Bewitched

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Bewitched. Before we get into it, here are my ratings:

Story - 2.00 Direction - 1.75 Pace - 1.50 Acting - 1.50 Enjoyment - 1.75

TOTAL - 8.5 out of 10

On Szeto, the writer of Bewitched, delighted me today with his story. I usually go on about missed opportunities in story concepts. But today, I can keep my gob shut on the subject. The tale of Bewitched, though simple, is complex, intriguing, and enthralling. What made this occult revenge horror flick special was the amount of detail. Once we know about the curses affecting Stephen Lam, we are then shown every detail of their creation. As we are with the subsequent spells against detective Bobby Wong and the Monk, he's asked for help. I particularly liked The Lemon Spell. Be warned that some of the black magic spells are pretty gross. Like the dead fetuses stewing in a pot of their blood, which the evil sorcery drinks - Ugh!

Chih-Hung Kuei directed this battle of Good V's Evil superbly. It is near perfect. He has a skilled eye for using light, shade, and colours to build and sustain an atmosphere. And his talent for controlling the film's tempo is evident in his action sequences. For the most part, the story trots along, but when we get to the exciting scenes, it builds to a cantor or an all-out gallop. Now I said near perfect; the opening scenes are the worst. They chop through the backstory with excessive speed and may leave your head in a spin. But stay with it, and you'll get your just deserts - the best occult movie ever made.

The cherry on top of this mystical cake is the special effects. All of which are excellent. Even the simple ones like pulling the nine-inch nail from the child's head made me squirm. Bewitched is not a film for the squeamish.

The cast is acceptable in their roles. However, I find that early Oriental films like their actors and actresses to ham it up on occasions. And there are a few sections in Bewitched where this happens, especially with the loony who keeps stealing uniforms from coppers. But if you've watched a few of these films, you become inured to them.

So not only would I highly recommend this film to all the horror fans out there, but I would state this is a Must-Watch movie.

Please visit my Absolute Horror list and see where I ranked Bewitched.

Take Care & Stay Well.

This is a strong contender for the strangest film that the Shaw Brothers ever produced, and in some ways, maybe one of the least polished. One must note straightaway that this immediately comes off as more than a little gawky and clunky in its lot development. It's extraordinarily swift and curt generally in its editing, a quality that is continuous throughout its length, and even in how individual scenes are orchestrated. In the first ten minutes or so it blazes through a substantial number of plot points in exposition, so many that there is quite literally a risk of blinking and missing a great deal. Yet all that is but prelude for a lengthy flashback that constitutes the meaningful beginning of the plot, a flashback that will round out the rest of the first thirty minutes. Meanwhile, many other scenes to follow are very long and drawn out, a variability in pacing that belies how curiously thin the story actually is. The connective threads between certain characters and story ideas are frail and barely cohesive; if one does actually miss the underlying motivations for the plot, bewildering as they seem to be, our assumptions are confirmed at the very end when a voiceover imparts the morals of the tale. Then, too, at the same time that blunt dialogue seems to indicate at times that the characters know exactly what is going on, there are other points when there is no specific explanation for the precise course of events, such as who a person is and why something associated with them is critical as a spell component.

That latter point is an important one where 'Bewitched' is concerned, and not just because the premise portends black magic. For all the rough patches in how the story is told and the footage spliced together, these aren't even the most significant oddities of this 1981 flick. Nor are the present-day setting (as opposed to the period pieces the Shaw Brothers are best known for), or the unremarkable sets and costume design. Nay, what really sets this apart is an element that is so unusual that it took me half the runtime to realize that the foremost facet of these 100 minutes was just that, and not a diversion. Where the average title from this studio would give us narrative advancement adjoined to or interspersed with kung fu action, the core factor of this picture is the preparation and conduction of spells and rituals, and to a slightly lesser degree, the resulting effect on the person they target. All those minutes that would elsewhere give us a flurry of martial arts wizardry instead gives us, in this case, a wizardry meeting the more typical definition. Once one realizes what it is that writer On Szeto and director Chih-Hung Kuei are doing here the inclusions go from sluggish sidesteps to a fascinating centerpiece, and one wishes they had become aware of their nature sooner - indeed, may other viewers be more wise than I am. With that being said, though, I still think one needs to be a patient and open-minded viewer to indulge in these long scenes that broadly have less going on in them than one expects.

In fairness, those practical and special effects that we do see look pretty swell, including blood and gore, special makeup, and some gruesome props; would that, perhaps, we got more of all of these, and more visualization of what the spells achieved than how they were cast, for that would have distinctly helped to give the proceedings a shot of adrenaline. Those stunts and action scenes that we do get come off well, and overall this is well made. I'm also a fan of the original music of Jen-Hou Su and Eddie Wang, a collection of far-out themes that in their own way match the peculiar tenor of the movie. And while 'Bewitched' is in no small measure not what I was expecting, I did enjoy it, and I think the concept is unique, imaginative, and worth exploring. I also think this was in considerable need of more careful craftsmanship and writing, for the initial headlong rush turns into a bit of a slog, and all the while the plot itself is less than convincing or satisfying. True, the writing isn't necessarily the most integral aspect of many Shaw Brothers productions, but it seems extra weak here. With this, and more of a gnarly spectacle taking advantage of the dark tone and potential for special effects, the end result could have been more memorable, and more of an achievement. I still think that 'Bewitched' is worth checking out if you come across it, but one maybe shouldn't go out of their way for it, and it's best suggested for those viewers who are open to all the wide possibilities of cinema and who will be best equipped to endure the more stagnant or undeveloped parts of the film.

Revenge is a dish best served with an extra portion of gastric slime in the Shaw Brothers sordidly Satanic, morbidly maggot-infested Black Magic body shocker 'Gu'. Once holidaymaker, Stephen (Fei Ai) returns from his sojourn in sultry Thailand, he grimly discovers that he brought back more than spicy snapshots of, Bon Brown (Lily Chan), his beauteous, yet bizarrely vengeful, beach-frolicking lover! Plagued with mad visions of his daughter's increasingly malign nature, Stephen is arrested, summarily sentenced to death for the brutal slaying of his child. The once cynical cop, Bobby (Melvin Wong) stoically exposes those cruel instigators of the curse that evilly compelled, Stephen to commit such a monstrous act of infanticide!

Kaleidoscopically garlanded in grisly, dayglo-dripping necromancy, 'Bewitched' remains a hallucinatory, fascinatingly visceral example of vintage HK Body Horror. Director, Chi-Hung proves himself singularly adept at staging nauseating scenes of luridly flesh corrupting sorcery! Mean-spirited, and visually striking,'Gu' is steeped in stomach churningly graphic manifestations of blasphemous Black Magic maleficence! While disturbing, Bewitched is aesthetically sublime, the exquisite Thai locations are dazzling, and our Black Magic beleaguered protagonist's gruesome travails climaxes in a hyperbolic, mythically mental, monk vs sorcerer showdown. Far-flung, far out, but far from formulaic, the queasy far Eastern shocker 'Bewitched' casts a wickedly captivating spell that cannot be broken!

I saw this for the first time few days back. Got enticed aft reading glowing reviews. I shud hav been careful regarding the only four reviews as of now. This film is ridiculous with unnecessary gross scenes. The lead villain is always shown in bat-like/Dracula-like attire, he sneaks in n out of places as if he is some sorta ninja with high skills. The effects r laughable n why does the poor bat always has to be the epitome of evil? Ther is some nudity, the initial police investigation is kinda intriguing but it all boils down to what did I jus watch. Without any sex operation, a man suddenly turns into an old hag. Now that is some super duper mumbo jumbo technology.

Towards the end of the Shaw Brothers' rein over kung fu cinema, the studio branched out into other genres, enjoying some success in the supernatural horror market. Much of their horror output was typified by black magic storylines with gross-out special effects, Bewitched being one of the best examples.

The film opens with the discovery of the decomposed body of a little girl, a nine-inch spike having been hammered into her skull. A police investigation leads to the arrest of her father, Stephen Lam Wai (Fei Ai) who admits to the murder, but claims that he was under the influence of a spell. Sentenced to death by hanging, the man tells his story to policeman Bobby Wong King-Sun (Melvin Wong), and begs the cop to find out what drove him to kill.

According to Lam Wai, the trouble began when he wooed a pretty young woman, Bon Brown (Lily Chan), while on holiday in Thailand. After several days of being romanced by Stephen, Bon gave her new beau an amulet and made him swear to return to her by June 30th. When Stephen returned home to Hong Kong, he boasted about his holiday romance to his work colleagues (no doubt telling them about Bon's topless sprint across the beach, which is shown in slow-motion), but neglected to keep his promise to return. That's when the crazy stuff started to happen: the amulet caused a large stain on his chest, which sprouted hair, he became impotent, and his daughter began to act very strangely indeed. An old woman told him that he had been possessed and that the person closest to him would try to kill him and the only way to stop them would be to hammer a large nail into their head.

Bobby doesn't believe a word of the killer's crazy story, until he too experiences a scary supernatural phenomenon. Now convinced, he travels to Thailand to investigate, learns that Bon had a spell put on Stephen (the magic involving oil extracted from the corpse of a pregnant woman), and attempts to remove the curse with the aid of an old witch (who performs a ritual with some bad flute playing, a levitating skull, a twig and what looks like a small Wade figurine of a frog). When this fails, he visits a monk, who enters into a supernatural battle with the wizard who cast the spell. Cue lots of yuckiness, including the villain drinking blood from a vat full of dead babies, his face oozing pus, and a nail slowly pushed through the palm of his hand.

Unfortunately, the monk is unable to defeat the powerful wizard, and needs a week to recover before he can try again. During these seven days, Bobby is subjected to a variety of spells cast by the miffed magician, which leads to more madness, including the cop developing an appetite for raw pork liver, a bout of heart trouble caused by a lemon, Bobby's wife being stabbed by a flying knife, and a guy getting dragged under a moving car. Director Chih-Hung Kuei also sees fit to throw in those mainstays of the genre, maggot eating and worm vomiting. Meanwhile, Bobby also has to contend with an escaped lunatic who is causing havoc, having got his hands on a cop's gun (in the film's most shocking moment, the madman shoots a child several times in the chest).

The entertaining ending sees the return of the monk, refreshed and ready for round two, in which he successfully desiccates the wizard, forcing a bat demon to fly out of his mouth!