Huo zhu gui (1989)

... aka: 火燭鬼
... aka: 表哥到續集
... aka: 滅火英雄
... aka: Biao ge dao xu ji
... aka: Burning Sensation
... aka: Feng chuk gwai
... aka: Fire Ghost

Directed by:
Ma Wu

In the sepia tone pre-title sequence, a Chinese opera stunt goes wrong and the leading actress accidentally gets torched. Thirty years later, we meet up with a fire brigade responding to a fire in an abandoned building. Ken aka Fireman #7022 (Kenny Bee) has visions of a woman inside screaming for help that no one else can hear, defies his superior's orders, runs in, can't find the woman, leaps through a tall window and is safely caught in a net by his fellow firemen. And all he has to show for it is a stupid little wooden shrine! While this stunt gets him in hot water with the fire chief (James Tien) and put on a three month leave, it also attracts the attention of the dead actresses ghost whose shrine he removed. She - Ling (Carol 'Do Do' Cheng) - follows him everywhere, lives in his TV set (which constantly plays her 1950s operas) and helps protect him as he's now her "benefactor."

Meanwhile, a taxi driver (Blackie Ko) thinks he's in luck when he picks up the lascivious Piu Hung (Eva Lai, a former beauty queen and Miss Asia Pacific) outside of a cemetery and convinces her to accompany him to a "love motel." They don't make it that far when she reveals herself to be an evil seductress / man-hating siren who strangles him to death with a super long mutant tongue that looks like it was made out of Laffy Taffy. Apparently, Piu Hung is a well-known entity in the area because she's a topic on a supernatural-themed late night radio show hosted by Hau-Pau Ma (played by the director), who also happens to be Ken's much older brother.

Because he's now out of a job, the shy, virginal Ken is forced to move in with his macho, sexist, obnoxious, lifelong bachelor bro, who promptly tries to find him a wife because, according to him, he's over twenty now and too old to still be doing "women's work" (cleaning and cooking). Ling makes herself useful by beating up Ken's former boss, jamming a toothbrush into Hau-Pau's mouth and then burning his dick with a lit cigarette (?!) And she's supposed to be the sweet, charming one! When he shows up at work the next day limping, his coworkers stare at him and accuse him of having v.d. Thinking he's cursed with bad luck, Hau-Pau rearranges his furniture and hangs a wok over the front door, which (according to this film) helps ward off evil. That doesn't quite work as planned.

After hearing the radio broadcast about her and having a weird love spell cast on her (which involves plucking the object of your desire's hair, tying it around your finger and then sucking on it), Piu Hung first targets Hau-Pau before setting her sights on Ken. But first she'll have to get past his protector, Ling. It's then a war between the two supernaturally-gifted ladies; one wanting to kill him and the other trying to save him. Seeing how sensitive and skittish Ken is, Ling tries to conceal the fact she's actually a ghost from him as the two start to fall in love. However, since Piu Hung refuses to go away, she's forced to come clean about what she really is in order to save him.

Clearly striving for the widest audience appeal imaginable, this gives viewers comedy, drama, horror, action and romance (read: slow motion love montages set to syrupy songs) all wrapped into one. Unfortunately, it doesn't do any of those genres particularly well, though it's mildly entertaining and sporadically pleasant. Impatient viewers will especially want to steer clear as it takes over an hour for this to go all in on the action and horror and, even then, it trots out mostly cliches as far as HK ghost movies are concerned (spells papers, a magic mirror, laser fx, deadly shawls, coin swords, acrobatic wire work with visible wires, etc.). Some of the more interesting story elements, like invisibility achieved via "glutinous rice powder" and some time traveling, aren't introduced until the film is almost over. Marketing this as a ghost vs. firefighter film, which sounds great in theory so someone should actually make that movie, is also a bit of a cheat seeing how firefighting only features in one brief scene.

While many of the comic set pieces flatline, especially a scene where Hau-Pau and his buddies (Teddy Yip and Clifton Ko) try to cheat a blind friend (James Wong) at mahjong, there are at least a few amusing gags involving the tongue. I'm not sure where exactly this idea originated but seeing how GHOULIES (1985) also featured a seductress with a long killer tongue she uses to strangle someone with, they perhaps got the idea there. The same concept was later used in the obnoxious wanna-be camp horror-comedy The Killer Tongue (1996). When Piu Hung's true self takes shape, she has long red fingernails, teased hair, purple lipstick and crazy eye make-up, so basically she looks like an 80s punk groupie. Except for the vampire teeth. And green blood. And super-stretchy arms.

This Golden Harvest release co-produced by Sammo Hung was available on VHS through Rainbow and Tai Seng. The DVD releases from Fortune Star (as part of their "Legendary Collection") and the Malaysian company Speedy Video both have English subtitle options. Despite being a Ma Wu fan, this isn't one I'm likely to be revisiting.

★★

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987)

... aka: Apocalisse a Frogtown - La città delle rane (Apocalypse in Frogtown: The City of Frogs)
... aka: Ein erbarmungsloser Jäger (The Relentless Hunter)
... aka: Hunter, The
... aka: Sam Hell
... aka: Sam Hell ist: Der Jäger (Sam Hell Is: The Hunter)
... aka: Transmutations

Directed by:
Donald G. Jackson
R.J. Kizer

Ruddy-skinned, kilt-wearing former professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper previously showcased charisma, likability and surprisingly competent acting chops in the 1986 wrestling comedy Body Slam, which opened the door for leading roles in both this and John Carpenter's higher profile wide release They Live (1988). He would be gainfully employed in a steady stream of direct-to-video action flicks and TV guest spots in between his wrestling and wrestler commentary stints from here on out. Piper is teamed up here with former professional dancer turned actress Sandahl Bergman, who'd made a name for herself starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger as the courageous Valeria in the R-rated sword-and-sorcery hit Conan the Barbarian (1982). That led to starring roles in two other big budget fantasy-adventures; She (1983) and Red Sonja (1985), which hoped to turn the physically fit Bergman into a female action star. However, both films were critical failures and commercial disappointments, which then landed her in lower-budgeted films such as this one. Still, she and Piper are an agreeable duo and play off each other quite well here. Their back-and-forth bickering as a means to release sexual tension (which eventually develops into a romance, of course!) is one of the main reasons this ends up being fairly enjoyable.

Sam Hell (Piper) is a scavenger, thief, smart ass and wanted fugitive on post-apocalyptic Earth ten years after nuclear war has reduced the planet to dust and debris, turned some of the populace into frog-faced mutants and rendered much of the non-mutant population infertile. Sam has been falsely accused of sexual assault by a disgruntled former lover and is just about to get his groin carved up with a broken bottle by sadistic border patrol agent Devlin (William Smith) when he's bailed out by Med Tech representatives Patton (Eyde Byrde) and the uptight Spangle (Bergman), whose job it is to help repopulate the planet. As it turns out, Sam's carrying a much-needed "loaded weapon" and has left behind a string of pregnant women everywhere he's gone. He's just the type of guy Med Tech needs to help locate and impregnate any remaining fertile women living in the desert wastelands. Since he's already familiar with that territory, his private parts are put into a locked, government issued chastity belt (!) and he's forced to sign a contract with Med Tech. Otherwise it's back to being interrogated by Devlin and his bottle.

Sam, who is kept in check by an "electronic stinger" found on his codpiece, along with Spangle and tough corporal escort Centinella (the very sexy Cec Verrell), are then sent on a trip through the desert. Their mission? Rescue a bunch of non-mutant fertile women who've been kidnapped and are being held hostage by some of the frog-people, led by one Commander Toty (Brian Frank). The titular location is somewhat like a Native American reservation. Except, you know, with mutants. Thanks to the provisional government passed "Mutant Isolation Act," all frog-people are forced to live separately from, and are forbidden from breeding with, non-mutants.

Strangely enough, some of the best moments this film has to offer take place before the mutants even factor in. The travelers first stumble across a runaway girl (Suzanne Solari), who's dirty and in a state of shock. She's given an injection of an aphrodisiac drug called "ovidal" to make her horny and then Spangle dryly orders Sam to "facilitate procreation." Our usually macho hero then talks about needing the right atmosphere and complains he's "not a machine you can just turn on and off when you want to!" Further explaining, "Well maybe you outta try making love to a complete stranger in the middle of a hostile mutant territory!"

With Sam posing as a slave dealer and Spangle posing as his slave, the duo venture into Frogtown where they meet a variety of frog-people on their way to freeing the (pacifist) female slaves. There's Arabella (Kristi Somers), a frog spy posing as a stripper who hopes to get Sam in the sack... a scenario having Sam reaching for his own sack to put over her head. Eye patch-wearing frog slaver / torture master Bull (Nicholas Worth) tries to do "exploratory surgery" with a chainsaw, while human uranium prospector Lonnie O'Toole aka Looney Tunes (Rory Calhoun) offers to lend our heroes a helping hand. And, of course, there's the evil Commander Toty, who is reduced to having Bergman do the seductive "Dance of the Three Snakes" to try to get a rise out of his three penises (!) so he can procreate with her.

While some of the above moments offer mild amusement (I mean, how could latex frog mutant people offer anything but?), the action scenes in the second half fail to generate much in the way of excitement and, once the premise is established, it slogs along toward a predictable conclusion. Using a large, ruined steel mill as Frogtown was a good, cost-saving idea but they should have tried to hire a few more extras to fill the "town" out because, as is, it appears that fewer than a dozen frog-people actually live there. On the plus side, the costumes are OK and Steve Wang and his crew did a good job making the frog masks and animatronics. The film is at its best, however, during its less showy, dialogue-driven moments between the two stars, which is often amusingly and charmingly scripted by writer Randall Frakes. And, trust me, that's slightly off-putting in a film where the mutant frog people should obviously be the highlight!

Why Jackson decided to forego competent B movies like this for his later brand of "Zen Filmmaking" (shooting things on video, not using scripts and having the actors improvise their way through things) probably all boils down to lack of demand for decent budgeted films of this type moving into the 90s and thus lack of opportunity on his part. Jackson apparently had no interest in evolving with the times, cashing in on popular trends or trying to invent some of his own and seemed content making no budget videos that very few people wanted to watch. While this early effort is certainly not an 'A' film, it does prove that Jackson at least tried at one point in his career. Either that or co-director Kizer, an NYU Film School graduate who started out editing for Roger Corman and now works as a respected / award-winning sound editor in Hollywood, actually had more control over the production than he did.

Originally this was planned as a direct-to-video release to be shot on 16mm on a 150K budget. However, it ended up being shot on 35mm on a budget of 1.5 million dollars with hopes of showing it in theaters (Kizer was brought on by New World because they didn't trust Jackson with such a high budget). While this likely didn't play on many big screens, it was widely distributed on home video and became a late night cable favorite. It was also enough of a success to prompt the sequel Frogtown II in 1992. The later Toad Warrior (1996), starring and co-directed by frequent Jackson collaborator Scott Shaw, isn't an official sequel. The later releases Max Hell Frog Warrior (2002), Max Hell in Frogtown (2008) and Max Hell Frog Warrior: A Zen Rough Cut (2015) are simply re-edits of Toad Warrior.

Ernest D. Farino did the typically cool opening credits and Fred Olen Ray is thanked at the end. Frogtown was given VHS releases through New World and Starmaker, made its U.S. DVD debut in 2001 on the Anchor Bay label, was paired with Def-Con 4 (1985) for the 2011 Image release and finally made its U.S. Blu-ray debut through Vinegar Syndrome in 2019. There were earlier BR releases from Arrow Video in the UK and Wicked-Vision Media in Germany.

★★1/2