Gong gui zai

Some really crazy films came out of Hong Kong in the late '70s/early '80s, none more so than the horror movies that revolved around black magic and sorcery-- titles such as Black Magic 1 & 2, Centipede Horror, Seeding of a Ghost, The Boxer's Omen, Bewitched, Hex, and this totally bonkers effort from director Titus Ho, in which a documentary crew pays the price for opening up the coffin of the evil Red Dwarf Ghost sorcerer (despite signs clearly warning that anyone who does so will be cursed).

Like the other films I have mentioned, Red Spell Spells Red involves all manner of hocus pocus resulting in some truly insane scenes of Asian excess, including plenty of creepy crawlies (so many scorpions!), attacks by inanimate objects (a net, some wooden poles, a reel of film, and a leaf!), a fair amount of gore, and some nudity courtesy of the cute lead actress.

And it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that there is also a hefty dose of animal cruelty in the film: a couple of pigs are slaughtered in the name of art, a frog and a scorpion get crushed, and in the film's most nauseating scene, a crazy old man chews on a live chicken, pulling out and eating the bird's intestines while it is still flapping. Gag!

In keeping with the general bizarre nature of the whole thing, Ho ends his film abruptly, leaving the viewer to pick up their jaw from the floor.