Tag Archives: Kuei Chih-Hung

Hex After Hex (1982)

August 11, 2023 Ken Miller 3 Comments

The giant 'living' statue is behind you, buddy! — The giant ‘living’ statue is standing behind you, buddy!

Starring Lo Meng, Lily Chan, Lau Dan and Ma Chao. Directed by Kuei Chih-Hung for Shaw Brothers.

Lo Meng's painted face is featured in the opening credits — Lo Meng’s painted face is featured in the opening credits

A ghost (Chan) purposefully causes a car crash so that she can inhabit the body of the dead neighbour of Ma Su (Meng). Calling herself Pok Pok, she begins a relationship with the muscly Ma Su, who is at first unaware of her supernatural origins.

HEX AFTER HEX begins immediately after the events of HEX VS WITCHCRAFT (1980), which was itself a sequel to the much better, much more serious first film HEX (1980).

HEX AFTER HEX contains the same kind of broad humour, slapstick and silly, jumbled, undisciplined storyline as the previous movie in the series. Cross-eyed actor Ma Chao, who is never one to knowingly underact, returns for a third time, playing an arsonist who has the Shaw Brothers logo branded on his backside!

Darth Vader, er, I mean 'Black Knight' appears at one point — Darth Vader, er, I mean ‘Black Knight’ appears at one point

After making a bunch of demolition workers turn naked by hitting them with his (plastic-looking) lightsabre, the Black Night disappears

Other briefly diverting moments involve Pok Pok taking on the likeness of a lo-fi Yoda, then invoking a Darth Vader lookalike called Black Knight, who strikes at demolition workers with his green lightsabre, magically making their clothing vanish!

Pok Pok licks a lollipop... — Pok Pok licks a lollipop…

...then she transforms into this Yoda-like creature to freak out the demolition workers! — …then she transforms into this Yoda-like creature to freak out the demolition workers!

The film’s main subplot focuses on the heartless, stingy boss of a property business, who Pok Pok sets out to bankrupt after he evicts everyone from the building that she and Ma Su were living in. Pok Pok’s scheme involves becoming the company secretary, hanging out with the boss when he gambles, then making him think the worthless horse statuettes he is purchasing are actually made of solid gold. This storyline, unfortunately, is protracted, not particularly interesting or funny, and sidelines the Ma Su character for a big portion of the running time.

Matters become more engaging after Ma Su discovers that Pok Pok is a ghost, studies skills to allow the Tai Sheung God to enter his body, and tries to banish his spirit girlfriend.

Ma Su during his ritual to bring the Tai Sheung God into his body — Ma Su (Lo Meng) during his ritual to bring the Tai Sheung God into his body

Ultimately, Ma Su retains feelings for Pok Pok and saves her from a ritual which causes a statue of Thomas Jefferson to become animated, controlled by a priest’s movements, forcing Ma Su to invoke the Monkey God into his body so that he can fight the automaton.

The statue mimics the priest's movements! — The statue mimics the priest’s movements!

The Thomas Jefferson statue reaches out for Ma Su — The Thomas Jefferson statue (which resembles Lee Van Cleef if you ask me) reaches out for Ma Su

This scene, using a quite impressive statue costume, is way more professional looking than the special makeup effects seen earlier in the movie, such as Pok Pok’s cheap ghost mask and the crummy Yoda puppet.

Ma Su jumps onto the statue's shoulders and uses Monkey Style kung fu! — Ma Su jumps onto the statue’s shoulders and uses Monkey Style kung fu!

To cap off this man-vs-statue encounter, the Thomas Jefferson statue, bizarrely, reveals itself to be a kind of slot machine and starts spitting gold Krugerrand coins out of its mouth?!

Loads of gold Krugerrands start to spill from the statue's mouth!? — Loads of gold Krugerrands start to spill from the statue’s mouth!

Everyone gets rich! Hooray! The end!

Curse of Evil (1982)

March 8, 2023 Ken Miller Leave a comment

It's a toothy bloody frog! — It’s a toothy bloody frog!

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.

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' — 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! — Bloody frogs chew on Quan’s face!

A tied-up maid is unable to escape an attack by a bunch of bloody frogs!

The Killer Snakes (1974)

March 7, 2023 Ken Miller Leave a comment

The main character is quite Norman Bates-like sometimes, only he's more disturbed than Norman! — 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.

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.

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

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.