Weird Asia
This section lists extreme Asian movies of a specific kind: The often cheesy and over-the-top commercial horror movies of Hong Kong, Indonesia and sometimes Thailand and Philippines as well. The approach in these countries are unique in that they are bizarrely creative but juvenile, sometimes grotesque and sick but blackly humorous and campy, imaginative and energetic but commercial. Japan and Korea have a completely different approach to their twisted movies and are therefore not included here. Most of the these films are part of the notorious Hong Kong Cat III genre which basically focuses on sex, gore or nasty violence. Only the most extreme are included but keep in mind there are scores of other Asian horror titles that border on the bizarre but that keep most of the nastiness off-screen, and/or wrap it in a comedic or campy package, which doesn't come off as twisted, only imaginatively and crazily energetic.
Some names that stand-out include Ngai Kai Lam who often goes more over-the-top than any of his peers, Herman Yau, and the actor Anthony Wong Chau-Sang who is frequently cast in twisted, psychopathic roles.
Some noteworthy titles that didn't quite make it to this list are: Seeding of a Ghost, The Eternal Evil of Asia, Calamity of Snakes, The Rape After, Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind, Centipede Horror, Blind Warrior, Special Silencers, Excuse Me, Please!, Succubare.
One of the more confusing messes of the Cat III genre that seems to think throwing in the kitchen sink is a good idea. For the first half we get a confusing hodge-podge of scenes that set up characters, police mysteries and back-stories but are very hard to put together. Then the movie focuses on a supernatural kidnapping-revenge, sex-oriented, snake-and-phallic-creature-swallowing, evil possession and battle of wizards police-thriller plot that revolves around some cops and a brother in search of his sister who are after an evil sorceress and her weird wizard friend who kidnap, possess, command, and have sex with female slaves. Features a variety of magic, and a battle on the astral plane a la Zu Warriors.
An Indonesian unofficial sequel to the HK Black Magic series and one of the relatively more gory and wild Indonesian fantasy flicks. A village is plagued by black magic and blames a local woman who was spurned by her lover. She takes revenge with the help of the local evil wizard and kills her assailants one by one while a local holy man fights against them. Features lots of enetertaining magic, exploding boils and skin, worms and maggots, insect attacks and the gory centerpiece: a man pulls off his head after which his head flies around attacking people.
Crazy supernatural Hong Kong movies are a dime a dozen but this unique entry looks and feels like the unholy union of Jodorowsy's Holy Mountain and HK horror. A boxer has to avenge his brother being paralyzed in the ring by a Thai boxer while getting involved in a much bigger fight between good and evil, a Buddhist monk who is near-immortal and kept in a jar and an evil sorcerer and his pupils. The boxing is good but short, the preparation with the monks and the supernatural fights being the jaw-dropping stars of this show, featuring animated crocodile skulls, dessicated bats, lively Sanskrit writing moving between jars and skin, an evil buddha shooting laser beams and turning into a naked dancing witch, bubble-gum skin and dozens of other bizarre visuals. And this one actually has some atmosphere instead of typical HK cheese. Entertaining craziness.
Over-the-top campy sci-fi-horror-action entertainment by the maker of Ricky-Oh. The convoluted plot involves good and evil aliens on earth, undead cats, secret weapons, museum artefacts, cops and the supernatural all-knowing adventurer Wisely. The movie supplies one scene after another of over-the-top action including a dog vs. cat fight involving cat-fu that must be seen to be believed, a mutating electrifying monster that transforms itself into various bizarre creatures a-la The Thing, undead body snatching, a flying woman, over-the-top machine gun battles, etc. Crazy, entertaining camp.
Two part HK fantasy extravaganza based on a traditional Chinese tale of magic and Buddhism. Mix over-the-top Honk Kong fantasy madness and imagination with Stephen Chow's typically insane, bawdy and very silly slapstick humor and the result is this confusing romp. A Monkey King, secret scriptures, spider women, talking bulls, grapes that turn into priests, time-travel, insane magic-fu that doesn't repeat the same weird maneuver twice, as well as gang crotch kicking to put out fires and instant pregnancies. Energetic, entertaining madness but too silly.
Like Sex & Zen, this Hong Kong sex comedy goes over the top with even more crude and shocking humor yet for all its perversions, insane sex and tortures, it never feels too sleazy. The story involves a girl sold as a maid to a rich scholar whose slutty wife gets jealous over. When the girl discovers the wife's affairs, she soon finds herself married to a local peasant with a monster penis. This isn't enough however and the adulterers plot to frame them for murder. The movie jumps from one outrageous scene to another such as creative sex toys, exploding penises (literally), rape by an invisible man who inserts his penis ummm...in the wrong place, lots and lots of quick creative tortures like a man planted in the ground whose head is cut open and made to jump out of his skin, and the pièce de résistance: the famous drop-dead hilarous sex-kung-fu scene where a man and a woman battle it out with sex techniques (super oral sex, undeafatable tongue, hammering, spinning sex, flying sex, etc).
A by-the-numbers kung-fu film about an evil master and the people he abuses who come back for revenge after being trained by a quirky, old kung-fu master, but the heroes this time just happen to be cripples. One has a stump instead of both arms and the other has useless stick legs, and both are very adept with fighting skills. They team up to complete a whole and use their disabilities to their fighting advantage in every way imaginable. Has a forgettable kung-fu plot, yet you can't take your eyes off the screen.
Somewhat early HK gore-horror madness in a medium-length movie. The plot involves some mysterious experiments with mutant creatures, a forced teenage girl made to carry the child in her womb, a vicious humanoid cyclop that can mutate and spring various limbs out of his body, some lovemaking between teenage girls, and a gory mutation ending to rival a cheap Yuzna flick.
Cheesy, laughable but insanely whimsical fantasy action from Indonesian Ratno Timoer and Barry Prima. The story is about an evil nymphomaniac Queen who kidnaps and hypnotises men, and both good and evil warriors, wizards and witches, all of which fight for power and a mystical sword. A typically cheesy over-the-top martial arts and fantasy extravaganza from Asia except they decided that anything goes in fantasy so people come out of a mountaintop and fly on a rock, shoot laser beams from their hand, fight crocodile men and a silly cyclops robot, go underground, disappear, and kill a witch who just survived being cut in half by kicking her head into a crevasse.
A 90s style supernatural Cat III upgraded with a modern look by the maker of Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome. Although it's not as out of control and sleazy as before, he still doesn't shy away from the extreme stuff like baby mutilation and nasty gore. The plot involves a cop, some cop killings, revenge, a curse placed on his wife and baby, and the expected counter-curse magic and battle of the wizards. There are plot twists but the ending makes no sense. Curses include the by-now cliched centipedes inside people, exploding babies, flying decapitated heads and the violence includes blowtorching a completely ripped up hand. Darkly entertaining.
Thai insane production mixing the cheesy and colorful Japanese juvenile 70s superhero genre with a bloodier, not-so-juvenile Hindu god Haneman and visions of hell. The human-bug Kamen Riders are doing their karate with evil, cheesy-mask-wearing bad guys one minute, and Haneman is crushing human beings while bad people are being boiled, decapitated or made to climb spiked trees the next. The mentality here is 'more-is-more', with endless fighting, giants, flying motorbikes, pig and chicken headed humans, exploding eggs, blood-sucking machines, kidnapped scientists, etc. Crazy stuff.
By the maker of Men Behind the Sun, an exploitative film about the treatment of illegal immigrants in Hong Kong. The sleaziness and abuse are so over-the-top that the groups of immigrants start resembling masses of cattle flesh like in Goodbye Uncle Tom as they are violently beaten, stripped, played with, tortured, raped, abused and sold. The police are the least of their worries, as they are grabbed by criminals who fight amongst themselves to own more immigrants and make money off their helplessness. Wild humanity at its worst.
A neglected Cat III shocker with Anthony Wong that tells the violent and dramatic tale of a psychotic wife beater who repeatedly rapes, suffocates, beats and humiliates his wife in various ways, and the cop who gets in his way. After some stalking and hide-and-seek where the wife changes hands several times, the movie reaches a gory, violent finale. The exploitative, nasty rape scenes are often cut in most prints.
A bizarre Indonesian horror movie that is so bad, it's entertaining. A dumb American comes to Indonesia to study their magic but quickly finds herself literally in over her head, when the evil witch takes control of her soul and body and makes her head detach daily (complete with spine and entrails), and fly around eating blood and unborn babies. Other bizarre and extremely cheap special effects include transformations into beasts, zapping wars between witch and wizard, flying fireballs, long tongues that tattoo spells with electricity, and more. Only for people that love bad oddball movies with horrible dubbing.
Another wild Hong Kong sleaze-fest about a weakling who uses his grandpa's medicines and herbs to concoct a poison that turns anyone into a desperate nymphomaniac and addict, and best of all, they forget everything the next day. He soon puts this to good use for revenge against various women and men who have been cruel to him or whom he lusts after, and the story turns into a kind of nasty 'revenge of the nerd'. This power gets out of hand however and things get very violent and depraved. Mediocre, but somewhat wickedly entertaining sleaze.
Non-stop unpredictable horror madness about a family that moves into an evil apartment that promptly possesses his wife and child and causes mayhem. Partying ghosts eat dog meat, a mad grandmother stage performer, a fat kid bully, the hypnosis of a fat butcher who is used for sex while rolling around in pig carcasses, a werewolf woman with hairy, flexing mutating boobs, a horny, African warrior, and a Hare Krishna hi-tech exorcist are some of the elements that somehow make up this silly entertaining movie.
A unique entry amidst the swarm of evil-magic HK Cat IIIs with imaginative and wild spells and gory animal death in the jungle like something out of a Cannibal movie. A group of reporters specializing in the occult, release an evil dwarf sorcerer from his jar-prison and hang out in the remote village when evil magic starts to create havoc and the villagers turn into a lynch mob. Most of the movie consists of strange goings-on and battles of magic between wizards and priests. This includes: a cursed girl surrounded by vicious scorpions, gory flying scorpion attacks, magically controlled bodies flung through the jungle, pig-slaughters, a possessed man taking bites out of a live chicken (nasty!), a movie reel machine grinds a man's hand to a pulp, treatment of a possessed woman by water-torture wheel, various indescribable forces of evil, and a hijacked soundtrack from movies like Rambo.
A notoriously gory kung-fu splatter movie that is so over-the-top, it achieved a cult classic status. Superhuman strength allows the fighting characters to punch through bodies, smash skulls, literally break apart fists, jump through steel, sew their own tendons back together, rip out their own intestines to choke opponents with, etc. Ricky is a hero sent to prison where comic-book villians (who keep getting bigger and badder) make his life extremely difficult. Collateral damage to the prisoners includes imaginative slashings, choppings, and smashings, all adding up to make this rank in the top 5 goriest movies ever made. The only problem is they filmed it as a cheesy kung-fu flick instead of a comedy. A very entertaining bad movie.
Crazy and very silly Thai self-conscious spoof on zombie movies with plenty of dumb, bad-taste humor, cgi special effects, gratuitous nudity and blood-splattering, flying body-part gore. The Sars virus creates fast-moving zombies while a group of dumb thugs kidnap a girl and it's up to the old master, his battery operated light saber and his super-virgin apprentice to save the day. Humor ranges from running over a bear-suit-clad guy to transvestite seduction and violence. There's a huge snake thrown in to make more cash, and the plentiful gore is played for laughs, avoiding any truly gruesome splatter.
Of the scores of Hong Kong crazy supernatural action movies, this one stands out as being one of the more extreme, with gore, nastiness, adventure, camp and violence. A man saves a girl from the worm tribe and is cursed with vein popping disease where his skin explodes. Teaming up with a wise adventurer (Chow Yun Fat), he goes back to the tribe to find a cure and finds himself battling flying piranha demon-babies and glowing skeletons along with ninja monks, a screaming reporter and a rocket launcher.
Bizarre sexual comedy from the East, featuring (among other things) a horse penis transplant, near death through excess sex, sadomasochism, and scores of impossible sexual positions. Weird soft-core porn with a rich production as only Hong Kong can make. Not at all dark, just surreal and very excessive.
Insane Thai spoof on the J-horror genre involving ghosts with long hair and plot twists. 7 neurotic nurses obsessed with their looks work with a doctor (whom they fight each other for), who sells corpses and has a strange relationhip with another doctor. When they kill one of their own for stealing a man, she comes back to take revenge. The editing, cinematography and horror set-pieces are over-the-top, amusing and confusing at the same time, piling on the weird ideas for every scene. Some examples: A nurse's hands are possessed and she runs around sticking her face in ashtrays and drinking from a water dispenser, another nurse is smothered in tons of hair then dunked sideways into an aquarium, another gets a cellphone genetically fused to her cheek, and another nurse is forced to swallow razor blades, after which her jaw falls off, her cat eats her tongue and an embryo from a jar is stuffed into her throat. Features about 10 endings where the plot folds over itself again and again, one of them involving the birth of a grown woman a la Gozu.
Stephen Chow made quite a few insanely over-the-top comedies but when he becomes Inspector Gadget you know things are going to get crazy. This is another chaotic, cartoonish movie jam-packed with sight gags, spoofs, silly toilet humor and wacky comedy that features Chow as a spoiled rich boy who washes in a swimming pool and plays pranks on his classmates (like blowing up the toilet while they're on it). After he gets in trouble with a mafioso, his mad professor turns him into a robot (with a faucet for a penis) that can transform into anything and he puts this to good use at the local violent school and against thugs. Amongst the endless wacky scenes is the one where he transforms into a toilet, a toothpaste tube complete with paste and a moving logo, and a spoof on Pulp Fiction involving bad needle aiming. Silly entertainment.
Hong Kong shocker about a very violent man who takes over a restaraunt that sells pork chops. His victims, whom he gets angry at for any triviality, soon get chopped up and end up in.. well lets just say they help the policemen solve the case. A very gripping performance by the lead actor, some uneven humor and typically sloppy HK storytelling, some gore and rape, and no-holds-barred politically-incorrect brutality.
A classic Hong Kong fantasy flick that started the supernatural era of martial arts mixed with fantasy and manic special effects, and surprisingly, it remains one of the most insane of them all until today. It starts innocently enough with two warriors finding themselves in an insanely colorful civil war, escaping to a magic mountain where they encounter a swordsman and monk and some ladies that are fighting a Blood Demon, etc. The special effects gradually build up from flying martial arts to long magical eyebrows, flying old men chained to boulders, an evil rock, and a slew of magical weapons, until the incoherent climax featuring psychic battles in another dimension with light rays. Entertaining, but too messy.
Energetic MTV-style madness and silliness from Thailand. The story is a mix of murder-mystery with a 'drum-fu' path to spiritual perfection complete with duels to the death between drummers, and drum-sex. A boy and a girl trained by a drumming master start a band, train for the ultimate duel with the dark master while running away from the raccoon-like police who suspects them of murder. The star of the show is the editing which resembles an extended MTV interlude where an editor cuts together anything he could find while under the influence of drugs. Jokes and crazy visuals fly by quickly making the silly story sillier. But, like MTV, it gets boring after about 3 minutes.
This sequel in name only isn't another entertainingly insane sex comedy but a grim collection of nasty characters and torture with lots of sex and gory swordfights thrown in for good measure. Two down-on-their-luck couples and a strong man with a dark past vow eternal brotherhood, but when the man gains a powerful position and lusts after his friend's wives, his repressions come out in cruel ways. Features many torture scenes like hot wax down people's ears, 1000 cuts, rape with a calligraphy brush, sodomy, death by a huge burning dildo, lips sewn together, etc.
Another in the wave of shocking Cat III movies that came out of Hong Kong in the 90s. This one tells the tale of a girl abused by her family and raped by her drunk, philandering father until she snaps and goes on a murder spree. Mixed with the explicit nastiness is lots of nudity and sex, and extremely silly humor like having the policeman fondle or pose with a corpse.
A typically insane and fast-moving Hong Kong horror flick with horrible dubbing and cheesy acting but this one goes for extreme gross-outs in the form of a virus inflicted on people by a ghost that makes them break out in boils and abscesses, burst in gree goo, and vomit pus, blood, worms, centipedes and snakes. The story around these lengthy and gross centerpieces is silly drama and comedy involving a manipulative and cruel man who marries into a family with a hotel and abuses them to no end.
Insane Hong Kong supernatural flick reminiscent of Zu Warriors mixed with a typical Ghost Stoy revved up and mixed with every effect imaginable and the kitchen sink. There is no real plot and instead, the movie follows a supernatural slimy devil that starts off in a vase, rapes and impregnates a woman, erupts as a fetus, possesses a dog, fights a wizard with rapid, lowest-budget computer-game special effects, invades a birthday cake with worms, squashes a man in a sauna, makes a young guy eat dog guts, throws furniture around like a poltergeist, fights a sword expert with teleportation, and much more. A mess with flat acting.
A later cash-in on the Hong Kong shockers that tries to imitate mostly Dr Lamb. A serial killer in jail reminisces his life story as he murders prostitutes in order to allow them to reincarnate into a better life. This saintly motive however doesn't explain why he irons his victims, plays with their corpses, slices off body parts and skin, blows up a whore with dynamite, and lusts after everything that moves. His wife and a love interest lend some drama to the proceedings. This one is mainly nasty in intention, not visuals, since it doesn't actually show most of the gory activities.
Hong Kong commercial shocker about a psychopath who grew up as a slightly perverted kid and then clubbed bad girls in his taxi cab, then took them home to photograph their nude corpses, chop them up or enjoy some necrophilia. The police try to track him down and work out the details of his murders. Features an unconvincing but interesting off-the-wall performance, and some gory breast slicing and body chopping.
I'm not sure if the movie is so confusing because it's so terrible, or because it's truly insane. Three idiots escaping from something or another follow some strings in a forest and get entangled with a kind of evil vampire in a forest who keeps his Dad/master under the ground. Random people appear and then die or are hypnotized by some magic while the three stooges all easily seduce the local slut/village daughter, or are these just dreams? Hands popup out of the ground or out of bowls, the waitress's pants fall down after an encounter with evil, a swastika with magical powers turns out to be completely useless, a tortoise and a log provide an motorized escape, the vampire wears a mask for no reason, a chicken appears out of thin air, and there's some mud-pie-fu like something out of Karate Kid.
An exceptionally nasty Cat III movie by Hong Kong standards made by the 'Untold Story' team. A perverted, violent, demented man kills his boss whose wife he was in bed with, then runs off to South Africa where he works in a restaurant, contributing various body fluids to the customers' diets. While shopping for meat at the local Zulu tribe, he rapes one of the dying locals and contracts the Ebola virus from her. Soon he is on the rampage infecting everyone he meets, forcing girls to pleasure him and killing and chopping up his new boss. Will the authorities catch up with him before hundreds more are killed?
After the conventional nude ghost fantasy of part I, this unrelated sequel goes for the oddball instead. The plot involves demons and fairies of lust who have gone wild, battling it out with humans who attempt to pacify them with virgin sacrifices. Not too much erotica here and instead we get scenes of eyeball-licking, lots of people making endless silly faces and sounds, a detachable fairy who doesn't feel anything when her upper body is detached from her bottom half, and a warrior Buddhist midget who turns into a fireball. It's all too silly to be entertaining though.
A lesser Cat III shocker from Hong Kong mixes gore, sleaze, rape, nudity and a touch of nastiness in a story about a psychotic who kills people to make shoes out of their skin. Features typically silly Hong Kong drama and action, lots of explotaitive nudity, and a stand-out scene with a poster of a woman with her mouth open, a luckless duck on the other side of it, and one very disturbed and horny man.
A throwback to the 90s Cat-III exploitation shockers. This one tells the simple tale of a prostitute who gets herself in trouble with a violent criminal who tortures and humiliates her for days until the expected end. Forced coprophilia, burning plastic torture and a thorough beating are some of the niceties in this pointless nasty that doesn't even have over-the-top gore and sex to draw in the exploitation crowd.
Early Hong Kong shocker tells the tale of a young guy with a twisted and brutal past who is constantly tread on and abused by gangs, employers and whores. He befriends the snakes who have their gall bladder ripped out at the nearby restaurant by sewing them up. Soon he goes on a vengeful rampage, sends his snakes and lizards to bite, rip and even rape his abusers. Features endless sleaze and some S&M sex.
Hong Kong Cat III extreme sleaze about a rapist with a dark past that makes him react violently every time he sees a girl wearing red. When a local retarded girl learns to dance and puts on her red dress, he turns into an animal yet again and rapes her but is seduced by her innocence. The law is no help and when her teacher tries to stop him by teasing him with red, things go way over-the-top with more rape, gore and an unconvincing primal rage.
Whereas the first was mostly hardcore porn with some kink and nastiness, this softcore Cat III lays on the ultra-sleaze. A psychotic woman with a dark past goes around dressing in ultra-trashy clothes, seducing men then killing them in various nasty ways, then keeping a bodypart as memorabilia. A cop is on the trail, as are some co-workers, one of which falls for her secret world of lust. The weird kink from the first is taken to the next level, with one scene having her dangle her lover on a rope in a skull mask and a flapping sheet, and another scene featuring sexual torture by octopus and stapler. Non-stop sleaze and nastiness.
This time around, the owner of the bun restaurant is a weak man with a slut bitch for a wife. A psychotic bitch from the mainland joins them and sets her eye on the weak man and his business. Sick and gruesome events ensue including the expected dismemberment and cannibalism. Not as disturbing as the first and the gore is minimal, but twisted and nasty nevertheless.
Like Mystics in Bali, this HK low-budget bizarro features a curse that makes a woman's head fly off along with her entrails to search for blood. Features lots of typical HK over-the-top magic and witchcraft-fu, a powerful dark wizard and a buddhist who fight it out, and lots of cheap special effects with various flying objects and laser beams. It even has some gore.