Devil’s Curse (1988)

Warning: some spoilers to follow!

aka Devil Curse

aka Devil Curse Country

Original title: 猛鬼咒

Hong Kong cop Chan Che (Sun Xing) accompanies a group of his police buddies on a Thailand trip. He’s a bit of the party pooper of the operation, or simply the only one who isn’t a total creep, for he is happily married to Wai (Emily Chu Bo-Yee), and not interested in picking up Thai girls with the lads – particularly since the couple now has a baby on the way.

Alas, things turn into a darker direction when Chan helps a local woman named Chuma (Yip Yuk-Ping) get her wallet back from a pickpocket (and beats up the pickpocket’s buddies, because we need at least a martial arts scene early on). Though he doesn’t show more than polite interest, the young woman is very smitten with Chan. So smitten, she jumps at the offer of a statuette that purports to be a god placed in a cage in her wizard father’s wizard den to help her out by teaching her a fitting spell. Chan is soon ensorcelled and seduced, yet still returns to Hong Kong and his wife.

That is of course not going to be that, and Chan soon finds himself beset by visions, spirits and apparitions sent by Chuma and her patron, all as part of a highly dubious campaign to win him over and – eventually – to get rid of his wife.

Up until the point I’ve left the synopsis of To Man-Bo’s Devil Curse, the film is a pretty typical example of the sub-genre of Hongkong CATIII horror about men from Hongkong cheating on their wives while travelling in Thailand or other parts of Southeast Asia, and then getting beset by black magic problems instead of Glenn Close doing nasty stuff to their cats. It’s a bit milder than many CATIII movies of the type: Chan’s not a shitheel played by Anthony Wong, and the black magic business uses a minimum of centipedes and other creepy crawlies. Even our villainess isn’t quite so villainous, but more the naïve victim of a more dangerous power.

Then, once Chan has lost the fight against his own possessed hand and his wife and unborn kid are dead, the movie takes a sudden left turn into a much weirder, goofier and entertaining direction, when Wai’s cousin (she might be Chan’s cousin, because these are typical HK subtitles) decides to use her dangerous half-knowledge of Taoist magic she has picked up from books her Taoist priest daddy (Kwan Hoi-San) leaves laying around. Quickly, the ghost of Wai and her child are put into a mannequin and an incredibly ugly doll, respectively, and things escalate into sudden vampirism, several magical duels in the inimitable Hong Kong style, and other particularly enjoyable things.

That’s not exactly what I came for or expected from Devil Curse, but when mannequin possession, a wire fu fight between a ghost (in the usual white gown) and a demon guy with an impressively fake moustache, and many a shot of priests and sorcerers shooting drawn lasers out of every orifice are offered, I’m not the boy to complain, nor one to decline.

Director To dips the ever increasing madness into lots of blue dry ice fog, green spotlights and whatever other colour seems to be appropriate at the moment. When he can’t afford a special effect, he vigorously edits around the problem via triple reaction shots; when he can, he’s making sure the audience really notices the effect. Bonus points to whoever chose the music to needle drop, particularly in the finale: going from John Carpenter to John Williams is as bold as it is awesome, and really hits home the main feeling I left Devil Curse with – that this is a film going all-out to entertain you in its increasingly crack-headed and wonderful way.