czar-10

I was expecting something good when I purchased this film, I thought "Alright another new film with Bolo in it that I have never seen". From the opening credits and first scene I realized I have seen this before, not in a film but in a Japanese TV show called FIGHTING DRAGONS. Yup, this film is nothing more than a pastiche of scenes from the TV show to sell to gullible people like me. The fighting scenes with Bolo are done quite well but the film is rather disjointed. With that all in mind this film still is rated rather poorly for me as I hate Godfrey Ho type re-cuts and re-sells. Seek out the TV show instead.

This show is "Tales of the unexpected" nastier brother. Much darker than anything seen in similar 30 min format TV shows. Some of the endings left me saying "Holy Moly!" When audiences in the USA in 1972 were watching stuff like Night Gallery and saying "Gee, this is great", audiences in the UK were treated to this anthology show that was original, and dark. Not sticking to too well worn TV tropes THE FRIGHTENERS showed what no holds barred TV was all about. Only running 13 episodes, at 24 min each episode, this show is as good as it gets for this type of TV, I wish there was more episodes, but sometimes less is better. The ultimate theme of each episode is Man's malice towards one another, so no ghost stories, or anything dealing with the supernatural, just human's being nasty to each other.

An old man of the village tells kinky ghost stories to a few of it's inhabitants after all the kids have gone to bed. What follows are stories that have horror elements and some soft-core nudity thrown in. Soft-core porn Director Li Han-Hsiang is in familiar territory here with mixing period piece sets with a sex hungry succubus and various other typical ghostly incarnations.

Although many Shaw Brothers horror films have a very creepy set pieces, this one sadly lacks in that department. Fans of Taiwanese sex-symbol Chin Hu, or Shirley Yu may want to give this one a spin.

Typically Shaw Brothers were churning out films like this at a prodigious pace and I found Director's other film RETURN OF THE DEAD from the same year, a much more effective horror story.