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The Seventh Curse (1986)

Dir: Nam Nai Choi.

Dr. Yuen (Siu-hou Chin from "Mr Vampire") joins a medical expedition to Thailand to find herbs that may cure AIDS (little did we know it was that simple). While there he sees a beautiful young tribal woman named Betsy (Sau-Lai Tsui) bathing in a pool. But upon hearing a strange call, Betsy runs off.

Yuen is warned by the professor in charge of the expedition not to get involved with the local cult called the worm tribe. As they are known to practice the dark arts making human sacrifices.
Of course, Yeun ignores the advice and sneaks into the worm tribes temple where he is shocked to see Betsy and another man being prepared for a sacrifice. The cult leader Aquala, who's face is painted white and has Groucho Marx eyebrows, (played by Elvis Tsui) pours blood over a stone coffin.
A skeleton with aged rock-star hair, and blue glowing eyes, pops out and heads for the tied-up sacrifices. Yuen rescues Betsy but the unfortunate man has his head snapped off and his spinal cord sucked out by the skeleton, who transforms into a huge flying monster that looks like a cross between a Gargoyle and Giger's Alien.

Betsy gets away, but Yuen is captured by Aqulala who forces him to eat bullets dug out of the bodies of dead cultists. This turns out to be a curse that makes Yuens' veins explode! Yuen escapes, but is still exploding all over the place (rather messy and generally not very nice) and is only saved when Betsy cuts open her breast and removes a gland which she feeds to him! You have to love the crazy minds of HK filmmakers.

Returning to Hong Kong a year passes and all seems well until Yuens' veins start exploding again. Betsy's lover, Huh Lung (Dick Wei) appears and tells him to go back to Thailand to save Betsy and himself.
Yuen seeks advice from super scholar, Wisely (Chow Yun Fat in a support role), who tells him that he has been given a blood curse that will kill him in a week unless he takes on Aqulala to find a cure.

So with Wisely saying he will follow in a couple of days, Yuen and Wisely's irritating female reporter cousin (the lovely Maggie Cheung), head to Thailand to find a permanent cure before he explodes to death…

 

This delightfully bizarre horror fantasy packs enough off the wall gore to fill two more movies and is a text book example of the twisted imagination of Hong Kong filmmakers. We are treated to such delights as a fight on a huge stone Buddha, where Yuen and Huh Lung take on a load of kung fu monks, various gun battles, and our heroes being chased by a flying coffin and a couple of amazingly cheesy monsters. The Gargoyle/Alien creature is entertaining and treats us to lots of head crushing, and stomach ripping scenes. But the monster highlight has to be the hysterical little four armed, sperm shaped, big eyed, frog muppet creature, 'Little Ghost', that Aqulala keeps under his cloak and unleashes onto victims. This lethal little guy rips open throats, and explodes out of stomachs like a rubber "Alien" chest burster.

One crazy sequence, which you could only get away with in an HK film, has Aqulala throwing young children into a huge stone squashing machine to collect their blood to make the Little Ghosts. It's a kind of an evil cult 'Kiddy Juicer'. The gore effects are plentiful and fun as well, with some very impressive "Scanners" style pulsating vein sequences, showing Yuens curse at work. The squishy spinal cord sucking scene is also a gross-out highlight.

The performances are only adequate though, with Maggie Cheung (a fan fave and star of the "Heroic Trio" films who has since gone on to make serious art house movies to great international acclaim) coming off the worst due to her being stuck with a very annoying character that adds heavy handed comic relief. But even Cheung is outdone in the beauty stakes by Sau-Lai Tsui. Her first appearance as she rises out of the pool in slow motion shows her shear dress clinging to her luscious, naked curves, is a very memorable introduction to say the least. She also gives Betsy (which is surely a badly translated name) a welcomed serious edge and keeps the, at times, damaging humour at bay.

Elvis Tsui has fun as the psychotic worm cult leader, but has a strange high-pitched voice that zaps a lot of the characters menace. Siu-hou Chin gives his usual solid performance but fails to give his kung fu doctor any real personality. Chow Yun Fat stands around looking wise while smoking a huge pipe and as always adds a spot of class, but is only really given anything to do near the end. But it's worth waiting for, as Wisely shows that even pipe smokers can kick ass.

Sadly, the film is (at least on this Hong Kong DVD used here) stuck with some very bad translations and grin inducing lines; "Take my advice or I'll spank you without pants" and complete non-sense like "And these are toes chopped down by spaceman" Funny, but this kind of stuff casts an unfair shadow on the films credibility.

Overall the film is packed with great ideas and gory supernatural action but attempts to cram in too much in its short running time. It also lacks any real soul. It's basically a "turn the brain off", blood drenched, popcorn munching flick, but the uniquely bizarre and over the top HK ingredients push it into a higher league than the normal no brainer. And it's full of so many crazy sights you can't help but warm to its trashy charms.