Xie mo sha (1977)

... aka: 邪魔煞
... aka: Devil Strikes, The
... aka: Evil Spirits

Directed by:
Yee-Hung Lam

Seeing something crossing the road, a woman pulls over her car and is attacked by a crawling disembodied hand that busts through her windshield and starts strangling her. Alas, this turns out to only be an advertisement for unbreakable car windshields (!?) The mastermind behind that is Chen Bong Ling (David Lau Chi Wing), who's fast becoming one of the top commercial producers in the business. Not only is he doing well at work, but he's also in love with, and hoping to marry, Sao Chin (Kimmy Got Kim Ching). Well, OK, that part's gonna need a little work. On a visit to the ocean, Sao hears someone calling her name, has visions of funeral procession heading through the woods and then sees a bunch of people burying her mother's corpse on a beach. She flips out, starts running, falls and passes out. Afterward, a doctor shows up to examine her, finds nothing physically wrong and writes it off as a stress-related hallucination caused by her college studies.

Still, Sao feels she may possess "the sixth feeling" and suspects there's a disaster coming her way. Immediately after confessing that to her boyfriend, she receives a letter from her aunt (Man Wong) in Thailand, who informs her that - surprise! - her mother has just died. It has something to with a civil war and a bomb and being refugees and is all shown in a confusing flashback that's even more confusing because the subtitles are usually cut off. There's another flashback, too, where the aunt in her younger days brings her boyfriend home to meet her disapproving father. In the letter, the aunt also mentions that she's relocating to Hong Kong. And she'll be bringing along her chubby, chocolate-bar-obsessed son.

Once the aunt and cousin arrive, Sao takes them to their hotel and is told a fascinating story about how the aunt used a special ring to save them when they were fleeing enemy troops. It enabled them to jump off of a cliff and float in the water for 2 days before they were rescued by a passing ship. Auntie gives her a silver snake bracelet as a gift and then she informs her that she's already been "appointed" to marry her cousin. Sao brushes off that suggestion as not to anger them but has no intention of ending her love affair with Chen Bong.

To pass along a strong hint, Sao brings Chen Bong over for dinner. Aunt Chin is rude to him and tries to sneak a black magic potion (made from her son's spit!) into Sao's drink, but the glass explodes when Chih-Ming (intentionally) drops his snake ring into it. You see, Chih-Ming isn't in agreement with what his mother is doing at all and doesn't want to be forced upon Sao. Still, Auntie is dead set on their union. In order to make stronger spells, she goes to a snake handler who slices open, guts and then skins a (real, live) cobra in a disgusting scene. And then she has a dog killed for its blood to use in another spell. This one creates a phantom dog that bites Chen Bong, which creates a huge bruise that oozes blue liquid, causes him to almost wreck his car and lands him in the hospital.

Aunt and Chih-Ming get into an argument about what she's doing, which ends with Chih-Ming getting killed in a freak accident on a construction site. But if Sao thinks this is going to free her from any creepy family obligations, she's got another thing coming. Aunt Chin disowns her at the funeral and then promises she will "die much worse" than her son. She checks out of her hotel and promptly goes to a large abandoned building with her box of Thai black magic trinkets, where she can strike out at Sao and her friends from afar.

Sao's birthday party is ruined when her cake is infested by maggots. Her roommate Chin Li (Monica) is attacked when the bracelet turns into a lizard and then gets trapped in the bathroom where the shower head sprays her down with hot water. And then Sao herself is possessed. Her hair starts falling out and her face breaks out in bloody lesions. She secretes some green slime and eats it (!), chews up a wooden cross and spits it out, floats through the hallways and is eventually taken back to the hospital. The aunt uses chicken blood and voodoo dolls, gets so far into her black magic her eyes eventually turn completely black and she sprouts vampire fangs and then sends a large moth to Sao's hospital window to help her break out. Chen Bong must then try to track her down and save her. If that's even possible.

I'd never heard of this one before I stumbled upon it but it appears to be a companion piece (or rip-off of) a 1974 film called Nu mo or "The Devil in Her," which was Hong Kong's answer to The Exorcist. It even features the same two main actors from that one playing similar roles. There's a distinctive Asian flavor to the usual possession proceedings with all the black magic and the performances (especially from the aunt) are decent, but this takes too long to get going (Sao isn't even possessed until the last 20 minutes), the music is mostly stolen from Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, the finale is disappointing and, well, I've already seen this same thing done more imaginatively elsewhere with better special effects and production values. But, to be completely fair, all that's currently available is a washed out print with poorly-done subs, so that probably doesn't help this any.

The director also wrote the crazy Shaw Brothers film Seeding of a Ghost (1983) and went on to make a bunch of Cat III films later in his career like The Story of Lady Sue (1992), O.C.T.B. Case - The Floating Body (1995), Erotic Ghost Story: Perfect Match (1997), Ghost on Fire (1998) and others.

★★

Adam (1974)

... aka: אדם

Directed by:
"Jonah Dai" (Yona Day)

An IMDb search for Israeli horror films made between 1899 and 2000 turns up approximately three results; one of which was an American production merely filmed there. While there are a couple of movies in that 100 year span that could be classified as partial or psychological horror (like 1976's The Angel Was a Devil, a woman-pursued-by-a-killer "psychological thriller," and 1984's Soldier of the Night, about a serial killer of Israeli soldiers), it's true that horror films were simply not being made in Israel until here recently. A 2016 article in The Times of Israel notes that Israeli audiences are just now starting to "warm to home grown horror movies." That's right, 2016. Audiences have been starting to warm to horror as of just three years ago. Seeing how there haven't been any notable horrors made in Israel since that article was written, I'd say that "warming" period has already grown cold.

The turning point that ushered in the brief wave of Israeli horror seems to have occurred in 2010 with the release of Kalevet / "Rabies." Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado's terror-in-the-woods tale received good notices and had enough cross-over appeal to receive a limited theatrical release in both Canada and the U.S. as well as international DVD distribution. The same team's Big Bad Wolves (2013) received even wider distribution and acclaim. It netted eleven nominations from the Israeli Film Academy (winning five), was recognized at Cannes and the Chicago International Film Festival and did a pretty clean sweep of most of the major genre film festivals and awards. A number of other Israeli horrors have been made since. Among those are the post apocalyptic "infection" film Another World (2014) and the zombie film JeruZalem (2015).

Dr. David Avissar (Ilan Dar), dean of the psychology department at Tel Aviv University, thinks he's got a handle on all schizoid types. At their core they're arrogant, emotionally stunted loners who wear a mask of normalcy in public but behind closed doors are afraid of creating relationships due to the fear of rejection. Their urge for acceptance, while simultaneously keeping everyone in their life at arm's length, may lead to frustration and then murder if left untreated. Dr. Avissar believes that a well-adjusted, psychologically sound man who recognizes his own self-worth will find no need to kill. Surgeon Dr. Dan Adam (Shmulik Kraus, who was better known as a pop singer and music composer) disagrees and thinks performing a partial lobotomy is the only remedy for the condition. Actively disproving Avissar's theories becomes an obsession with him and, being a sociopath himself, he may be the perfect man to disprove the theory.

Dr. Adam's life has been an empty one and the only true joy he seems to get is in torturing and killing animals, including regularly feeding white mice to his caged pet bird, and looking at morbid slide shows of death and destruction. He can't stand his controlling mother, can't wait for her to die (as evidenced by him blithely giving her a drawing of her own grave!) and isn't the least bit interested in attending her board meetings. Dr. Adam also doesn't have any real interest in romantic relationships. On the way to a conference, he pulls over the car just so he can watch two horses mate and, later, can't get those horses out of his head when he's having sex with a large-breasted, slutty nurse at the hospital where he works. He doesn't seem to notice, or even care, that his attractive secretary has a crush on him.

Adam finally discovers a fulfilling extracurricular activity is terrorizing both David and his family. Because the psychologist is always so busy at work, Adam first targets his pregnant wife Ruthie (Iris Davidesco, who is probably thirty years younger than the man cast as her husband) and their young daughter Sharon, who are usually left all alone in their huge house. Adam begins calling her up and making thinly veiled threats to both her and her husband. When the little girl picks up, he tells her to take off all her clothes. Not content with just hassling them, he then starts spying on their home from the brush and stalking her around town. Once David gets more involved, with Adam starting to call them repeatedly in the middle of the night and waking them up, they're forced to unplug all of their phones.

With his wife on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, David finally goes to talk with policeman friend Miha, who brings in smug Lt. Colonel Avimeleh Ram, head of investigations, to help. They decide to place a bug in the home and David is instructed to try to keep the caller on the line as long as possible so they can get an accurate trace. Adam somehow finds out what's going on and keeps the phone calls short and sweet from then on out. However, he's not smart enough to avoid making one of his phone calls from work and when his name is announced on the intercom, David now has the identity of the man who's been terrorizing them. But will he stick by his original theory that a sane man has no need for violence and murder?

During the first twenty-five minutes or so, this seemed like it's going to be fairly enjoyable, or at least trashy and entertaining, but it goes literally nowhere interesting after that. The dialogue and acting aren't very good, there's little tension or suspense, the phone calls aren't the least bit intimidating and, once the police get involved midway through, it slows to a crawl and becomes talky, generic and formulaic. Aside from perhaps the fabulous 70s decor, fashion and architecture, this only has one other memorable aspect, though unfortunately not a good one: excessive cruelty to (real) animals. We get endless shots of the bird picking apart mice, plus a pig is shot and stabbed and the psycho even squashes a frog under his foot. And as if seeing that once wasn't enough already, they then decide to repeat bits of it during the final scene. That's all the shock value they're able to muster up here.

Can't say I'd recommend this to anyone outside of Israeli film historians interested in seeing a genre anomaly from their home country. It was a critical and financial failure that got shelved after just a few weeks in theaters in the fall of 1974. The first time director, a cafe owner and businessman who had no prior film training or experience before he jumped into the filmmaker's chair, never made another film afterward.

★1/2