The Oily Maniac

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 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.

Danny Lee plays a crippled guy who has polio.When he visits his uncle in prison,waiting for the execution,he gets a special spell thanks to the tattoo on his back.Since this day,the man can turn into the oily maniac super hero,who slaughters a bunch of criminals."Oily Maniac" is one hell of a hilarious monster flick.The main idea is completely crazy:a man can turn into a pool of oil.The special effects are primitive,but the action is fast and there is a good deal of nudity.The plot is silly,but who cares.If you like to see cheesy monster rampage and lots of breasts this low-budget monster/super hero flick is a must-see.I'd give it 8 out of 10 just for the sheer pleasure of watching this trash.

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.

After casting a magic spell and covering himself from head to foot in oil, cripple Shen Yuan (Danny Lee) transforms into an oozing monster to seek revenge on those who have wronged his family.

I'd been sitting on director Meng Hua Ho's The Oily Maniac for quite some time, waiting for the right moment for some seriously silly and ridiculously outrageous Shaw Brothers exploitation. I think I got my expectations up a little too high. While the film does deliver a memorably daft 'man in a rubber suit' monster, AND plenty of gratuitous female nudity (nearly all of the women get their jubblies out), it fails to completely live up to its wonderfully wacky premise and promising title, the creature not nearly maniacal enough. Where I had hoped that the man turned walking oil slick would kill countless bad guys in an OTT gory fashion, he merely swats most of his adversaries to the ground. Only one victim goes out in style, his head crushed by the oily maniac, but it's all too brief.

While I can't be too harsh when rating a film that gets the lovely Ping Chen (as Shen Yuan's love interest, Little Yue) to strip off more than once, or that features so many loud shirts (every bad guy wears one), I can only bring myself to rate this cheeze-fest a middling 5/10. The Mighty Peking Man, which also stars Danny Lee, is a much more satisfying slice of Asian trash from the same director.