Aimilia, i diestrammeni (1974)

... aka: Aimilia, the Psychopath
... aka: Bloody Emily
... aka: Emily the Pervert
... aka: Emily, the Psychopath

Directed by:
Pavlos Parashakis

Conservative middle-aged music teacher, wealthy widow and philanthropist Aimilia (Gisela Dali) is giving lessons to a few orphan children when three older folks arrive at her home. They're there because they want money to keep an institute open and to suggest she sell one of her many estates to help them with funding. Against Aimilia's wishes, one of her guests sees an armed man breaking into a home next door and immediately calls the cops. The burglar, Nikos (Dimitri Aronis), happens to already be well acquainted with the homeowner but he's there to collect money owed to his boss. After getting him to confess he has the money and getting him to open his safe, there's a fight and Nikos shoots both the guy and his girlfriend dead. Just then, the police arrive and Nikos flees into the night. He manages to duck into another home to hide out... Aimilia's home. He then overhears her and her guests having a conversation with one of the cops.

After the guests and cop leave, Nikos decides to hide out there until the police finish scouring the neighborhood. To kill time, he spies on Aimilia and watches as the woman he had seen all buttoned up doing the repressed, uptight act is living a dual life. Aimilia strips off her dress, showers and then changes her appearance, throwing on a sexy, short dress, heavy makeup and a blonde wig. She then leaves (giving Nikos a brief chance to use her phone to call his boss to tell him what's up), goes to a seedy area of town, picks up a guy and brings him home. After calling him a “male hooker” and slapping him in the face, he slaps her back and then the two jump into bed. She whips out a knife hidden under a pillow and then stabs the guy to death in a murderous frenzy that also puts the camera guy into a frenzy because it's impossible to see anything. Uh oh, Nikos has wandered into the home of schizo. Frequent flashbacks show that as a child Aimilia saw her hooker mother (also played by Dali in a black wig) get stabbed to death by one of her male acquaintances.

Aimilia soon run across the intruder and unsuccessfully attempts to kill him but, before you know it, she's crying on his sympathetic shoulder. Well, maybe she's not such a bad lady after all (other than the occasionally liking to stab horny men to death bit). Nikos manages to get home the following morning in one piece and learns from his girlfriend Kaiti (Lyn Fotopoulou) that his boss has been apprehended by the authorities. She begs him to run away with her but he has other things he needs to take care of first. Kaiti's mother Helen (Jenny Stefanakou) is heavily embroiled in the criminal lifestyle herself. Her husband and son are both in jail and she wants the money to hire lawyers to help get them out. She also warns Nikos that if he tries to do something foolish like split with all the money (which he hid behind some books at psycho woman's home) before delivering her cut then there will be hell to pay.

Nikos runs into many problems trying to retrieve the cash. For starters, Aimilia found it and hid it some place else. Second, Aimilia is an unpredictable, unreliable psycho so who knows what'll happen if he goes back. Third, police already have their eye on Aimilia and have posted guard outside her home. Four, his girlfriend's backstabbing mother cuts a deal with thug Joseph (“George Pliver” / Giorgos Plivouris) to split the cash 50/50 and cut Nikos out of the deal (by killing him). Kaiti overhears them making plans and pleads with Joseph to leave them alone, but he says he only will if she'll sleep with him. After they have sex, he instead goes right over to Nikos' and attempts to shoot him.

While out trying to find another victim, Aimilia stumbles across Mr. Paris (Manos Destounis), one of the guys who was begging for money earlier. Mr. Paris was also acquainted with her mother, who used him, teased him and mocked him. After she gets him home, he confesses to being the man who murdered her mother but is still willing to have sex if she'll have him. I'm sure you can guess what happens to Mr. Paris. Nikos is dragged into the police station and put in a lineup but Aimilia refuses to identify him as the shooter. It all leads to “tragic” consequences for pretty much all concerned after Aimilia clubs Joseph over the head with a candlestick and then puts on her seductress charms for Nikos when he finally shows up to get the money.

I only had the chance to view an old VHS release of this one, which is in pretty awful condition and also appears to have been cut at certain points to reduce nudity. That said, I don't believe the current running time of 95 minutes as given by IMDb. The cut I watched ran 77 minutes and the story didn't appear to be missing any key plot points plus the only abrupt soundtrack jumps occurred during sex scenes. Even so, this is a rather poorly made film. The camerawork is bad, the acting is bad, the story is all over the place, some cheap kaleidoscopic effects pass for style and there are loads of zooms in and zooms out used in place of proper editing cuts. I also found myself only really interested in what Aimilia was up to (at least at first) and not the dull crime stuff with Nikos and his lowlife friends or the dull scenes with the cops poking their noses around.

As far as Greek remedies for psycho-sexual problems are concerned, I'm not sure what's worse: The nut cured of his impotency by finally being given the chance to anally rape a woman in HOSTAGES OF LUST (1973) or a frigid female's murderous psychosis being cured by finally getting laid properly as in this film. Sheesh. Despite being from two different directors, both this and Hostages are filled with tinted flashbacks explaining how someone was turned psycho by the antics of a heartless female sexual tease. That's right, ladies. Always put up or shut up or else you'll end up with blood on your hands!

★1/2

Xie zhou (1982)

... aka: Che jau
... aka: Curse of Evil
... aka: Jinx

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

A narrow alleyway leads to the Shih Public Shrine. An old mansion lies at the end of the alley, where the descendants of Shih live. Up until twenty years ago, they were the wealthiest family in the area. That all changed after a group of bandits broke into their home, robbed them and killed thirteen family members. Only the mother and son managed to survive. The bodies of those slain were then dumped in a dry well near the house and ever since the family has been hit with bad luck and one inexplicable tragedy after another. Rumor has it that the corpses being unceremoniously disposed of disturbed the “Dragon King” spirit and the family is now cursed. That becomes pretty evident during Old Madam Shih's 50th birthday celebration when her son Guozhong keels over dead during dinner and his heartbroken wife passes away soon after. The wheelchair-bound Madam Shih (Lang Wai) is then entrusted with the care of her two young granddaughters; Yumei (Lily Li) and Yulan (Tai Liang-Chun), and raises them to adulthood. Fifteen years after her son's death, Madam's brother (Leung Tin) and his wife (Angelina Lo), plus their grown children; no good son Jinhua (Ai Fei), a stepson from the mom's previous marriage, and whiny daughter Ming-Ming (Lau Nga-Lai), also move in to “help” her as her health deteriorates.

Yulan is now a student studying ancient texts under Mr. Xu (Eric Chan), Yumei is very dedicated to taking care of the madam of the house, Ming-Ming is a spoiled brat and Jinhua is not only a disrespectful thug who stays out late every night but a pervert / sex predator who peeps into the girls' bedrooms, wants to marry (and even tries to rape) his cousin and uses a silver medallion to hypnotize the maid so he can have sex with her. To appease the Dragon God, everyone must pray and make offerings at a different time than everyone else, on the 1st and 15th of every month. On those two days, everyone who occupies the home is susceptible to something very bad happening if they're not careful. Since the new arrivals are bringing some bad karma to the household, and may be up to some scheming involving getting their mitts on the estate, some very bad shit starts happening.

The servants get a small taste of the curse when old Quan (Ching-Ho Wong) has his prayers interrupted when a dead gutted bird falls on his head and maid Qiao (Yau Chui-Ling) gets splattered with chicken blood while preparing dinner and catches herself on fire. Then, some nasty critters show up. First, there's a bunch of small mini-monsters called “the bloody frogs” who try to bite whoever's within reach with their steel teeth. Second, a big, horned lizard creature with a mutant face, human torso and a snake-like bottom half that's covered in pink slime comes crawling out of the well. While Jinhua is attempting to tie up a maid so he can rape her, the slimy lizard shows up to rape Yumei (rivaling the ick factor of the alien slug rape scene in Galaxy of Terror) and then rips her face off when it's done. Now one of the only descendants left of the Shih family line, Yulan has an even larger target on her back and needs to figure out her screwy family dynamic before its too late.

While the evil daughter-in-law and her equally awful son are trying to find ways to bump off the old woman (like pouring sulfuric acid on the floor of her lift) so they can leech off her estate until Yulan turns 20, someone else is feeding leftover meat to a bunch of mutant frogs living at the bottom of the well, staying up late at night sewing something in the attic, slipping poison into chicken soup, unleashing the army of flesh-eating frogs on bound and gagged victims and, eventually, slashing the cast to death in all manner of grisly ways. A police inspector (special guest star Jason Pai Piao) shows up a few times to snoop around but doesn't really have much to do.

Did Chih-Hung Kuei ever make a truly bad film? Not based on what I've seen thus far. While this is slow to get started, has too many characters to keep tabs on (leading to a bit of confusion early on) and doesn't quite reach to heights of crazy, colorful, gruesome lunacy as some of his better films like BEWITCHED (1981) and THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983), this still manages to come through in a big way by the end. It's clear someone saw the bizarre 1953 horror-mystery THE MAZE (an obscure and random source to crib from if there ever was one!), and decided to do an updated version of it by adding gore, slime and sex to the mix. Kuei did pretty much the exact same thing with HEX (1980); a version of the French suspense classic Les diaboliques (1955), which began as a rather routine updating of the original before going its own crazy direction.

Though I can't give this too high of a rating because of its uneven nature, rest assure your patience for enduring the rocky first half will be rewarded and then some by the final reel, which features two decapitations, eyes ripped from their sockets, Pepto Bismol colored blood, multiple rapes (monster and human alike), numerous hand puppet frog attacks, metal fangs ripping off chunks of flesh, a pit of skeletons, cool underground catacombs, a mummified baby, full female nudity, enough eye close-ups to make Lucio Fulci jealous and much much more. It all builds to a busy and utterly priceless climax with one wacky plot twist after another (plus a flashback) trotted out. The cast is pretty good, too, with especially memorable turns contributed by vets Lang Wai and Ching-Ho Wong, who shines as the household's longtime butler. Of course a lot of this is completely and utterly ridiculous, but that's all just part of the fun.

According to some sources, Curse was actually started by Shaw Brothers regular director Fung Wong but finished by Kuei. Judging by the end results, this has Kuei's stamp all over it so Wong couldn't have directed too much of this. Unlike most other SB films, this one's never been officially released on DVD. As a result, it's one of their harder horror titles to find. What is currently available is a substandard, though watchable, print with English subs.

★★1/2