Nature of Shame:
Unwatched 88 Films Blu-ray
Hooptober ’21 Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1980’s
Asian Cinema
Country: Hong Kong
BEWITCHED ELEVATOR PITCH
Shaw Bros. sponsored PSA about the dangers of casual sex. Complete with super-earnest post-movie title card. But really gooey.
IDLE BEWITCHED MUSINGS
This one doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I won’t spend much time trying to make sense out of any of it. It opens with a guy defending himself against the charge that he killed his daughter. His excuse? She was possessed by evil spirits and had to hammer a spike into her head to end her suffering and save his own life. You see, he traveled to Thailand, hooked up with a long-lashed honey and contracted a mad case of Gong Tauuuuuu! He’s been cursed and evil things happen all around him. His daughter trying to kill him just happened to be one of those evil things.
Our protagonist, a very lazy detective, heads off to Thailand to investigate the man’s claims where he also contracts a mean case of Gong Tauuuuuuu! Gong Tau is less a hex and more of a voodoo monk that pulls the strings from a safe, unnamed location that cost very few of the Shaw Bros. precious dollars to secure for long days of filming this wizard monk voodoo guy relishing the pronunciation of various hexes like “Hairy chest!” and “Strangling spell” with Chyron generated titles beneath.
Things get really wacky when the detective finds a good crazy voodoo monk to do battle with the evil monk. For 90% of this 45-minute battle they’re not even in the same room and they can’t even troll each other on the Internet. They’re squaring off remotely with mind powers and incantations. It’s not until they confront each other (with one extra wandering through the airport like she got lost on the way to craft services) that they come face-to-face.
Elsewhere you’ve got worm vomiting, maggot eating, pregnant demon ladies with goopy yellow snot, bursting bubble blisters… the list goes on and on. Thankfully this ooze and goo and GONG TAU! fest clocks in 101 minutes. Any more and GONG TAUUUUUU! might have worn out its welcome.
FINAL THOUGHTS
While I can’t say that Bewitched bewitched me (sorry about that), it did lead me to Kuei Chih-Hung’s follow up feature, The Boxer’s Omen (1983), which amplifies all the crazy I enjoyed in Bewitched. Maybe I’ll even write about it. Until then, stay out of Thailand and if you must go to Thailand, please keep it in your pants… because GONG TAU.
I watched Bewitched on an 88 Films Blu-ray.
2021 @CinemaShame / #Hooptober Progress
#1. Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965) / #2. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) / #3. Bewitched (1981)
James David Patrick currently writes for DVD Netflix. He’s written just about everything at some point or another. Add whatever this is to that list. Follow his blog at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com and find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
