Gu

Revenge is a dish best served with an extra portion of gastric slime in the Shaw Brothers sordidly Satanic, morbidly maggot-infested Black Magic body shocker 'Gu'. Once holidaymaker, Stephen (Fei Ai) returns from his sojourn in sultry Thailand, he grimly discovers that he brought back more than spicy snapshots of, Bon Brown (Lily Chan), his beauteous, yet bizarrely vengeful, beach-frolicking lover! Plagued with mad visions of his daughter's increasingly malign nature, Stephen is arrested, summarily sentenced to death for the brutal slaying of his child. The once cynical cop, Bobby (Melvin Wong) stoically exposes those cruel instigators of the curse that evilly compelled, Stephen to commit such a monstrous act of infanticide!

Kaleidoscopically garlanded in grisly, dayglo-dripping necromancy, 'Bewitched' remains a hallucinatory, fascinatingly visceral example of vintage HK Body Horror. Director, Chi-Hung proves himself singularly adept at staging nauseating scenes of luridly flesh corrupting sorcery! Mean-spirited, and visually striking,'Gu' is steeped in stomach churningly graphic manifestations of blasphemous Black Magic maleficence! While disturbing, Bewitched is aesthetically sublime, the exquisite Thai locations are dazzling, and our Black Magic beleaguered protagonist's gruesome travails climaxes in a hyperbolic, mythically mental, monk vs sorcerer showdown. Far-flung, far out, but far from formulaic, the queasy far Eastern shocker 'Bewitched' casts a wickedly captivating spell that cannot be broken!

Following the discovery of a dead body, a police detective who helped solve the case finds that the spirit who caused the murderer to embark on his killing spree has now possessed him and turns to a devout priest to before the necessary rituals in order to protect himself.

There was quite a lot to like with this one. One of the many positives of this one is the fact that there's such a deranged and wild atmosphere present in this one due to the black magic cursing involved. The way the spells are enacted in here are quite intense and often creepy, being that they're carried about in the one room where all the different black magic relics are shown from the skulls, black candles, strange jars lining the walls and the different pots and containers featuring all the ingredients to make their spells come to life. The way they include all the different objects here, from the silver bells on the strings of the ceramic boxes to carving out the writing with the special tree-branch and the special altar where they reside over during all the special ranting and enacting their spells, all combine together to give this one a rather creepy and frightening atmosphere which is what makes the film work as it does. This as well carries over into the rather fun curses that actually get played out here, from the black marks on the body that continually spread across them to the different artifacts turning into animals and other objects being turned into lethal and rather dangerous elements to attack their victim that it becomes all the more effective even before adding in the requisite vomiting up worms and maggots that is included in here. Once it finally gets to the spectacular spiritual battle between the two sorcerers at the end, there's just such an insanely wild and fun time here with the frenetic action enabling the two sides to engage in the battles against each other as we get to see the dueling priests throughout here fire some truly outrageous spells at each other. Cursing pictures in order to cause painful sores to appear on the body, causing their equipment to crumble into dust at the merest touch, bringing objects in the room to attack the other and other activities, there's such a wild and crazy assortment of black magic featured here that the film becomes a highly visceral experience on that alone. Even the other finale, from his battle to get free and how he reacts while under that control, makes this one quite fun and rather fun. What makes all this sorcery at the end work is the fact that the build-up exploring what happened to him here, from his relationship with the girl that's quite fun and innocent to the strained way he interacts with his daughter amid the slow-building realization of his curse, the set-up to this one manages to work quite nicely and gives this one the burgeoning storyline necessary to really fuel the rest of this one rather nicely. The only thing that doesn't really work here is the fact that there's the second affliction in the final moments rather than built up so that it really makes a rather strange inclusion. Otherwise, there's not much to dislike here.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity and Language.

Towards the end of the Shaw Brothers' rein over kung fu cinema, the studio branched out into other genres, enjoying some success in the supernatural horror market. Much of their horror output was typified by black magic storylines with gross-out special effects, Bewitched being one of the best examples.

The film opens with the discovery of the decomposed body of a little girl, a nine-inch spike having been hammered into her skull. A police investigation leads to the arrest of her father, Stephen Lam Wai (Fei Ai) who admits to the murder, but claims that he was under the influence of a spell. Sentenced to death by hanging, the man tells his story to policeman Bobby Wong King-Sun (Melvin Wong), and begs the cop to find out what drove him to kill.

According to Lam Wai, the trouble began when he wooed a pretty young woman, Bon Brown (Lily Chan), while on holiday in Thailand. After several days of being romanced by Stephen, Bon gave her new beau an amulet and made him swear to return to her by June 30th. When Stephen returned home to Hong Kong, he boasted about his holiday romance to his work colleagues (no doubt telling them about Bon's topless sprint across the beach, which is shown in slow-motion), but neglected to keep his promise to return. That's when the crazy stuff started to happen: the amulet caused a large stain on his chest, which sprouted hair, he became impotent, and his daughter began to act very strangely indeed. An old woman told him that he had been possessed and that the person closest to him would try to kill him and the only way to stop them would be to hammer a large nail into their head.

Bobby doesn't believe a word of the killer's crazy story, until he too experiences a scary supernatural phenomenon. Now convinced, he travels to Thailand to investigate, learns that Bon had a spell put on Stephen (the magic involving oil extracted from the corpse of a pregnant woman), and attempts to remove the curse with the aid of an old witch (who performs a ritual with some bad flute playing, a levitating skull, a twig and what looks like a small Wade figurine of a frog). When this fails, he visits a monk, who enters into a supernatural battle with the wizard who cast the spell. Cue lots of yuckiness, including the villain drinking blood from a vat full of dead babies, his face oozing pus, and a nail slowly pushed through the palm of his hand.

Unfortunately, the monk is unable to defeat the powerful wizard, and needs a week to recover before he can try again. During these seven days, Bobby is subjected to a variety of spells cast by the miffed magician, which leads to more madness, including the cop developing an appetite for raw pork liver, a bout of heart trouble caused by a lemon, Bobby's wife being stabbed by a flying knife, and a guy getting dragged under a moving car. Director Chih-Hung Kuei also sees fit to throw in those mainstays of the genre, maggot eating and worm vomiting. Meanwhile, Bobby also has to contend with an escaped lunatic who is causing havoc, having got his hands on a cop's gun (in the film's most shocking moment, the madman shoots a child several times in the chest).

The entertaining ending sees the return of the monk, refreshed and ready for round two, in which he successfully desiccates the wizard, forcing a bat demon to fly out of his mouth!

Sex, horror and exploding bats are the main ingredients for this early 80's Shaw Brothers thriller from director Kuei Chih Hung, the man who brought us the fantastic horror film, Hex, The Boxer's Omen, Killer Constable and many more. It stars Ai Fei, from the Shaw classics House Of Traps, Human Lanterns and Death Duel, as a man arrested for the murder of his daughter, having claimed that she was possessed, and that he himself, had a spell put on him after meeting a Thai girl and leaving her jilted. The first shock of the film comes pretty quick as a kid playing ball comes across the grossly, realistic body of his daughter in the woods - complete with 6 inch nail driven into the top of her head that forcefully gets removed. Its the first of many moments that will make you wince through the atmospheric and fun, Bewitched...

Told in flashback (in part) from the jail cell to officer Melvin Wong, Ai Fei's stories convince Wong to head to Thailand to learn more about the black magic rituals, leading to a crazy run of events, leaving him with much more than he bargained for!

I like Bewitched! It's something a little different and has some pretty cool tricks going on that keeps viewers entertained right through. These include graphically disturbing corpses, a séance with floating skulls and twigs that write alone, evil wizards versus good wizards, reanimated bodies, a possessed child munching down on raw meat, brutal car accidents, levitating knives and much, much more.

Director Kuei keeps things tense as the story rolls along with some incredible visuals and darkly wild atmosphere throughout. There's a rawness to Bewitched that just seems to keep you gripped, along with its ominous music and sound effects that just add to the experience. Its beautifully shot for the most part, capturing some wonderful shots of Thailand (including its fantastic, giant movie posters on the buildings), with some incredible lighting which makes it look amazing and very nice to watch. This is also aided by the incredibly clean, crisp and colourful print, 88 Films have provided here allowing us to see the ultimate version of this classic...

The great Melvin Wong does a wonderful job, as do most of the cast, with real-life wizard Hussein Hassan playing the dark villain of the piece. He gets to take part in an extended battle with a good wizard, attacking each other with spells that gets violent and bloody, that leads to the evil wizard drinking the blood from a (shockingly graphic) barrel of dead babies and internal organs for more power!

It's really quite disgusting.

The final half hour sees Wong return to Hong Kong to follow-up his case. Its here that he finds his Ai Fei in the prison hospital, wrapped from head-to-toe in bandages, violently throwing-up worms, and slashing his stomach open! And it only gets worse for him, with the detective now finding himself suffering the same problems and pains that first plagued his prisoner...

Bewitched certainly isn't boring, and I'd go as far to say that it definitely put a lot of people off going to Thailand upon release. With some great use of practical FX for its time, solid direction, and plenty of WTF moments to keep you entertained, this little gem should please any fan of horror. Kuei Chih Hung was one of the finest horror directors in Hong Kong of that period, so I'd suggest checking out some of his other titles and giving this one a go.

Overall: Mad, gross, shocking and beautifully made, Bewitched is a crazy piece of Hong Kong cinema that deserves a watch!

The first film of Kwei Chih-Hung I ever saw was the indescribable Mo (Boxer's Omen) so working backwards I just had the chance to watch his previous outing into the world of Thai black magic.

A policeman investigating the horrid death of a five-year old girl is led to Thailand where he encounters black magic and eventually a series of horrible curses are placed on him to prevent his solving the mystery. That description makes the film sound reasonable if not a bit boring but believe me it's not boring! We are witness to lots of sights including, a six inch nail being pulled from the corpse of a five year old girl, an extended spell battle between a monk and a sorcerer, a séance with floating skulls and twigs that write plus exploding bats. We also learn many useful things such as how to extract oil from the rotting corpse of a pregnant woman, or that eating maggots gives you super evil powers, or that if you discover a loved one is eating raw pork liver at night, all may not be well. All this commotion is because a callous Hong Kong tourist didn't come back to his Thai lover by a certain date. She happily causes the death of several people and is willing to kill more so her ex-lover dies a protracted death. And strangely she somehow convinces a black magic priest to go along with this despite the pain and danger he goes thru when a Buddhist priest volunteers to fight back.

It's quite an experience but it falls apart by the final third and the ending looks like they ran over budget and Mona Fong said, "You have one night to finish this film and send those Thai actors back!". So they shot the ending in a HK airport terminal. Regardless, the film looks quite good at times with interesting art direction and photography. There's a bit of nudity when the Thai girlfriend goes for a slow motion swim, but most of the film is just silly looking but gross effects.

Fun but "Mo" is more fun.