Blood Sorcery (1986)

On a pitch black night in Burma, two guys, Li (Ying-Chieh Han) and Au Yeung (Hoi-San Kwan), flee from a bunch of torch and arrow-wielding villagers with a jade statue they’ve stolen.  Yeung escapes with the help of the god whose icon he’s pilfered (who is never given a name), but Li isn’t so lucky (though Yeung does get an arrow to the thigh).  Cut to Hong Kong, where Mak Long (Jason Pai Piao) loses his wife due to impotence after some noisy body smooching.  Doctor Au Shau (Alan Chan Gwok Gwong), son of Yeung, comes upon Mak bleeding mysteriously from his leg, and the two discover that they have more in common than they might have expected (namely a certain village in Burma and its vengeful Wizard [Feng Ku]).

Ling Pang’s Blood Sorcery (aka Xiong Zhou) is a supernatural revenge film with enough interesting elements to make it worth a watch, but it’s also enough of a mess to make it largely unsatisfying.  The revenge angle stems from dishonor, both personal and societal.  Yeung stole a statue that had value to the villagers as a symbol of their deity.  It has a spiritual meaning for them, whereas it has only a monetary value to Yeung (something which never comes to fruition anyway, as the statue comes to have a spiritual meaning for Yeung as well).  On the other side, Mak has transgressed against the Wizard in a personal way.  While on leave in Thailand, he visited the Wizard’s bar (they moved from Burma; I don’t know what their livelihood was there), and he met Lina (Git Ling Fung), the Wizard’s daughter.  After a drunken, impassioned evening rolling in the hay (as it were), the two vowed to get married, but Mak got shipped elsewhere and seemed to forget completely about Lina until now when it’s become inconvenient for him.  Not only has the Wizard’s daughter been jilted, but she’s also been left with a bun in the oven, and the whole affair is a source of dishonor for the Wizard and his family.  Despite this, Mak’s intentions were true when he pledged his love for Lina, who begs her father to call off the curse he’s placed on Mak.  Now, most normal people would simply move on and maybe give Mak a sock in the eye if they were to ever see him again, but honor trumps all for the Wizard.  Once it’s lost, it cannot be regained, except through blood.  Similarly, Yeung won’t allow Shau to marry his sweetheart, Shuk Fong (Jo-Jo Ngan), because she has to prove herself to the old man (at least this was what I discerned; maybe you’ll see something different).  The father/child/marriage situations parallel each other.  The Wizard wants Mak to prove himself by being a normal, decent man.  Shuk will have to prove herself by standing with Yeung against the Wizard.  The fantastic needs the ordinary as the ordinary needs the fantastic.

Blood and decay, then, are the symbols of shame, dishonor, and corruption.  Both Yeung and Mak have wounds on their thighs that bleed profusely at any given moment.  Yeung now resides in a wheelchair, we can assume from this wound (and it’s intriguing that Yeung’s initial leg injury was inflicted physically before it became a chronic condition, while Mak’s wound simply appeared as a result of black magic).  His and Mak’s dishonor links them through a very specific condition, and in a very specific bodily location.  The trouble spot on their thighs correlates (maybe just in my mind) to the acupressure point SP-10 or the Sea of Blood (or Xuehai).  This point supposedly invigorates and/or cools the blood (amongst other things).  Therefore, that it is the site of such massive blood loss has some meaning as to how the actions of these men has thrown their bodies and spirits into disarray.  There is also a lot of worm imagery in the film (as there seems to be in most Chinese Horror films).  These worms crawl around and wriggle forth from the leg wounds, swimming in pools of blood, and looking generally very gross.  They are the interior rot of Mak and Yeung’s bodies and souls, being as closely related to corpses as worms are (and they will appear later in the film in that precise role).  Comparably, the Wizard is physically corrupted by the magic he uses to corrupt others.  When performing a ritual against his enemies, his hair suddenly becomes long and white, and he sprouts large fangs.  He literally becomes a monstrosity when doing monstrous things.  By that thinking, neither victims nor revenger have any claim to a moral superiority.  They are equals sunk to their lowest levels.

Though Yeung, Mak, and certainly the Wizard believe in magic, Shau doesn’t (or doesn’t want to), so he tries to find scientific methods of treating Mak.  It’s the classic science versus the supernatural trope of many movies dealing with magic, yet here it doesn’t play as one might expect (or maybe it does).  Outside of watching Mak hemorrhage blood and worms, Shau makes no real effort to get to the root of the issue (the answers basically fall in his lap) and no real headway in curing it once he does discover the condition’s source.  Shau is ineffectual in the face of magic, thus he is ineffectual as a hero.  Shuk, a nurse at the same hospital, crosses the divide between the natural and the supernatural.  In an inversely proportional way, Lina mirrors Shuk.  Lina’s desire is to become a mundane wife, to move away from magic.  The two women cross paths headed in opposite directions.

Blood Sorcery is a difficult film to follow (completely not helped along by very literal subtitles), but we’ve seen this before in genre films from Hong Kong, so it’s not only expected, but it’s also part of the charm (or at the very, very least it’s not a complete deterrent).  Scenes stop abruptly in mid-action with no resolution before being thrown into the next inexplicable scenario.  The characters are flat and uninteresting.  The reason to watch the film is to see how wild it gets with its visuals and situations.  By that measuring stick, I’d say it makes it a little past average.  You won’t see anything here you haven’t seen before, done better, or done more coherently.  I guess in that way, it’s a lot like porn, huh?  And like porn, it does its function well enough.

MVT:  The more colorful images (both gross out and mystical) are the entirety of this film’s existence.

Make or Break:  The sight of the first ball of worms squirming in blood soup.  Too sickening for some, not sickening enough for others.

Score:  5.5/10   

Angel Terminators 2 (1993)

One of the fascinating things about words (aside from the power they can wield; I do believe they can be mightier than the proverbial sword) is their ability to be misunderstood.  I’m not simply referring to the varying extents of people’s vocabularies and the confusion that can cause.  I’m talking about the misinterpretation of words, and how people react to such misinterpretations.  For example (and I am completely stealing this from local radio personality John Webster, so if he happens to be reading this [which is doubtful], thanks and sorry), if you say, “throw the cow over the fence some hay before you leave,” the syntax is funny, first because of the mental image it immediately conjures (throwing a cow over a fence, at least momentarily), and second because we know these words don’t go in this order, and we love to laugh (however lightly or cruelly) at the mistakes of others.  

Another way misinterpretation can be a positive is in its ability to inspire.  A great many writers mis-hear phrases, and it stimulates something in their brains that ignites an idea for an essay or story (I’m thinking specifically here about Harlan Ellison as the first author from whom I heard this [as the impetus for his story Jeffty is Five], but I also think it’s one of those innate skills/quirks of scribes, seasoned and neophytic).  This leads into this week’s film, Tony Liu Jun-Guk and Chan Lau’s Angel Terminators 2 (aka Huo Zhong aka The Best of the Lady Kickboxer), which is one in an avalanche of Hong-Kong-produced films whose English subtitles are so literal they’ve become a trope in and of themselves.  You get such gems as, “You shall be responsible if I suffer loss today,” “You come only now?” and “Hey, you’re nut.”  This oddity doesn’t detract from the quality of the better-made Hong Kong films, but it does add a layer of fun to both accomplished and less polished efforts alike.  Thankfully, this film falls in the former category. 

After cops Great Aunt (Sibelle Hu, who wears sweat pants almost exclusively while on duty) and Bao (Jason Pai Piao) bust up a robbery, they head on over to the local prison.  Bao’s daughter Bullet (Yukari Oshima, who also wears some tragically baggy pants throughout the film) is being released, but she wants nothing to do with her old man.  Bullet’s best friend Chitty (Moon Lee, who we first see wearing a sweatsuit, notice a trend here?) and a gaggle of friends show up and take her into their care.  But vile gangster Mad (Anthony Cho Cheuk-Nin) entangles himself in all of their lives, and the only way out is through blood.

One of the things this “girls with guns” film has at its heart is a theme of bonds between people (like a great many Hong Kong movies).  Great Aunt and Bao are tight as partners.  She is the loose cannon, while he is usually the voice of reason (though he can certainly handle himself in a fight).  It’s a trait she admires in him, and she looks up to him both as an equal and (I got the impression) a surrogate daughter.  Likewise, Chitty and Bullet are best friends from way back, and they look out for each other to the extent that Bullet will defy people she probably shouldn’t (and this points to a key aspect of her character, as well).  Their friendship is primarily expressed physically in the fights in which the two girls seem to take great delight (with other people, not one another).  

But for how alike they are in that respect, Bullet and Chitty are different in how they relate to their actual families.  Bullet unrepentantly hates her father and displays her disdain openly (and considering her reason, you can’t really blame her).  Bao tries to reach out to his daughter, but his apparent lack of emotion, his detachment from what family means, and his belief in duty over all, only helps keep the two at odds.  Consequently, Bullet joined a gang in her youth and sought some form of acceptance in that lifestyle (this is never developed outside of a plot point, but it does make a certain sense for Oshima’s character).  Conversely, Chitty’s Uncle Tiger (the late, great Lo Lieh) is a retired gangster, and Chitty does her best to make him believe that she is straitlaced (she changes into demure eyeglasses directly before seeing him).  For how much she rebels, however, Chitty cares a great deal for Uncle Tiger.  She has what Bullet doesn’t have (more precisely, what Bullet rejects) – a family – and so, she is a kind of substitute family for Bullet.  As you may have guessed, these relationships become bonded by blood in a very actual sense, and it is in this way that the film resonates, as the best heroic bloodshed films (and action films in general) do.

These bonds and interrelationships carry over into ideas of individuality and conformity.  Chitty rebels in her friendship with Bullet and their skirmishes together, but she plays the part of a nice young woman for her uncle.  She wants to fit the mold she perceives as the norm, to please others over herself.  Bullet is fiercely independent, though she has to rely on her friends for support.  At one point, she tells Chitty, “If you don’t resist, others will beat you,” and this is the summation of her character from start to finish. This is not necessarily a philosophy she picked up in prison, although it would certainly aid in surviving on the inside.  It’s a wall she has built up over time to protect herself from harm: hurt others before they can hurt you.  By that same token, Bao is the model of conformity (and the film does make a point of emphasizing aspects of the British colonialism extant at the time of its production; so, there’s that).  While Great Aunt does act out in the same sort of way that Bullet does, she is able to be reined in to some extent by Bao and the powers that be.  Ultimately, it’s the two characters between the extremes (Chitty and Great Aunt) who will decide how they choose to live their lives for themselves and benefit from the lessons from both ends of this spectrum.

The fight choreography in Angel Terminators 2 is truly outstanding, and the participants (particularly the three main female characters) are a pure joy to watch (while I suspect there may have been some undercranking used to speed up the fights just a little, and if it wasn’t, color me even more impressed), and they are liberally sprinkled across the runtime.  The filmmakers, in the Hong Kong tradition, use stylistic flourishes to emphasize the kinetic characteristics of their action scenes with Dutch angles, quick tracking shots, slow motion, low angle shots, and wide angle lenses all thrown into the mix rather smoothly.  Also as is the norm in Hong Kong action films, the story brings up plot points that it forgets about and reintroduces them much later on, granting them more emotional weight than they probably should have for their lack of development.  Ergo, its pace moves in fits and starts in spite of the frequency and velocity of its action beats.  Despite its deceptive (some would say “sloppy,” and to be fair, I would probably prefer the term “ambitious”) structure, there is a ton to love about this film, and any fan of action films, foreign and domestic, should give it a whirl.  

MVT:  Yukari Oshima carries a lot of the film’s weight with a constant intensity that impressed me, her magnificent martial arts skills notwithstanding.

Make or Break:  Coming as no surprise to anyone, the Make for me is a scene towards the end involving Bullet, some Molotov cocktails, and a very large knife.  The first shot by itself was enough to engrain it in my head until the day I die.

Score:  7/10      

Men From The Gutter (1983)

Pre-digital Hong Kong genre cinema holds a great fascination for me, not so much for the technical achievements, the jaw-dropping stuntwork, or the bonkers ideas they throw around, but for the ambience of their visuals.  They can look beautifully garish as in many of the set bound Shaw Bros martial arts films or dirt-lickingly grotty as in some of the sleazier Category III films.  They even manage to mix the two from time to time.  The way Hong Kong is often portrayed is as alternately glamorous as it is dangerous.  Decked out nightclubs with gorgeous women and men in white suits are a staple.  Conversely, blown out ratholes where people in jeans and cheap tee shirts are forced to live provide the flip side.  

It’s not so much that this dichotomy exists, it’s that these films give the impression that these two strata of society exist essentially on top of one another.  There is the distinct sense that if a character opened the wrong door in a discotheque, they’d be met with a sweaty, stabby, rapey nightmare to set the old spine a-tingling.  It’s as if everyone is trapped within the city, like a real-life Escape from New York, and some denizens have merely managed to crawl to the top and accumulate wealth which only further buffers them from the dregs beneath them (or so they hope).  

Now, I’m no expert on Hong Kong films, and I’ll admit I haven’t seen nearly as many as others have, but the one thing which partly defines a lot of them from my perspective (particularly in the Crime arena) is this idea of the callous villainy of the wealthy versus the desperate ambition of the poor.  This is reinforced for me through the texture of the visuals.  The more realistic Hong Kong films have a certain grainy, desaturated look, and the worlds created are often filled with box-strewn warehouses, cluttered streets, and clogged up piers.  I can’t say how close to reality any of this is (and that’s really not the point anyway), but from films like Lam Nai-Choi’s Men from the Gutter (aka An Qu), I would suggest that my theories only gather more support. 

In his lousy tenement apartment, Wang (Parkman Wong Pak-Man) climbs out of bed in the middle of the night, crushes the cockroaches scuttling on his lunch, and ventures out to meet his ex-con pals Long (Lung Tin-Sang) and Brainless (Billy Lau Nam-Kwong) to discuss their big plan to get rich.  But the police are onto Wang, and an officer is killed while trying to apprehend him, sending Sgt. Zhao (Venom Clan alumnus Lo Meng) into a frenzy.  Meanwhile, fellow policeman Qiu (Michael Miu Kiu-Wai) is investigating the murder of Zeng Cai (Lee Hoi-Sang), bodyguard of criminal kingpin Xu Wen (Wong Yung), by Zi Jian (Jason Pai Piao) and their ties to each other.  Complicated stuff.

Perhaps the oddest thing about Men from the Gutter is that it is, on its surface, two separate crime stories the only linkage between which is the police officers.  Nonetheless, I would offer up that Lam and company are treating the Crime genre in a metaphorical way (while still delivering a cracking good Action film) and attempting to look at more than one side of the lower echelons of society in relation to crime.  Zi Jian’s motivations are revenge and honor.  He has no real avaricious goals in mind.  Wang’s motivation is one hundred percent monetary.  He gets very upset every time he thinks about all that  he doesn’t have.  He believes that money will solve all his problems.  As the title suggests, then, Zi Jian is coming out of the gutter to get at Xu Wen, to drag him back down into the gutter.  Wang is in the gutter struggling to get out by any means necessary.  Zhao and Qiu are the forces of order, standing in the gutter up to their waists, trying to maintain control while not going under.  In the gutter, a person has to do what’s necessary, but there is always the element of choice, and the end goal (personified by a freighter and its captain) is not guaranteed.  From this viewpoint, the film begins to take focus as more than the sum of its parts, even though it may not appear obvious at first glance.

The film is also loaded with images of characters watching and being watched, predominantly in the narrative of Zi Jian and Xu Wen.  Photos are taken of Xu Wen at a restaurant with Zi Jian in the background.  After being questioned by Qiu, Xu Wen looks at himself in a mirror while crime scene photographers snap pictures.  Zi Jian is shown making love to a prostitute in the reflection from his eyeglass lenses.  Later, he takes a slingshot and a metal ball and shoots the image of himself in his hotel mirror.  He checks his teeth in reflections in a store front window as well as in a fitness club mirror.  Point of view shots play into this as well.  At the gym, Zi Jian sneaks up on an unsuspecting guy (in POV) and knocks him out for his clothes.  Later, there is a POV shot following Zi Jian (and in which he again checks himself out in a mirror).  If these are just stylistic affectations or character quirks, they are lingered on longer and are more numerous than one might expect.  I tend to think that the reflections are how the characters remove themselves from their world.  By engaging with a mirror, staring into oneself, they are disengaging from reality and fortifying themselves for what lies ahead.  Similarly, POV shots like those herein tend to disengage the viewer from the film’s reality (we don’t share what’s in the minds of the characters through whose eyes we see), targeting where they’re headed rather than what surrounds them in the moment.  The characters are watchers and watched, within and without themselves, and a similar affinity is reached with the film’s viewer through these visual choices of the filmmakers.   

Men from the Gutter is surprisingly non-exploitative, as well.  Aside from one shot and a scene with some bare breasts, there’s no sex (consensual or non-consensual).  There is a decent amount of violence and blood, but not nearly to the levels of gore showcased in some of the Shaw Bros both at this point in time and in the past.  Outside of the film’s outstandingly heightened climactic sequence, the film is rooted firmly in reality.  That said, the final set piece does contain acrobatics and nigh-superheroic levels of stamina.  It also has a huge (and I mean that both literally and figuratively) concluding moment that will truly make your jaw drop.  But the film never goes off the rails, and it does a very admirable job of balancing its elements.  If you’re an Action film fan, and you haven’t seen this film, you need to (it’s available with subtitles on Youtube).

MVT:  I love the character of Zi Jian, especially as brought to life by Jason Pai Piao.  He’s odd and colorful, clearly dangerous, but also with a noble air about him.

Make or Break:  The heist scene is marvelously orchestrated.  It’s complex, gritty, and clearly blocked and edited.  I think that, in some ways at least, it encompasses all of the emotional heart of the film as well as the thematic points.

Score:  7/10