Shan kou (1980)

... aka: 山狗
... aka: Beasts
... aka: Beasts, The
... aka: Flesh and Bloody Show, The
... aka: Flesh and the Bloody Terror
... aka: Mountain Dog
... aka: Survive

Directed by:
Dennis Yu

Five teenagers; outgoing Wah (Eddie Chan), his shy and innocent kid sister Ling (Patricia Chong), Pauline (Siu-Ling Wong), her lazy / cowardly boyfriend Ken (Cheun-Man Ko) and third wheel Louis (Paul Chung), who has a crush on Ling, head by bus to the mountains for a summer weekend camping trip. After switching to a lorry, they're dropped off in the middle of nowhere then hike to the valley of Kau Wah Shan, where only a tiny village rests. Something immediately seems off with the unfriendly locals. The bus driver refuses to speak to them and when they stop at a small general store, the owner lies about having a telephone and sends them on their way. The five find a nice place to set up camp not too far from the store and near a waterfall, ignoring a "No Camping" warning as they do and instead using the sign as firewood.

A couple of obnoxious redneck locals, Fu (Man-Bo Kwok) and Ko (Chor-Fai Kwong), who spied on the girls from a shack behind the store, show up to menace Ling and demand some of the soup they're cooking. You see, in this village there isn't much in the way of law and order. There's also no opportunity and little hope for the impoverished younger villagers, who've resorted to semi-savagery and stealing whatever they can in order to survive while they fantasize about running away to live in the Netherlands. The two men are chased off by Wah, but they'll soon be back... only there will be more of them, including constantly-snarling Snake (Ming Kam), who has rotten teeth, hisses, drinks snake venom and has a cobra for a pet, the big, bald and slow Mo (Kent Cheng) and the sadistic ringleader Holland Man (Ching Wong).

While Wah and Louis are busy chopping wood and Pauline and Ken are busy messing around in some weeds, Ling finds herself alone washing dishes at the base of the waterfall. The five thugs arrive, hold her down, rip off all her clothes and brutally gang rape her. After finding her nude and unconscious, Wah chases after them and is pushed into a boar trap dug in the ground, where he's impaled on sharpened bamboo sticks. Snake even drops his cobra into the hole just to make sure Wah's finished off for good.

While most of the locals defend the thugs responsible and say the teens were not welcome there, the CID show up to investigate matters and haul four of the five killers in. A local drunk identifies them as the culprits always stealing his chickens and harassing him, but he's written off as an unreliable witness. Ling is of no help as she's gone crazy from her attack and does things like brushing her teeth bloody after (gah!) using her toothbrush to clean a toilet. The rapists / killers are then set free and return to the village. But there's someone who's not about to let them get away with what they did: Ling and Wah's father, Mr. Chan (Sing Chen); a woodworker in good physical condition for a his age. Chan goes to the same area where his children were attacked, camps out and waits for the right moment to strike.

After burying the drunk farmer up to his neck, the "Disco Boys" steal his money, which they use to go into the city, get drunk and pick up hookers. They're rejected by most due to their poor hygiene and one even farts in Fu's face in a scene that would be repeated about 1000 times in various Troma movies. When they return home with a bar girl, they attempt to gang rape her but she manages to run off. They then start disappearing one by one, all falling victim to the vengeful father, who puts his carpentry skills to use making various booby traps he hides in the woods. The weapons used include a jagged sickle blade, a metal mouse trap (which is so big it could probably also catch a bear), a nail lined box and, my personal favorite, snakes.

Fairly well-made on a low budget, this ugly, gritty, mostly humorless film has clearly been heavily inspired by a number of U.S. backwoods terror tales and revenge flicks like Deliverance (1972), THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978). The bad guys are truly disgusting cretins and, while they're certainly adequately loathsome and the actors (some of whom never appeared in anything else) are well cast, they also go a bit over the top with it. The goons yell, behave idiotically, drool, act obnoxious, pick their noses, lick blood, smell bad and constantly bicker and fight amongst themselves. The victims and the father character are given far less screen time when this would have benefited from a bit more balance in that department.

If you've seen your fair share of exploitation films, you've probably already seen most of this before. It's neither the best of its kind nor the worst and it's neither the most graphic of its kind nor the least. It merely falls somewhere in the middle. The outdoor scenery is nice and there's plenty of violence, fighting and blood, plus some full frontal female nudity in the uncut version. I actually found the first half of build-up with the teens hiking / camping, which tries to be atmospheric with a lot of added fog and eerie Theremin-sounding music, stronger than the actual revenge portion, which is supposed to be the big pay off. Those not interested in seeing violence inflicted upon real animals should also be warned that a pig, a chicken, a rat and snakes are killed. And the same folks probably won't appreciate the bits where a monkey is yanked around on a chain and a dog is thrown on the ground.

Numerous cuts of this title exist, some of which are missing violence, bits of the rape scene and the full nudity of the bar girl. The HK theatrical release ran 83 minutes and was cut and these cuts are maintained on both the Pearl City VCD and DVD release. The pre cert English-dubbed video released in the UK on the Mercury International label (under the title The Beasts), plus the Dutch VHS (also with the English dub) are said to be the uncut versions. In the U.S., mail order bootleggers Video Search of Miami offered a shortened 72-minute version with hardcore sex insert shots added, which was released under the titles Flesh and the Bloody Terror or The Flesh and Bloody Show. Someone (unofficially) also put together an 86 minute composite, splicing in some of the cut footage into the best quality available print. It's mostly in Chinese with English subtitles but with bits of the dubbed version wedged in here and there.

The soundtrack features songs from The Police and Genesis and a disco version of Ace's 'How Long' (I think by Lipps Inc.), most likely used without permission. This may also be why this film was not officially released here in America. Director Yu (credited as Dennis W.K. Yu on the print I viewed) also made THE IMP (1981) and Evil Cat (1987).

★★1/2

Ye jing hun (1982)

... aka: 夜驚魂
... aka: He Lives by Night
... aka: Killer Stockings
... aka: Koroshi no sutokkingu
... aka: Night Fright
... aka: Ye ging wan

Directed by:
Po-Chih Leong

After leaving the nightclub where she works, a French showgirl is slashed with a utility knife and then strangled to death with her own white silk stocking while caught up in a bunch of multi-colored sheets hanging up in an alleyway. It's a scene that could have been plucked right out of a Dario Argento movie and one that partially informs the visual style of this offbeat Hong Kong production. But to assume this is just a stylish horror film or (bigger mistake) an homage to something else isn't giving it due credit. Outside of a few of the murder set pieces and some colorful lighting, this does its own thing, has its own tone (which is almost nothing like the Euro giallo or U.S. / Canadian slashers), is filled with humor (both lighthearted and twisted and, again, nothing at all like giallo or slasher flicks) and puts a quirky romance right at its center. In other words, this is not only not a copycat but it isn't really what I'd call an homage either.

The showgirl's murder happens right outside the window of late night radio show hostess Sissy (Sylvia Chang). Though a tomboy who usually dresses down, Sissy's mix of wit and sultry-voiced on air flirting has won her many male admirers. Among those is a nameless obsessed psycho played by Bing-Sum Hui, who's so into her that he uses her photos as wallpaper and has a mannequin in her likeness that he talks to. The stalker frequently calls her up to discuss his romantic designs on her and, when rejected, usually ends the conversation with a threat ("I'll kill you sooner or later!") He even starts trying to take credit for the string of murders following the showgirl's even though he's not actually the killer. And he's not the only one who's interested in her...

Pipe-smoking police chief Dragon (Kent Cheng) and his underling Wong (Yam Tat Wah / Simon Yam), the main detectives investigating the killer, have both fallen for the charms of Sissy. Dragon is pretty overt in wanting to marry her, keeps asking her out, goes to expensive and sometimes ridiculous lengths to try to impress her (see: the disco scene) and even lets her read classified case files from the investigation. Wong, or "Lousy Wong" as she's nicknamed him, has known Sissy since school and keeps his attraction to her a secret but is clearly jealous that Dragon is pursuing her and always trying to wedge himself into their plans.

When she's not playing music, answering letters and dishing out advice during "3 Hours with Sissy" our plucky heroine is commenting on the news, which also attracts the attention of the killer. Trying to psychoanalyze him publicly, making comments about him having no friends, being a chicken and a "cuckold" and then inviting him to call in to the show, ends up putting her in peril. She eventually even allows herself to be used as a decoy by the police and goes on TV to directly appeal to a specific fetish the psycho has.

The killer (revealed early on so I'm not ruining any plot twists here) turns out to be Eddie (Eddie Chan [sometimes Chen]). By day he's a polite, mild-mannered, well-dressed Gucci shoe salesman who keeps to himself. By night he's slapping on female attire and heading out to slash up women who happen to be wearing white stockings. He even has his eye on a young girl who lives in his slummy apartment block with her abusive, neglectful parents. After he saves her from being hit by a car, she becomes friendly with him, makes him a card and starts calling him "uncle." But her merely wearing white socks drives him up the wall.

A flashback reveals that Eddie was once a successful architect whose life was ruined by a cheating wife. In order to mess around behind his back, the wife's lover started dressing in drag and pretending to be a female friend so Eddie wouldn't catch on to the affair. After finding the two in bed together, he strangled his wife and slit the guy's throat. It was then off to a spell in a mental institution before he was released back into society. He strangles a punkette after she and her male friend (in Kiss make-up) rob a convenience store and, during the film's best scene, breaks into the home of Suzie (Elaine Jin), a bitchy housewife whose husband is always out of town, and murders her while her friend Nancy (Mabel Kwong) hides behind a shower curtain. With the cross-dressing killer and use made of both split screen and hazy soft focus photography, a lot of this actually seems as influenced by Brian De Palma's then-popular Dressed to Kill (1980) as anything else.

Dragon and Lousy Wong, who pretend to be the killer to scare Sissy on multiple occasions (including putting on a Santa Claus mask and accosting her in a dark alley as she walks home!) are two of the most ludicrously unprofessional cops you'll see in any film and it's here where the film sometimes flounders. While some of their scenes are amusing (sometimes even hilarious) their ineptitude and clownish behavior gets annoying after awhile. But, thankfully, this picks back up again for a lively (and lengthy!) finale featuring a pursuit through the radio station at night, cops running around in their underwear (and seemingly unable to use an elevator or even walk up stairs properly) and the killer pushing a 7-UP machine through the hallway trying to crush our leading lady.

The director has had a pretty interesting career. Born in the UK, he studied in London before relocating to Hong Kong to work in TV and film (1985's The Island seems to be his only other HK genre credit). Afterward, he made the Jude Law vampire movie Immortality (1998; aka The Wisdom of Crocodiles) in the UK, the Cabin by the Lake TV movies in Canada (2000 -2001), The Darkling (2000; another TV movie) in the U.S., the Steven Seagal action film Out of Reach (2004) in Poland and the Wesley Snipes action film The Detonator (2006) in Romania. He then returned to Hong Kong to make the horror film Baby Blues (2013) but then came back to America to shoot The Jade Pendant (2017) just last year in Utah. Guess he loves to travel.

The screenplay is from Kin Lon, who scripted a number of other genre films in the 80s and 90s and went on to direct some as well, including the great HEARTBEAT 100 (1987), which kind of fine-tuned some of the same things attempted here, Into the Night (1988) and Banana Spirit (1992). The cast includes Carroll Gordon, Eric Tsang (also the production manager), Billy Lau as a convenience store cashier and veteran actor Kung-Wu Huang as the radio station security guard who keeps a box of weapons (including a nail-lined club, brass knuckles and nunchucks!) at the front desk in case anyone's feeling insecure walking home alone at night.

This Cinema City release was very successful at the box office and was nominated for three Hong Kong Film Awards, winning for Best Editing (Kuo-Chung Chou) and Best Cinematography (Arthur Wong). The music from Violet Lam is also great. There was a U.S. VHS release on the Rainbow Audio & Visual label plus a DVD release from Mega Star / Tai Seng. Both have English subtitles and a few outtakes and bloopers at the very end.

★★★