The Devil

In the opening scene of The Devil, a woman performs a magic ritual on a man covered from head to foot in erupting boils and lacerations; she opens up his stomach with a knife, fishes around in his maggot-infested guts and removes all manner of muck before patching him up. After this promising start, the film goes rapidly downhill.

The rest of this dreadfully inept movie deals with the tale of an avenging ghost whose victims cough up bucket loads of snakes and multi-coloured goop before finally kicking the bucket. Although this sounds like a gorehound's dream-come-true, the effects are lame and the excruciatingly awful scenes between the 'mucky' bits would test the patience of even the most obsessive horror fan.

In fact, the only reason I can possibly think of for recommending this dreadful film to anyone is that you will get to witness one of the most bizarre cinematic characters ever in the form of 'Ding Dong', the annoying camp bellboy; his outfits are so gay they will have you sniggering uncontrollably.

So. if you wish to see a small boy sporting tight white shorts, braces and a cap, or a fetching Sgt. Pepper style uniform, go ahead and enjoy; otherwise, I would stay well away.

First off, let me say that "The Devil" is the feel good movie of the year! It's a roller-coaster ride of thrills and chills! It's a triumph of Chinese Cinema!

After watching this film, I can honestly say it is probably the finest example of Hong Kong gore. I suspect there's actually no plot to this thing--not that it matters. If you like to see one gratuitous scene after another of people vomiting snakes, worms and maggots, then this film is for you! Oh, there's plenty of erupting boils as well. And a rather fey Chinese boy dressed like the long-lost miniature Asian member of the Village People. His name is (and I'm not making this up) "Ding Dong." Mere words just cannot do this masterpiece justice.

Sell all your worldly possessions and go see this film NOW!!!!!

This surely is a cult phenomena. It's being searched by horror buffs world wide and so far it doesn't had a proper release on DVD. It's out on oversized US VHS release and of course a Japanese release. If you find this flick then you will have to pay mostly around 150$! Is it worth that amount of money.

If you like Centipede Horror (1983) or films involving puking of real animals then this is a must see. It's a typically 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. Sadly that's it, were as the other animal puking flicks did had an interesting story this is rather boring. Still it's not for the squeamish or easily offended because a snake (living) is smashed to death and living animals do crawl out of the actors their mouth.

An excellent extreme gory opening with magic rituals and a body being opened by her to reveal maggots and goo. But from there Xie Mo becomes rather boring and goes downhill especially the scene's at the hotel with Ding Dong the young boy and there are a lot! You really have to sit through tame parts to see the maggots and puking, the final is worth seeing too. Only for the buffs.

Gore 2,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of this era of Hong Kong horror films. I love a lot of the CAT III sleaze/exploit/horror stuff that came later, and I love most Japanese horror/exploit/pinky stuff from the 60's through today - but I find most of the horror films that came out of the early 80's in Hong Kong to be pretty much the same story told in different ways - usually pretty ineffectively. This is no different with THE DEVIL - but this one is done better than the previous attempts that I've seen.

The story behind THE DEVIL is of a con-man who infiltrates a relatively wealthy family who owns a hotel, when the hotel bell boy, Ding-Dong (?!?), plays a little match-making with the hotel owners daughter. It's found out that the con-man has done this sort of thing before, and when he's exposed and inadvertently causes the death of the hotel owner, the matron of the family puts a curse on him. At the same time that this is happening, random people are coming into contact with some sort of witch that lives in the woods that makes her "victims" puke worms, maggot, centipedes, slime, and blood in pretty gruesome fashion when she "possesses" them...

The story behind THE DEVIL is relatively straight-forward and isn't quite as confusing as some of the other similar films from this genre that I've seen - but there were still plenty of moments when I lost track of the characters, or why certain things were happening. Luckily, there were enough worm-puking scenes (which seems to be a "staple" of these kinds of films - but THE DEVIL does them better...) to keep me relatively entertained. Unfortunately though, other than a chick getting her face smashed with a rock, and a guy having insects, worms, and snakes cleaned out of his guts in the very beginning...the worm-puking scenes are the only other type of gore scenes, and end up being kinda redundant after the first few times. Even so, this one was a little more enjoyable than some of the others I've seen, and I would recommend THE DEVIL to fans of such films as SEEDING OF A GHOST, DEVIL FETUS, or CENTIPEDE HORROR. 6/10

Some deformed looking b···· is running around, making men puke worms and s···. The Devil is a typical far east Asian horror movie that contains vomiting and snakes and so forth. You know, the usual far east malarkey. I thought this one was good. It does contain some very gruesome body horror sequences, it's paced rather well and has an okay story. And I hate that little f····· Ding Dong. God! Asian kids are just the worst. This kid is just a whiny s··· with a gay bellboy costume. So annoying. Regardless, if you like Asian black magic movies, give this one a whirl.