She sha shou (1974)

... aka: 蛇殺手
... aka: As Serpentes do Mal (The Serpents of Death)
... aka: Killer Snakes, The
... aka: Killer Snakes... The Hiss of Death
... aka: Se sat sau
... aka: Snake Killer

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm not a snake fan. There's just something about them I cannot stand. I know it's irrational and snakes help keep mice, rat and insect populations in check and thus serve a useful purpose. I've even done numerous things to try to break myself of this fear including petting snakes, actually paying to have my picture taken with a boa around my neck at an amusement park and volunteering to write about killer snake films in the book When Animals Attack. At one point, I went so far as to go to a friend of a friend's home knowing they let their two pet snakes slither around freely just to see if I could handle it. All that proved is that I could handle it yet hated every second of it and couldn't wait to leave. Even if I don't scream and run, my body immediately tenses up every time I'm around a snake. I don't like their eyes. I don't like their tongues. I don't like their scales. How they eat and the way they move around just freaks me out. Having already tried to conquer this fear head-on numerous times, I basically just gave up and accepted the fact that I don't like snakes and I never will.

Back when I was still actively trying to cure my ophidiophobia, I collected a bunch of snake movies that I was going to force myself to watch. While I did view some of the more lighthearted ones, others I never got around to. I particularly avoided some of the more extreme examples of this type, like this one and Calamity of Snakes (1982). So we'll see how this goes...

In the sepia prologue, a young boy listens to a woman (his mother) having kinky sex while begging for her lover to hit her and then takes a snake out of a box. That's followed by opening credits swarming with snakes and then some guy cutting one open (as it bites his hand!!), removing its gall bladder and draining it into a bowl. Then some schmuck drinks it because a local custom says it's supposed to increase one's virility. Fuck. This isn't even two minutes in and it's already killing me.

Awkward, scrawny, virginal, nail-biting, unemployed loner Zhizhong Chen (Kwok-Leung Gan), the now-grown kid from the opening scene, fantasizes about bondage, whipping, dripping hot candle wax all over tied up women and other kinky things. We later get more flashbacks about his mom and her lover that further explain why he is the way he is is. Zhizhong has a crush on Xiujuan (Maggie Li Lin-Lin), a nice girl who lives and works in the same impoverished, crowded urban area and feels sorry for him as he's always being bullied. Zhizhong gets a job working as a delivery man. The hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., the pay is 400 dollars a week and the boss (Chin Chu) is an asshole, but it's a job and, in the slums where he lives, at least that's something.

An injured cobra whose gall bladder was removed slithers into Zhizhong's room one night. He talks to it ("A snake's life is just as precious as a human's, don't you agree?"), promises to tend to its wound, stitches it up, makes a bed for it in a box and tells it to rest. He names it Xiaobiao and the snake eventually fetches other snakes who've also been injured and escaped their fate as someone's dinner by neighbor Fucheng Zhou (Chi Chou), who runs the snake shop next door. Zhizhong also fixes their wounds and before long he has a virtual mini-army of snake "friends" living with him that he mostly keeps in a pit he's dug out on the floor. Because of his new job, Zhizhong builds up the courage to finally ask Xiujuan out and she agrees to go to the movies with him. Things are finally looking up, but it doesn't last.

While out delivering food, Zhizhong runs across cruel hooker Jinyan (Helen Ko) and some hooligans who decide to beat him up and rob him. When he returns to work, he's fired. Meanwhile, Xiujuan's sickly father (Li-Jen Hao) starts getting worse. Dealing with him, she's unable to meet Zhizhong at the cinema, so he thinks she's stood him up. But Xiujuan has more pressing issues. Working as a toy vendor doesn't pay much and if she's unable to raise enough money for medical care, her father will soon die. Not only that, but she's behind on rent and her shrill landlady keeps threatening to evict them. Her friend Fang Fang (Terry Lau) recommend she become a call girl just like her to make the cash she needs. Feeling she has no other option, Xiujuan goes to live with her friend, who shows her the ropes and gives her a makeover so she doesn't look like such a "country bumpkin."

After being beaten and robbed again by Jinyan and her thugs, Zhizhong (who carries his cobra best friend in his pocket) discovers Xiaobiao and the rest of the snakes he's rescued are willing to kill for him. In fact, he can tell them exactly what to do and they obey. He has them kill the thugs, then ties Jinyan up, whips out some more snakes and has them enter her between the legs (!) before biting her to death. Zhizhong returns home and demands even more snakes. After all, he has a lot of venom to direct toward a whole lot of different people who've treated him like garbage. He breaks into Mr. Zhou's shop, takes all of his snakes and then kills him. Both Zhou and Jinyan's bodies are discovered and police start looking into matters.

Elsewhere, Xiujuan is making her money "entertaining" men (dancing with them and keeping them company) but hasn't quite taken the plunge into full-fledged prostitution yet. Little does she realize but Fang Fang, who turns out not to be much of a friend, would love to change that. In fact, she's trying to make extra money by arranging for a rich, pervy customer named Mr. Hu (Richard Chan Chun) to take the girl's virginity. Fang Fang and Hu get Xiujuan falling down drunk, Fang Fang collects her "reward" and then sends Hu and Xiujuan on their way to the "Love Motel." When Zhizhong finds out what's going on, he decides to get even in scenes that involve rape, bondage, sex, hissing Komodo dragons and dozens of snakes unleashed in an apartment.

Director Chih-Hung Kuei is one of my favorite Asian genre directors but, unlike most of his other films, this isn't exactly fun. It's too well-made and serious to be campy despite the crazy premise. The urban setting is grim, filthy, depressing and hopeless. The photography is dark. The characters are dirty, mean-spirited, terrible people for the most part. As per Kuei's usual, it's stylishly directed and has shots of colorful lighting throughout, though it's nowhere near as visually imaginative / bonkers as some of his later films. Because most of the snake scenes take place in dimly lit areas, they're actually easier to sit through than they otherwise would have been. The biggest surprise is the large amount of fetishistic sleaze and female nudity. There's so much kink and BDSM that this almost comes off like one of those Japanese pinky fetish movies.

Some actual snakes get sliced up, chopped in half and burned alive in this film, so there's your animal cruelty warning. Also of note: Shaw Brothers get a chance to plug their Jade and Pearl Theaters here. At the height of their popularity in the 70s, Shaw owned over 200 theaters throughout Asia which I'm sure helped when it came to keeping their own films in circulation. The Jade and Pearl were two cinemas in the same large building located on Causeway Bay and had a combined seating capacity of nearly 3000 people. They were demolished in 1998 to make room for a new MCL Cinema but you can get a glance at them in their heyday right here.

Surprisingly, this received a limited theatrical release here in America (it was given an X rating) and was one of the only Shaw Brothers horror films to be English-dubbed for U.S. distribution. Something Weird released that version on video in 1992. The Image / Celestial Pictures DVD contains both the original Cantonese / Mandarin track with an English sub option and the English language track so you can watch it either way.

★★1/2

Turkey Shoot (1982)

... aka: Blood Camp Thatcher
... aka: El imperio de la muerte (The Empire of Death)
... aka: Escape 2000
... aka: Helvetsejakten (Hell Hunt)
... aka: Insel der Verdammten (Island of the Damned)
... aka: Kalkkunan metsästys (Turkey Hunting)
... aka: Les traqués de l'an 2000 (Hunted People of the Year 2000)

Directed by:
Brian Trenchard-Smith

Some films get raked over the coals by critics. Others get raked over the coals and then left bleeding and badly injured on top of said coals until there's nothing left of them but dust meant to be swept into some cinematic dustbin and then forgotten. This particular film falls into the latter category. You couldn't really find anyone to say anything nice about this one back then and I remember every review book I had gave this its lowest possible rating. That, of course, always made me want to watch it to see if it was really that bad. I never got around to it until now but I notice something interesting has happened in the meantime: Many people, even some critics, have done a 180 and are starting to now give this positive reviews. A Guardian article even went so far as to draw comparisons with The Hunger Games and enough interest was generated to prompt a remake / "re-imagining" in 2014 starring that bland guy from the TV show Prison Break. No, the other one. While Turkey Shoot hasn't magically just changed into a newer, better film over time, the current bit of positivity may have a lot to do with a growing appreciation for older films that are campy, kitsch, outrageous and / or gloriously over-the-top.

The good news here is that if you can't decide just what to watch tonight and have it narrowed down to an action film, a dystopian sci-fi film, a horror film, a prison film, a war film or just a tasteless, sleazy exploitation film, then this has you covered on all fronts. The setting is an oppressive Orwellian future where you're expected not to have any opinion or individuality and must obey the fascist leaders and abide by their restrictive rules or else face death or being shipped off to a top secret camp to be "rehabilitated."

Paul Anders (Steve Railsback) was operating a pirate radio station speaking out against the government and railing against abuse of power, corruption, the camps and forced social conformity. Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner) was reported by a scorned lover for being a "whore." The cloyingly goody goody Chris ("I've never been against society!") Walters (Olivia Hussey) was wrongly implicated when an injured criminal burst into her shop. All three are drugged and transported to Camp 47, a "re-education and behavior modification" camp promising to turn "deviates" into "assets to society." As soon as the new arrivals step out of the van, the camp's raison d'être is revealed to be a joke. The "fresh meat" are already being ogled by the people who run the place and a limping, whip-wielding guard attempts to force Chris and then Paul to give him a blow job! Deviates, indeed.

While Paul and Rita are worldly enough to adjust to their surroundings, the innocent Chris is having a much harder time of it. She just oozes innocence and vulnerability, which puts a target on her back by attracting the attention of lecherous guards. Luckily, she has Paul to take her under his wing and protect her. Prisoners are forced to work their asses off on a daily basis but most of the time they appear to be raking dirt. They're allowed to have sex "within reason" but homosexuality is a "capital crime," spreading VD is a "punishable offense" and unwanted pregnancy results is abortion, sterilization and castration. In other words, no one's going to want to have sex with those kind of rules in place!

Prisoners must refer to themselves as "the lowest form of life of Earth" and commit "Freedom is obedience. Obedience is work. Work is life." to memory so they can be good little worker ants once they return to society. If they return to society. Making it there requires surviving being regularly beaten, whipped, tortured and casually shot at. One girl is kicked to death and an escapee who's captured and returned is covered with gasoline and set on fire. Being the shining beacon of purity that she is, Chris almost gets gang raped in the shower by guards (the slender Hussey is hilariously given a DD body double for one shot then magic hair that remains glued over her chest for the rest of the scene) but she and a handful of the others have something even worse to look forward to.

"Camp Master" Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig) not only runs the camp with all of the sadistic nonchalance of your usual prison movie warden, but has created an early release "special program" that involves participants allowing themselves to be hunted down Most Dangerous Game-style by him and his rich buddies. Watching the prisoners on monitors back in Charles' luxurious home, his guests can even pick and choose which "turkey" they want to try to kill. Paul, Chris and Rita are all selected, along with Dodge (John Ley), a likely necrophiliac who eats raw fish guts, and Griff (Bill Young), who - like Paul - has a history of escaping such establishments. The rules? They'll be released into the woods at dawn, given a three hour head start and must survive until sundown. If they can, they'll be released. At least that's what they're told.

So is this as bad as the critics once said? Yes! I mean no! Well, let's just say it's complicated. Despite the futuristic setting, sci-fi trappings are extremely minimal and the first half plays out like your run-of-the-mill prison exploitation feature with all of the cliché characters and events one would expect in such a film. The prison camp sets are hilariously cheap-looking, with aluminum siding interiors, buildings that seem constructed out of plasterboard with pointed canvas tent roofs and a dorm room where prisoners sleep on painted boxes with air mattresses on top. The characters are all thinly-drawn and not one of them, not even our heroes, is remotely likable. But you just need to endure all that to get to the real meat of the film.

At about the halfway point, something amazing happens: One of the hunters trots out a werewolf-like "circus freak" wearing a top hat named Alph! I immediately burst out laughing and realized just how ridiculous this whole thing was and how this absolutely had to be satirical. From that moment until the finale, this continues on in such an over-the-top fashion that it becomes immensely enjoyable. There's a surprising amount of bloodshed during the hunt portion that predominates the second half, while the big break-out finale has tons of explosions, dozens of people getting shot and blown up by bazookas and grenades and even fighter jet bombings!

As Thatcher and his fellow sickos Mallory (Noel Ferrier), Jennifer (Carmen Duncan) and Tito (Michael Petrovitch), plus sadistic guards Ritter (Roger Ward) and Red (Gus Mercurio), partake in the hunt, even I was surprised by the tasteless amount of gore put on display. There's death by arrow, machete, getting run over and someone getting impaled crotch first by a ridiculous booby trap. Hands are chopped off, an eye is gouged out with a stick, someone is shot in the dick and a body gets cut in half by a bulldozer (!!) A face erupts into flames after being stabbed with an explosive-tipped arrow and there's even a nifty little head explosion. Even Alph the werewolf freak gets his moment to shine by ripping off someone's pinky toe and eating it (!) before cracking their spine over his knee.

Brian May did the score and actor David Hemmings was an executive producer and shot 2nd unit footage (sans credit). Turkey Shoot was a troubled production where the script had to be re-written, a few of the actors were difficult and a large chunk of its budget got cut just before filming started, which forced the scheduled production days to go from 44 to less than 30. The latter may even explain those wonky sets as something had to be drastically cut.

After its 1982 Australian run, this was released to U.S. theaters in 1983 under the title Escape 2000 (also the VHS title). It was more successful in the UK, though, where is was cut by over five minutes and released as Blood Camp Thatcher, which had people assuming this was an indictment of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher! Well, that actually wasn't too far from the truth. Trenchard-Smith said the film was intended to be "a tongue in cheek but gutsy action movie with subtext about corporate fascism at the beginning of the Reagan era."

The 2003 DVD from Anchor Bay has interviews with Craig, Stoner and Ward discussing the film, which were retained for Severin's 2015 DVD / Blu-ray release.

★★1/2