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The Seventh Curse | Year: 1986 Classification: Foreign Film - Chinese Directed: - Ngai Kai Lam Earth shattering "The Seventh Curse" is an utterly insane film. No other phrase so adequately describes the experience of watching this low budget Asian picture. I read a plot summary some time ago about the movie, thought it sounded interesting, and decided to give it a shot. Well, the summary totally failed to convey the depths of weirdness plumbed by the film. I thought I would be watching a straight horror movie, and that is true to some extent-"The Seventh Curse" does contain many elements of horror. But it also delves into action, science fiction, fantasy, and just about any other offbeat theme you've ever seen in a film. I'm hardly an expert on Asian cinema. What I know about these films can easily be summarized on a sheet of paper. I've seen several of the Hong Kong category III movies, such as "Doctor Lamb" and "The Untold Story," and I even own a copy of "The Story of Ricky" even though I haven't watched more than ten minutes of it. I've even seen several films from Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. With the exception of "Ichi the Killer" and "The Untold Story," "The Seventh Curse" may well rank as one of the most disturbing Asian films I have seen. Don't get me wrong, though, since that's a good thing. You want something to dig under your skin and stay there for a few days. "The Seventh Curse" does that quite nicely. I start with a caveat: don't pay attention to this film's DVD cover. The picture of two men in formal wear grinning from ear to ear is a scene from the movie, but it's about the only sane thing in the entire production. The other chap in the photo is the real star of the film. He plays Dr. Yuan, a sort of troubleshooter extraordinaire who finds himself caught up in one wacky situation after another, the first being an intense hostage situation. The police call in Yuan to help when one of the hostages suffers a heart attack, but they also talk the good doctor into taking a bomb into the building. A messy shoot 'em up follows, with Yuan walking away relatively unscathed. He heads home for a night of relaxation that quickly turns into an epic martial arts battle with a guy who shows up to tell the doctor that he's in some danger. It turns out that about a year before Yuan went into the wilds of Thailand with the aim of doing some medical research. He rescued a local girl, Betsy (!), from a bunch of black magic worshippers called the worm tribe. Yuan barely escaped after the horrible encounter he had with Aquala, the fearsome sorcerer leader of the tribe. He also escaped with a curse that causes painful eruptions on his body, one every seven days until the last one punctures his heart. The curse finally starts to do its deadly work, so Yuan's friend Wesley (Chow Yun-Fat), a pipe smoking genius in all things strange, instructs the physician to go back to Thailand in search of some holy objects that will cure his ailment. The doctor knows he's got to go, so he takes along an uppity reporter named Tsai-Hung (Maggie Cheung), a ton of fi Extreme HK Gore and Gratuitous Chow Yun Fat This is a disturbing film, with baby crushing, gut munching, worm spewing, and very little Chow Yun Fat. This is one in a series of films about Dr. Wei, sort of a Sherlock Holmes/Indiana Jones character who sets off on adventures around the world. This time, he discovers that on a past adventure, when he was the lone survivor of native ambush, he was cursed. Now to cure the curse, he returns to the scene of his crime and battles a gut munching alien fetus demon, the sorcerer/leader of a band of natives, and the skeletal remains of their long dead evil king. Chow Yun Fat appears every 15 minutes or so, explains what's happened so far, then disappears again. As with many HK films, it all ends abruptly and a happy ending is nowhere to be found. Still in all, the Effects are fine (except for the rubber fetus demon and the puppet nature of the dead king). Maggie Cheung appears in an early role. Don't buy this for Chow Yun Fat. Buy this for the same reason you would anything Joe Bob Briggs would recommend, Blood, Breasts & Beasts. bizarre and gory from the director of riki oh/story of ricky comes this twisted movie. Like a mix of Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, a wild kung fu film, and the Evil Dead. Some cool gore scenes add to the mayhem, I've never seen a guy eaten alive by worms before, or a crazy witch doctor throw children into a giant stone press to squeeze the blood out of them, or a guy with a blood curse whose veins pop periodically and squirt blood. This one may be hard to follow, and seem like a strange dream after you watch it, but is worth checking out. Only Japan or China could make a movie this fast and off the wall. Buy The Seventh Curse at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on The Seventh Curse Search with the Priority Search Engine on The Seventh Curse This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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