Che yuen joi che (1982)

... aka: 邪完再邪
... aka: 鬼妻
... aka: Ghost Wife
... aka: Hex After Hex

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

Director Chih-Hung Kuei's Hex trilogy concludes with this third and final installment for Shaw Brothers. It has absolutely nothing to do with the serious Diabolique variant HEX (1980) and is instead a direct follow-up to the first comic sequel, HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (also 1980). In HvsW, a desperate, down-on-his-luck man with a gambling problems gets more than he bargained for marrying a ghost for money. This sequel initially follows a similar premise but then shoots off in its own crazy direction. Checking out a knock on the door late one night, muscular movie stuntman Ma Su (Meng Lo) - neighbor of the guy from the previous film - finds a parcel full of gold and valuables laying on his doorstep. He thinks he's lucked out until old Mr. Liu (Chi Hing Yeung) shows up to inform him that he can only keep the money (plus he'll get a house) if he agrees to marry his daughter, Ah Tsui. The daughter happens to love muscular, fit men so it appears to be a good match-up. Well, except for one tiny detail: Ah Tsui is dead. Ma Su refuses to marry a ghost, but when the old man returns home, the daughter's angry spirit leaves the altar. The ghost causes a car accident that kills Ma Su's pretty neighbor Suk Yi (Nancy Lau Nam-Kai) so she's able to inhabit her body and make a play for Ma Su herself.

Suk Yi / Ah Tsui shows up at Ma Su's apartment and insists he call her Red Pok Pok. She seduces him and gets him to marry her. Many problems ensue for the young couple, none of which really has anything to do with her being a ghost. For starters, they and the other tenants in their apartment building face eviction from a development company. To scare them off on demolition day, Ah Tsui pretends to be Yoda from Star Wars (!) and then transforms into Darth Vader and strips the construction crew's clothes off with a light saber (!!) After being fired from Shaw Brother Studios for refusing to do a dangerous stunt, Ma Su ends up getting a job as a driver for Johnny Tien (Dan Lau), the greedy and comically awful manager of the Puck Hik Real Estate Company. Because of his ineptitude and gambling issues, Johnny has run the company into the ground and takes it all out on his employees by being the boss from hell. He doesn't give his employees benefits, watches everyone on video monitors and fires people for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable, even leading one tired, overworked old man to hang himself in the bathroom.

Johnny's having a hard time getting the locals to leave their homes so he can tear them down and begin construction on some high-priced hotels, so he hires a bumbling, cross-eyed arsonist (Yue Tau-Wan) to cause problems. Once Ah Tsing discovers what he's doing, she decides to use her supernatural powers for revenge. During one silly scene, she zaps the arsonist's clothes off, so he slips on a pair of pantyhose, is chased around by angry villagers, gets his ass burned with fire, slides down a hill in a bucket, gets piss accidentally thrown in his face and then has the Shaw Brothers logo branded onto his ass. Ah Tsing has it in for the evil Johnny even more, especially after he fires her hubby. She gets his secretary Lily (Lily Chen) fired, takes her place and then sets out to destroy the shady businessman. She can't type, but Johnny tells her that all she needs is a "nice buxom body" to be his secretary. Ah Tsing feigns interest in him and the two start going on dates. All the while she's actually setting him up to lose all his money during an auction. It all drives him crazy and he's sent away to a nuthouse. Despite receiving plenty of help from his new wife, Ma Su eventually realizes she's a ghost. His friend Big Beard takes him to see Master Lau Gia Lin; a sorcerer who teaches Ma Su about "Sun-Da;" a practice for invoking Gods to drive pesky spirits away. He calls up the spirit and manages to banish her, but begins to have second thoughts about doing so.

This mile-a-minute ghost comedy moves along at an insane pace, with little regard for pacing and continuity. There are many extremely irritating and over-the-top characters and gags miss the mark as often as not, but it's so freaking weird you can't keep your eyes away from the screen. Not just a crude comedy, Hex After Hex also seems to be trying to make a serious point about the infiltration of American culture into Chinese culture. Characters wear clothes with American labels, the English language seeps into the country's dialect and an American named "The Godfather" lives behind a gated home and burns petitions from the locals without even reading them. The finale is one of the absolute strangest you'll ever see in any film as a statue of Thomas Jefferson in the city square is brought to life by a rival sorcerer to do battle. It flips off the hero and then its jacket opens to reveal a slot machine and pieces of gold spew from its mouth. Wow.

Aside from the Hex trilogy, director Kuei also made BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (1973), Ghost Eyes (1974), Fearful Interlude (1975), The Killer Snakes (1975), Spirit of the Raped (1976), Bewitched (1981), CORPSE MANIA (1981), Revenge of the Corpse (1981), Curse of Evil (1982) and THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983) (1983). All of the ones I've seen so far on his filmography are worth seeking out and I can't wait to see more.

★★1/2

Woman Hunt, The (1972)

... aka: Escape
... aka: Highest Bidder, The
... aka: Women for Sale

Directed by:
Eddie Romero

An exploitation twist on Richard Connell's famous and oft-filmed short story "The Most Dangerous Game," this Filipino-lensed turkey misses the fun mark by a wide, wide margin. Working on behalf of wealthy sadist Spyros (Eddie Garcia), a trio of thugs are given the task of kidnapping five beautiful women for use in their shady employer's brothel. Lured onto a boat, naive blonde stewardess Lori (Laurie Rose) and her friend become the latest abductees... except one of the kidnappers gets a little too rough with the friend trying to silence her. Oops, make that four women. Lori is taken aboard another boat and thrown into a bamboo cage, where she joins the sexy, short-haired McGee (Pat Woodell), black Billie (Charlene Jones) and Filipino Rita (Liza Belmonte). The ladies are all taken to a remote island, where they're blindfolded, have their arms tied behind their back and then are thrown into a truck and driven out into the jungle. From there, they're transferred into a cage being pulled by a cow for the rest of the trip. After a botched (and extremely pathetic) escape attempt that night, they finally make it to their destination the following day.

Upon arrival, the women are each given their own room and some sexy evening wear for a "dinner party" they're to attend later that evening. Little do they realize, but Spyros has other plans in store for them other than sexual slavery: namely letting them loose in the jungle, hunting them down and then killing them. He even forces some of his reluctant millionaire clients to take part. Before any of that can happen, some of the thugs decide to try make a move on the ladies; or as one so eloquently puts it: "Sure is a lot of pussy going to waste over there." Some of the girls attempt to comply in hopes that they'll be spared, but when McGee gets her top off for the mean Karp (Ken Metcalfe), he just throws her on the ground, spits on her and calls her a pig, and when Billie gets drunk Silas (Sid Haig) into the sack, he just passes out on her. Looks like their destiny is pretty much set in stone... unless they can escape. Thankfully, the conscientious Tony (top-billed John Ashley; also one of the producers) is having no part in the "hunt" and helps the ladies get out of the house, but they still have miles of dangerous jungle to navigate as well as Spyros, his guests and his goons to evade, if they're going to reach safety.

Combining elements of numerous tried-and-true exploitation subgenres: jungle-action, women-in-prison, hunting humans, etc., probably sounded great on paper, but unfortunately the execution is extremely bland and the film pretty much flat lines right out of the gate. Part of the blame falls on the director for his inability to generate any excitement or fun at any point in the film. Perhaps even more of the blame falls on the writers (it was scripted by David Hoover based on a story he co-wrote with Jack Hill), for doing a poor job rehashing an already tired plot, for refusing to give any of the characters even the slightest glimmer of personality and for pussy-footing around with various boring nonsense before allowing the action to finally kick in. Hell, our heroines aren't even actually in the jungle until the final 20 minutes, and even then we're not given much in the way of action or violence. Certainly not enough to justify the first boring hour of this 72-minute film.

I also have a bone to pick with the cast. With the possible exception of Haig, the performances are uniformly terrible and lifeless and most of these people behave as though they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else. This isn't fun, spirited, over-the-top bad acting from an enthusiastic cast, it's just bland, bored bad acting. In low-budget exploitation films, a game cast goes a long, long way. Roger Corman (the uncredited executive producer) knows this himself because many of his own super-low-budget films were elevated tremendously by talented, memorable actors like Dick Miller and Beverly Garland. Sadly, this one lacks anyone with the charisma and talent of, say, Pam Grier or Roberta Collins; both mainstays of Corman productions from around this same time. Perhaps the worst offender of all is the painfully wooden Lisa Todd (later of Hee Haw fame), who's handed a camp movie dream role as Spyros' black-clad lesbian assistant and does absolutely nothing memorable with the part.

Best one can say for this one is that there's breasts (all of the female leads aside from Todd lose their top at least once) and a bit of blood toward the end (including a spike trap hitting a stomach, a head being blown off and a real cobra getting hacked up with a machete). Romero also made The Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), The Twilight People (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973) for Corman's New World Pictures. IMDb claims this was released in 1973, but it actually first hit theaters November 1972.

★1/2

Glass Cage, The (1964)

... aka: Bed of Fire
... aka: Den of Doom
... aka: Don't Touch My Sister

Directed by:
Antonio Santéan

At an apartment house, a prowler is shot and killed, so a pair of detectives; aged, level-headed and experienced Lt. Max Westman (John Hoyt) and his younger, reactionary partner Sgt. Jeff Bradley (Robert Kelljan), are on the case. They go to interview Ellen Sawyer ("Arline Sax" / Arlene Martel), a quiet young blonde who claims to have shot the man when he broke into her flat. Ellen's recollections of the events don't seem to add up and neither do her stories about her family. She says her mother is dead and tries to change the subject any time the police ask about her father; whom she claims is an evangelist living in another city. As for Ellen's older sister Ruth, well she does live in town. In fact, Ruth was also there the night of the killing and had given Ellen the revolver used to shoot the intruder. Westman and Bradley go to Ellen's home and are unable to locate her. They find a portrait of the sister there though and she's a dead ringer for Ellen, only with darker hair and a much more sophisticated look. It seems that while Ellen lives very modestly in a cheap, barely-furnished apartment in a bad area of town, her sister is quite well off in her Hollywood Hills home and helps to support her sibling.

Jeff ends up becoming infatuated with the sweet-natured, soft-spoken and demure Ellen. Though she's polite and nice, she's also clearly got mental issues. And the same goes for Ruth (also played by Martel in a dark wig), who finally materializes at the police station to give her testimony. As it turns out, the victim wasn't a prowler at all, but Ruth's well-off businessman lover. We're basically given two options in this psychological horror / mystery. The first is that there aren't two sisters, and that Ellen and Ruth are the same schizophrenic person. The second option is that Ruth is a cold-blooded sociopath who wanted her lover dead for his money and thus set him up to be killed by her emotionally-fragile sister. Either way, the resolution to all of this isn't going to be surprising anyone. And if you don't want that aspect spoiled, go ahead and stop reading right now. I'll leave you with the note that this forgotten and extremely obscure film (thus far only distributed by Sinister Cinema on VHS) is worth tracking down.

Extremely low-budget and often technically crude (the boom mic is even visible multiple times), The Glass Cage still manages to overcome the predictability of its premise. For starters, it's surprisingly upfront for its time dealing with issues ranging from mental illness to childhood abuse to perverse sexuality. One of the more interesting side characters is Tox Midler (King Moody), an unemployed, sleazy starving artist / voyeur / exhibitionist who lives in a building across from Ellen and is constantly peeping in her windows. He knows just what's going on and witnessed the shooting, but instead of informing the police he attempts to blackmail Ellen into having sex with him. During one surprising sequence, Tox is in bed with a zoned-out Ellen trying to make love to her when she suddenly starts screaming and calling him "Daddy!" This kind of thing certainly wasn't the norm for mainstream releases in 1964, so it's easy to see why the film didn't get much of a theatrical release back in the 60s.

Ellen's frequent hallucinations are also very interesting, both in concept and in visualization. In one, she imagines a scar on her arm bleeding all over the place. In another, she's surrounded on a sidewalk by a bunch of leering men when suddenly a giant hand reaches out of a store window trying to grab her. In most of her delusions, a well-dressed man wearing a top hat and carrying a cane (Elisha Cook Jr.) is either chasing or following her. The man turns out be her father, whose current occupation as a clergyman (shades of The Night of the Hunter) betrays what a creep he really is. The director uses multiple cheap, experimental techniques to try to spice things up, including weird camera angles, distorted sounds, freeze frames, repeat shots and slow-motion. While these flourishes don't always work, they're highly effective when they do. Most of the performances here are at least decent, but everything pretty much hinges on the lead actress. Thankfully, the little-known Martel does not disappoint in her dual characterization. The actress gets to play two very different women; the delicate, aloof, introspective Ellen and the cool, seductive, outgoing Ruth, and she manages to pull it off. If this were a more high-profile film her performance would have received more attention.

I was also struck by the similarities between this and Roman Polanski's REPULSION (1965), which was released the following year. While it may seem a long shot to even suggest that one of the most acclaimed genre films of all time was inspired by a low-budget film that hardly anyone saw, just check out the list of similarities between this film's Ellen and Repulsion's Carole Ledoux played by Catherine Deneuve. Both are attractive, troubled blondes with likely sexual trauma in their childhoods leading to mental problems as adults. Both live lonely existences in apartment houses. Both have to stave off the advances of lecherous male admirers who don't seem to care that the object of their unwanted affection clearly has a few screws loose. Both have self-absorbed and uncaring sisters who only financially support them and are quite their opposite in personality. Both Santéan and Polanski chose to illustrate the protagonists' inner turmoil by utilizing elements of surrealism. And the list goes on. Though this doesn't quite pack the same punch as Polanski's landmark film, it's still worthy of a reevaluation and a larger audience.

This was the only directorial credit for Santéan, who co-wrote the screenplay with veteran character actor Hoyt (who receives top-billing here). Both men were also the executive producers. It's also interesting to see Bob Kelljan - who's better known as a director - in an early acting role, though he's the weakest link among the principle actors seen here. Kelljan went on to make the huge hit Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and its follow-up The Return of Count Yorga (1971), as well as Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973) and the sleazy rape-revenge drive-in hit Act of Vengeance (1974).

So will a DVD distributor eventually step in and save The Glass Cage from its sorry fate, or will it remain forgotten and unloved for the rest of eternity? It's hard to tell. For now, it exists only for the extremely dedicated genre fan; one who's willing to slog through a faded, sometimes-jumpy and heavily-damaged VHS print to seek its rewards. Said video was poorly distributed to begin with and I doubt many will pay attention unless a major label bites.

★★★