Meng gui xue tang (1988)

... aka: Haunted Cop Shop II, The
... aka: Haunted Copshop II, The
... aka: Haunted Cop Shop of Horrors 2, The
... aka: Haunted School
... aka: Maang gwai hok tong

Directed by:
Jeffrey Lau

This immediate follow-up to THE HAUNTED COP SHOP (1987) went into production after the first became a modest hit in Asia. Like its predecessor, it also did pretty well in theaters (earning just 1.5 million less than the first) but there were still no further films in this particular series. That's not necessarily a bad thing if I'm being perfectly honest. Abiding by the smart strategy “Don't change a winning team,” this was made by the same director, writers (Lau and Kar-Wai Wong) and producers (Alan Tang and Golden Harvest), brings back all of the original film's main actors (some reprising their originals and others in different parts) and sticks by the same bumbling policemen vs. ghostly vampires horror-comedy template.

After a nightmare / flashback sequence that utilizes footage from the first film, this throws us right into the action with a long action-horror-comedy-horror set piece in a high rise office building. While a meeting of professionals is going on about what to do with a recent outbreak in vampires / ghosts (should they be eliminated or treated like normal citizens are have to pay taxes?), a bloodsucker sneaks into the building and causes another outbreak. Supt. Shun (Fung Wu) of the Hong Kong Police Department puts his most experienced officers; Kam Mark (Jacky Cheung) and Man Chiu (Ricky Hui), in charge of taking down the vampires but all anyone really does is try to run away from them. Kam Mark skates around the office when buckets get stuck on his feet while Man Chiu is forced into having sex with a horny female vampire (which is captured by security cameras and later accidentally broadcast on TV) to keep her from biting him.

Seeing how their current techniques haven't been all that effective, the mayor has Shun start a special new “Ghost Buster Team” of the force specializing in snuffing out the supernatural. Gee, that sounds awfully familiar. The new unit's full name is the Hong Kong Royal Police Monster & Special Crime Research and Action Unit, or the H.K.P.C.D.U.K.L.M.E. for short. Don't ask how that works out but I think it's supposed to be funny. Kam Mark and Man Chiu are forced to assist Shun like it or not. The ambitious Little Bald (Chan Fai-Hung) joins only because he thinks he'll be getting a raise and promotion if he does. Over-the-hill wannabe ladies man Romeo (James Yi Lui) asks for a change of department after discovering the severed head of a serial killer's victim inside a basketball but insists big breasted Hung Dai Dai aka Big Mimi (Kitty Chan) be reassigned, too. Sick of helping a shrink talk suicides off of jumping off rooftops, Little Witch (Prudence Liew) thinks she can do better. Miss Bad Luck (Sandy Lam) causes injury and misfortune to anyone so much as in the same room with her so she's thrown into the mix. And, finally, Lazy Bone (Billy Lau), twin brother of one of the first film's victims, joins up looking for revenge.

Around the campfire, Little Witch pulls out a book her grandfather gave her that explains the different type of vampires one can come across. What kind of vampire one becomes depends on how frightened they are prior to being bitten. There's even a type of werewolf vampire (no fur or claws, just wolf-like behavior and one fang instead of two) that only lusts for blood on a full moon but is normal the rest of the time. Little does anyone realize, but Man Chiu actually suffers from the latter condition after getting bitten during his earlier tryst. The gang do an obstacle course that includes running through tires, scaling a wall and trying to stake a target white it spins. Other than that, they spend nearly an entire day trying to charm a chicken so it'll lay eggs. After much goofing off, everyone eventually has to deal with two female vampires; one dressed in red and the other in white, who conveniently live near the training groups in some underground lair.

Not quite up to the middling heights of the previous entry, this comes off like some unholy mix of Ghostbusters, Police Academy and Mr. Vampire. Don't get me wrong, this movie really does try hard, it's just that most of the time the attempts at humor aren't the least bit clever (though a dig at the hopping vampire genre made me laugh) and this has even less horror and action than the first. Even worse, the mostly unlikable characters talk a mile a minute, never seem to shut up and are constantly mugging and looking directly at the camera making goofy faces. There's a pretty good scene in a bathroom where one of the girls tries to elude a vampire that rises from a tub, and a decent final twenty minutes or so of action in the vampire lair when an army of zombies show up but that's about all this has to offer.

★★

Femmine infernali (1980)

... aka: Escape
... aka: Escape from Hell
... aka: Hell Females
... aka: Hellfire on Ice, Part 2: Escape from Hell
... aka: Hell Prison
... aka: Les évadées du camp d'amour (Escapees of Love Camp)

Directed by:
"Tony Moore" (Edoardo Mulargia)

I've owned a copy of the Linda Blair vehicle SAVAGE ISLAND (1985) for quite some time now and put off watching it after learning it's mostly made up of footage from two other Italian / Spanish women-in-prison exploitation movies; this one and Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso / “Orinoco: Prison of Sex” (better known by the title HOTEL PARADISE). Both Escape and Orinoco were shot back-to-back by the same director for the same production companies in the same country using the same sets and featuring the same actors. In fact, the two are so similar that for the longest time they were listed as being the same film in most reference books. So I held off on watching the Blair version until I acquired the other two films just so I could map out the chronology of how one shoot produces two films and then two films become three films and about how three films can then be released under about thirty different titles between them. Anyway, I now have all three so expect to see a one-two-three punch of W.I.P. crap in your near future.

This genre of film basically exists for one reason: To show scantily-clad / naked females being raped, abused, tortured and degraded in various ways. Having a mostly female cast trapped in a prison setting is pretty much the ideal exploitation premise because it means more shower scenes and more lesbian scenes which means more flesh on display. A tropical prison setting is even better. After all, hot = less clothing and hot also = more showers needed. Most of these films attempt to justify what they're doing by applying a “girl power” angle and allowing the ladies to either outsmart the corrupt staff and escape or turn the tables on their oppressors and get bloody revenge. Of course that usually happens in the last ten minutes or so. There are far more pressing things to take care of first!

To its credit, Escape from Hell clicks not only all of the expected boxes, plus also a few unexpected ones. Things open with a group of ladies dressed essentially in ripped, stained t-shirts doing their hard labor for the day and getting pushed, kicked, whipped and berated by laughing, leering guards the entire time. A girl named Ann attempts to escape but she's caught, gang raped and murdered. Lead guard Martinez (Serafino Profumo) tells everyone else she's been killed and eaten by a jaguar but most of the women know better. Things are about to get even worse for the prisoners with the arrival of the new warden (Luciano Pigozzi), who's an asshole germaphobe that claims to be a stickler for law and order but isn't above torturing the prisoners when they do something he doesn't happen to like. He's also so uptight that even his room cannot be dusted to his satisfaction. As it turns out, the Warden is under contract to clear a path through the swamp and I bet you can guess who gets to work their asses off even harder than usual to accomplish that.

Along with the new Warden, a new batch of prisoners are brought in, including the pouty Vivienne (Cristina Lay), who's set to serve 10 long years. She's introduced to her three cellmates; Mary (Maite Nicote), a former prostitute, Zaira (Ajita Wilson), who's serving 20 years for unpremeditated murder for accidentally shooting her partner in a circus act gone wrong and blonde lesbian Katie (Cintia Lodetti), a lifer who rather casually mentions that she killed her girlfriend as if were nothing to her. Katie is also the Queen Bee of the prison and insists that whatever she says goes and whatever she wants she eventually gets... including the new arrival. Vivienne resists her advances at first and is slapped in the face. She eventually caves in but Zaira also has eyes for the newcomer and gets into a nude cat fight with Katie (“You black bitch!” “White trash!”) over her.

The girls are called things like “swine,” “rats” and “fucking whores” and are fed nothing but a steady diet of snake meat because it “gives them zip.” For punishment, they get strung up by their wrists, are forced to run around in a circle carrying heavy bags, are whipped bloody or get shot dead. Mary, who's been screwing one of the guards for special favors (“I prefer to buy you like a whore than take you by force!”), is busted with booze and cigarettes so she ends up getting buried up to her shoulders on the jungle floor and is killed by a giant python. Having had enough torture, rape and slave labor to probably last them a lifetime, Vivienne, Zaira and Katie, along with their new cellmate Lucy (former Miss Italy Zaira Zoccheddu), decide to attempt an escape and even have an ally on the inside...

Classical music loving drunk Dr. Farrell (Anthony Steffen), the only halfway decent person who works at the camp, has seen enough himself and decides to help the ladies out. He gives them a potion that will make them erupt in red soars and puke up blood in hopes that he can convince the Warden they have the plague. It works and he's given permission to take the infected girls a few miles away from the camp until they recover. Farrell decides to kill the Warden before they take off, which ends up biting them in the ass once his body is discovered. What follows is a Most Dangerous Game-style forest hunt with the doc and the girls trying to elude armed guards whilst also trying to survive the elements during their 10 mile trek to the river. There's death by snake, leeches, dehydration, quicksand and gunfire, plus an out of nowhere fantasy striptease from Wilson, which is wedged in because the film had gone (gasp!) a whopping 15 minutes without gratuitous nudity beforehand.

Also for your viewing pleasure, you get a snake having its head bitten off, a crazy woman “dog lover” who supposedly has a sexual relationship with the resident canine and a voyeuristic mute servant who's had his tongue removed. There's plenty of torture violence (though this isn't quite as sadistic as the Ilsa movies) and full frontal nudity in shower scenes, soft core sex scenes (both straight and girl-girl) and cat fights and one long and rather graphic rape scene including spread eagle shots that would have gotten this slapped with an X here in America had they not been cut out. In other words, you get everything you could possibly want from one of these things and then some with this dumb but lively piece of Euro-sleaze. The version I viewed ran 89 minutes and does not appear to have been cut, though some sources claim there's a 93 minute version out there.

Wizard Video first released this in the U.S. in 1984 under the title Escape, which managed to actually beat Savage Island to theaters so some people saw parts of the same film twice. In 1990, the obscure label Hurricane Pictures then reissued it under the name Hellfire on Ice, Part 2: Escape from Hell (the *other* Hellfire on Ice was actually 1972's Sweet Sugar). It was then picked up by Troma and Shock-O-Rama for DVD distribution. The UK version titled Hell Prison was cut by about 5 minutes. In Germany, it was released as part three in a bogus series entitled Die Schwarze Nymphomanin / “The Black Nymphomaniac.” The first two Black Nympho releases (all of which starred African American post op transsexual Wilson) were Queen of Sex (1977) and Erotic Passion (1981). It was also released in Germany under the irresistible title Die Liebeshexen vom Rio Cannibale / “Love Witches of Cannibal River.” This is much easier to find that its companion piece.

★★1/2