Jui gwai chat hung (1983)

... aka: 7 Ghost Chasers
... aka: Seven Heroes Chase Ghost
... aka: Trail, The
... aka: Zhui gui qi xiong

Directed by:
Ronny Yu

Developing a love for the cinema from a young age (they were first an escape from a bout with polio when he was just nine years old), Ronny Yu decided to explore film further in America when the time came for college. Telling his father he'd study business or another surefire lucrative profession while abroad, he majored in advertising and communications instead and took as many film courses as he could while earning his other degree. Upon returning to Hong Kong, he went to work for his father's company and became acquainted with a few guys who wanted to get involved in the film business. He then co-wrote a script. After the major studios turned it down, his backer suggested he direct it. It was then a case of learning on the set for the young, inexperienced director, who had no clue what he was doing and relied on the cameraman, editors and other more experienced crew people for advice. The resulting film, the 1979 crime-drama Cheung laap cheing ngoi (or The Servant), ended up becoming a surprise hit, which led to other opportunities. The next decade was spent making a number of films in various genres, but it wouldn't be until 1993's Bai fa mo nu zhuan / The Bride with White Hair (a winner of three Hong Kong Film Awards) that Yu would receive international attention. Hollywood eventually came calling and he ended up directing both Bride of Chucky (1998) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003).

The Trail was Yu's fourth film, his second film for Golden Harvest Company and his first horror effort. It's worth noting that even though the Internet Movie Database lists it as an adventure / comedy, other Hong Kong databases categorize it (correctly) as a horror / comedy. It's a good thing I stopped relying on IMDb and their genre tags long ago to come up with my horror lists or else I'd be missing out of hundreds of horror movies here. Speaking of IMDb, this has a paltry 30 votes and a middling 5.9 rating over there. That really needs to change. I would say poor distribution is the main reason why this is so under-seen but that doesn't seem to be the case. There was an English-subtitled VHS release by Tai Seng, a VCD distributed by Mega Star and a DVD from Fortune Star.

The setting is the Xiang Xi Provence of China in 1922. Wealthy, evil Master Miao (Miao Tian) is used to getting whatever he wants and getting away with whatever he does, in part because his father has been struck down with leprosy (supposedly bad karma from being a playboy for years) and doesn't have control over much of anything anymore. Those indebted to Miao's family usually have a steep price to pay, especially those with daughters that can be bartered as sexual favors to buy them more time in paying back the money. One evening, Miao demands the company of a beautiful songstress (Siu Ling Tsui). When she refuses to put out, he drowns her husband in a fish tank, leading to the song bird's suicide. Miao quickly wants rid of the musician's corpse so it doesn't ruin his reputation, so he has the body wrapped up like a mummy and hands a bag of gold over to two monks and tell them to dispose of him. The monks; Ying (MR. VAMPIRE co-star Ricky Hui) and “The Captain” (Kent Cheng), actually aren't monks at all, but opium smugglers.

Along with the rest of their seven-man smuggling operation; brains of the operation Reader (Anthony Chan), wonky-eyed, sunglasses-sporting Little (Addy Sung), oafish Bo (Cheng Fu Hung), skinny Fatty (Mars) and silver boomerang-armed cool cat Flint (Fat Chung), the men hit the trail to their next destination with plans of disposing of the corpse somewhere along the way. While going through a bubbling sulfur swamp, Ying and Bo get stuck in a quicksand bog and have to be rescued but they lose the body when it sinks down into the muck. Assuming they've done the job of getting rid of the body, the men carry on, encountering a group of thugs along the way and getting on their bad side after accidentally cutting off the leader's ear. Those men won't be the only problems they'll face when the corpse rises from the swamp looking for revenge.

The men stop by an inn, where Captain gets in hot water with drunkard innkeeper Walter Tso's flirty younger wife (BLACK MAGIC star Ni Tien aka Tanny) and ends up getting his legs shaved in the process. Later that night, one of the men is found with his head twisted around backwards. The next morning, villagers swing in to the inn to complain about finding their pigs and chickens dead, drained of blood and smelling like sulfur. A superstitious old woman says these are all signs that a zombie is on the loose. And, as well all know, there are several ways to fight a zombie... Fire? Well, no. Decapitation? Sure, but not here. Smashing in the brain? Hmmm... did you forget we're in Hong Kong? Try yellow paper, nets, learning how to croak like a frog and, of course, urine from a virgin. Knowing they will have a tough fight ahead, the men get busy making up strips of spell papers, practicing their bellowing and having little prepubescent schoolboys pissing in pots for them to use later on.

The action moves back to the woods to a crumbling old temple, where the men encounter the slimy, lumpy-faced zombie late at night but are unable to kill it, plus waste all of their hole-y water trying. The next day, they descend down into a series of caves and locate an awesome “king's tomb” lit with blue and green lights and full of human bones, stone statues of Terracotta warriors, mice and snakes. After locating the zombie and unsuccessfully attempting to kill it, only two of them make it out of there alive. We also check in with the tormented Miao from time to time and learn he's being haunted by horrifying visions of the creature and signs that it's coming his way.

Things gets really crazy during the last twenty or so minutes. Our heroes (decked out like scarecrows) battle the zombie once again with the help of a powerful Taoist priest (Shu Tong Wong), but attempts to do it in with fire and lightning bolts shot from a rosewood sword don't work. After finding out what Miao has done to prompt this curse in the first place, our heroes attempt to blackmail him for gold and find themselves being used as zombie bait instead. That leads to the zombie showing up to go the Jaws route and chomp some men under the water, plus decapitate one with its tongue and cause a house boat and dock to blow up. Not good enough? How about an out-of-left-field send up of a famous scene from The Exorcist (1973) to wind things down?

This is a very well-made, nicely-photographed, atmospheric, energetic and very busy film. There's so much going on and so many characters to keep track of it's sometimes difficult to follow (especially in the first half), but things eventually settle in quite nicely. Yu co-wrote with comedian Michael Hui (also the producer) and their script offers up numerous hilarious moments, plus many more sure to at least put a smile on your face, without short changing viewers on the action and horror in the process. I've seen enough by now to know that's not an easy thing to pull off and most fail at it, but this one seems to find the right balance. Production design is excellent and the actors acquit themselves well and seem perfectly chosen for their particular roles. In addition to a sometimes confused narrative, this also gets dinged for stealing much of its music from other films, most notably Tangerine Dream's score from William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) and Ennio Morricone's score from John Carpenter's THE THING (1982).

Yu's horrorography also includes The Occupant (1984), a romantic horror comedy about a haunted apartment, Bless This House (1988), a more serious ghost story about a family moving into a new home that's haunted, and The Phantom Lover (1995), a Phantom of the Opera-inspired tale set in a 30s-era theater. He also directed "Family Man;" one of the better episodes of the short-lived series Fear Itself.

★★★

Mutilations (1987)

Directed by:
Lawrence Thomas

Here's an ultra low-budget regional production made for peanuts in Tulsa, Oklahoma that managed to get a VHS release. The distributor was the hitherto unknown label Baron Video Distribution Limited, which was formed in, you guessed it, Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1990, the same year the tape was released. In other words, Baron Video was likely formed for the sole purpose of issuing this particular movie. On the Oklahoma Secretary of State's website, the company is given a suspension status for having “... not complied with Oklahoma tax requirements.” Uh oh. 

Extremely dopey Plainsfield University astronomy professor Jim McFarland (Al Baker), who speaks all of his long-winded dialogue in bits and pieces with long pauses in between as if he's trying to remember his lines, and his secretary / assistant Ann Bennett (Katherine Hutson) take six students out into a field to look at the stars. While they're gazing, a red, glowing, meteor-like object passes overhead. Said meteor is actually a spaceship with vicious alien creatures aboard. One of them comes out of the ship and uses its three-clawed hand to mash in the face of a drunk bum after he reads a newspaper story on cattle mutilations in the area. The next day in class, the professor tries to link the possibility of alien life to the bible (“Even the prophet Ezekiel had his encounter with the Wheel of Light!”) and suggests to his students they “... contemplate on the existence of life... elsewhere in the vastness of space... remembering that there's always room for more concepts... in this area of speculation.”

Jim, who plans on dedicating the rest of his life to proving aliens exist, and Ann take six lucky students; Jerry (Richard Taylor), Libby (Shelly Creel), Roger (Matthew Hixenbaugh), Fran (Jackie Shook), Eugene (William Jerrick) and Connie (Pamela Michaels), to a small farming community outside of the city called Berry Hill to investigate “strange aerial sightings.” The entire town has been on edge because of burnt-out patches on the ground as well as frequent instances of cattle being “...slaughtered, mutilated... and... HALF EATEN?!” On their way to the town, our heroes get out of their van long enough to bear witness to the death throes of a skinned Claymation cow. From there, they're chased down the road by a toy spaceship until they arrive at a diner. Stopping in for a bite to eat (one of the girls passes on a burger considering what she's just seen), they get additional information from unfriendly diner owner Buck (Bill Buckner) and redneck farmer Charley (Harvey Shell), whose two dogs were among the many animal victims.

The professor is pointed in the direction of a man named Oliver Matson (John Bliss), who claims to have had frequent encounters with aliens since the 1950s. The gang go to his house and find that he's a mean, old, scar-faced, religious-fanatic hermit who lives by himself in a shack and goes on and on about being terrorized by the aliens, how no one believed him and how his nephew got him institutionalized for a spell because of it. He then takes a break from his ramblings to espouse the virtues of Mormonism and praises Joseph Smith! The alien spaceship then puts us out of our misery by crashing into the house and killing him and one of the girls. Multiple stop-motion aliens then begin attacking and killing off everyone else while a smoke machine rolls and blue, red, purple and pink lights flash. The survivors make it down into some tunnels beneath the home, where we get more of the same. I guess the highlights would include a neck squeezed by a rubber alien hand and an alien arm thrust through a woman's chest.

I admire what the people behind this one were trying to do on a tiny budget, just not the end product so much. The extremely colorful comic book approach to the lighting was a plus and there are lots of charmingly cheap special effects sprinkled throughout. Much stop motion is used in this one and it's incorporated into the live action with about the same amount of finesse as WINTERBEAST (1991). Meaning, with not much finesse at all. Still, the various effects are certainly fun to watch and these people get an A for effort for all of their home grown visuals. Fans of low-budget 80s creature feature films like The Deadly Spawn (1983) may want to give this a look regardless of what I'm about to say below...

The fatal flaw here is really with the horrendous acting and incredibly mundane dialogue (well, I'll give “Eat my biscuits, you bloodsucker!” a pass). At first I was perplexed trying to figure out just what they were shooting for. Were these people simply the worst actors they could find or were they intentionally being coached to speak all of their dialogue in a stilted, lifeless, brain-damaged, Shatner-esque constant-pause manner? The answer is probably both: Already bad actors attempting to do what already comes naturally; act poorly! It's amusing for all of five minutes but becomes tiresome very quickly. This film would have worked a lot better with sincere performances. They could still be awful for all I care, as long as they're actually trying to act.

I've seen a few defend this by claiming those who write negative reviews just don't “get it.” Now let me give my rebuttal. Just because a film has intentionally bad acting does not make it a good film. Just because a film has intentionally humdrum dialogue does not make it a good film. Just because someone has it in their mind that by making a “50s-style” sci-fi film it must contain terrible acting and awful dialogue in a “tribute” to the entire decade, does not make it a good film. Just because someone is striving to make an intentionally stupid or bad or goofy or campy movie, does not make it a good film. And just because a film has all or some of the above does not make it a cult classic. Some films are just too obvious for their own good and a piece of calculated, intentional schlock is never as endearing or fulfilling as the genuine article.

IMDb currently lists this as being released in 1986 though the copyright date is 1987 in the end credits so that's what I'm going with. It runs just 67 minutes and, despite many claims to the contrary, was shot on film, not video.

★1/2