HUMAN LANTERNS Movie and DVD Review

HUMAN LANTERNS (1982)

Rivals Lung and Tan have been at each other for years, trying to best the other in everything from martial arts skills to festival competitions. When Tan invites Lung to his home, only to show off what will be his entry in this year’s lantern competition, Lung is jealous and humbled. But when Tan brings out a local prostitute in front of Lung and his wife, who Lung has been secretly seeing, Lung is humiliated. Vowing revenge, Lung turns to a master lantern craftsman (Shaw Brothers legend Lo Lieh) to construct a lantern guaranteed to win the competition.

Meanwhile, a psychotic madman with a mastery over monkey-style kung fu has vowed to take away everything that is precious to Tan and Lung. Dressed in black and donning a skull mask, the madman begins to kidnap women including Tan’s sister and Lung’s wife. Tan and Lung at once begin to suspect each other, and bring in the local police to place blame on one another. The police begin to search for clues, hoping to find the women still alive, unaware the kidnapped victims have already been skinned alive to be used as material for the madman’s dazzling lanterns.

Mixing the expected incredible martial arts choreography that the Shaw Brothers are known for with the rising desire for macabre subject matter of the early eighties, director Sun Chung (THE SEXY KILLER, THE AVENGING EAGLE) along with co-writer Ni Kuang, who has written pretty much every worthwhile Shaw Brothers title since the mid 1960s, created what would become one of the studio’s most sought after cult films.

Starting with the shocking and seductive title, which also goes by the slight more descriptive Human Skin Lanterns, the film proceeds to deliver the goods with several jaw-dropping sequences in which the still living women are turned into raw material for lanterns while strung up in a fog-drenched torture chamber and workshop. Using clever camera angles, along with latex, flesh-toned fabrics and copious amounts of bright red food coloring, these sequences may even bring a grimace to those with a penchant for gore and horror. While the grotesque skinning is shown as much as it can, just enough is left not seen in order for a vivid imagination to fill in the blanks.

But for its alluring title and gory sequences, the film is much more in line with putting another notch in the Shaw Brothers’ martial arts belt than experimenting and expanding into horror. Lung and Tan, played by Liu Yung and Chen Kuan-Tai respectively, provide several fun one-on-one martial arts duels using classic Shaw Brothers choreography techniques. But it is the fight sequences that focus on the mystery madman that are surely the highlight of the film. His style, which emulates the movements of a wild monkey, is made all the more unreal by altering the film speed of the camera. By either slowing down or speeding up the movements, his attacks seem impossible to overcome, and merely toys with his kidnap victims and opponents until he is through having his fun.

Individually, the macabre horror and martial arts scenes are well done and left on their own provide great entertainment. But this is clearly a case where the parts are greater than their sum. Sun Chung often has difficulty switching between the vastly different styles, and the jarring editing at times feel like two entirely different films were used to create one. That being said, it is certainly nowhere close to ruining the picture, but perhaps a more thought out singular feel would have made the editing flow better and given fans and even greater movie.

Helping to give HUMAN LANTERNS its rise in cult status and infamy is due to the unavailability of an uncut print on any commercial format. Originally released in its entirety for its 1982 theatrical run in Hong Kong, subsequent VHS releases had much of the gore and nudity cut out. Even for its remastered release on DVD in 2003 by Celestial Pictures in Hong Kong, some of the most noticeable cuts remained and left fans more than a bit disappointed. But now, with the help of Image Entertainment through their Eastern Masters banner, the hunt is a thing of the past. Sporting extended footage of the these infamous scenes, this release is exactly what the fans have been waiting for.

Using Celestial Pictures remastered print, Image provides an anamorphic widescreen transfer with the original Mandarin soundtrack along with English and Spanish subtitles. The DVD features an interview with actress Shaw Yin-Yin, who recalls her days at Shaw Brothers and her time on the set of HUMAN LANTERNS. Also included is one of the skin peeling scenes with alternate footage cut in, as well as a selection of production stills. Finishing out the disc are a large assortment of classic martial arts and action movie trailers from Hong Kong.

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HOLY VIRGIN VS THE EVIL DEAD (1991) Movie Review

HOLY VIRGIN VS THE EVIL DEAD (1991)

On the night that Shiang (Donnie Yen) and a small group of his female students are having a late night picnic, the moon turns red and from out of nowhere comes a man who quickly knocks Shiang out and attacks all of the girls. When Shiang awakes, he finds his students dead, and quickly becomes the main suspect in their murders. Local police inspector Chen takes up the case, and begins to follow Shiang around. When a second murder takes places, it happens in a small temple. Shiang and his private investigator friend do some research, and discover that temple is for worshipping a god in an ancient religion that in Cambodia.

Shiang and his group of friends head into Cambodia, in the search for the tribe that still worships this religion. They have also discovered that the man who attacked Shiang is actually the inhuman Moon Monster. Once in Cambodia, they cross paths with the Princess White, who has been charged by her tribe to kill the Moon Monster. They are on a tight deadline though, for when the New Year begins, the Moon Monster will regain all of its powers and become unstoppable. Will Shiang, Princess White, and their friends be enough to put an end to an army of machine-gun totting fanatics and the vicious flying Moon Monster?

In this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Category III extravaganza, logic and taste are thrown out the window to make room for a hodge-podge of erotic-tinged fantasy, supernatural horror, insane action, wire-fu martial arts, and pure exploitation. This is classic Hong Kong entertainment, the kind where the plot seems to have been made up as the movie was being made, where action set pieces are placed at even ten-minute intervals, where crude sexuality is debased to even cruder comedy, and where the film title offers more to the imagination than the actual film. This is definitely not the kind of Hong Kong import that has any fear of being remade. Ever.

Donnie Yen, who is the star of this because of his name recognition, and not due to his screen time, plays a meek teacher until it is he is threaten. He gleefully pushes the stereotype that all Chinese know kung-fu, for his character is given no background as to why he knows how to do flying spin kicks and scorpion kicks. He just naturally does. The rest of the actors, if they can even be called that in a production such as this, also are well versed in advanced martial arts, and are proficient in operating machine guns as soon as they pick them up. Pauline Yeung, who was Miss Hong Kong 1987, as Princess White, is the films main source of charming eye candy (but who is the only female actress not to go nude) and holds her own as a female warrior. She glides through the air with ease and has at her command a host of magical spells. But it is Ken Lo, Jackie Chan's then bodyguard and cinema career bad guy, as Moon Monster who takes the cake. His Jon Bon Jovi and Joe Elliot inspired wardrobe, long flowing black hair, and snarling growl make his performance truly memorable.

Part of the charm of HOLY VIRGIN VS THE EVIL DEAD, apart from the fact that there are no holy virgins and no evil dead mentioned in the entire film, is the ludicrous low-budget nature. The special effects, including lightning bolts, energy beams, and glowing eyes, are literally painted on the frames in post-production. Quick and choppy editing allow the characters to fly or leap great distances. Sound and Image rarely sync up, as the soundtrack was created after principal photography. The English subtitles, which disappear half the time when there is too much white on the screen, include such zingers are "bastard, run you!" and "hold it or I'll shoot her to dead!" And the music score, composed of mostly synth-score snippets on repeat, sets a truly ridiculous tone. Even White Princess' sword has a diddy that gets played each time it is drawn.

Though stamped with the nefarious Category III, it avoids the truly nasty territory that many of its brethren would wallow in. Instead, director Wong Chun-Yeung is merely dancing with joy at the freedom of the rating that was new at the time, and seeing just how far he can go with it. He succeeds in creating a high watermark example of the what-the-heck-did-I-just-watch cinema which was pouring out of Hong Kong at the time. It is films like this, which have sadly been weeded out of Hong Kong as their moviemakers became more internationally conscious, that made Hong Kong the go to source for exciting, unique and over the top movies in the first place and gave Hong Kong its international appeal.

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