As the saying goes, people can't look, have you ever thought that the man in the photo who is not good-looking is actually a crazy master of Hong Kong cult movies?
This person's name is Gui Zhihong, a Hong Kong film director who was active in the 80s of the last century, I believe that the friends who have seen his movies should not be young, right?
The director is famous for a "evil" character, nicknamed "The Great Evil King", and has left his own page in the history of Hong Kong cinema with the single-word trilogy of "Evil", "Demon and Demon".
Among them, "Evil" is the most famous, which perfectly combines Hong Kong's local folk customs, Japan's strange talk art style, and Western disgusting cult style, forming Gui Zhihong's unique self-style.
Because of the great success of "Evil", Gui Zhihong has made three other movies with the word "evil" in the title, namely "Evil Fights Evil", "Evil Ends Evil Again" and "Evil Curse".
Today I want to talk about this "Evil Curse" released in 1982.
The film is short, only 1 hour and 16 minutes, but despite this, Gui Zhihong's signature features are just as good.
During the Republic of China, in an alley in a small county town, there was a quaint mansion, which used to be the richest man in the area, but 20 years ago, bandits burned and looted, and the family was not spared, thirteen members of the family were brutally killed, and the body was thrown into the well in the courtyard, and only a mother and daughter survived.
In the past 20 years, strange things have often happened in the mansion, and it is rumored that the body was thrown into the well, which disturbed the earth dragon.
The earth dragon is a god-like existence, since it is disturbed, it will naturally be retributed, and it is not uncommon for the people who lacked knowledge at that time to believe this superstition.
On this day, the mother of the surviving mother and son, Mrs. Shi, held a fiftieth birthday banquet,
The family ate happily, but suddenly Mrs. Shi's only son's body convulsed and died on the spot.
Not long after, the daughter-in-law also died of grief and depression, leaving only two daughters, who were raised by Mrs. Shi.
Because there were no men in the family, and Mrs. Shi was getting older and needed someone to take care of her, the two daughters' uncles and aunts moved in with their own children.
The Shi family has a traditional worship ceremony, that is, every first and fifteenth day of the first year, incense and paper money are burned to worship the tablet of the earth dragon for peace.
On this day, the butler was worshipping as usual, but suddenly there was a vision in the sky, with a thunder explosion, a crow on a tree died violently, just fell on the butler's face, frightening the maid next to him to scream and scream.
The day's bad luck was not limited to this one, first the chandelier fell for no reason, and then the maid was frightened while killing chickens in the kitchen and accidentally set his hair on fire, and was almost burned to death.
In the evening, Mrs. Shi's granddaughter Yulan saw a legendary "blood frog" on the table, the so-called blood frog is a monster with blood stained on its body and steel teeth, if it appears, then it indicates that something ominous will happen.
Yulan's cousin is a gentleman, recently learned hypnosis from nowhere, holding a silver chain pendant in front of Yulan, wanting to hypnotize it to implement misconduct, but the cousin very wittily touched the mirror and bounced the hypnotism, the cousin himself was hypnotized, sobered up after falling to the ground, and directly moved to rape Yulan in anger, but fortunately was stopped by the tutor who rushed in.
Yulan's aunt took this opportunity to directly propose to Mrs. Shi, wanting her son to marry Mrs. Shi's other granddaughter, Yumei, so that she could legitimately inherit the Shi family's property.
That night, Yumei returned to the room and saw the legendary earth dragon in her house, the earth dragon is a strong, python-like, and 10 times thicker than the python wriggling monster, the earth dragon raped Yumei, and spit out red slime to wrap Yumei's body and corrode, after everyone arrived, the earth dragon was frightened and fled through the window, leaving the body of Yumei who was dead.
Just when everyone followed the traces of the earth dragon to find the dry well, and wanted to go down to find out, Mrs. Shi came out to stop it, she said that this was all a fated disaster, all because thirteen corpses were thrown into the well 30 years ago and offended the earth dragon, not only their daughter and son-in-law were cursed to death, but now their granddaughter is also not spared.
Old Mrs. Shi asked the housekeeper to lock the dry well so that the earth dragon could no longer come out to commit crimes, hoping to save Yulan, the only descendant of the Shi family.
The tutor, who felt strange, called the police, and the next day the detective came to Shi's house to investigate, but no conclusions were reached.
Mrs. Shi's physical condition was even worse because of the death of her granddaughter, and she invited a doctor to treat her pulse, and the doctor just said that as long as Mrs. Shi was not greatly stimulated, it would be fine.
Taking advantage of the night, a mysterious man secretly opened the lid of the dry well and threw the animal's internal organs into the well to feed the blood frog.
That night, Yulan was woken up by the sound of stepping on a sewing machine, she followed the sound to the attic on the roof where the debris was stored, when she entered, the sound stopped, and the next day she came to the attic again with the maid to check and found a photo from many years ago, in the photo was the former owner of the mansion, that is, Yulan's grandfather and wife,
But the strange thing is that this lady does not look like her current grandmother, that is, Mrs. Shi.
Yulan also found that the parents written in the family tree with the photo died when they were almost 20 years old, and her sister Yumei also died when she was almost 20 years old, and she took the photo and the family tree to ask her grandmother what was going on.
Grandma said that she was indeed not the original match of her grandfather, but the step-brother who married her grandfather after her original match died, and as for the reason why the descendants of the Shi family would die before the age of 20, it was precisely because of the curse suffered by offending the earth dragon, and Mrs. Shi said that when Yulan was almost 20 years old, she would arrange for her to go to other places to avoid disasters.
In the kitchen, the maid left a bowl of chicken soup for herself, but was poisoned by the mysterious man, another maid drank the chicken soup after seeing it, the poison attacked, although she was not dead but insane, she was tied to the room by her family, and a group of blood frogs climbed on her body that night, because she couldn't break the binding rope, she was bitten alive by the blood frog.
That night, the aunt and son who conspired to seize Mrs. Shi's inheritance poured sulfuric acid on the elevator that was convenient to go up and down when Mrs. Shi was usually in a wheelchair, and the floor of the elevator was corroded the next day, and Mrs. Shi's wheelchair crushed the floor and fell, fortunately, Yulan grabbed Mrs. Shi's hand upstairs, and the detective who happened to be present to investigate the maid's death was very strong and worked together to save Mrs. Shi.
The aunt secretly continued to plan to seize Mrs. Shi's inheritance, but suddenly in the yard, she was dragged down by the ground dragon that drilled out of the pool and turned into a corpse.
In the evening, the aunt and son who spent the day drinking returned home, and in a daze found some scattered strange costumes in a room, if the combination was particularly similar to the earth dragon he had seen before, before he could make a sound, he was wiped on the neck by a firewood knife that appeared behind him.
Another maid in the house was also killed by the earth dragon that suddenly appeared, and the uncle who arrived saw a person who looked like the doctor who treated Mrs. Shi before and fled in a hurry.
Yulan received a note saying that Yulan's current situation is very dangerous, and for details, we will meet in the basement at ten o'clock tonight, but because a mysterious person secretly slowed down Yulan's clock by an hour, the housekeeper who wrote the note waited in the basement until ten o'clock and did not wait for Yulan to come,
Just as the butler was about to leave, the door to the basement was locked outside, and the butler was attacked by a blood frog that suddenly appeared. Yulan heard the voice but still came to the basement and found the bitten butler with a bloody face.
Uncle could not stand the condemnation of conscience, he decided to leave the Shi family, and gave Yulan the power of attorney to monitor the Shi family's property, and told her to check in the dry well if she wanted to know the truth.
That night, Yulan found a tutor to go down the well together, and there were indeed more than a dozen Sensen white bones at the bottom of the well, but the two counted only twelve bones, not the legendary thirteen, there were sparkling rays of light on the wall at the bottom of the dry well, and the two disassembled the wall and found that there was a secret space inside.
At this time, there was a woman holding the child in the dim light, and when she came closer, it was Mrs. Shi, her originally paralyzed legs were not lame at this time, her face was covered with heavy makeup, and she was holding the remains of a baby in her hands.
In the tearing, the bones fell to the ground and shattered, and Mrs. Shi picked up scissors and attacked the two like crazy.
At this time, the door of the basement opened, and a man wrapped in black and holding a firewood knife ran in, and he directly cut off Mrs. Shi's head.
The man in black turned out to be the butler, and he told Yulan the truth of everything.
30 years ago, the army was in chaos, the Shi family planned to take refuge in other places, when Grandpa Yulan's original match could not give birth, so the maid in the family, the later Mrs. Shi, became pregnant with the child, before leaving, the family snatched the child born to Mrs. Shi, leaving Mrs. Shi in the basement to fend for herself, at this time the bandits arrived and killed the twelve members of the Shi family plus the child. Since then, Mrs. Shi's spirit has become abnormal, and this housekeeper's own child happens to be about the same age as Mrs. Shi's child,
So he discussed with Mrs. Shi and made up a story, so that his child, as the only survivor of the Shi family, would inherit all the Shi family's property when he was 20 years old in adulthood, and then split half with Mrs. Shi.
However, Mrs. Shi was later unwilling to let the housekeeper take away half of the property, and killed the housekeeper's child when he was almost 20 years old. When the butler and his granddaughter Yulan leave the basement, the Earth Dragon reappears and kills the butler.
The Earth Dragon's hood was taken off, and it turned out to be played by the doctor, who was hired by Mrs. Shi to disguise as the Earth Dragon to kill everyone who wanted to rob the inheritance.
Finally, during the fight between Yulan and the doctor, the doctor fell into a hot pot of boiling water and burned to death.
The story of this film ends.
It turned out that in addition to the blood frog being real, the Earth Dragon killing and cursing killing were all ghosts that Mrs. Shi secretly made in order not to let people take away their property.
This film uses the two monsters of the blood frog and the earth dragon as the core horror point, supplemented by the suspense point of the man in black who appears in secret, and finally reveals the conspiracy story of a person who eats and dies for the bird.
Such old movies now seem to be very outdated in terms of special effects and storytelling, and some people may ask, so why bother to introduce such a movie?
I think on the one hand, it is to be able to lead the audience who have seen these movies to revisit the classics of that time, and the other is to satisfy the curiosity of some readers, but the most important thing is to leave more marks on such movies.
This unique film style is absolutely unprecedented, and no one can make such a film today.
The disgusting scenes of crows dying, killing chickens, and dealing with animal offal, as well as the strange and sticky body shape of the earth dragon, and the red slime stained with the body, especially the swollen and rotten cult aesthetics of the blood frog, are all impossible to accept by the audience today and impossible to pass the review.
The unscrupulous and unscrupulous shooting methods of such films in those years can no longer be replicated, but because of this, they should be understood and remembered by more people, which was the most crazy and crazy era of Hong Kong cinema.