Yan gui fa kuang (1984)

... aka: 艷鬼發狂
... aka: Possessed II
... aka: Yim gwai faat kwong

Directed by:
David Lai

Director David Lai and star Gary Siu both return for this sequel to the previous year's POSSESSED (1983); also a Johnny Mak production. I suppose the original did well to prompt this follow-up, though it's a sequel in-name-only and has nothing to do with the first one. It's also that rare sequel that improves upon the first. Things begin with an amusing sequence of a zombie-like brothel madam and her little boy and some equally undead-looking American soldiers eating a pot of cooked dog meat. When they hear a noise, the entire crew quickly clear out and erase any trace of them being there. As it turns out, they're all ghosts. The noise turns out to be a realtor showing the place to a young couple; Inspector Siu (Gary Siu) and his wife Li Chun (Mabel Kwong). They already have a little girl, Ling-Ling, and Mrs. Siu is very far along in her next pregnancy. The apartment is a complete wreck and it'll need a lot of work to fix up and renovate, plus it sits right next to an old cemetery... but it's cheap so Mr. Siu talks his wife into moving in. The place is whipped into shape in no time, but there are several problems that can't be fixed with a coat of paint and some vacuuming. The first is an unhappy marriage. And the second, of course, is that the place is haunted, leading to several nasty possessions.

Inspector Siu, though he may work as a respected homicide detective, isn't going to be up for a Husband of the Year award any time soon. He's been carrying on an affair with a female coworker Michelle (Pauline Wong) and has no problem humiliating and berating his wife whenever possible. The Inspector even tells his young daughter that he plans on divorcing her mum if she's not pregnant with a boy! During an ultrasound, it appears Li Chun is indeed going to have a son but her glee doesn't last long after a ghost shows up and pushes her down the stairs, causing her to miscarry. Mr. Siu naturally doesn't believe her story and blames it all on her. Other ghosts show up and it isn't long before both mother and daughter start showing signs of possession. For mom, she puts away her frumpy clothes and glasses and starts dressing and acting sexy to lure men, whom she promptly shreds after transforming into a fanged, clawed werewolf like-creature. Two of her victims include a fat butcher (Chun Wong) who she seduces on a truck hauling pig carcasses and a black guy with a fro lured to a zoo. For the daughter, her new powers come in handy taking on a chubby schoolyard bully. During one hilarious scene, little Ling-Ling turns into a blue-faced ghoul, levitates off the ground and beats the living hell out of the kid who's been trying to rub his boogers on her and steals her Hello Kitty watch.

Mr. Siu finally decides he's had enough and wants his family back. He calls off his affair with Michelle (who Li Chun ends up killing, anyway) and enlists the aid of some exorcists who come to his home armed with an owl, a rat, black dog's blood and knowledge of fung schway to drive the spirits away. Unfortunately, their attempts to clean the apartment of the evil don't quite work and Li Chun and Ling-Ling revert back to their possessed ways. Siu finally seeks the aid of a Hare Krishna (Jayson Case), who explains what Siu is up against. The malicious spirit causing all of the problems, Lucy, was romanced by an American soldier - named Tim Burton! - during the Korean War. He abandoned her while she was pregnant and never came back, so she decided to kill her son and then commit suicide by jumping off the rooftop. She's now buried behind the home and wants revenge against the soldier who spurned her. What this has to do with Siu and his family is pretty much anyone's guess.

Possessed II is a lightning-fast, very busy effort that zips right along from one crazy scene to the next. While the first film had its share of dull stretches, there's never a dull moment in this one. It's more entertaining and more imaginative than the first, the entire cast is enthusiastic, it's frequently hilarious and full of creative special effects and gory make-ups. However, the sheer overkill of this frequently hectic and noisy movie is going to have a polarizing effect on most viewers; some will be delighted by the insanity of it all and others are going to be turned off and find it monotonous after awhile. There's definitely more good here than bad, though the film grows tiresome and seems repetitive at points. The writing is confusing and unfocused. From a structural standpoint, this thing is an absolute mess, though I'm not entirely sure what hand the English subtitles have in that. Oh well. If nothing else, it has the best use of a Hare Krishna since John Waters' classic comedy Female Trouble (1974) and that has to count for something, right?

Supposedly, one of the sailors is played by Toby Russell, the son of late director Ken Russell! DVD is from Fortune Star Entertainment, who also released a nice print of the original.

★★1/2

Meng gui chu long (1983)

... aka: 猛鬼出籠
... aka: Maang gwai chut lung
... aka: Possessed

Directed by:
David Lai

Royal Hong Kong Police officers Yuh Lung Hsiao (Gary Siu) and Ming Kung (Siu Ming Lau) are on patrol. Ming - who's older but definitely not wiser (and a drunk, to boot) pukes in a pickpocket's face and then forces his partner to chase after a speeder who almost runs him over. They end up out in the country at a house where a man is trying to attack his wife with a cleaver. After being punched and kicked repeatedly to no avail, it takes six bullets to finally put the guy out of commission. The wife, however, isn't all that thankful and curses at them for blowing away her hubby. Strange things begin happening soon after, especially to poor Hsiao, who already has a lot on him plate as is, including having to take care of his rebellious teenage sister (Irene Wan) because his parents are gone. Hsiao's entire apartment starts shaking and the furniture starts levitating, he's attacked by his closet when it detaches and tries to crush him, receives strange phone calls from an inhuman-sounding voice and witnesses the suicide of someone who appears to be possessed by a demon and leaps off a tall building. In addition to all that, Hsiao is suffering from hallucinations, including ripping off his own face.

Hsiao thinks he might be losing his mind. His girlfriend Sue (Chi-Shui Chan) suggests he take a leave of absence from work to cope with the stress but Hsiao passes and opts for prayer, offerings of roasted pig to the Gods and old school charms hung around his apartment to ward off the evil. The charms seem to work, at least temporarily. While he's away at work one day, Sue (who spent the night to take part in a sex scene) removes them to hang Korea posters and unleashes the evil again. She's slapped around by some unseen force, has her robe ripped off, is raped ENTITY-style on his bed, is strung up by her wrists and spits up greek goo. Hsiao rushes her to the hospital and, while he's away, his sister returns home and sneaks in her boyfriend. After some Pac Man and a little messin' round, the spirit returns to toss the sister around her room and bounce her off her box springs right into the ceiling fan, which kills her. After witnessing the incident, the boyfriend goes crazy.

Hsiao and Ming start investigating both the cleaver psycho they shot down and the guy who committed suicide and notice there's a connection between the two men. Both - along with one other guy who was executed - were charged for a murder during a burglary gone wrong. Who put them away? Why, none other that Hsiao's father, who's been locked away in a mental asylum for the past decade and has some secrets of his own when it comes to improper police interrogation techniques, not to mention accepting bribes. After a disjointed and almost aimless first hour - rife with "borrowings" from other horror film and few bright moments along the way - things finally pick up toward the end with a lively exorcism climax that partially redeems things. Included in this ten-minute-long sequence are the following goodies: a man being flogged by a chicken, a real life chicken being thrown into a pit of fire, a female midget swinging around a samurai sword, a man being tossed down the stairs where he's bitten by a cobra, a man being killed by having a cauldron full of hot oil dumped onto his head, a gigantic hand reaching out of a hole in the ceiling and strangling someone, a fish bowl getting stuck on someone's head, eyeballs popping out, a demon-monster, a flaming body leaping through a window and three cars exploding.

Like many other 80s Hong Kong films, this borrows liberally from many American horror movies popular at the time. In this case, ideas and even entire scenes are swiped from a variety of sources, such as the aforementioned ghost rape of The Entity, as well as the pulling-apart-your-own-face-in-front-of-bathroom-mirror sequence from POLTERGEIST. Speaking of Poltergeist, this film also totally rips off the Zelda Rubinstein character by having an eccentric, whiny-voiced little psychic lady who keeps talking about the "Four-face Buddha." There's also a car crash right out of one of the OMEN movies and other elements Xeroxed from other films.

Followed by the immediate, unrelated (and better!) sequel POSSESSED II (1984). The Japanese company Fortune Star Entertainment released both films to DVD with optional English subtitles.

★★

Sex Wish (1976)

... aka: Love Wish
... aka: Night Walker, The
... aka: Wish

Directed by:
"Tim McCoy" (Victor Milt)

Lawyer Kenneth Bradshaw (Harry Reems) has just returned from vacation in Japan. He goes to visit his fiancee Faye (C.J. Laing) and after a ten minute romp in the bathtub and on bed, he leaves early in the morning to work on some briefs. On his way out, he bumps into a strange man carrying a briefcase and cane, who seems in a hurry. Ken goes to work. The stranger (Zebedy Colt) goes to visit his girlfriend. With pantyhose over his face, he busts into her apartment and demands she play doctor with him. He makes her strip off her robe, puts tape over her mouth and hogties her while talking in a childish voice and singing "Ring Around the Rosie." Then he decides to take her temperature but forgot his thermometer. I'm sure you can use your imagination with that one. After he's finished with that, he throws her on the floor, starts speaking in his mother's mannered voice, alternates between whipping her ("Naughty girl!") and whipping himself ("Bad boy!"), smacks her, beats her head off the floor and tells her she deserves it. Finally, he puts her out of her misery by cutting her throat (the blade is located inside his cane).

Forgetting his briefcase, Ken has to return early and when he does he finds Faye dead. Thankfully the killer had dropped a matchbook outside that says "21 Club. 'Artie' After 9!" on it, which at least gives him his first clue. After being questioned by Inspector Allen (an uncredited Robert Kerman), Ken goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. Two girls there offer up their, uh, services, to help him get his mind off things. Afterward one of the girls tells Ken if she were him that she'd go buy a guy and hunt down the fucker who killed his girl... and that's exactly what Ken does. He keeps tabs on what's going on via news broadcasts and learns that Club 21 is a gay bar but there's no one named Artie there. Still not over his girlfriend, he goes to visit Faye's compassionate neighbor Alice ("Sue Franklin" / Nancy Dare), who cooks him dinner and then, uh, comforts him. Hell, his fiance's not even two days dead yet and he's already nailed three chicks. I guess her getting offed might not be such a bad thing after all.

Meanwhile, the psycho does poppers, puts on lipstick and a jock strap and then busts into a black couple's apartment with a gun. He tells them "I want to see your naked bodies playing nice games!" The girl throws her panties at him and yells "Smell it, baby! I know you wish you could have this!" At gunpoint he forces them to have sex while barking out various orders in his childish voice. The girl (who is a great little actress by the way) asks, "Is that what you want to see you dirty mother fucker?" He then forces the guy to flip her over and "bite her little assy." When he refuses to bite off her nipple, he's slashed to death. The killer and the girl get in a struggle on the couch. Her wig falls off and then he slashes her throat and then castrates the dead guy for good measure. Ken then decides to hit the streets to hunt down who the press has dubbed "The Sword Killer." Mid-chase, the psycho yanks a woman off the street (Terri Hall) into an abandoned building. Can Ken get to them before he claims his next victim?

Clearly taking its cue from the hit DEATH WISH (1974) in more than just title, this very unpleasant hard X film has built up a reputation over the years as a sick classic. So does it actually live up to its reputation? For the mosst part, I'd say yes. At least if you're like me and not well versed on this kind of stuff. The attack scenes are very twisted, effective and made even nastier by the inclusion of hardcore sex. Still, they wouldn't have near the impact they do if not for the effectively deranged performance from Zebedy Colt as the psycho. Colt - a New York stage actor and gay cabaret singer who moonlit in straight porn because the parts were better - goes all out in this role: crying, screaming, laughing and even changing up his voice whenever necessary. If this same performance was in an R-rated film, it would probably be lauded. On the down side, all of the actual death scenes are ineptly staged, with the weapon clearly not making contact with the body. Reems' straight sex scenes are a bore, too, but that's why they invented a fast forward button. Still, the film would have obviously been better with more Colt and less Reems.

As you can tell from my screen caps (taken from Alpha Blue Archives' release), I didn't have a decent copy at my disposal and I'm not even sure if one is even available at this point. Yet somehow, how terrible this thing looked was completely fitting. Director "Tim McCoy" (Victor Milt) also made THE EROTIC DR. JEKYLL (1975), which featured much of the same cast seen here, including Reems and Colt.

★★

Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

... aka: Colour Out of Space, The
... aka: Monster, The
... aka: Monster of Terror

Directed by:
Daniel Haller

Though Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace (1963) is still to this day grouped into the director's eight-part Edgar Allan Poe series, it was actually based primarily on H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." Despite how it was initially promoted, Palace was in fact the very first feature-length attempt at bringing Lovecraft to the big screen. Die, Monster, Die! (UK title: Monster of Terror) was the second attempt and is based on Lovecraft's wonderful short story "The Colour Out of Space." Screenwriter Jerry Sohl has altered many things from the story and added new ideas and characters, but he at least honors the general premise of the tale here. Director Haller, making his directorial debut, had previously done splendid economy-class art direction on many of the Corman-Poe films (including Palace) and brings that same kind of attention to detail and atmosphere to this one.

Honoring a request for a visit from his girlfriend's mother, American Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) arrives via train to the small British village of Arkham. Once there, he's unable to get a taxi ride or even rent a bicycle to transport himself to his destination. Seems the folks round those parts have a problem with the same family Stephen is planning to visit. He's forced to walk a good piece to his destination. Along the way there, Stephen must ignore no trespassing signs everywhere, sidestep strategically placed bear traps and, strangest of all, pass by a huge empty crater and a forest full of charred trees. Upon arriving at the Witley home, Stephen is given a cold, rude reception by wheelchair-bound patriarch Nahum (Boris Karloff), who immediately asks him to leave. His girlfriend Susan (Suzan Farmer) greets him warmly, however, and takes him upstairs to meet her mother Letitia (Freda Jackson). Mum's not doing very well it seems.

Not only is Letitia sickly and bedridden, but she's also strangely light-sensitive and refuses to be seen. She warns Stephen about the family history (Nahum's father apparently dabbled in Satanism) and tells him her maid went crazy and has since vanished. She also begs Stephen to take her daughter out of the home. Because of her mother's illness and her father's erratic behavior, Susan refuses until she finds out just what is going on. At dinner that evening, servant Merwyn (Terence de Marney) - forced to wear dark glasses because he's inflicted with the same malady effecting Letitia - collapses and then later dies. Strange screams are frequently heard throughout the home but seem to have no source and a shrouded figure lurks the grounds brandishing a knife. Stephen goes to a local doctor (Patrick Magee) for help, but he's a drunk who has been driven half mad himself by whatever's going on at the Witley estate and is of no help.

If you're familiar with the story or have seen any of the later film adaptations, such as THE CURSE (1987) or the recent Italian adaptation Colour from the Dark (2008), then you already know that a fallen meteor is responsible for everything odd that's been occurring. Nahum keeps a huge chunk of it down in the cellar and has it spread throughout his greenhouse and who knows where else. Enough exposure to the radioactive alien mineral leads to excessive growth in plants (plus enables them to attack) and madness and mutation in both plants and animals.

Despite the old school Gothic setting (large castle, fog-shrouded forests and graveyards), this seems strangely modern at times in terms of character actions, pacing and sound design. Haller and his crew make it all quite atmospheric, there are some interesting aural and light effects used at the finale, nice use of matte paintings throughout, some mildly icky make-up fx (such as a face melting down) and an interesting metallic-looking meteor monster that shows up at the very end. It runs just 75 minutes.

★★1/2