Starring Yu Lung, Ching Li, Tina Chin Fei, An Ping, Wei Hung and Chen Hung Lieh, directed by Tetsuya Yamanouchi for Shaw Brothers and Jih Mao Film Company.
Poster
At one point Na Cha grows multiple arms!
After eating a sacred peach and accidentally knocking the other seven peaches down to the mortal world, young Na Cha must deal with the human-looking devils that have appeared on Earth after various animals have chowed down on the mystical fruit.
A toad eats one of the sacred peaches
This seems like a kids fantasy film to begin with, but soon we’re presented with shots of groping couples making out and scenes of folks being killed by the devils, who have a penchant for turning themselves into the likenesses of loved ones.
A dragon looms up above a village…
…and the beast starts burning down the place!
There’s a decent kaiju moment when a giant dragon burns down a village, plus a subplot involving the devils attempting to prevent a military fleet from setting sail, and an airborne skirmish between Na Cha, a devil eagle and the dragon. To even the odds in this fight with the puppet predators, Na Cha grows in size and becomes multi-armed for a while!
Na Cha throws a sword into the devil eagle’s wing
Goat dude
NA CHA AND THE SEVEN DEVILS is a watchable Hong Kong-Taiwanese fantasy adventure coproduction that, just like similar mythical tales, continually introduces extra characters as the story progresses, including a snake dude, a bull dude and a goat dude, plus an immortal hero with a third eye called Yang Jian, who is aided by Celestial Dog: a canine companion wearing its own natty yellow costume!
Starring Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Alice Chan, Chan Wai Ming, Benny Lai, and Frankie Ng Chi-Hung, directed by Steve Cheng.
Nom, nom, nom…
Dr Harry (Lai) smuggles a sample of weaponised virus from a lab that’s attempting to create ‘painless warriors’, but he is bitten by one of the test subjects (Jude Poyer) and slowly turns into a zombie-like being, triggering an outbreak of the undead at a rural Hong Kong police station.
Green gunk dribbles from Dr Harry’s mouth during sex…
There’s too much extraneous chat and a string of pointless scenes padding out the beginning of this movie, but matters become more interesting once Harry starts drooling green gunk during sex, rips apart the occupants of a police cell and then becomes a super-strong, scabby-faced ‘New Human’, who can bend bars.
Harry gets pretty strong
Could’ve been better…
Instead of being a super-soldier thriller, as suggested by the opening sequence, BIO-COPS evolves into a zombie outbreak flick and is really rather silly. Quite a few zombies seem to like to hide in lockers, a cop gets his arse bitten by petty hoodlum Cheap (Lee), who’s just pretending to be a zombie, and Frankie Ng Chi-Hung simply looks embarrassed playing zombified Hung Hing triad gang boss Kow.
For a ‘zombie’, Harry talks quite a bit
Reminiscent of BIO-ZOMBIE (1998) in some ways, this film is nowhere near as good as that flick, though the diverting latter zombie siege moments, involving submachine guns and pump-action shotguns, do enliven the story, but the finale lacks fizz, turning into a talky confrontation between cop hero Marco (Fung), his girlfriend May (Wai Ming) and Harry, but at least it ends with Harry having a grenade shoved into his mouth. Boom!
Starring Lau Kar-Leung, Tang Lai-Ying, Mark Cheng, Wong Jing, Hsu Shu-Yuan and Stuart Ong, written by Wong Jing and directed by Dennis Yu.
We see the cat creature in her true form during the prologue, but must wait until the last five minutes to see the cat-woman again
An evil cat demon-spirit reappears every 50 years and a descendant of the demon-fighting Cheung family has always been there to combat it, in a cycle of events that spans the past 400 years. Now the final cat spirit has been set free on the Earth and Master Cheung, who is suffering from cancer, enlists the help of young chauffeur Ah Long (Cheng) to destroy the evil once and for all. Armed with a bow and three charmed arrows, Long & Cheung hunt down the energy-absorbing feline entity, which first possesses Long’s boss Mr Fan and then his personal assistant, Tina.
The possessed Mr Fan likes to eat live carp
DVD cover
Evil Cat is standard 80s Hong Kong horror-fantasy fare, with the requisite amounts of humour and suspense, with decent action scenes overseen by master martial arts director Lau Kar-Leung, who also plays spirit-fighter Cheung.
A cop has a hand rammed right through his body
Written by Wong Jing, the film gains momentum once Tina (Shu-Yuan) gets possessed, triggering scenes in which she bites off the tongue of a pop star during sex in a car, rams her hand through a policeman’s body, and withstands multiple gunshot hits when cops blast at her during an energetic police station rampage.
Lots of swirling spectral lights as the evil cat spirit enters Tina’s body
Tina turns nasty
The plot’s supernatural lore is patchy at best, with the cat-demon easily jumping from host to host, even when it is stabbed by the supposedly lethal magic arrows, but the movie doesn’t worry itself too much about the fuzziness of its mythology, concentrating instead on supplying incident after incident, intent on reaching its climax, where the evil spirit finally reveals its true form: a pale, white-haired cat-woman.
During the police station rampage the possessed Tina really gets shot-up by the cops…
…and the policemen keep on shooting Tina… and she doesn’t die!
Evil Cat doesn’t really stick in the memory, but it is never dull and certainly passes the time nicely enough.
We see the evil cat spirit’s true form again during the finale
She could definitely audition for the Andrew Lloyd Webber show…
Starring Lau Siu-Ming, Wong Shu-Tong, Michelle Yim, Chan Chi Chi and Eddy Ko, directed by Tsui Hark for Seasonal Film Corporation.
Tien Fung, leader of the Ten Flags clan, investigates the mystery of killer butterfly attacks in the deserted Shum Castle, accompanied by some of his troops and lone woman warrior Green Shadow. Entering the catacombs beneath the castle, they encounter esteemed scholar Fong (Siu-Ming), Master Shum, his wife and a mute maid named Chee. The butterflies continue to kill, hidden rooms are discovered and renowned fighters known as the Thunders enter the story.
Tien Fung and Green Shadow inspect a dragon carving in Shum Castle
Poster
Butterflies munch on a victim’s hand
Tsui Hark’s first film is an assured, thoroughly engrossing Hong Kong new wave wuxia murder mystery with creature feature elements. The empty Shum Castle itself, often shown from the outside, looming above the long grasses, adds immeasurably to the atmosphere of the film, as does the effective use of Jerry Goldsmith’s PLANET OF THE APES score. Wong Shu-Tong is steely, stoic and thoughtful as Tien Fung and Michelle Yim is playful and acrobatic as Green Shadow.
Wong Shu-Tong is a cool dude in this movie
Butterflies on a corpse
The film offers a realistic reason for characters being able to fly about, by showing them using various line-firing gizmos, but there are still fantastical components to the story, like a fire crow bird that explodes on contact with people and the notion that butterflies can actually kill a person, though these lethal Lepidoptera assaults are actually explained away as being the result of the use of ‘butterfly-controlling medicine’.
Master Shum is assaulted by a swarm of butterflies
Be careful… this bird can blow up!
The introduction of a helmeted armoured man becomes the focus of the latter stages of the movie, with the killer butterflies taking a back seat, as fights involving dart-ejecting weapons and explosive projectiles ultimately lead to a nihilistic finale.
The mysterious armoured dude
Art by Maya Edelman
The secret plans and rivalries eventually revealed to be the reasons behind the events may fail to be particularly compelling, but THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS remains a very moody, intriguing, enjoyable viewing experience.
Starring Billy Chong, Lo Lieh, Sung Gam-Shing and Fang Mien, directed by Lee Chiu for The Eternal Film Company.
Green-lit ghoul
During the annual Ghost Festival, bare-chested hero Chun (Chong) is visited by the eyeless, green-faced spectre of his dead dad, who informs his son that he was a victim of murder. Chun decides to go to Yellow Dragon Town to get revenge for pops, but it won’t be easy as the villain controls a bunch of henchmen and is aided by a black magician priest (Gam-Shing). After Chun is pestered by hopping undead corpses in a playful scene, he’s inspired to go back to the location of a book of magic, which he uses to raise a group of mangle-faced undead to do his bidding.
DVD cover
These undead know how to make their own crucifix
This film is a great deal of fun!
Just to illustrate this, let’s look at what happens in a nicely-mounted confrontation between Chun and his ghosts versus the bad priest: the magician uses a magical cape and two long-tongued spirits in pointy hats to fight Chun’s ghosts, but Chun stands his ground and retaliates, using his glowing magic book to turn the black magician’s spirits into puddles… but the movie’s weird factor is suddenly turned up a notch as the priest piles on the pressure… by summoning Count Dracula! Wonderful stuff!
Zapped by the magic book!
Billy Chong’s fight moves are a joy to watch, plus we get to see a deadly ghost with stretching arms, a long-range flamethrower breath attack, women’s underwear thrown at the wizard to weaken him and a scene where the main villain (Lieh) is chased by the burning scalps of his victims!
These surreal elements, added to fine action courtesy of martial arts directors Alan Hsu and Sung Gam-Shing, make this a very entertaining kung-fu-horror-fantasy yarn.
Starring Tai Liang-Chun, Ai Fei, Lily Li, Wang Lai, Eric Chan and Yu Tsui-Ling, directed by Kuei Chih-Hung for Shaw Brothers.
The creature from the well assaults its first victim
The story takes place in a mansion in a quiet back alley, where the members of the dysfunctional Shi family and their servants act very superstitiously on the 1st and 15th day of each month, because this is when freaky stuff can happen, due to the fact that thirteen members of the family were killed by bandits and thrown into a dry well many years ago. When a weird, pink, toothy ‘bloody frog’ is encountered, this is seen as a bad omen for sure, as this amphibian always presages ominous events. Terrible things do begin to happen, with a slimy, horned monster crawling out of the well, intent on raping and killing.
Pink goo and tentacles
A slime-coated victim of the tentacle-monster
Kuei Chih-Hung, director of luridly memorable Hong Kong horror opuses like THE BOXER’S OMEN, CORPSE MANIA, BEWITCHED and THE KILLER SNAKES, clearly decided not to hold back when making this demented, gooey weird-fest, choosing to merge murder mystery plotting with creature feature imagery, adding exploitative sexual abuse scenes to make the movie that bit more sleazy.
Lots of goo dribbles from the tentacled creature onto its victims
Another ‘bloody frog’
The story somehow manages to combine a subplot involving certain relatives trying to kill off the Shi family’s wheelchair-bound matriarch (Lai) in order to inherit her house, with footage of a demon-headed well-monster with two tentacles instead of hind legs that sexually assaults its female victims and kills them with its flesh-ripping steel teeth, with shots of a mystery figure secretly feeding offal to a pit full of spiky bloody frogs, with scenes of abusive cousin Jinhua (Fei) hypnotising one of the maids so that he can have sex with her, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. As you can see: Kuei Chih-Hung obviously believes that enough is never enough!
The well-critter rips chunks of flesh from people with its steel teeth
After seeing this poster you wanna see the movie, right?
We get close-ups of the tentacle-monster’s extendable appendage as it sucks out the eyeballs of elderly manservant Quan and see the critter cover its female victims with pink, gelatine-like slime… and yet… it’s eventually revealed that this beast is actually fake, just a guy in a suit! This is all an elaborate set-up, of course, involving fake identities, obscure secondary characters and the matriarch herself, who is not really disabled and can become an unstoppable maniac… until she is beheaded! The unimaginably preposterous denouement would have us believe that all of the strange happenings were fabricated and nothing supernatural actually occurred, yet the film never provides a real-world explanation for the existence of the flesh-eating bloody frogs, which chow down on several people, including a bound-up maid. Did these amphibians mutate purely because they were fed lots of offal? Does it matter, really? This is a loopy film where logic takes a backseat, so that the director can focus on batshit crazy stuff like a mad granny secretly sewing costumes for a kid’s skeleton in the attic, perverted amateur hypnotism, and outrageously far-fetched murder schemes.
Bloody frogs chew on Quan’s face!
Off with her head!
A tied-up maid is unable to escape an attack by a bunch of bloody frogs!
The main character is quite Norman Bates-like sometimes, only he’s more disturbed than Norman!
Starring Kam Kwok-Leung, Li Lin-Lin, Chen Chun, Lin Feng and Ko Ti-Hua, directed by Kuei Chih-Hung for Shaw Brothers.
A box full of slithering snakes
Snakes on the carpet!
Zhihong is a poor, gawky, bullied youth living in a shack next to a snake bladder store in a rundown Hong Kong neighbourhood. When an injured cobra slithers through a crack in the store wall, entering Zhihong’s ramshackle home, he decides to stitch up the serpent’s wound and look after it, triggering a set of circumstances that will lead to Zhihong using his killer cobra, plus more reptiles liberated from the store, to avenge himself against those who have treated him badly.
Shaw Brothers horror at its sleazy best
A bloody-mouthed lizard
Unlike Willard (1971), however, which this film is obviously inspired by, Zhihong is a far more disturbed protagonist compared to the rat-obsessed main character in the American original. In a scene where Zhihong carries a prostitute who’d tried to mug him back to his shack, The Killer Snakes queasily merges Zhihong’s desire to get back at his tormentors with his disturbed sexual urges, showing him take advantage of the woman by tying her up and licking her. Though Zhihong himself has been a victim of bullying, he does far worse, allowing his snake friends to violate his captive in a sweaty, seedy scene that uses black and white flashbacks to suggest Zhihong’s dark urges stem from childhood memories of abuse and voyeurism.
Zhihong allows his bondage fantasies to get out of hand
Starting with mondo-style footage of live snakes having their gall bladders cut out, this film is sordid and repellent in many ways, but it is well shot and lit, juggling its exploitative components expertly. Bondage fantasies, scenes of Zhihong letting monitor lizards scratch his latest tied-up female victim, a set piece involving an abusive character chopping up snakes for real with a sword before he’s constricted to death by a huge python, plus other grindhouse elements, show how this movie set its sights on offending and disturbing its viewers, a goal it obviously succeeded in achieving with sleazy ease.
Zhihong lets monitor lizards attack one of his captives
Starring Yueh Hua, Lo Lieh and Ching Li, directed by Chor Yuen, for Shaw Brothers.
DVD cover
Members of various clans hunt for the hiding place of a legendary weapon. One of these warriors is swordsman Fei (Hua), intent on finding this deadly device before it gets into the hands of someone who will use it for evil purposes.
Fight!
THE WEB OF DEATH, directed by Chor Yuen, is a tangled tale of rival sects, including the 5 Venom Clan, Qingyi Clan and Holy Fire Clan, who are all immersed in a plot featuring such fantastical elements as acid pit traps and characters with the power to unleash energy beams from their hands.
Some of these martial arts masters can fire power beams from their hands
Poster
The highlight of the film is undoubtedly the secret weapon at the centre of the tale, known as the Spider. This is a hand-held smoking lantern containing a glowing tarantula that makes roaring sounds, emits deadly poisonous gas and creates massive webs that can trap its victims. The use of this curious device, which causes some casualties to develop blackened faces as they expire, adds a layer of surrealism to the film and helps make the finale very strange, absurd and spectacular.
Lo Lieh unleashes the Spider weapon!
The tarantula within the lantern is normal-sized
The faces of some victims of this otherworldly arachnid go black as they die
Everyone gets trapped within an electrified web
Although the plot can be overly convoluted at times, the film is entertaining, with colourful costumes and wonderful eye candy sets, the most impressive of which is a voluminous chamber containing stone balconies and a large, red spider sculpture.
Starring Sorapong Chatree, Sun Chien, Michelle Yim, Fan Chin-Hung and To Siu-Ming, directed by Edgar Jere, from Filmark International Ltd.
Also known as COUNTER DESTROYER
A scriptwriter called Joyce goes to an isolated rented villa to write her magnum opus about the last Emperor of China, but other film companies want to prevent this biopic from being made and will resort to murder to get their way. To make matters worse (and weird) the plot also involves hopping vampires, a crosseyed Taoist priest, a possessed phone, ninjas with automatic weaponry, poisoned lipstick, a razor-fingered spirit, a fortune-telling sacred bird, a muscular zombie-vampire that leaves sparkling footprints, an explosive bouquet of flowers, the ghost of a Ching Dynasty eunuch… and the silvery cyborg hero from ROBO VAMPIRE (1988)!
Robo-Warrior dude!
Ninja!
A not very scary hopping vampire
This poster rocks, even if the film doesn’t!
The dubbing, dialogue and acting in this cut-and-paste brain-warper, which is also known as COUNTER DESTROYER, THE VAMPIRE IS STILL ALIVE and COUNTER DESTROY, achieves levels of cheesiness that other Tomas Tang productions even fail to reach. The voice work for the actress playing Joyce’s friend is especially jarring!
Also known as COUNTER DESTROY
The various bits of unrelated footage, some from a Thai film called KILLER EYELASHES, are tenuously linked, as usual, with new dubbed dialogue ‘seamlessly’ melding it together, but all logical narrative is swept away during a finale involving the robo-warrior, hopping vampires, the Taoist priest and a ghostly vampire kid who bursts from Joyce’s rapidly-swelling belly! This brat tells a couple of vampires that they are going to pay for killing his ‘mother’, even though it was the kiddy-vamp who actually killed Joyce by erupting from her stomach! The vamp-child then proceeds to urinate on the vampires, but don’t worry, folks, the film ends with Joyce somehow still being alive?! My brain hurts…
Does any of this happen in the movie? Ah, I don’t think so
Starring Simon Reed, Harry Carter, Henry Steele, Joe Nelson, Chiang Tao, Lu Feng, Chen Hung-Lieh, Angela Mao and Danny Lee, directed by ‘Bruce Lambert’.
Pasty-faced dude
Two dice, taken from hopping vampires, will help Mr Baker, known as the Gambling King, take over the whole gambling world! But Roger, the brother of a gambler forced to kill himself, promises to get revenge, which he does dressed as a white-clad ninja!
Ninja versus vampire!
You’ve got to grudgingly admire the don’t-give-a-f*ck plotting in producer Tomas Tang’s spliced-together specials from Filmark International. This particular film sticks new vampire & ninja content (probably shot by action director Chiang Tao and not Godfrey Ho, who is always credited as director for these kind of movies) into footage from another film called THE STUNNING GAMBLING, which stars Danny Lee and Angela Mao, featuring gamblers betting their lives on the outcome of games, including a super-fast card-dealing challenge.
THE STUNNING GAMBLING, a Taiwanese gambler opus, provides much of the footage used in this cut-and-paste movie
Greek VHS sleeve for NINJA: THE VIOLENT SORCERER with misleading cover art
‘The mystic knowledge of all ages is unleashed…’
With ninjas being taught anti-sorcery magic by a priest, seemingly unconnected scenes located on a war movie set and in a rowdy barroom, green & white ninjas with the ability to vanish and reappear, and a briefly-seen female ghost called Rose, NINJA: THE VIOLENT SORCERER ends with the two ninja heroes and a good priest combating multiple hopping vampires and an evil priest in a normal-looking suburban living room.
Hopping vampire alert!
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