Wan, of Revenge of the Corpse and Return of the Sentimental Swordsman), who always berates him for having spent his half of their sizable inheritance (presumably on get-rich-quick schemes gone bad).

So he starts making wishes on the brain, first for his luck to reverse. Then he gets in a fight with his sister over her refusal to lend him some money. After he tells her to go to hell, the sister is attacked by invisible forces and falls to her death from a balcony. His future father-in-law mysteriously changes his mind about allowing the marriage. After after Ben marries Annie, her brother Kit is killed by dozens of brain-like parasites after insulting Ben. It takes a while for Ben to realize that he the Brain acts up whenever it isn't being "worshipped" enough and when he's ready to pursue life without its help, Annie accidentally breaks the recipient of holy water meant to destroy it. Only Annie's growing religious fervor--she buys a statue of a four-headed Buddha when the haunting starts racheting up--and another black magic sorcerer (Lo Lieh) can defeat the Brain...

This is one of those movies that I wanted to like more than I did. I mean, I love a good "killer brain" film and the Hong Kong version of Fiend without a Face (plus a pre-dating dose of Brain Damage) feels like just the sort of random nonsense to hit the right spots. Sadly, the film suffers from some pacing issues and a lack of imagination in the final showdown with the brain, who has transformed one of the characters into a Brain Person. I don't think the film had enough of a budget to have the non-stop parade of sickening effects and campy optical FX that made those late-period Shaw films so entertaining, even when shooting entirely out of Hong Kong (it would seem). But a lot of scenes were hampered by the crappy VHS rip file that I found on the Internet Archive. Perhaps it will be more entertaining if the I watch the HD release from Mondo Macabro coming out next year.

There are some amusing scenes, like the father-in-law decorating his room with pictures of the Virgin Mary and cloves of garlic after he and the help see the brain inside the refrigerator (this came out a year before Ghostbusters). He knows there is something, but not knowing what, he uses protection better meant for a vampire. And it has a nice 1970s "bummer" ending. And if you are grossed out by lingering shots of pulsating brains, this movie has those in spades. It just feels a bit too quaint after having watched The Boxer's Omen earlier that week.


Brutal Sorcery (Hong Kong, 1983: Chan Siu-Pang)



Horror film directed by veteran martial arts choreographer Chan Siu-Pang (The 18 Bronzemen; The Best of Shaolin Kung Fu; Shaolin Kung Fu Mystagogue) is little more than the first act of the Shaw Brothers film Bewitched dragged out to 88 minutes. Moreover, it is notably less graphically violent and exploitative than its inspiration, making one wonder why the undertaking was done in the first place.

The movie starts at the funeral of cabbie Cheung Yau (Newton Lai, of Final Run and The Devil's Box), who is buried in hallowed ground by a Taoist priest (and his devotees in ninja hoods), despite the unsavory rumors regarding his death. A reporter talks to his wife, Anne (On Hei-Lai), and his primary physician, Dr. Kwok (Kwan Hoi-San, of Project A and The Shaolin Disciple), about the circumstances involving his death and that would be the rest of the movie.

One evening, Cheung Yau is doing his rounds when he comes across a woman walking alone at night. Cheung stops her and asks her if she needs a ride. When she turns to face him, Cheung is horrified and drives off: her pale skin and bloody face suggests that she was a ghost. He goes to see a fortune teller after the encounter and things don't look good for him. The fortune teller suggests that his having been born on the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month, not to mention that he's about to turn 27 (i.e. 3 times 9), is a very inauspicious sign and he's destined to have a horrible life and probably die early, too.

Shortly after that, Cheung Yau is one more doing his rounds when he comes across a young couple walking around at night--which happens to be a holiday of sorts for disembodied spirits. He convinces them to let him drive them home, which turns out to be two different cemeteries. Cheung is soon possessed by the two ghosts, which alarms his wife, Anne. She and her parents take him to a medium, Lady Luk (Tong Yeuk-Ching, of Sorrows of the Forbidden City and The Kingdom and the Beauty--she passed on shortly after this movie). Lady Luk is able to get the ghosts to possess her and they explain that they had been lovers and even married, but the girl's parents did not approve of their relationship. They were killed by a black magic sorcerer and buried in separate cemeteries.

The ghost couple promises to leave Cheung Yau alone if he will dig up their bones, bring them back to her sister in Thailand. Cheung Yau does just that and delivers up the bones to the sister, Suzanne (Lily Chan, playing the same role she did in Bewitched). Suzanne doesn't realize Cheung Yau is married (and our "hero" is too stupid to tell her outright) and asks him to stick around for a few days. They end up sleeping with each other and she makes him promise to visit her in three months' time. Of course, Cheung Yau ends up not keeping his promise and if you've seen Bewitched, you can see where this is going...

The film can be broken into three parts. The first part covers Cheung Yau's initial possession by the doomed ghost couple, who are not evil--although they certainly act that way whenever they're possessing him--but just want a decent burial next to each other. The second act covers Cheung's trip to Thailand and his getting cursed. Finally, the last act has Anne and Dr. Kwok travel to Thailand in order to ask Suzanne to call off the curse. When she refuses to, they turn to another magician, King Ping (Ng Hong-Sang, whose name in the dubbing sounds like "Kingpin"). As you can expect, this will ultimately end in a battle of sorcery, complete with flames, little kid devils (who can transform into chickens), wooden swords, yellow paper amulets, maggots, magic capes, and telekinesis. Kinda crazy, but it needed more energy, which is surprising, given Chan Siu-Pang's involvement (he could always direct a lively fight scene).

Like I said, this movie never feels like it went all the way. Lily Chan does get naked when she's performing the first part of the curse, but the camera doesn't linger on her body like it did in Bewitched (slow-motion running and all). Watching a crappy VHS rip also doesn't help. We get to see the one guy stuffing live fish into his mouth and chowing down on raw liver. Another guy's stomach swells and then erupts in a mess of maggots. Nonetheless, it all feels too familiar, with the only thing that this film does better than Bewitched is not forgetting about Lily Chan's character after the initial curse.

Capsule Reviews - 3 Vintage Horror films from South Korea

A Bloodthirsty Killer (1965)

Starring: Lee Ye-chun, Do Kum-bong, Jeong Ae-ran, Lee Bin-hwa, Won Nam-kung, Chu Seok-yang, Mun Kang, Jo Seok-geun, Na Jeong-ok
Director: Lee Yong-min

Classic vintage South Korean horror is actually very effective in that genre despite its age. A lot of that goes back to the film's breathless pace that kicks off with "mysterious goings-on" and goes full horror without letting up for an entire hour. I mean, the hauntings and scares (by 60s standards) just keep coming and coming. Then the film sets itself apart in the unconventional third act that will surely divide its viewers.

The movie opens with mining mogul Lee Si-mok (Lee Ye-chun, of The Man With Two Faces) going into an art exhibition, only to find the place completely empty. Was he set up? Was he late? He hears a female laugh and finds but a single painting, that of a woman named Ae-ja (Do Kum-bong, of The Noble Thief Iljimae), whom Si-mok recognizes. He picks up the painting and it starts melting in his hands. Spooked, Si-mok takes a cab out of the place, but the driver takes him out into the countryside and deposits him at a mysterious house. There he meets a mysterious artist who gives him another portrait of the woman and begs for him to leave. But then she appears and the artist tries to sexually assault the woman, who stabs him to death. Si-mok, hiding under the bed, sees the woman float out of the house.

Si-mok is chased out of the house by the cab driver, who thinks he murdered the artist. After a lengthy chase, Si-mok finds himself in a basement of an abandoned building, where the same woman who murdered the artist appears. It is Ae-ja, whom Si-mok seems to have known and thought was dead. He ends up taking her to a family friend, Doctor Park (Won Nam-kung), who also is surprised to see Ae-ja in such good condition, considering that she apparently had died more than a decade earlier. After a series of spooky phenomena at the doctor's office, Ae-jae returns to life and kills Doctor Park. Si-mok flees and returns home to his wife, Hye-suk (Lee Bin-hwa, of The Gates of Hell), his mother (Jeong Ae-ran, of The Public Cemetery Under the Moon), and children. But soon Ae-ja shows up at the house and starts haunting them, too. Just what is going on and why does this supposedly deceased Ae-ja have it in for Si-mok and his family?

Like I said, the film starts off unsettling and goes full throttle on the haunting and supernatural phenomena for an entire hour without letting up. It is only in the third act that the movie takes its breath, with an extended flashback that takes up most of the final half hour giving us the bizarre and twisted soap opera that explains Ae-ja's relationship to the other characters and why she is so vengeful. It is an unconventional approach, but it weakens the narrative by allowing the true climax to have taken place well before the narrative reaches its end. Instead of a final showdown, we get a Deus ex Machina resolution to one of the film's creepier moments.

I also thought that the metaphysics of the ghosts and spirit possession are a bit murky; one of the characters is murdered and returns as a cat demon. Given what we learn later, it is unclear whether we have two cat demons who can assume their respective human forms, or one cat demon who can assume multiple forms. I wish the script had been more explicit in that regard. There are two religious figures that show up, a female shaman (shamanism has long been a big part of Korean culture) and some mysterious woman (Kang Mun, of The Three Swordsmen of Iljimae) who randomly shows up claiming to be the family housekeeper. We find out who she is at the end and my response is...uh...huh. How convenient.

A Bloodthirsty Killer is two-thirds of a horror classic. The lost momentum of the third act and "easy" denouement hamper what is otherwise a highly entertaining horror-mystery about vengeance from beyond the grave.

A Public Cemetery of Wol-ha (1967)
aka The Public Cemetery Under the Moon

Starring: Park Nou-sik, Do Kum-Bong, Kang Mi-ae, Hwang Hae Hwang, Jeong Ae-ran
Director: Kwon Cheol-hwi

I wonder if this was the first South Korean horror film shot in color. Taking a glimpse at the IMDB's Advanced Search, it may very well be, especially if you don't count Yongary, Monster from the Deep as "Horror".  Much like A Bloodthirsty Killer, this is a revenge flick from BEYOND THE GRAVE revolving around the supernatural doings of a wronged first wife. Unlike that film, this film's scares bookmark both ends of the film, while the middle hour is one long flashback explaining how we got to where we're at.

The film is set during the Japanese occupation of South Korea, although I'm not really sure when. A pair of student activists named Kim Han-sul (Park Nou-sik, of Quit Your Life and Descendants of Cain) and [something or other] are thrown in jail by the Japanese police because of their pro-freedom stance. The latter's sister, Seong-meon (Kang Mi-ae), becomes a courtesan named Wol-ha in order to raise money to secure their release. Han-sul is released first and, at his friend's request, marries Wol-ha. Han-sul gets rich through a mining business (not unlike Lee Si-mok of A Bloodthirsty Killer) and life seems idyllic for him and Wol-ha. They even have a child together. Things are looking on the up and up.

Being a horror movie, the happiness is not permanent. Things get bad when the family receives word that Wol-ha's brother's sentence has been extended to "life in prison" after several failed escape attempts. This does a number to Wol-ha's immunity and soon she's stricken with consumption. This is a window of opportunity for Nan-ju (Do Kum-Bong, playing the opposite role she played in A Bloodthirsty Killer), a kitchen servant at the Kim household. She lusts after the Kim family fortune and realizes that to get it, she needs to get into Han-sul's trousers first. So, she pays the corrupt Dr. Park to replace Wol-ha's medicine with a slow-acting poison. Since Wol-ha is taking "too long" to get better, Han-sul's "pipes" are getting a bit backed, so Nan-ju steps in get them flowing again.

Wol-ha finds out about her husband's dalliance and stops talking to him. The wicked Nan-ju uses that distance to her advantage and arranges for the "family butler" to sneak about Wol-ha's room, arousing suspicion in her husband. The husband finally approaches her and denounces her as a whore (although the subtitles read "courtesan," which doesn't carry the same impact), leading Wol-ha to kill herself. Nan-ju is able to become the second Mrs. Kim, but doesn't stop there. When Nan-ju sets her sights on her predecessor's son, Wol-ha rises from the grave for...VENGEANCE!!!

When I reviewed A Bloodthirsty Killer, my complaint was that the last third deflated the momentum built up by the first hour, compounded by the realization that the climax came a good 30 minutes before the film's end. This film avoids that, but commits a larger sin by making the flashback take up most of the film's running time. The supernatural elements take up the first and last 15 minutes of the movie, with everything in between being one long soap opera. It has some demented elements to it, but is nowhere near as twisted as the backstory in A Bloodthirsty Killer. It would have been better to have told the story in a standard linear fashion, so that the supernatural elements would have taken on a genuine crescendo of fright.

When the final haunting begins in earnest, it mainly consists of a character seeing Wol-ha's ghost (who looks almost like a vampire, what with lots of blood dripping out of her mouth), screaming, turning to the side, seeing another apparition of the ghost,  screaming, turning to the other side, seeing...etc. etc. etc. The most shocking thing that happens is when one character accidentally runs into a tree and gets their eye poked out by a tree branch. The scare scenes are kinda fun on a 1940s horror level, especially after so much soap opera and scheming. It is also very open about the characters' attempts to commit infanticide, which some may find disturbing. But overall, A Bloodthirsty Killer was a much better movie.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978)

Starring: Kim Ja-ok, Kim Jeong-cheol, Kim Man, Won Nam-kung
Director: Kim Ki-young

Strange film is marketed as a horror film is an occasionally surreal journey of one man as he deals with various entities after a near-death experience. Lowly biology student Kim Young-gul is miserable. He lives alone in a slum. He eats ramen every day. He goes to bed hungry. One day, he is on an outing with some friends when he goes butterfly hunting. He meets a woman who offers him some juice. It turns out that she has poisoned the both of them, as she intends to die and wants someone to accompany her into the afterlife. Kim survives the poisoning and is cleared of her murder.

After that, Kim becomes obsessed with death, even contemplating suicide at several points. He is visited by The Ghost of Christmas Past an old book salesman who explains to him that if your will is strong enough, you can cheat death. The two get in an argument and Kim stabs the old nutcase who...believe it or not...keeps on talking despite being stabbed to death. Even when maggots are pouring out of the man's wounds, he keeps on tacking. Some time later, Kim goes spelunking with a friend of his, who is currently working for a famous anthropologist. While hanging out in a cavern, they find a 2000-year-old skeleton of a young woman. They smuggle it out with the intent to sell it the anthropologist. While Kim is reassembling the skeleton in his house, it comes back to life in the form of a beautiful young woman from the Silla Kingdom. She informs him that she will love and cherish him, but in order for her to keep on living, she must eat a human liver...

The above summary covers about the first 40 minutes of the 117-minute film, which moves at a very slow pace. For a certain portion of the film, especially the first hour or so, it almost feels like you could cut the film into 15-minute pieces and you would have a completely different-looking movie for each piece. The second half settles into a more focused narrative involving Kim, the aforementioned anthropologist, and his kooky daughter. The story does have a few interesting turns, but it is all ruined by the ending.

The film is a meditation on life and death, and how people often obsess with either of the two. At least three people that Kim meets are obsessed with immortality, using differing means to achieve it. And then he meets people who are obsessed with death, which is interesting, since once Death comes a-knocking, they become deathly (heh) afraid of it. I think the general message, which is driven home to some extent in the last quarter during the camping segment, is that the best approach is to live life to its fullest and accept Death when it comes.

Some of the symbolism feels arbitrary, like the bit with the pastry machine. Kim and the resurrected girl make love on top of a mountain of pastries as the machine is indiscriminately shooting them all over the room. I think it is some commentary on how modernity can surround us with disposable food, but it cannot produce what we really need to nurture our bodies--see the fact that Kim subsists entirely on ramen noodles. But that theme is brought up in that moment, but it isn't really revisited, unless you consider Kim stuffing his face with all sorts of food once he starts working with the anthropologist. I don't know.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death deserves some thought and pondering. It has some interesting food (heh) for thought, and the fake ending would have been deliciously ironic. But the film is not for everyone: it is long and slow and some of the imagery that might've been scary, but comes across as cheesy instead.