The Oily Maniac

Nowadays you are a monster if you spill old-fashioned polluting fossil fuels, or even promote their use, but in 1976 it was a wonderful product that made you a superhero! By obtaining an ancient Malaysian formula, the pathetic, crippled, and insignificant lawyer assistant Shen Yuan discovers that he can turn into a powerful warrior as soon as he comes into contact with oil or an oil product. Sure, he may look like a walking pile of petrified feces, but he's super strong, can jump incredibly high, and even liquefy himself to move faster. Which member of The Avengers can do that; I ask you?

To be honest, I'm not too familiar with the work of the infamous Shaw Brothers, and I expected "The Oily Maniac" to be different. The fighting/martial arts sequences are well-choreographed, like I assumed, but was hoping for trashier & smuttier B-horror instead of all the nudity and rape scenes. Every girl in the cast is forced to go topless, and many of them don't look too comfortable. There also isn't much of a plot. Shen Yuan transforms whenever he witnesses injustice, kills a few bad people, and carries on. The police are quite useless, as they literally state: we suspect everyone except for the cripple guy. There are a few pulpy highlights, like when the superhero-creature beats someone to death with his own bicycle, but the film certainly isn't a must-see.

Shaw Brothers movies aren't really known for being chill, but The Oily Maniac was particularly lacking in it. It's very silly, which is good, but it's also one that goes a bit far with the sleaze and assaults against women. I get that you get some of that in movies of this kind, but it's a short movie and there were at least three scenes featuring the latter, and at that point, it makes me start wanting to ask uncomfortable questions about the director's motivation for making this film.

Still, when you get the Oily Maniac doing his thing, it's goofy, funny, and probably will prove memorable. His appearance and the sounds he makes always proved amusing. He can turn into oil, or he can be a hulking humanoid covered in oil. He also has to immerse himself in oil to use these powers, which leads to some funny stuff. At its best, it feels like a goofy and more hardcore update to the sorts of tragic anti-hero monsters found in the old Universal Horror movies of the 1930s and '40s... kind of.

So the film follows him as he uses his powers to get back at people who've wronged him while also being something of a vigilante. It's basic, stupid, perverted (not the good kind of perverted, and probably too frequently perverted, too), but if you think you're the kind of person who'd enjoy a Shaw Brothers movie called The Oily Maniac, then you will enjoy the Shaw Brothers' The Oily Maniac.

I watched this bad boy last night and I simply loved it!

If you are looking for usual Shaw Brothers' martial arts extravaganza you better to skip this one. There's only couple fighting scenes and they ain't nothing special. Oil Monster likes more to stomp, pound and strangle peoples to death than bust some kick-ass kung fu moves.

But if you are B-movie fanatic like me and you like flicks with monsters in the bad costumes, you will love this movie too! Story is based on the old Chinese folk tale.. Crippled man learns magic spell from his uncle who is sentenced to be executed The spell turns him into a Oil Monster and it's payback time! Monster starts to kill bad guys like there's no tomorrow..excellent!

'You gui zi a.k.a Oily Maniac' ain't horror, I would categorize it as a cheesy superhero tragedy. Yeah, that's right..

Monster itself is like when Superman meets Mr. Hyde and Swamp Thing. This Chinese Toxic Avenger is really cheap looking in bad costume with shining yellow eyes and heart stuck to the chest. Special effects are hilariously poor, especially when Oil Monster turns pool of oil and starts to move around.

'Oily Maniac' has lots of nudity and lots of sexual violence. Every Female character shows their boobs, except Lily Li. Don't show this film to your feminist girlfriend because there's plenty of rape scenes that she couldn't handle.

This movie could be more entertaining with more gore. There's couple of smashed skulls, but nothing more. This might be filmed at same time with Black Magic (by same director Meng Hua Ho), as many of the locations looks pretty similar. The plot is entertaining and acting isn't bad, actually pretty decent. Danny Lee shines in this as usually.

In overall, if you want to see piece of Chinese b-movie cult cinema you need to check this one out.

I also recommend Meng Hua Ho's King Kong -rip off 'The Mighty Peking Man'.

I give 'You Gui Zi' a.k.a 'The Oily Maniac' 7 1/2 oil-stained corpses out of 10

I was gonna say something about as I was watching this it just felt like I was watching a special flick, a cult classic if you will. Of course, some other user comment says the same thing. Well, TS! The Oily Maniac is a memorable and fun trip down slimy monster revenge road!

Story revolves around revenge and the moral of "justice will prevail". They say that in the movie, that this is the moral. With Uncle Ping(?) being unfairly put to death, our handicapped hero learns the secret from Uncle to get even with the baddies who are causing all this havoc. And with the directional tattoo copied off of Uncle's back, our hero will now be able to turn into, The Oily Maniac! Watch out sleazy bad guys, cause your about to get greasified!

The film is just basically our Oily Maniac taking out each bad guy that he's aware of. Pretty simple, but pretty entertaining as well. The Oily Maniac can turn into an oil slick which he can use for stealth attacks and even travel at faster speeds, though he's no slouch at running or jumping either. He also has the power of regrowth! And of course, yelling when he's about to strike.

With some fun sleaze and action to be had, the Oily Maniac delivers in the areas that it needs to be an entertaining flick. My only real gripe is the lack of any real gore. If the deaths were more gruesome this film could have been a classic, but instead it's just a cult classic. By the by, someone needs to write South Park and tell them to do a spin-off episode with Jimmy as the Oily Maniac.

This cheesy highly 70's Hong Kong feature immediately gives you the impression that you're going to regret watching it. From it's immensely 70's feel, terrible dialogue and cheesy plot I expected the worst and maybe that's why I came out the other end pleasantly surprised.

Don't get me wrong The Oily Maniac isn't exactly a great film but it's not terrible either.

Arguably a superhero movie our hero gains the ability to turn into The Oily Maniac whose powers are essentially to be a man made of *Wait for it* oil! Though the plot isn't exactly original our leading character certainly is and though you may find it laughable and perhaps hard to get behind the character it is definitely memorable.

This is a film I'd happily see a western remake of as the concept is a lot of fun. A bit of a higher budget to overcome the terrible 70's sfx and maybe make it either R rated or more tongue in cheek (This one doesn't know what it wants to be) Better yet here's an idea The Oily Maniac vs The Greasy Strangler Can you smell the potential? Make it happen Hollywood