Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave
Tagline: “This is a deadly ghost. In life he was a poor bum. Now he’s a worst ghost.”
Year: 1982 Runtime: 89 min
Director: Lee Chiu
Writer: None (it must have wrote itself)
Starring: Billy Chong, Lieh Lo, Sai Aan Dai
What to Expect: Kung Fu. Magic. Zombies. Count Dracula.
What You Need to Know (there be spoilers here):
Oriental zombies have very little in common with their Occidental counterparts. Oriental Zombies hop. They wear WAY too much theatrical make up. They can talk, communicate, follow orders and directions, as well as other feats of language mastery. They can be stopped by magic bookmarks (i.e. a slip of paper with magic words rightly placed on their foreheads). Finally, they are compelled to follow a ringing bell.
Actually, this movie has very little in common with anything as we have come to know it. Magicians aren’t old guys with ZZ Top beards and child molester robes. On the contrary, they are bad-ass and know Kung Fu. Ghost are not intangible ectoplasmic entities, they have physical form, and should one interrupt a person practicing their Kung Fu, they get their asses handed to them just like any other chump. And if you think vampires are hot, young things that spew sexual intensity, guess again. Count Dracula is a British chap, who for a few burned dollars, can be summoned to aid in the magician’s fight against whatever (more in Sixth Point of AWE-some).
They story is pretty straight forward Kung Fu revenge stuff. Chun Sing’s father was murdered. Now that Chun is of age, he must avenge his father.
Oh, yeah. One last thing, that’s not actually the tagline. I couldn’t find one. That is a line from the film. It was so awesome I substituted it for the tagline.
What [Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave (Yin Ji)] Delivers:
5 Mesmerizing Menances (out of 5) ‘cos It’s Bad Ass is Why!
First Point of AWE-some: Brand X actors. The first I call Edward James Almost. Everyone has a twin, and this guy is the Chinese Edward James Olmos. His dermatologist prescribed a double barrel blast of salt-rock to complete the illusion. The second, Black Magician (Sai Aan Dai), I call Chen Carrey because he looked like the Oriental love spawn of and Jim Carrey and The Rock.
It is believed the reason his eyebrow is always up in a inquisitive arch is ‘cos the muscles that control that part of his face died in the stroke that gave him his magic powers. I personally think he does it to look cool.
Second Point of AWE-some: The Score. Despite what Whale Wars preaches, Orientals don’t all hate whales. If they did, this movie’s soundtrack wouldn’t have been supplied by mating whales. Unfortunately, most of the subtleness of the music was lost because it was well beyond the range of my Occidental ears.
What I could hear was terrible.
Third Point of AWE-some: Walls in the Orient. This is just a general point of AWE-someness as far as Kung Fu movies are concerned. Why did they even bother building walls? I mean, everyone in The Orient knows Kung Fu and anyone who knows Kung Fu can easily jump over walls. This rule applies to most things, i.e. horses, zombies and women.
God bless their little yellow hearts, their perseverance is inspiring.
Forth Point of AWE-some: Kung Fu Magic. No matter how charged up, nor how bad ass, all Kung Fu Magic has 8-bit sound effects. 8-bit sound effects are, of course, the digital equivalent of dropping pots and pans.
Which brings up another aspect of Kung Fu Magic: with it, one can turn a human heart into cherry pie filling. Directions: extract hearts from chest as normal (see note), place in pot on alter, apply Kung Fu Magic™ and viola, cherry pie filling. A quite delicious between meal snack, or salve of invincibility.
Ah, So: One must use pure hearts, harvested from the bodies of two lovers who have both just reached orgasm, simultaneously.
Fifth Point of AWE-some: Communicating with the Dead. Like I wrote earlier, there is little in this movie that we Occidentals recognize. This is yet another example. The process involves burning incense, or when translated into American English, signaling in morse code. Quite literally, as Chun is burning incense to communicate with his dead father, they dub-titled morse code sounds.
Flips and movements might not need whoosh sound effects, but at least it accentuates the Kung Fu Kool. But burning incense needing a sound effect? Morse code? Really?
My hangup aside, the dead, though nestled comfortably in their coffins, will hear the scented signals. If the signal is too weak the dead have amplifying antenna that boost the signals, bamboo sticks. They just push the coffin lids open a bit and wiggle them around.
Ah, So: In The Orient, bamboo works better than aluminum foil.
Sixth Point of AWE-some: Count Dracula. Suppose you need some help from the dead, but you don’t want hordes of mindless zombies. What do you do if you want something more, something that packs more of a punch? You fan out $20 in one dollar bills (you could spend more, but why?) and light them on fire. As you do this, call for Count Dracula to come to your aid.
Literary Re-enactment:
Outside – Courtyard – Night
You
(igniting 20 singles)
“Count Dracula, come to my Aaaaaaaaiiid!”
Count Dracula flies in, stage left.
Count Dracula
“Here I aaaaaaammmm!”
Count it!
Seventh Point of AWE-some: Flaming Meatball Attack. I know it sounds like hyperbole, ‘cos it is, but I flipped a big-ole-boner when I saw the Kung Fu Flaming Meatball Attack. It’s like Ryu’s hadōken (the ah-WOO-jit attack), except it’s a meatball.
Mmmmmm, meatball.
Eighth Point of AWE-some: Yellow Snatch Smoke. A fart is not only funny, it is the ultimate combo breaker. Yet, the best defense, better than Kung Fu, better than Kung Fu Magic™, even better than summoning the undead, is Yellow Snatch Smoke.
Ah, So: Yellow Snatch Smoke, also known as Kung Fu Punani Poo-gas, is yellow and thick, like a carbureted engine burning oil.
While Chun is hunting for his father’s remains, a deadly ghost decides to get fresh by looking down the “whiny” girl’s pants. Up to that point she’d been nothing but a nuisance, suddenly she has a AWE-some super power. She uses it to spray Yellow Snatch Smoke™ on the offending zombie.
That zombie… he didn’t make it.
Parting Quickshots of AWE-some:
- What’s longer than the final fight in a Kung Fu movie? Dracula vs. Zombies, in a Kung Fu movie.
- Chan Carrey gets off to rubbing hot incense on his bare chest. It makes his magic more stronger.
- If you’re in Orient, and you drink unmarked bottles of formaldehyde and play the number game over coffins, the dead will come back to life.
- Chun tries to find his father among all the undead. He remembers that his father has 6 fingers. He looks at a couple, finds one that clearly only has five fingers, and calls out, “There you are. I found him!”
- Even maids have a special Kung Fu attack, Hot Hand-Towel Toss. They toss their hot hand towels on your face and, well… it’s quite nice. (Equivalent to Superman Cellophane S attack from Superman 2: The Wrath of Khan)
- At the end, Chon Carrey has a final stand fight with three heroes. Of course, he gets his shit crushed, it’s three on one for Christ’s sake. Just before Chin Carrey dies, he gets the last word when he coughs, “Three against one, it would be pretty amazing if I’d have lived.”
The Last Word: This movie is so AWE-some it made me want to touch my friend’s pee-pee, and I’m not gay or nothing. Or maybe I am. Regardless, anything that makes me want to give a Has-Been Handjob™ to the guy sitting next to me on the bus, is the stuff
The Occident Was Founded On
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