Kung fu has never been so fiendishly tasty. For his second feature, Hong Kong movie master Tsui Hark taps into Western grindhouse movie convention with this gruesome mix of cannibalistic depravity, freakish absurdity and martial mastery.

The title, WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU gets right to the point… of a butcher’s knife. The film follows Tsui’s wuxia thriller and big screen debut, THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS with one of the most unique kung fu movies ever made. It takes the concept of American horror classics like 2000 MANIACS and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and mixes it with kung fu action and Cantonese comedy. The result is less satisfying if you’re looking for heavy doses of chills and gore but action choreography from Corey Yuen is intense, bloodletting surpasses that of Chang Cheh’s films and the acting roster is crammed with every certified weirdo working in Hong Kong.

Shaw Brothers veteran Norman Chu stars as Agent 999, a kung fu fighting government agent sent to a small island to apprehend a thief with the odd name of Rolex (Melvin Wong). Little does he know that the island in home to a village full of crazed and ravenous cannibals who feast on every careless traveler who ventures there. Although initially attacked by a gang of masked butchers, Agent 999 is unaware of their connection to the villagers or their chief (Eddy Ko) and he foolishly continues his manhunt. As the situation gets increasingly dicey, Agent 999 teams up with another nimble thief (Hon Kwok-choi) in an effort to fight back, rescue an attractive girl (Michelle Mai) and escape the mad flesh eaters in one piece.

This is not the ultimate splatter kung fu movie by any means but it’s not a bad effort from Hong Kong where such films were up to this point virtually non-existent. Shaw Brothers had produced some fairly risqué prison torture films and some fun horror titles like HUMAN LANTERNS but no filmmaker had really tried to shoot realistic gore. The SB makeup department never was up to the standards being set in Italy and America.

True to form as a New Wave student of Western cinema, Tsui Hark pushes the envelope by Hong Kong standards with graphic scenes depicting limbs getting chopped up and ripped apart and one gut-wrenching opening where a victim is sawed in half while still alive. For its day and for Hong Kong, the special effects work is impressive. However, most of it doesn’t stand up anywhere near the kind of cutting-edge work that makeup effects master Tom Savini would unleash on unsuspecting audiences the same year in FRIDAY THE 13TH. The biggest problem, beyond the obvious rubber hands and flank steaks getting tossed around, is the pinkish-colored blood that sadly looks even worse than Shaw Brothers’ notorious, bright red paint that Chang Cheh had gushing out of his heroes’ gut wounds years before.

The real problem with this movie is what plagues so many attempts at horror in Hong Kong, the film just isn’t scary on much of any level. The reason is simple. Tsui makes the mistake of making his main protagonist a kung fu fighting dynamo. Second, he opts for humor over chills most of the time and it is that uniquely broad comedy so common in Cantonese-language films. This is a near-complete failure as a true horror film but it does possess a measure of the black humor and gory zaniness that has made over-the-top horror classics like EVIL DEAD and BRAINDEAD such beloved cult classics.

The action from Corey Yuen and Chin Yuet-sang may not be as bloody as I would have liked to see it but the choreography, particularly the group fighting is fantastic. Norman Chu gives a terrific fighting performance but the stunt crew is the real star of the action. There are two main fighting sequences where Chu battles a mob of masked butchers, all wielding butcher knives or sticks. They pile all over each other in long takes involving highly-sophisticated attacks, parries and dodges involving up to a dozen or more people. Seriously, no other stunt crew in the world could have pulled off this kind of fighting at the time. Its loads of fun to watch and rivals just about any group fighting action you see in the classic era (1970-85).

Eddy Ko appears as the main villain. He’s not one of the better screen fighters out there and it shows. He does alright though. Ko’s big match with Chu is unfortunately a little too much like a Sammo Hung-style fight in terms of mixing fast, elaborate moves and comedy. A lot of Western viewers may miss one of the film’s biggest comic references where Ko mimics Guan Yu, a famous deified general widely depicted as red-faced. It’s a scene that would be fine were this a straight kung fu comedy but I couldn’t help but be disappointed by this and other elements that set a lighter tone for the second half of the movie. Ko’s fate is also a bit of a letdown, chiefly because of Tsui’s clunky presentation.

Most annoying is the presence of Siu Gam, the “Andre the Giant” of Asia, playing an amorous female who is constantly trying to trick the two main heroes out of their clothes. Tsui uses this actor and a number of other famously odd-looking folks to populate the cannibal village including Sai Gwa-pau with his huge overbite, the cross-eyed To Siu-ming and Tam Tin-nam with a mashed nose. Yuen Clan veteran San Kuai, a frequent player of bizarre characters such as a hunchback in Yuen Wo-ping’s BUDDHIST FIST, easily fits right in as one of Ko’s crazies. These guys look the part but never quite seem menacing enough.

WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU has a lot of potential as a freakish gore flick with kung fu added that ultimately doesn’t possess the guts to go all the way. It’s a shame Tsui backs away from more consistently extreme content and poops out in the end. He could have succeeded in making a real cult classic. Frankie Chan creates truly unnerving music and Lau Hung-chuen produces unusually good cinematography. The framing and layers of depth that he and Tsui create are way above the standards of similar shock movies in Hollywood, not to mention low-budget kung fu movies in Hong Kong. Alas, these high standards are largely wasted. As such, this movie is an amusing diversion and a modest special effects warm up for Tsui Hark’s first real hit, ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN.

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