Few movies in the massive Shaw Brothers film library can lay claim to being as simultaneously offensive, bizarre and preposterous as Kuei Chih-hung’s THE BOXER’S OMEN. It literally oozes with cheaply-produced mondo gore involving creepy critters, stampeding alligator skulls, chewed up and regurgitated animal intestines, floating heads, and a skinned she-devil that gives birth to three plastic-wrapped, self-mutilating witchdoctors.
At the same time, the film is also a mildly interesting, if highly flawed tale of a worldly Thai boxer from Hong Kong, portrayed by kung fu movie veteran Philip Ko, reluctantly recruited by the spirit of a dead monk (Elvis Tsui) to adopt Buddhist vows and battle black magic in and among the sacred Buddhist sites of Thailand and Nepal.
Director Kuei Chih-hung is undoubtedly Shaw Brothers’ preeminent exploitation filmmaker and THE BOXER’S OMEN may be his crowning achievement, for good or ill. In the 1970s, Kuei gradually moved from mainstream urban dramas like THE TEA HOUSE and THE DELINQUENT to embrace grindhouse extremism in the likes of THE BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS and THE KILLER SNAKES. With the explosive popularity of horror-related films in the early ’80s that grew out of the success of Ho Meng-hua’s BLACK MAGIC (1975) and especially Sammo Hung’s horror comedy ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND (1980), Kuei went for broke with a series of his own black magic and folklore-related horror films beginning with the comic-tinged HEX VS. WITCHCRAFT in 1980.
THE BOXER’S OMEN specifically carries on the theme of a Buddhist monk versus black magic that Kuen introduced in BEWITCHED (1981) and also deals with the popular motif of a Hong Kong resident traveling to Thailand and getting himself over his head in local supernatural phenomenon. This scenario has been repeated in Hong Kong cinema many times, perhaps most notably in SEVENTH CURSE (1986), starring Chow Yun-fat and Maggie Cheung. What may separate Kuen’s film from others is the level of detail he goes into showing the Theravada Buddhist customs and rituals, whether real or imagined that are used to fight evil. It’s hard to say if the perversity of the film’s extreme violence and sexuality will be viewed as any worse than similar Hong Kong films. The local industry pumped out more than its fair share of mind-blowing horror and exploitation movies prior to its taming and decline after coming under the morally-strict influence of mainland China.
The film’s many macabre special effects are varied and eye-opening but never realistic. That’s why a relatively gritty opening Thai boxing match between kung fu stars Wang Lung-wei and Bolo Yeung is definitely unexpected. It’s good enough to make me wish I had been watching a serious Thai boxing film instead of a gross-out horror flick, especially with these excellent genre stars in the ring. It’s staged very well and acts as a reminder that Kuen was still very capable of creating realistic and vivid action, as was most notably seen in his earlier work. Later, we’re treated to a second, similar kickboxing match where Philip Ko, fighting for an injured Wang, takes on Yeung. This time, his previous involvement with fighting black magic in Thailand causes him to go temporarily blind during the final round.
Aside from Ko’s boxing rivalry with Yeung and his sexual exploits with a girlfriend, most of his time is spent among the monks of Thailand, training to take on a Thai witchdoctor who had previously murdered a head monk by having spiders inject a special poisonous brew into the victim’s eyes while he’s sleeping. Elvis Tsui, the always game category III and exploitation actor, portrays the dead monk’s spirit as it haunts Ko, first rescuing him from gangsters in Hong Kong and later charging him with his task in Thailand.
Ko’s mid-film battle with the witchdoctor is an event unto itself and is only outdone by his eventual effects-filled showdown with three more witchdoctors and their wicked female minion. I can safely say that it is unlike anything I have witnessed before, even though aspects of it like a floating head that entraps Ko in what appears to be intestines or muscle tissue, is based on popular Thai folklore and has appeared in other horror films.
The floating head reference is to a creature of Southeast-Asian origin known as a Penanggalan. It is most often described as a flying female head with dangling venomous lungs, stomach and intestines that traditionally feeds on the blood of pregnant women and their newborn. This creature has been depicted more accurately in a number of older horror movies including the Hong Kong production, THE WITCH WITH FLYING HEAD (1977).
If flying heads with dangling entrails seems crazy, then the rest of THE BOXER’S OMEN is complete madness and not in the realistic, conventional bloodshed way of 300. Some of the effects, like felt-cloth spiders and worms and a giant rubber alligator, are almost on par with an Ed Wood-level of amateurism. The mechanism of their artificial movements are relatively well masked but they all tend to look like very cheap stuffed animals being poked and prodded into motion from off screen or perhaps from fishing line.
Kuen displays a fascination with brightly-colored organic goop, like a mixture of inflating balloons, various gummy-like objects and glossy thick liquid that comes in unnatural primary colors. The only thing that makes this stuff at all disturbing or gross is the implied act, be it a head ripping itself off from a torso or a mummified female corpse being revived from within a dead (and fake) alligator’s slimy, gut-filled belly. Kuen seems determined to freak out his audience with the most disgusting and vile imagery imaginable, even though an imagination is exactly what’s needed to accept most of it as even remotely convincing. The only scene that pushed me to the limit was when the three witchdoctors took turns chewing up banana peels. It’s something engineered to be repulsive, which is what much of this movie is intended to be.
For being a gratuitous exploitation film that relishes in gurgling, magically-mutated grossness and full-frontal female nudity, THE BOXER’S OMEN spends an awful lot of time on mundane Buddhist activities while showing off exotic Southeast Asian locales dominated by gaudy shrines and architecture. The film has a problem with its pacing, which seems a little too slow and lumbering. Another problem is that while the title and limited boxing suggest martial arts meets supernatural horror, the film contains very little martial arts action. Philip Ko spends most of his time simply reacting to supernatural attacks and only occasionally uses his fighting skills. Ko’s boxing rivalry with Bolo Yeung isn’t integrated with the main supernatural plot very well. It almost feels like two different movies spliced together, although that wasn’t the case.
Fans of mondo horror may enjoy this film for its extreme supernatural weirdness that bares a likeness to more accomplished low-budget delights of deviancy from the likes of Lucio Fulco (DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING), Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO) and Peter Jackson (BRAINDEAD). Average Hong Kong cinema goers with a preference for more conventional martial arts action, extreme or otherwise, won’t find much of value here beyond brief fighting scenes with Bolo Yeung featured.
by Mark Pollard- http://www.bmw1.0catch.com BMW
