Starring Zheng Long, Peng Bo, Shi Xuanru, Pang Yong and Cao Tiankai. Written by Xie Wenjun, directed by Guo Yulong and Xie Wenjun. Produced by Li Shi.
Cool bit of promotional art
A ginormous snake escapes from a snake farm (that’d been using illegal growth hormones in its feed to breed larger reptiles for its snakeskin handbag business) and slinks down to the nearby Haixi Flight Attendant Aviation College, where it runs amok, accompanied by masses of regular-sized, aggressive serpents. A valiant security guard (Long) and a feisty student (Bo) team-up to help a group of survivors holed up in the college buildings live through the ordeal.
The huge snake claims another victim!
This film should technically have been called ‘Rising Boas in a Flight Attendant Aviation College’, but I guess that title was far less punchy! Setting this film in this location does provide the filmmakers with an excuse to show droves of screaming female students, wearing figure-hugging white skirts and light blue blouses, clattering around in their high heels, as the huge snake rampages about the college, in scenes that really ramp up the movie’s cheesy fun factor.
A film that mixes killer snakes with student flight attendants!Stampeding student stewardesses!
Some girls and their teachers get gobbled up, then the story transitions into the siege-focused part of the plot. Despite a title that Freud would have salivated over, the film steers away from showing anything too lascivious, contenting itself with an occasional shot of, say, a small snake slithering from a dead student’s skirt or the scene where a snake crawls over an underdressed character whilst she’s in the middle of indulging in some blindfolded foreplay with her boyfriend. But none of this is as exploitative as the sweaty promotional art, which seems to promise something more risqué. There’s nothing here that reaches the delirious, manic, mondo heights of 80s Hong Kong schlock-fest CALAMITY OF SNAKES, for instance.
Boas like bras?
A sequence with the guard hero hanging from cables strung between two buildings, with the mega-snake curled up below him and two smaller snakes making their way along the cables, is well-handled, with special effects that are on a par with the kind of FX seen in similar flicks.
A variation on one of the promotional images
The massive boa looks quite good in some of its scenes
By the midpoint the film tries to become a little more serious, as more people get picked off and squabbles break out amongst the survivors. There’s a pause in the action to allow an elitist, selfish student to be lectured about the importance of working people, in a speech bound to please the Chinese Communist Party censors, and then the fun stuff kicks back into gear as the huge snake launches another attack.
Nom, nom, nom…
The guard protagonist has a moment of self-doubt (heroes in these movies often do), but he’s soon taking part in an enjoyable finale that sees the survivors tooling themselves up with homemade fireworks-bazookas. This extended showdown, ending with the recently-eaten security guard somehow surviving and crawling back out of the dead snake’s mouth, helps make this movie mindlessly marvellous in its own trashy, limited way, but it would’ve been far better if it had retained the silly, kitsch vibe of the first act.
The survivors use ‘fireworks-bazookas’ during the finale!
Starring Ma Xinyu, Feng Qilong, Yang Qiyu, Shen Yunzhong and Qiao Yaona, written by Li Wei, directed by Zhao Cong and produced by Xu Yawei.
Okay, I know I often say this, but here I go again: If only the movie was as good as this promo artwork!
This begins in the 1980s, on a newly-discovered island (the ghost island), where we see a T-Rex attack the researchers and guards at an encampment. Loads of bullets are fired at this T-Rex, but it keeps on attacking, and even dynamite does little to slow it down. One particular scientist is shown running about, clutching a dinosaur egg, and then the story skips to the present day (as stories often do in these flicks), and we’re introduced to Zhao (Xinyu), the daughter of the guy-with-the-egg seen in the prologue. Zhao is asked by the despicable Mr Du (Qiyu) to accompany him and his team on a new mission to ghost island, the location of which he has rediscovered by comparing cloud formations on photographs taken at different times (a rip-off of an idea used in the 1976 version of KING KONG). Against her better judgement, Zhao goes with Mr Du and his armed goons to the island. Other team members include Laka, a dreadlocked demolition expert, Sangji, a survival expert, and Yuzi, an attractive, stony-faced, gun-toting she-merc who likes to wear snug-fitting shorts.
Yuzi doesn’t like to smile
Once on ghost island, a member of the group coughs-up blood and dies after a bug flies into his mouth (but these wasp-like bugs are never encountered again), and then a super-gigantic cobra goes on the offensive (of course there’s a huge snake in this movie: Chinese creature features just LOVE to include giant snakes if they get the chance!)
Giant cobra!
A close-up shot of the serpent!
The team are unable to kill this huge serpent with all their firepower, and are fortunately saved when a carnosaur rocks up and quickly bites the cobra in two! The team get away from the reddish-brown predatory dino, which will turn up again later.
The big cobra and the huge carnosaur roar at each other!
An encounter with Velociraptors in an area of long grass happens next, and it is handled pretty well. There’s even a decent-looking full scale raptor prop head used in this sequence, as well as a full-body raptor costume.
The practical effects raptor head looks pretty damn good
The characters eventually reach the island’s open plains, which is populated by Stegosaurs, Triceratops, sauropods, pterosaurs, and other dinos.
Dinos roam the open plainsAll dinosaur movies should include shots of a big skeleton at some point. This movie does just that, so I am pleased!
The quality of the special effects does vary throughout the film, with some of it looking particularly weak. One such example of low quality FX is the reddish-brown carnivore (which we saw kill the cobra earlier) that now reenters the story. This critter moves about with a clunky, awkward gait that is not of a very high standard, effects-wise. But a T-Rex that shows up at this point, with Zhao’s wild-haired father riding on its back, is a better example of the CGI, boasting a more impactful body design and good skin texture details. It turns out that Zhao’s dad has raised this T-Rex from the egg he was carrying about, and now the dino is his loyal pet! This is a fun, goofy idea, but the filmmakers waste the opportunity to show lots of dino-riding action, and simply have the dad tell the T-Rex to chill out while he joins the team, as Mr Du searches for a special meteorite.
The wild-haired father’s pet T-Rex is hurt after a fight with the reddish-brown carnosaur……but it gets back up: the pet T-Rex is okay, folks! Yay!
The explorers reach a hot, volcanic landscape, dotted with jets of flame, which is the location of the meteorite. Mr Du wants to blow this hunk of rock up (presumably because it contains valuable minerals), but Zhao’s father says that the meteorite’s magnetic field is related to the life of the entire island, so if the rock gets destroyed every living thing on the isle will perish. So, after a raptor attack, the team members inevitably split into two factions, as some try to protect the meteorite, and others attempt to blow it up.
Raptors in the volcanic zone
The orange-hued, fiery zone, where this finale takes place, is quite stylised and theatrical-looking, exuding a more fantastical, cinematic vibe (compared to the naturalistic locations used elsewhere), and it definitely suits the pulpy requirements of this lost world film. So it’s a shame that it is used as the setting for a protracted hostage standoff situation, with Mr Du holding Zhao at knifepoint, which is all rather anticlimactic. We do get to see the pet T-Rex again, though, at the very end, as the survivors wait on the beach to be rescued.
Chillin’ on the beach with the pet T-Rex
As the film fades to black, some copy informs us that Laka, Zhao and Sangji were sentenced to six years in prison for breaking the local law. But could someone please answer this question for me: how the hell does a lost, prehistoric island happen to have its own local law?!
Chinese monster movies like to include Asian Lara Croft-types in their stories!
Starring Zhao Yixin, Li Jiayi, Qiu Shijian, Jiang Yan-Xi, Emir and Waise Lee, written by Wu Yang, Ma Huai-Chang and Dina Hamiti. Directed by Wu Yang for Culture Media Co/Rabbit Hole Film.
These new Chinese monster movies always boast nice promo illustrations
A research complex on a remote island, used for genetic experiments on snakes by a company called the Carsi Group, is forcefully shut down by its owner (Waise Lee), who even allows his soldiers to mercilessly gun down the scientists (as also happens in the Chinese monster-actioner NO WAY TO ESCAPE), but (surprise, surprise) some of the scaly lab-modified creatures survive…
Battling babes get ready to take on a serpent…
…and one of the femme fighters leaps at the reptile and stabs it with her dagger
Featuring what is probably the most beloved type of monster used in this recent wave of Chinese creature features – a massive snake beast – the film begins on the island, switches to a cruise ship location for the movie’s midsection, then returns to the island for the finale.
There’s a giant snake right behind you, mate!Normal-sized snakes slither all over the ship
After multitudes of the normal-sized, aggressive lab snakes, plus a much larger serpent, crawl up onto the ship we are treated to lots of snakes-on-a-cruise-ship hijinks, as a motley bunch of survivors, led by no-nonsense hero Qin (Yixin), dash about the corridors to avoid the slithering killers. Adding to the danger is the truly massive, crested, mutant snake that rises from the sea and wraps itself around the doomed vessel.
The really huge mutant snake towers over the ship
Qin and those who’ve managed to avoid the venomous reptiles escape the ship on an inflatable life raft that drifts to the island from which the savage serpents had originated. Here the plot becomes even more monster-tastic, as the characters encounter different types of killer creatures that’ve mutated thanks to the leakage of chemicals from the abandoned labs. My favourite new critters are giant barnacles that cluster along the shoreline. These can extend long, fleshy, prehensile mouthparts to chow down on victims!
Barnacle beasts!A barnacle’s toothy appendage grabs a victim!These mutant barnacles are definitely my favourite monsters in this film!
Another monster that’s encountered is a massive, stilt-legged spider that lurks in the tree canopy and is definitely a rip off of the very, very similar bamboo forest arachnid seen in KONG: SKULL ISLAND (2017).
I’ve seen a long-legged spider-monster like this somewhere before…
Zhao Yixin plays Qin as a very committed, serious dude on a mission, though he does get to have a sad, reflective moment as he recalls his dead love, who had died earlier investigating the Carsi Group. Qin and the few survivors are, of course, threatened yet again by the mega-snake, but they devise a plan that ends with the snake falling off a cliff and getting chewed to death by the berserk barnacles!
The barnacles attack the mega-snake!
Despite a misleading title (the mutant snake comes from an island, not the deep sea) and colourful promo illustrations that suggest the lead character will be some kind of gun-toting, super-fighter femme fatale (even though that particular character is killed off near the start of the tale), DEEP SEA MUTANT SNAKE is still a perfectly fine example of the typical sort of Chinese monster movie currently being created.
Directed by Pao Hsueh-Li, starring Danny Lee, Tan Nei, Lin Chen-Chi and Shih Chung-Tien.
Poster
The hero fights a gorilla skilled in kung fu. You heard me right: a gorilla skilled in kung fu!
Saying that this Shaw Brothers movie, based loosely on the novel ‘Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils’, is off the wall is no understatement…
The pre-credit sequence features the Emperor’s brother sending light beams from his fingers to shoot off the legs of his lover’s husband, Wang Yu Win (names vary depending on which film print you watch): yikes!
Using a finger-beam to shoot at the legs of his lover’s husband!
First one leg is sliced away…
…and then the second leg is shot off!
Twenty years later, Wang (aka Yellow Robe Man) seeks revenge on the man who crippled him, by attempting to kill his foe’s son, Tuan Yu (Lee). Oh, by the way, Wang now has metal, telescopic, clawed bird feet which he can contract and expand for use in battle!
Wang can eject his metal bird feet over long distances with his super-extending tubular limbs!
Wang is aided by his brother, who has dime store fangs, a bald, veined, scabby scalp, a metal crab-type pincer in place of one of his arms and a partly mangled face. At one point this dude pinches a guy in the groin with his pincer, lobbing the victim through the air.
Wang’s brother ain’t pretty
Watch out for his pincer!
Fight!
Tuan Yu is helped by a girl called Ling Ar, who has the power to make snakes glow and bore into people’s bodies, and masked swordswoman Miss Moo, who is revealed to be his stepsister.
One of Ling Ar’s magical, glowing snakes
A cheap-but-colourful set
Tuan Yu wrestles with a giant, red snake that attacks him in the woods. He wins and, because he drank some of the serpent’s blood, he attains the power to fire beams from his hands (like his dad) and the ability, at one point, to run up vertical walls.
Tuan Yu battles the snake in the water!
When Moo and Tuan Yu are thrown into a pit, they are attacked by a kung fu-skilled gorilla (a man in a suit, of course)… and Tuan Yu kills the simian adversary by using a hand-strike to chop off one of its arms!
Kung fu gorilla!
This ape won’t be so happy…
…once he gets his arm chopped off!
Tuan Yu develops even more powers after eating a glowing, green toad. This makes him totally invincible, enabling him to escape the pit.
Tuan Yu, his father and the Emperor, all of whom can fire laser/heat beams, have a final battle with pole-legged Wang and his clawed brother. Tuan Yu, who is now really super-charged, blows the fanged brother’s head off and then blasts Wang, who dissolves in multi-colours onto the floor. Miss Moo also dies, and Tuan Yu rides off with Ling Ar.
Folks have got all kinds of powers in this film…
…including the ability to shoot heat-beams from their hands
Zap!
This oddball production contains lots of optical/cell animated beam/magic effects during the finale and also boasts an oral flamethrower trick: Wang breaths flames onto his foes and, during the last fight, there’s a contest between his jet of flame and Tuan Yu’s red/green hand beams.
The merging of weird storyline, so-so optical effects (Miss Moo fires cartoon darts out of a bone weapon), theatrical, colourful sets, frenzied pacing and a gorilla that knows kung fu does manage to elicit a decent amount of warped respect for this film!
Flame breath!
This isn’t a normal bone…
…it fires cartoon darts!
Some more imagery for the flick…
Chinese poster
German ‘limited edition’
German video cover
One more look at the snake fight…
Sssssssssss!
And, finally, let’s see the villain’s ‘mouth flamethrower’ technique in action…
IFD Film Arts was a Hong Kong film studio originally created by producer Joseph Lai after he split from Asso Asia Films. IFD made some martial arts action classics like THE MAGNIFICENT, DRAGON ON FIRE and THE DRAGON THE HERO, but what I want to chat about now are some of the other, madder, monster-oriented films that are linked to the IFD film catalogue – this is the Monster Zone blog, after all! (Note: a bunch of films mentioned here, that are now part of the IFD catalogue, were made by Filmark international Ltd).
There’s a hopping vampire behind you!
Vampire and the E.T. Kid
IFD made films in many other genres beyond kung fu flicks, including war, horror, dramas, ninja films, romance, psychological thrillers, crime and animation.
Thunder of Gigantic Serpent
One subgenre that IFD is very famous for is the insane series of ninja movies (many directed by Godfrey Ho) from the 1980s. With titles including NINJA WARRIORS FROM BEYOND, NINJA TERMINATOR, ULTIMATE NINJA, NINJA THUNDERBOLT, NINJA DESTROYER and NINJA DRAGON, these films featured ninja characters who were given amusingly dated, anglicized names (like Alfred, Rodney, Harry, Gordon and Bruce) to appeal to western audiences.
Typical IFD ninja movie art
Godfrey Ho was a movie-making machine! He directed over one hundred films, including more than eighty movies from 1980 to 1990, and many of them were IFD ninja flicks. These very unhinged, low-budget, pasted-together, mind-boggling, semi-senseless films sported soundtracks with music ‘borrowed’ from the likes of Jean-Michel Jarre and Pink Floyd, mixed multiple genres into the brew and were, obviously, great fun to watch. Back in the 80s his colourful ninja VHS covers could be found everywhere!
Ho, who was actually trained at the prestigious Shaw Brothers studio, created most of these kung fu opuses with a cut-and-paste technique: splicing footage from different (already existing) movies together, then adding additional recently shot ninja scenes to act as ‘plot glue’ for the new story. An English language track would then be added to help the movie make some form of sense. The preposterous results included such things as the scene where killer crabs crawl out of a cooking pot to go on the offensive and the jaw-dropping moment Ninja Master Harry receives an important message via a small, plastic, talking robot toy!
Clash of the Ninjas
Speaking of Ninja Master Harry: he was played by Richard Harrison, one of the western actors brought in to play the ninjas. Just to be sure audience members knew what his profession was, Harrison often wore headbands with the word ‘ninja’ clearly written on them! As an added bonus, several of these films included scenes of a stern, serious-looking Harrison having deadly, important conversations on a plastic Garfield phone. The madness, the madness!
Don’t mess with Richard Harrison: he rocks!
Richard uses his Garfield phone…
My favourite IFD cut-and-paste ninja flick is SCORPION THUNDERBOLT (1988). This is an unhinged IFD classic of weird plot elements, involving a witch with spiky fingers, soft core sex with a murderous femme, a magic ring and a girl who periodically transforms into a slimy, killer snake monster! The audacious icing on the crazy-cake that is SCORPION THUNDERBOLT is the soundtrack, which includes purloined music from the movies CARRIE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and ALIEN, plus bits from Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene!
UK VHS cover
German VHS cover for Scorpion Thunderbolt
Spike-fingered witch
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT ‘s serpent monster scenes are taken from an earlier Korean film called SNAKE WOMAN and are some of the most enjoyable parts of the film: the glistening-skinned, big, clawed, rubbery reptile-beast-person bloodily attacks a bunch of victims, including one woman in a shower. The pacy movie features a blind flute player (who may be the reason one of the female protagonists periodically turns into the monster), a scene where loads of snakes slither over a car, and an amusing moment involving some characters proudly displaying a papier-mâché tadpole-ish model that they claim resembles the snake-beast!
Characters in the movie show off a model of what they think the terrifying snake monster might look like!
Serpent creature shower attack!
Scorpion Thunderbolt’s snake monster footage was taken from this film: Snake Woman
Beyond their many ninja productions, IFD also released some pretty out-there animated titles, including SOLAR ADVENTURE, a part live action, part anime South Korean movie featuring kids using Transformers-type robots to fight green-faced aliens… who have teamed-up with Kim Il Sung: the then-leader of North Korea!
Solar Adventure
Kim Il Sung!
One of the aliens from Solar Adventure
To cater for those with more esoteric tastes, IFD created/released such bizarro productions as ROBO KICKBOXER (a guy in a silver suit kicks the asses of other kickboxers), THE KILLER ELEPHANTS (featuring, er, killer elephants) and THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT (a giant puppet snake goes on the rampage). Also part of the catalogue, from Filmark International, is VAMPIRE RAIDERS NINJA QUEEN (which has a scene where a woman accidentally sunbathes on top of a hopping vampire on the beach!)
Cool!
Thunder of Gigantic Serpent
Godfrey Ho used footage from Taiwanese film King of Snake to create his cut-and-paste kaiju flick Thunder of Gigantic Serpent
Yikes!
The Killer Elephants
Evil ninjas and hopping vampires threaten the entire hotel industry!
Robo Kickboxer
Another one of these mad movies, from the Filmark International stable, is the flick ROBO VAMPIRE, which involves a Robocop wannabe dude taking on hopping vampires. Not content with this one film, Filmark also released COUNTER DESTROY… that also boasts scenes of a Robocop wannabe dude fighting hopping vampires!
A movie about a Robocop wannabe dude fighting hopping vampires!
Another movie about a Robocop wannabe dude fighting hopping vampires!
Other films that are part of the current IFD catalogue (the new owners of the catalogue are based the UK) include: DEVIL’S DYNAMITE (a Shadow Warrior battles vampires), NINJA THE FINAL DUEL (which includes shots of a special ninja team riding giant, rubbery, flying aquatic spiders), HUNT FOR DEVIL BOXER (featuring ghouls, zombies and a sacred sword), CROCODILE FURY (there’s an evil witch, croc attacks and vampires in this mash-up), VAMPIRE AND THE E.T. KID (a UFO lands in Taipei and awakens a group of buried vampires), DRAGON AGAINST VAMPIRE (friends rob a grave and evoke the wrath of the evil dark arts villain Black Dragon) and FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON (a period-set kung fu movie that has scenes of a human heart flying about the place, killing people!)
Spider-riding ninjas! (Shame they don’t feature much in the actual film)
Ninja the Final Duel
Devil’s Dynamite
Crocodile Fury
Hunt for Devil Boxer
This movie looks SO low key…
Dragon Against VampireThe flying killer human heart from Firefist of Incredible Dragon!
As mentioned at the start: the IFD catalogue boasts some cool kung fu movies and iconic stars of that genre, including martial arts royalty Wang Yu, Hwang Jang Lee, Bolo, Gordon Liu and even Bruce Lee (footage of Bruce was legally used in FIST OF UNICORN). But it’s hard for me not to keep revelling in the madness of the cut-and-paste flicks, which are so far beyond what is deemed typical movie-making that it’s impossible to use regular judgements like ‘bad’ or ‘good’. And, maybe in this time of glossy, big-budget, franchised, homogenous filmmaking, it’s a relief to sometimes delve into some anarchic cinematic absurdity.
Ninja with a machine gun!
Check out the ninjas on the water spiders!
French VHS cover for Scorpion Thunderbolt
Vampire and the E.T. KidCrocodile FuryVampire and the E.T. Kid
Ninja cut-and-paste flick that features a pesky female ghost
In this flick a ninja plays a special flute to lure a bunch of snakes!
Giant frog experiment from Thunder of Gigantic Serpent
Robo Vampire
Okay, one more gif from Filmark International’s Robo Vampire…
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.
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