Di san lei da dou (1980)

... aka: 第三類打鬥

... aka: 殺出地獄門

... aka: Fight Through the Gates of Hell

... aka: Heaven and Hell

... aka: Heaven and Hell Gate

... aka: Sha chu di yu men

... aka: Shaolin Hellgate

Directed by:

Cheh Chang

I'm so used to seeing amazing art direction from various Shaw Brothers productions that the opening scene here really threw me for a loop. This set, which is supposed to capture the splendor of heaven, looks incredibly cheap by their standards, with an obvious matte temple backdrop that looks like it could have been painted by some school kids. They do try to spruce it up with swirls of colorful fog, but it doesn't quite get the job done visually. What does work here is its amusingly atypical depiction of heaven that flies in the face of what a lot of folks are led to assume the "real" heaven would be like. A joyous place of eternal peace and contentment? Nah! This heaven is just as shitty as Earth; perhaps just as shitty as hell even!

I've always felt that if every sanctimonious, hypocritical, judgmental, pseudo pious, phony asshole who claims to believe made it through the pearly gates, and didn't receive a lobotomy or some kind of personality overhaul on their way there, that heaven wouldn't be all that it was cracked up to be. The makers of this film appear to agree with that notion. As depicted here, heaven is the usual assortment of haves and have nots, with the peasantry having to obediently serve the demanding, pampered jerks at the top of the hierarchy or else face the consequences. I'd imagine living through your earthly existence only to find the afterlife is essentially the same exact thing with the same exact problems and the same exact people you had to deal with as a mortal would be quite depressing. Make that doubly depressing; now you're also stripped of the possibility of death to finally put you out of your misery.

This also has a female ruler of heaven and the uptight and constantly scowling "Queen Mother" isn't such a nice lady. After participating in a silly choreographed dance, maid Zi Xiao (Maggie Li) finds out the hard way that you don't wanna upset the Queen. She's tasked with delivering a "magic peach" on a silver platter to her highness for her birthday, but accidentally trips, falls and drops it. Palace guards are then ordered to "punish" her by giving her 300 lashes and then locking her away in a cell for the rest of eternity. Peasant boy Zhou Bao (David Chiang), who's in love with Zi Xiao, steps in to save her and the two run off toward the South Gate, where they can escape heaven and return to Earth. Since heaven doesn't allow for marriage, getting out will also enable them to finally be together. For helping the two escape, royal guard Xin Ling (Yi-Min Li) is likewise stripped of all his supernatural powers and exiled from the kingdom.

Down on Earth, things get even stranger if you can imagine something even stranger than God demanding you be tortured and jailed for dropping a giant piece of fruit. For starters, we learn that the curiously subpar art direction of the heaven sequence is an intentional stylistic choice from the director, who is trying to make his film resemble a stage play, but only in the first 20 minutes. I'm sure there was some kind of artistic reasoning for this but whatever it was is completely lost on me. The same goes for the inclusion of several awkward musical numbers, which are also just in the first 20 minutes before the film completely forgets it was ever trying to be a musical. As for the characters, we meet entirely different sets of them at random intervals and continue to meet different sets until we get sick of meeting new characters and everything and everyone just becomes one big blur.

The first little subplot details artist Chen Ding ([Alexander] Fu Sheng) trying to save his bank secretary girlfriend Shi Qi (Fu's real-life wife Jenny [Tseng]) from brutal gangster Huo (Tao Chiang). While she's at work, some thugs show up to rob the place and kidnap her. She's then taken back to the gangster's home, raped and held hostage until her boyfriend can finally break her out. After Chen Ding defeats the thugs, the gangster enlists the aid of an experienced assassin (Lung-Wei Wang) to do him in and recapture Shi Qi. This leads to another brawl, but this one also involves Xin Ling, who's back on Earth working as a taxi driver. He manages to defeat the assassin but is also shot and killed in the process. Next stop: Hell!

Ditching the more minimalist approach of what has come before, hell here is actually a comic book-like visual treat in the expected Shaw Brothers way and filled with lots of gaudy colors, mutant guards, crazy tortures and maxed out set designs. While in heaven you're destined to be part of the slave class and have your eternity ruined for the most minor of infractions, hell's moral code is much more along the lines of letting the punishment fit the crime, only fairness and justice are absent because the residing judge (Miao Ching) is a bad combination inept and corrupt.

Interestingly, this hell has separate, specific departments, like one just for gamblers, who are forced into mahjong, domino and card games with cheaters and thus always lose; denying them of the gratification that once used to fuel their addiction. They then get their fingers chopped off, which miraculously reappear soon after and get to repeat the process over and over again. Greedy folks have to drink molten gold. Drunks are forced to ingest rivers of liquor. Gossips get their tongues ripped out. People hang from chains over beds of spikes, are frozen into ice cubes, bisected with giant saws, skinned alive, run over with plows, pulverized with grindstones, you name it! While heaven certainly isn't a treat, hell isn't such a fun place either. The impression given here is that perhaps it would be preferable for there to actually be no afterlife at all. Human contagion would probably manage to somehow screw it up.

Xin Ling befriends the beautiful Hung Chin (Chen-Chi Lin, who's completely wasted here in a decorative role but was used much more effectively by Tsui Hark in Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind this same year), who died after taking hallucinogens at a party and falling out of a window. After fighting back and causing some problems for the hell staff, Xin Ling is given a second chance at life after "The Buddha of Mercy" (Yung Henry Yu) shows up to answer his prayers. The merciful God allows him to assemble a posse of strong fighters to do battle with the hellish higher-ups. And, as if we needed even MORE characters, all four of these guys are given brief flashbacks to how they ended up in hell in the first place.

While engaged in a friendly battle, swordsman Tien-Yang Cheng ("Chui Kuo" / Phillip Kwok) was betrayed and then decapitated by his rival, Jia-Xiang Chang (Feng Lu). After avenging his father's murder, Tin-zan Yan ("Yen-Tsan Tang" / Bruce Tong) was captured and murdered while in prison by having a large metal rod pushed down his throat. Teenage ruffian Han-Ting Wei ("Mang" / Meng Lo) was shot in the back after a dispute with a corrupt cop who almost ran him and his friends over. Finally, Wei-Kang Lin (Chien Sun) was killed while trying to defend his girlfriend from some thieves / rapists. As you can probably tell, all of these guys unjustly ended up in hell just like Xin Ling, which also seems to explain why they still have red blood instead of black and are also given an opportunity to redeem themselves. But first they have to fight their way out of hell, which includes doing battle with all kinds fiends, including long-tongued wizards (one on stilts) and various H.G. Wells-looking animal-human hybrids (some of whom were the earthly enemies of the fighters) armed with spiked clubs and tridents.

With all of the unusual sights (including a truly trippy finale) and cheap make-up designs and weird costumes and great lighting schemes and crazy production design and non-stop, expertly choreographed action scenes, it's basically impossible not to be at least a little entertained here. And thank Buddha for that because the script couldn't be a bigger mess if it tried. Supposedly the film was made in fits and starts over the course of several years, which may explain why everything feels so disjointed and why the heaven and earthly lover characters are set up as leads but then never heard from again after the first 20 minutes. Though their stories are unresolved and unsatisfying (also rather pointless), this improves somewhat after it permanently relocates to hell for the final hour.

What this really feels like is a story-chucked-out-the-window excuse to not only squeeze in as many fight scenes as possible but also cram as many marquee stars from the Shaw Brothers stable into just one film as possible, coherence be damned!

Sheng Chiang (THRILLING BLOODY SWORD), Gary Siu (POSSESSED) and Dick Wei (THE SEVENTH CURSE) co-star as guardian angels that are decked out like drag queens complete with glitter, overdone eye make-up and feathery vests and skirts (!) Also here briefly are familiar veteran actors Ching-Ho Wong, Teresa Ha Ping, Chih-Ching Yang, Hsi Chang, Ching Tin and loads of others with hundreds of credits that I could mention. The director went on to make ATTACK OF THE JOYFUL GODDESS (1983) and THE NINE DEMONS (1984), which are both also strange and feature many of the same actors (a number of whom were Five Deadly Venoms vets) seen here.

There were several English-friendly DVD releases, including one through Image in 2007, who only offered the Mandarian language audio track with English subtitles. A characteristically awful English dubbed version is also available, though not recommended.

★★1/2

Sa init ng apoy (1980)

... aka: Hellfire

... aka: In the Heat of the Fire

Directed by:

Romy V. Suzara

Young newlyweds Laura and Emiliano Cruz (Lorna Tolentino, Rudy Fernandez) decide to spend their honeymoon in Baguio aka "The Summer Capital of the Philippines." After striking out finding a hotel in the city due to busy Holy Week festivities, the two get a flat tire while driving through the country and stumble upon an old, fogbound, seemingly abandoned home called Casa Morteja. There are both "For Sale" and "Room for Rent" signs out front, so the couple decide this would be as good a place as any. After meeting old, peculiar-acting caretaker Pedro (George Estregan - CRAZY), they should have decided otherwise. The caretaker likes sitting near the fireplace despite the sweltering hot summer temperatures outside yet keeps the home pitch dark otherwise. Though the home has electricity, he never uses it because he claims his eyes are sensitive to bright light. Not only that, but he has no set price on renting a room there and lets the couple decide all of that on their own. Not that it matters any. After they go to look at their surprisingly clean room, the old man has seemingly vanished into thin air and can't be found again. Regardless of that strange introduction, the two decide to stay there for what they hope will be a romantic, relaxing next ten days.

Long before their trip, Laura had been plagued by terrible recurring nightmares of someone trying to strangle her to death in the shower. These caused her to regularly wake up a sweaty, shrieking mess with blood on her hands, presumably from clawing at her own neck trying to remove the hands that were strangling her in the dream. Somehow, she and her psychiatrist determined that if she goes to bed after midnight, she doesn't have the dreams, so she tries to force herself to stay up late every single night. After just one day in the home, Laura starts behaving even more peculiarly than usual. She seems completely familiar with the home despite never having set foot inside it before, keeps seeing a shrouded figure lurking around outside and is drenched with blood while showering but then the blood disappears when she tries to show her husband.

Emil hunts down an orange-haired former classmate of his, Tony Fuentes (Joey Padilla), and his wife Vina (Janice Jurado), who put him in contact with Zacarias (Dick Israel - MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE), who self identifies as "the best fortune-teller in Baguio." He later reads Laura's tarot cards, which spell death in her near future, so he and Tony decide to help their friend out.

The men pay a visit to Vina's grandfather (Paquito Salcedo), who's been around long enough to remember the entire long, sordid and blood-soaked history of the home. The original owners - Ignacio and Sylvina Morteja - were both found dead in the attic covered in bite marks (supposedly from a dog) and with their hearts ripped from their chests. When the dead couple's adult son, Silvestre, inherited it, a grim fate also befell him and his family when they tried to move in. The wife went crazy and had to be locked up (a skeleton found hidden inside a closet is said to have been her) and both Silvestre and their young daughter, Editha, also reputedly died. But, of course, these are only local legends and, as is usually the case, a detail or two may not be so accurate. These events also explain why the home has remained unsold and vacant all these years later.

As Emil and his buddies try to get to the bottom of things, glutton-for-punishment Laura stays behind by herself to be repeatedly terrorized. Invisible forces bust her mirror and then throw her on the bed and spin her around. She's entranced and starts sleepwalking, seeming particularly interested in going into another small building on the property. One the plot's dumbest points is why the couple insist on even staying there in the first place when it's merely a temporary, week-long vacation rental and they could just pack their bags and leave at any time! It isn't until the night before their scheduled trip back home that Laura finally goes to her husband and asks to leave. Her reasoning? Well, because it was so weird she knew that a key was in a drawer their first day there. With all of the other freaky shit that's been going on, that's what she's weirded out about the most?!

The other character of interest is a nameless old woman (Estrella Kuenzler) who's lurking around everywhere and seems to be stalking the couple. She repeatedly tries to give them a package but keeps getting rejected. When she finally gives up and just leaves it in their jeep, they find a piece of bamboo and a small doll arm made out of ivory inside.

While watchable and not bad overall, this falls just shy of being solidly good thanks to some truly dumb and / or muddy plot points and poor pacing. For some reason, this is dragged out for nearly two hours and there's definitely stuff that could have wound up on the cutting room floor without losing anything of value in the process. The worst bit by far is a bunch of dissolve shots of the couple making out by the fireplace that goes on for three minutes just so the corny love theme song, "Apoy" ("Fire"), can be played in its entirety. There's also quite a bit of travelogue footage thrown in, though at least it's nice to look at.

During the final half hour, this throws a lot of what came before right out the window and opts to go the standard Exorcist route with our female lead becoming possessed, turning green, laughing in a maniacal deep voice, saying crude sexual things (though nowhere near as crude and vulgar as its inspiration or most of the other knock offs!) and puking up green slime. Oh yeah, and she also shoots the same stuff out of her nipples (!), which I suppose is at least something a little different. This also tosses some Omen into the mix with a demon / ghost Doberman prowling the property, which chews out a guy's throat and traps the protagonists on the property when they finally do decide to try to leave.

The two major highlights here are the fantastic supporting performance from Estregan, who's really creepy in his enigmatic role though he unfortunately disappears from the entire last act, and the cinematography from Ernesto Dela Paz, who does an especially great job shooting and lighting the indoor night scenes, which all look really dark but have nice pops and slivers of color a la Bava.

Stars Fernandez (who apparently was popular in his home country at the time but gives a wooden, dopey performance here) and Tolentino (who's much better) would marry in real life just a few years later and stayed married until his death in 2008. The director (who passed away in 2022) has over sixty films to his credit, including a couple of other genre films: Anak ng asuang (1973), which involves a female vampire and appears to be a missing film, and the cheap-looking, digitally-shot Sigaw sa hatinggabi / "Scream at Midnight" (2014).

After its initial theatrical release in its home country, this pretty much vanished (I can't even find evidence of an older VHS or VCD release) until a heavily-damaged 35mm print turned up. It was then digitally restored by ABS-CBN (who have done a commendable job) and given a limited theatrical re-release in its home country in 2018. Amazon, Apple TV and a few other websites now offer this for rent. 

Seeing how film elements from many older Filipino genre movies are probably gone forever, another discovery like this getting a second lease on life through restoration is always reason to celebrate, regardless of the outcome. This one has enough good things working in its favor to merit a look.

★★1/2