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Weird Asia
This section lists extreme Asian movies of a specific kind: The often cheesy and over-the-top commercial horror movies of Hong Kong, Indonesia and sometimes Thailand and Philippines as well. The approach in these countries are unique in that they are bizarrely creative but juvenile, sometimes grotesque and sick but blackly humorous and campy, imaginative and energetic but commercial. Japan and Korea have a completely different approach to their twisted movies and are therefore not included here. Most of the these films are part of the notorious Hong Kong Cat III genre which basically focuses on sex, gore or nasty violence. Only the most extreme are included but keep in mind there are scores of other Asian horror titles that border on the bizarre but that keep most of the nastiness off-screen, and/or wrap it in a comedic or campy package, which doesn't come off as twisted, only imaginatively and crazily energetic. Some names that stand-out include Ngai Kai Lam who often goes more over-the-top than any of his peers, Herman Yau who directed several extreme Cat III films, the Thai Sompote Sands who made some very wacky creature fantasies with touches of sleaze, and the actor Anthony Wong Chau-Sang who is frequently cast in twisted, psychopathic roles. Some noteworthy titles that didn't quite make it to this list are: Seeding of a Ghost, The Eternal Evil of Asia, Calamity of Snakes, The Rape After, Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind, Centipede Horror, Blind Warrior, Special Silencers, Excuse Me, Please!, Succubare. A notoriously gory kung-fu splatter movie that is so over-the-top and ridiculous, it achieved a cult-classic status. Super-human strength allows the fighting characters to punch through bodies, smash skulls, literally break apart fists, jump through steel, tie their own tendons back together, rip out their own intestines to choke opponents with, etc. all to cartoonish effect. Ricky is a hero sent to prison where comic-book villains (who keep getting bigger and badder) make his life extremely difficult. The movie seems to take itself seriously at parts as a kung-fu flick based on a comic-book, but ends up being hilariously bad instead, and other times it goes for full camp effect. But there is no doubt that this is one of the most entertaining bad movies you'll ever see, with constant surprises, and you will never know what ridiculous violence the next scene will bring. It even has a warden that keeps mints in his fake eyeball, and a rubber-suit mutant with a snot problem. Unusually insane and surreal 3-hour Bollywood cult entertainment. Vijay is a ruthless commando seen torturing and killing terrorists while his pregnant girlfriend reports the event on the news. His brother is a criminally-insane, very resourceful schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, locked up in an asylum, until Vijay visits him with his girlfriend, triggering repressed memories about an abusive step-mother. Abhay escapes, taking drugs instead of his medication, leaving behind a trail of violence as he goes after Vijay's girlfriend, leading to an insane final hour of action that must be seen to be believed. The movie frequently attempts to portray the world through confusing schizophrenic eyes, with people from his past appearing and disappearing, people in posters coming alive, people turning into comic book figures, all against psychedelic effects made worse by the drugs, suddenly erupting in bloody violence. The action is like Bollywood at its most insane trying to copy a Hong-Kong police action-comedy movie at its most insane, with Abhay doing anything from biting chunks of granite out of the wall to use as spitting weapons, to leaping into moving cars, or onto flying balloons from the roof of a building. And, of course, there are musical scenes, one about laughing, another featuring an elaborate dance routine in animal costumes. More crazy Shaw Brothers kung-fu in the vein of Buddha's Palm where anything goes and you'll never know what will pop up next. This is relatively less wild fantasy kung-fu, but has enough surprises and wackiness to raise it above its peers. It starts with a love triangle that has the most convoluted consequences, where every single one of them ends up angry at something, vowing revenge and developing supernatural skills. The cuckolded lover gets his legs cut off, so he replaces them with extendable steel eagle feet. There are a wide variety of kung fu lasers and light weapons that bring to mind Zu. A snake girl trains her pet glowing snakes to burrow into a man's flesh. There's a lobster mutant with a fatal head-fu move, a gorilla beast that knows kung fu, bones that shoot magical arrows, a huge red serpent that can make a man invincible, a pet killer toad, kung-fu fire, multi-colored melting men, and more. One of the more confusing messes of the Cat III genre that seems to think throwing in the kitchen sink is a good idea. For the first half we get a confusing hodge-podge of scenes that set up characters, police mysteries and back-stories but are very hard to put together. Then the movie focuses on a supernatural kidnapping-revenge, sex-oriented, snake-and-phallic-creature-swallowing, evil possession and battle of wizards police-thriller plot that revolves around some cops and a brother in search of his sister who are after an evil sorceress and her weird wizard friend who kidnap, possess, command, and have sex with female slaves. Features a variety of magic, and a battle on the astral plane a la Zu Warriors. There are dozens of black magic movies in Hong Kong that feature crazy, imaginative and gruesome spells, but this one may be the definitive one, by the maker of Boxer's Omen. Evil plots and black magic is afoot, forcing a man to kill his own daughter with a spike through the head. When a policeman gets involved, he too falls under the powerful magic. They enlist a monk to fight against the evil while a mentally challenged criminal is used as a pawn. A pretty standard plot for HK, but this movie, like an encyclopedia, gleefully explores one weird or grotesque spell after another, displaying their nasty ingredients in detail and even showing the spell's name as a scene title before it happens. The result is an endless stream of incantations, flying objects, remotely induced headaches, liquids extracted from corpses, maggot vomiting, drinking of fetus and viscera soup, crazy light effects, green pus, bat transformations, and lots more. An Indonesian unofficial sequel to the HK Black Magic series and one of the relatively more gory and wild Indonesian fantasy flicks. A village is plagued by black magic and blames a local woman who was spurned by her lover. She takes revenge with the help of the local evil wizard and kills her assailants one by one while a local holy man fights against them. Features lots of entertaining magic, exploding boils and skin, worms and maggots, insect attacks and the gory centerpiece: a man pulls off his head after which his head flies around attacking people. Crazy supernatural Hong Kong movies are a dime a dozen but this unique entry looks and feels like the unholy union of Jodorowsy's Holy Mountain and HK horror. A boxer has to avenge his brother, who was paralyzed in the ring by a Thai boxer, while getting involved in a much bigger fight between good and evil: A Buddhist monk who is near-immortal and kept in a jar, and an evil sorcerer and his pupils. The boxing is good but short, the preparation with the monks and the supernatural fights being the jaw-dropping stars of this show, featuring animated crocodile skulls, desiccated bats, lively Sanskrit writing moving between jars and skin, an evil Buddha shooting laser beams and turning into a naked dancing witch, bubble-gum skin, and dozens of other bizarre visuals. And this one actually has some atmosphere instead of typical HK cheese. Entertaining craziness. Probably Shaw Brothers' most over-the-top insane fantasy-fu flick with an endlessly rapid pace of wild and varied magical fight scenes that rival Stephen Chow at his craziest. The plot involves a scarred swordsman humiliated by his beloved's betrothed, a master of the Buddha's Palm technique who is after his master's killer, and several competing clans with various powers who eventually all face the evil Monster Foot master or Heavenly Foot of Ten Thousands Swords. There's laser and sound-wave-fu, a pantomime pet dragon, flying spinning chainsaw-like knives, a foot that elongates and becomes a massive table-sized limb, a flying flattened-golden-Buddha burglar defense system, a Dragon-Tumor duo that features a midget-kid melting opponents with green acid from his tumor, an elaborate mechanical death-trap, and much more. Over-the-top campy sci-fi-horror-action entertainment by the maker of Ricky-Oh. The convoluted plot involves good and evil aliens on earth, undead cats, secret weapons, museum artifacts, cops and the supernatural all-knowing adventurer Wisely. The movie supplies one scene after another of over-the-top action including a dog vs. cat fight involving cat-fu that must be seen to be believed, a mutating electrifying monster that transforms itself into various bizarre creatures a-la The Thing, undead body snatching, a flying woman, over-the-top machine gun battles, etc. Crazy, entertaining camp. Two part HK fantasy extravaganza based on a traditional Chinese tale of magic and Buddhism. Mix over-the-top Honk Kong fantasy madness and imagination with Stephen Chow's typically insane, bawdy and very silly slapstick humor and the result is this confusing romp. A Monkey King, secret scriptures, spider women, talking bulls, grapes that turn into priests, time-travel, insane magic-fu that doesn't repeat the same weird maneuver twice, as well as gang crotch kicking to put out fires and instant pregnancies. Energetic, entertaining madness but too silly. Jeffrey Lau revisits the Chinese myths of 'Journey to the West' that he played around with in Chinese Odyssey, only this time it's also a CGI party with sci-fi and aliens. The goofy tone and madcap, anything-goes approach, is similar however. Tripitaka is a monk who, for some reason, can provide immortality if he is eaten. So the Monkey King must protect him from a tree demon and his horde, and even some imps have similar plans until he meets a cartoonishly ugly girl with the worst teeth on the planet who attaches herself to him with a mixture of lust, clingy neuroticism and innocence. To describe more of this insane movie would take pages, but some of the scenes include: Throwing the monk across the country in a big ball of cotton candy, a very handy magic golden staff that can turn into a roasted chicken, a space-ship, or a massive tank with Gatling guns, floating space-girls in cocoons, massive monster and space battles rendered in cheap CGI effects, a man being forced to crawl between the legs of a gender-confused person with stinky underwear, some magic training in a Spider-Man costume, confrontations in Heaven, time-travel gadgets, a huge Buddha, and many more oddities that pop out of nowhere. And somewhere amidst all this goofiness and overblown cheap CGI, they find time for romance and human drama. Like Sex & Zen, this Hong Kong sex comedy goes over the top with even more crude and shocking humor yet for all its perversions, insane sex and tortures, it never feels too sleazy. The story involves a girl sold as a maid to a rich scholar whose slutty wife gets jealous over. When the girl discovers the wife's affairs, she soon finds herself married to a local peasant with a monster penis. This isn't enough however and the adulterers plot to frame them for murder. The movie jumps from one outrageous scene to another such as creative sex toys, exploding penises (literally), rape by an invisible man who inserts his penis into... the wrong place, lots and lots of quick creative tortures like a man planted in the ground whose head is cut open and made to jump out of his skin, and the pièce de résistance: the famous drop-dead hilarious sex-kung-fu scene where a man and a woman battle it out with sex techniques (super oral sex, undefeatable tongue, hammering, spinning sex, flying sex, etc). A by-the-numbers kung-fu film about an evil master and the people he abuses who come back for revenge after being trained by a quirky, old kung-fu master, but the heroes this time just happen to be cripples. One has a stump instead of both arms and the other has useless stick legs, and both are very adept with fighting skills. They team up to complete a whole and use their disabilities to their fighting advantage in every way imaginable. Has a forgettable kung-fu plot, yet you can't take your eyes off the screen. Somewhat early HK gore-horror madness in a medium-length movie. The plot involves some mysterious experiments with mutant creatures, a forced teenage girl made to carry the child in her womb, a vicious humanoid cyclop that can mutate and spring various limbs out of his body, some lovemaking between teenage girls, and a gory mutation ending to rival a cheap Yuzna flick. Cheesy, laughable but insanely whimsical fantasy action from Indonesian Ratno Timoer and Barry Prima. The story is about an evil nymphomaniac Queen who kidnaps and hypnotises men, and both good and evil warriors, wizards and witches, all of which fight for power and a mystical sword. A typically cheesy over-the-top martial arts and fantasy extravaganza from Asia except they decided that anything goes in fantasy so people come out of a mountaintop and fly on a rock, shoot laser beams from their hand, fight crocodile men and a silly cyclops robot, go underground, disappear, and kill a witch who just survived being cut in half by kicking her head into a crevasse. Deranged Hong-Kong spoof on Hong-Kong wuxia movies produced by none other than Wong Kar Wai on a whim while filming Ashes of Time. This goes beyond even a Zucker comedy in its wackiness and gag-a-second pacing, especially since it is spoofing fantasy kung-fu action. The plot would take a few pages to describe because they throw in everything and the kitchen sink. But some highlights include a slapstick battle in the forest where a kung-fu master asks his opponent to kill him but he can't control his defense reflexes over and over again, poison that causes swollen lips to look like two sausages, three cave 'monsters' consisting of guys in cheap animal costumes, time travelling backwards causing a man to urinate in a cycle, a gay musical number, a man who is only turned into 2/3s of an angel leaving behind some body parts, many wacky kung-fu moves and random supernatural powers involving killer toads, tornado punches, or grabbing of family jewels, fake slow motion, and much more. Your mind may implode by the time you reach the end. Stephen Chow would be proud. Nonsensical fantasy HK action movie starring none other than Jackie Chan. Except this takes nonsense to another level. The movie is book-ended by a kind of dirty-dozen action plot involving a secret mission to save some generals who can stop the Japanese from taking over the world. A handful of very silly rogues, rascals and criminals are collected by some army dude, then sent on a mission, followed by an angry girlfriend with a bazooka who likes to blow up houses for no reason. In between these bookends, chaos takes over. There are flying color-coded ninja Amazon warriors led by a tuxedo-wearing James Bong that make the gang wear cardboard cutouts of women, Jackie Chan throttles a chicken, there is a haunted house with hopping vampires, card-cheating ghosts with stretchy arms, and hopping rows of legs and boots, there's the punk gang standing on 70s cars with swastikas that are somehow linked to the army, and everyone keeps changing into whatever random costumes they found in the wardrobe that day. A 90s style supernatural Cat III upgraded with a modern look by the maker of Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome. Although it's not as out of control and sleazy as before, he still doesn't shy away from the extreme stuff like baby mutilation and nasty gore. The plot involves a cop, some cop killings, revenge, a curse placed on his wife and baby, and the expected counter-curse magic and battle of the wizards. There are plot twists but the ending makes no sense. Curses include the by-now cliched centipedes inside people, exploding babies, flying decapitated heads and the violence includes blow-torching a completely ripped up hand. Darkly entertaining. Thai insane production by Sompote Sands mixing the cheesy and colorful Japanese juvenile 70s superhero genre with a bloodier, not-so-juvenile Hindu god Haneman and visions of hell. The human-bug Kamen Riders are doing their karate with evil, cheesy-mask-wearing bad guys one minute, and Haneman is crushing human beings while bad people are being boiled, decapitated or made to climb spiked trees the next. The mentality here is 'more-is-more', with endless fighting, giants, flying motorbikes, pig and chicken headed humans, exploding eggs, blood-sucking machines, kidnapped scientists, etc. Unusually crazy stuff, even for Asian giant superhero movies and slightly more extreme than Sompote Sands's other over-the-top wacky creature movies. From the director of Boxer's Omen and Killer Snakes comes a more classic plot of ghost horror. It's mostly standard HK horror fare, with the usual HK shenanigans and wild imagination involving vengeful ghosts, green splatter, melting ghosts, violent revenge and broad characters. It also has a couple of nifty twists, but not original ones. This movie's real claim to fame, however, is the final 15 minutes where Chih-Hung Kuei does his first exploration of Boxer's-Omen-type bizarre occult ceremonies, this time a long strange exorcism performed on a dancing, gyrating very naked sexy ghost, and involving dog's blood, skin calligraphy, and gory ear-pulling. Followed by two unrelated very silly slapstick pseudo-sequels, the third ('Hex After Hex') of which is particularly bonkers. The pacing on this one is so extreme, you will keep checking that you aren't playing the movie on double-speed. This is Shaw Brother's answer to Zu Warriors made in the same year. The story involves an evil duo that is after the super power of the Holy Flame (a plastic tennis racket with a colored glass gem). They kill the couple that currently hold its secret, but a master saves their child in order to train him to take revenge 18 years later. The evil duo gather their own trainees, and everyone trains and constantly acquires new magical powers in preparation for the final battle. Every five seconds there is a new magical power, creature, magical trap, or high-speed battle, all of it involving completely unrealistic and impossible wire-fu, as well as flying transforming objects. Energy beams turn people into skeletons, snake bladders injects laser beams into fingers, flying colorful puzzle-words try to slice intruders, the power of ghostly laughter kills anyone within range, there's a vampire that speaks in cheesy English statements like 'Diamond? I like!', and so on and on, all with very colorful Flash Gordon-esque sets, costumes and props. You won't be able to breathe for 90 minutes. Very entertaining. Obscure Asian horror-fantasy directed by Lo Chi with some scenes reminiscent of the Japanese Jigoku. The first part is a typically campy ghost flick with wild magical battles between priests and spirits and the scared plain folk, all revolving around a mysterious magic mirror. When the ghost turns out to be involved in a family tragedy, a priest intervenes and tells her she must go through the tortures of hell to save her family. Lots of drama, hellish torture and moral judgement ensues, with moderately gory scenes of chopping, grinding, slicing, burning, disemboweling and eye-gouging, until everyone becomes enlightened. Along with Zodiac Fighters, this presents Taiwanese comedy kung-fu with Polly Shang-Kwan at its craziest. Polly acts as a male kung-fu master for no reason even though she is dressed like a woman, and has to fight off many strange gangs of fighters while attempting to retrieve a special sword. There's lots of mediocre fighting, very silly slapstick, a couple of typically useless buffoon sidekicks, and a slew of animal fighters: Roaring men in tiger makeup, a masked man with wings that somehow enable him to fly, an evil 'vampire' midget, hundreds of dangerous rolling steel balls and men in large balls with openings for punches, elephant men, a herd of abusive geese, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a couple of rubbery octopuses that can shoot out baby octopuses. Insanely silly. By the maker of Men Behind the Sun, an exploitative film about the treatment of illegal immigrants in Hong Kong. The sleaziness and abuse are so over-the-top that the groups of immigrants start resembling masses of cattle flesh like in Goodbye Uncle Tom as they are violently beaten, stripped, played with, tortured, raped, abused and sold. The police are the least of their worries, as they are grabbed by criminals who fight amongst themselves to own more immigrants and make money off their helplessness. Wild humanity at its worst. A neglected Cat III shocker with Anthony Wong that tells the violent and dramatic tale of a psychotic wife beater who repeatedly rapes, suffocates, beats and humiliates his wife in various ways, and the cop who gets in his way. After some stalking and hide-and-seek where the wife changes hands several times, the movie reaches a gory, violent finale. The exploitative, nasty rape scenes are often cut in most prints. A bizarre Indonesian horror movie that is so bad, it's entertaining. A dumb American comes to Indonesia to study their magic but quickly finds herself literally in over her head, when the evil witch takes control of her soul and body and makes her head detach daily (complete with spine and entrails), and fly around eating blood and unborn babies. Other bizarre and extremely cheap special effects include transformations into beasts, zapping wars between witch and wizard, flying fireballs, long tongues that tattoo spells with electricity, and more. Only for people that love bad oddball movies with horrible dubbing. Another wild Hong Kong sleaze-fest about a weakling who uses his grandpa's medicines and herbs to concoct a poison that turns anyone into a desperate nymphomaniac and addict, and best of all, they forget everything the next day. He soon puts this to good use for revenge against various women and men who have been cruel to him or whom he lusts after, and the story turns into a kind of nasty 'revenge of the nerd'. This power gets out of hand however and things get very violent and depraved. Mediocre, but somewhat wickedly entertaining sleaze. By far Sompote Sands's most warped flick, based on a Thai legend (I sure hope it isn't a children's fairy tale), but sprinkled liberally with Sompote's childish comedy and slapstick, bizarre touches and some nastiness. The epic story involves 12 little girls abandoned by their parents in a land populated by elephant-eating black giants with huge boobs, guru wizards, an evil witch, and her two assistant 'Yaks' (men with ridiculous ogre-like makeup and little tusks), who can grow to the size of a giant at a whim. They make the girls grow into full grown women by magic, then imprison them in a dungeon with plans to eat their eyeballs. The long story then involves an attempted escape, a prince who wants to marry all 12, a kindly Yak who tries to take care of one of the women, an evil seduction, spells, and a young boy of one of the women who comes back with a wizard and a Yak to try to free them. This story is peppered with Sompote scenes of a little girl pooping, a male Yak that grows lactating boobs so he can feed a little boy, graphic eye-gouging, cannibalistic baby-eating, a watermelon that gets women pregnant, cock-fighting and a battle with giants. Yes, you read that last sentence right, but you should probably read it again so that you know what you're getting yourself into. This Cat III is more about deranged criminals rather than the sex and gore, and what a parade of insanity it is. Someone is killing people and stealing their pituitaries from their brains. The police are on the trail, but for a while, it seems like this is just a Macguffin as they instead encounter various wackos, one nurse who tries to make stiff corpses line and up and march by biting them, and a man who eats live animals, teased out of his lair with a live duck. But soon it is back to the business involving a doctor who is trying to heal his daughter of dwarfism while she dreams of being a ballerina, and a psychotic killer midget bodybuilder on stilts who gives out as much midget abuse as he gets. Non-stop unpredictable horror madness about a family that moves into an evil apartment that promptly possesses his wife and child and causes mayhem. Partying ghosts eat dog meat, a mad grandmother stage performer, a fat kid bully, the hypnosis of a fat butcher who is used for sex while rolling around in pig carcasses, a werewolf woman with hairy, flexing mutating boobs, a horny, African warrior, and a Hare Krishna hi-tech exorcist are some of the elements that somehow make up this silly entertaining movie. One of Shaw Brothers' most extreme entries in the fantasy action genre on many aspects. There's surprising gore and nudity by their standards, as well as non-stop magical powers, all unique, bizarre and imaginative. The convoluted plot involves a crystal statue brought to life through blood by a craftsman, thereafter being blamed for the murders of members of a powerful clan that were performed by a powerful crystal-like supernatural fighter. The sculptor and his fat assistant investigate to clear their name, and they all find themselves in a strange cave run by a cult clan with endless confusing plot twists. Special effects and fight scenes include a weapon that causes stomachs to swell and explode messily, laser diamonds, gory shish-kabob and fish-net torture of a naked girl, magic crystal-&-laser-fu, ghost-fu, one of many strange powers that causes hair to grow out of a spear and melt the opponent's face, booby traps in the form of fast flying spiked spheres, a phantom-of-the-opera wizard-fighter, the ability to capture the moon, and many other strange tricks. If you like this, also check out the director's warm up movie before this one: Bloody Parrot, featuring another wacky array of odd supernatural surprises. Insane Bollywood horror that is a mix of Bollywood musical horror, Evil Dead camera-work complete with tree-rape-in-the-woods scene, and Hong Kong supernatural insanity with kung fu. A devil-worshipper makes a pact with Shaitan where he provides the devil with female sacrifices in return for eternal youth, beauty and magical powers. He seduces various women into his sacrificial room where general evil things happen, fights off her friends and family with supernatural powers, until he falls in love with one of the women. Shaitan applies pressure to get her as well, and she flees, but it's only much later until their daughter gets entangled in his clutches that matters reach a climax of good vs. evil. The movie is full of frantic montages and a wide variety of cheap effects, superimpositions of skeletons, skulls, colors, cutout effects, lightning bolts, and the just plain weird, all accompanying the many scenes of seduction, fights and sacrifices. A re-dubbing of the movie 'Vayanadan Thampan' with extra footage. A unique entry amidst the swarm of evil-magic HK Cat IIIs with imaginative and wild spells and gory animal death in the jungle like something out of a Cannibal movie. A group of reporters specializing in the occult, release an evil dwarf sorcerer from his jar-prison and hang out in the remote village when evil magic starts to create havoc and the villagers turn into a lynch mob. Most of the movie consists of strange goings-on and battles of magic between wizards and priests. This includes: a cursed girl surrounded by vicious scorpions, gory flying scorpion attacks, magically controlled bodies flung through the jungle, pig-slaughters, a possessed man taking bites out of a live chicken (nasty!), a movie reel machine grinds a man's hand to a pulp, treatment of a possessed woman by water-torture wheel, various indescribable forces of evil, and a hijacked soundtrack from movies like Rambo. Crazy and very silly Thai self-conscious spoof on zombie movies with plenty of dumb, bad-taste humor, cgi special effects, gratuitous nudity and blood-splattering, flying body-part gore. The Sars virus creates fast-moving zombies while a group of dumb thugs kidnap a girl and it's up to the old master, his battery operated light saber and his super-virgin apprentice to save the day. Humor ranges from running over a bear-suit-clad guy to transvestite seduction and violence. There's a huge snake thrown in to make more cash, and the plentiful gore is played for laughs, avoiding any truly gruesome splatter. Of the scores of Hong Kong crazy supernatural action movies, this one stands out as being one of the more extreme, with gore, nastiness, adventure, camp and violence. A man saves a girl from the worm tribe and is cursed with vein popping disease where his skin explodes. Teaming up with a wise adventurer (Chow Yun Fat), he goes back to the tribe to find a cure and finds himself battling flying piranha demon-babies and glowing skeletons along with ninja monks, a screaming reporter and a rocket launcher. Bizarre sexual comedy from the East, featuring (among other things) a horse-penis transplant, near death through excess sex, sadomasochism, and scores of impossible and outrageous sexual positions. Weird soft-core porn with a rich production and beautiful women as only Hong Kong can make. Not at all dark, just surreal and very excessive. A Cat III classic. The sequel goes even more bonkers with a super-hermaphrodite, a mechanical penis, exploding penises, life-force draining, chastity belts, etc. Followed by a more conventional erotic second sequel. 20 years later, this pseudo-remake goes 3D and attempts, quite successfully, to reproduce many of the elements from the original movies with a few nasty surprises of its own. Once again there is a misguided student in love with his wife who loses his way while seeking sexual adventures. These include an outrageous animal-human-penis transplant with a twist, a super-hermaphrodite with a magical penis wrapped around her thigh, insanely acrobatic public displays of sexual prowess, life-force sexual draining, etc. But for the final third of the movie it goes to the darker side of Cat III, with nasty sexual tortures, castration, gory violence, brutal rape, and just general violent mayhem. All of which successfully bring back the heydey of entertaining 'Cat III' madness, insane erotica, and nastiness. Insane Thai spoof on the J-horror genre involving ghosts with long hair and plot twists. 7 neurotic nurses obsessed with their looks work with a doctor (whom they fight each other for), who sells corpses and has a strange relationship with another doctor. When they kill one of their own for stealing a man, she comes back to take revenge. The editing, cinematography and horror set-pieces are over-the-top, amusing and confusing at the same time, piling on the weird ideas for every scene. Some examples: A nurse's hands are possessed and she runs around sticking her face in ashtrays and drinking from a water dispenser, another nurse is smothered in tons of hair then dunked sideways into an aquarium, another gets a cellphone genetically fused to her cheek, and another nurse is forced to swallow razor blades, after which her jaw falls off, her cat eats her tongue and an embryo from a jar is stuffed into her throat. Features about 10 endings where the plot folds over itself again and again, one of them involving the birth of a grown woman a la Gozu. Stephen Chow made quite a few insanely over-the-top comedies but when he becomes Inspector Gadget you know things are going to get crazy. This is another chaotic, cartoonish movie jam-packed with sight gags, spoofs, silly toilet humor and wacky comedy that features Chow as a spoiled rich boy who washes in a swimming pool and plays pranks on his classmates (like blowing up the toilet while they're on it). After he gets in trouble with a mafioso, his mad professor turns him into a robot (with a faucet for a penis) that can transform into anything and he puts this to good use at the local violent school and against thugs. Amongst the endless wacky scenes is the one where he transforms into a toilet, a toothpaste tube complete with paste and a moving logo, and a spoof on Pulp Fiction involving bad needle aiming. Silly entertainment. It seems that, every few years, Herman Yau (of Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome fame) just can't leave that Cat III genre alone and calls in Anthony Wong for another slice of nastiness, this time in a double role that really shows his range. This was released in 2017, decades after the the Cat III craze died down, and he pulls out all the stops for this one. It's a multi-generational curse that starts with sleep deprivation and ends in deranged gory killings and cannibalism. Flashbacks take up half the movie taking place in WWII with the brutal Japanese takeover, cruelty, rampant killing and gang rape. A doctor, both then and now, gets involved in the insanity while trying to study sleep and provide an unusual cure with an even more unusual solution. There's a bit of splatter at the beginning and end, including graphic castration, but the rest is energetic HK horror. Once again, crazy Asian fantasy flicks with cheap effects are a dime a dozen, but this Taiwanese version of Snow White stands out in its non-stop bizarre magic and insanity. In this version, Snow White is a princess, banished because she was born a pulsating blob of flesh after the Queen was hit by a flying space object. The dwarves are cursed generals, the prince is a warrior turned into a bear, then is made to wear a special bikini warrior costume. Various magical monsters are afoot, including two disembodied demon feet, brought about by two evil sorcerers and fought by the prince and some guy with a butt on his head. An evil warrior's vulnerable point is his anus, there's a talking chicken and a farty dwarf, and the fight scenes just keep piling up one surprising and utterly pointless magical effect after another. Hong Kong shocker about a very violent man who takes over a restaurant that sells pork chops. His victims, whom he gets angry at for any triviality, soon get chopped up and end up in.. well lets just say they help the policemen solve the case. A very gripping performance by the lead actor, some uneven humor and typically sloppy HK storytelling, some gore and rape, and no-holds-barred politically-incorrect brutality. Comedy kung-fu from Taiwan featuring Polly Shang-Kwan. It's all extremely silly and relatively normal fantasy-fu for the genre at first, telling the tale of a mourner girl who cries at funerals for money who then has a change of heart thanks to some depressing music and finds a special blade at the foot of a skeleton. This leads her to 'heart-broken girl' who has been waiting for someone with the blade to enter the cave of the 12 zodiac fighters and learn the art of dragon fighting in order to take revenge on the evil tiger-shark man. They then collect a set of fighters, each a master of some animal-fu (including sheep-fu, bunny-fu and chicken-fu featuring costumes and strange animal behaviour), and battle it out with the evil master. Like I said, all quite 'normal' for the genre, but the final battle with flying toy-sharks launched from a palanquin and an albino who tries to hop to the sea versus a bunch of fighters in animal costumes, is flabbergasting. A classic Hong Kong fantasy flick that started the supernatural era of martial arts mixed with fantasy and manic special effects, and surprisingly, it remains one of the most insane of them all until today. It starts innocently enough with two warriors finding themselves in an insanely colorful civil war, escaping to a magic mountain where they encounter a swordsman and monk and some ladies that are fighting a Blood Demon, etc. The special effects gradually build up from flying martial arts to long magical eyebrows, flying old men chained to boulders, an evil rock, and a slew of magical weapons, until the incoherent climax featuring psychic battles in another dimension with light rays. Entertaining, but too messy. Energetic MTV-style madness and silliness from Thailand. The story is a mix of murder-mystery with a 'drum-fu' path to spiritual perfection complete with duels to the death between drummers, and drum-sex. A boy and a girl trained by a drumming master start a band, train for the ultimate duel with the dark master while running away from the raccoon-like police who suspects them of murder. The star of the show is the editing which resembles an extended MTV interlude where an editor cuts together anything he could find while under the influence of drugs. Jokes and crazy visuals fly by quickly making the silly story sillier. But, like MTV, it gets boring after about 3 minutes. Yet another Hong Kong shocker about a deranged killer, except this one's unusually disturbing twist is that he targets mothers and their babies. We meet him in jail at a practically feral stage, then we get to see his past in a long flashback, his cartoonishly over-the-top constant mistreatment by his family and acquaintances, and his violent experiments. Babies are brutally killed, mothers are sadistically abused, raped, killed, and then raped again, while the police try to track him down. Nothing really of interest here, just more shock-oriented trash with a sprinkling of Hong Kong camp. This sequel in name only isn't another entertainingly insane sex comedy but a grim collection of nasty characters and torture with lots of sex and gory sword-fights thrown in for good measure. Two down-on-their-luck couples and a strong man with a dark past vow eternal brotherhood, but when the man gains a powerful position and lusts after his friend's wives, his repressions come out in cruel ways. Features many torture scenes like hot wax down people's ears, 1000 cuts, rape with a calligraphy brush, sodomy, death by a huge burning dildo, lips sewn together, etc. Another in the wave of shocking Cat III movies that came out of Hong Kong in the 90s. This one tells the tale of a girl abused by her family and raped by her drunk, philandering father until she snaps and goes on a murder spree. Mixed with the explicit nastiness is lots of nudity and sex, and extremely silly humor like having the policeman fondle or pose with a corpse. A typically insane and fast-moving Hong Kong horror flick with horrible dubbing and cheesy acting but this one goes for extreme gross-outs in the form of a virus inflicted on people by a ghost that makes them break out in boils and abscesses, burst in green goo, and vomit pus, blood, worms, centipedes and snakes. The story around these lengthy and gross centerpieces is silly drama and comedy involving a manipulative and cruel man who marries into a family with a hotel and abuses them to no end. Insane Hong Kong supernatural flick reminiscent of Zu Warriors mixed with a typical Ghost Story revved up and mixed with every effect imaginable and the kitchen sink. There is no real plot and instead, the movie follows a supernatural slimy devil that starts off in a vase, rapes and impregnates a woman, erupts as a fetus, possesses a dog, fights a wizard with rapid, lowest-budget computer-game special effects, invades a birthday cake with worms, squashes a man in a sauna, makes a young guy eat dog guts, throws furniture around like a poltergeist, fights a sword expert with teleportation, and much more. A mess with flat acting. A later cash-in on the Hong Kong shockers that tries to imitate mostly Dr Lamb. A serial killer in jail reminisces his life story as he murders prostitutes in order to allow them to reincarnate into a better life. This saintly motive however doesn't explain why he irons his victims, plays with their corpses, slices off body parts and skin, blows up a whore with dynamite, and lusts after everything that moves. His wife and a love interest lend some drama to the proceedings. This one is mainly nasty in intention, not visuals, since it doesn't actually show most of the gory activities. Hong Kong commercial shocker about a psychopath who grew up as a slightly perverted kid and then clubbed bad girls in his taxi cab, then took them home to photograph their nude corpses, chop them up or enjoy some necrophilia. The police try to track him down and work out the details of his murders. Features an unconvincing but interesting off-the-wall performance, and some gory breast slicing and body chopping. I'm not sure if the movie is so confusing because it's so terrible, or because it's truly insane. Three idiots escaping from something or another follow some strings in a forest and get entangled with a kind of evil vampire in a forest who keeps his Dad/master under the ground. Random people appear and then die or are hypnotized by some magic while the three stooges all easily seduce the local slut/village daughter, or are these just dreams? Hands pop up out of the ground or out of bowls, the waitress's pants fall down after an encounter with evil, a swastika with magical powers turns out to be completely useless, a tortoise and a log provide an motorized escape, the vampire wears a mask for no reason, a chicken appears out of thin air, and there's some mud-pie-fu like something out of Karate Kid. An exceptionally nasty Cat III movie by Hong Kong standards made by the 'Untold Story' team. A perverted, violent, demented man kills his boss whose wife he was in bed with, then runs off to South Africa where he works in a restaurant, contributing various body fluids to the customers' diets. While shopping for meat at the local Zulu tribe, he rapes one of the dying locals and contracts the Ebola virus from her. Soon he is on the rampage infecting everyone he meets, forcing girls to pleasure him and killing and chopping up his new boss. Will the authorities catch up with him before hundreds more are killed? After the conventional nude ghost fantasy of part I, this unrelated sequel goes for the oddball instead. The plot involves demons and fairies of lust who have gone wild, battling it out with humans who attempt to pacify them with virgin sacrifices. Not too much erotica here and instead we get scenes of eyeball-licking, lots of people making endless silly faces and sounds, a detachable fairy who doesn't feel anything when her upper body is detached from her bottom half, and a warrior Buddhist midget who turns into a fireball. It's all too silly to be entertaining though. A hodgepodge of characters and snippets of stories revolving around a morgue, but very confusingly chopped and spliced together in an artsy fashion, as if someone was trying to emulate earlier Wong Kar Wai, only a depressed version. There are several morgue workers, some seasoned, some temporary and taking their job hard, and one with a relative who works as a prostitute while taking care of their little boy. Their lives and different attitudes are explored briefly. There are short snippets of cruel crime scenes, criminals and vicious corrupt cops, all of whom provide the morgue with an endless supply, with one crime involving the morgue attendants themselves. And there are also some scenes that take place in death row in prison, including one interview with Anthony Wong as a killer. The morgue scenes are very graphic, with quite heavy use of splatter effects and nudity relative for an HK movie. The editing makes it difficult to put together as a movie, but is more of a depressed and depressing mood piece. A lesser Cat III shocker from Hong Kong mixes gore, sleaze, rape, nudity and a touch of nastiness in a story about a psychotic who kills people to make shoes out of their skin. Features typically silly Hong Kong drama and action, lots of exploitative nudity, and a stand-out scene with a poster of a woman with her mouth open, a luckless duck on the other side of it, and one very disturbed and horny man. A throwback to the 90s Cat-III exploitation shockers. This one tells the simple tale of a prostitute who gets herself in trouble with a violent criminal who tortures and humiliates her for days until the expected end. Forced coprophilia, burning plastic torture and a thorough beating are some of the niceties in this pointless nasty that doesn't even have over-the-top gore and sex to draw in the exploitation crowd. Early Hong Kong shocker tells the tale of a young guy with a twisted and brutal past who is constantly tread on and abused by gangs, employers and whores. He befriends the snakes who have their gall bladder ripped out at the nearby restaurant by sewing them up. Soon he goes on a vengeful rampage, sends his snakes and lizards to bite, rip and even rape his abusers. Features endless sleaze and some S&M sex. Rare HK exploitation oddity about a scientist jilted by his girlfriend after getting involved with some criminal businessmen. He decided to take his revenge by injecting lizards with special chemicals and used-women's-panties extract, thus turning them into rabid vagina attackers. He goes on a crazed revenge spree, first collecting used panties, then attacking women with the lizards, watching them go mad then die in pain and ecstasy. Borderline extreme Cat III has two over-the-top pointlessly nasty violent scenes, and the rest is cliched drama and crime. A group of horny psychos are on the rampage, not just killing prostitutes, as the understated title would have you believe, but also gang raping and torturing them. One nasty scene involves a brutal scalping during a rape. But that wasn't enough for some reason, so they added acid and necrophilia as well. When the gang go head to head against a local chief hood over a stupid bracelet, there is also random gang violence, with one stand-out gory bone-crushing, eye-gouging scene of revenge. Trashy pulp. Hong Kong Cat III extreme sleaze about a rapist with a dark past that makes him react violently every time he sees a girl wearing red. When a local retarded girl learns to dance and puts on her red dress, he turns into an animal yet again and rapes her but is seduced by her innocence. The law is no help and when her teacher tries to stop him by teasing him with red, things go way over-the-top with more rape, gore and an unconvincing primal rage. Confusingly, this was released in the same year as "Human Pork Chop" and covers the same true crime and plot structure. The crime involved a prostitute tortured for days until she died, then chopped up, with parts of her placed in food, or in a Hello Kitty doll. This Cat III plods along depicting the crime as flashbacks, displaying all the nasty details, even adding some titillating sex scenes to kick it off. This endlessly misogynistic movie starts with a sex scene where oil, miscellaneous junk, tools and a vacuum cleaner are used to spice things up, then proceeds to abuse and torture with any object at hand, including some excrement, until her death surprises these idiots and they have to take care of the body. Slightly less nasty than its competitor, but still in the same league and just as exploitative and pointless. One amusingly disturbing detail is that while all this is going on, the Hello Kitty doll had to be censored out for commercial sensitivity. Whereas the first was mostly hardcore porn with some kink and nastiness, this softcore Cat III lays on the ultra-sleaze. A psychotic woman with a dark past goes around dressing in ultra-trashy clothes, seducing men then killing them in various nasty ways, then keeping a body part as memorabilia. A cop is on the trail, as are some co-workers, one of which falls for her secret world of lust. The weird kink from the first is taken to the next level, with one scene having her dangle her lover on a rope in a skull mask and a flapping sheet, and another scene featuring sexual torture by octopus and stapler. Non-stop sleaze and nastiness. This time around, the owner of the bun restaurant is a weak man with a slut bitch for a wife. A psychotic bitch from the mainland joins them and sets her eye on the weak man and his business. Sick and gruesome events ensue including the expected dismemberment and cannibalism. Not as disturbing as the first and the gore is minimal, but twisted and nasty nevertheless. Like Mystics in Bali, this HK low-budget bizarro features a curse that makes a woman's head fly off along with her entrails to search for blood. Features lots of typical HK over-the-top magic and witchcraft-fu, a powerful dark wizard and a buddhist who fight it out, and lots of cheap special effects with various flying objects and laser beams. It even has some gore. |
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