Once a year, the Gates of Hell are opened, and lost souls are allowed to briefly roam the Earth. During this time, a rotten-faced ghost visits his son, played by Billy Chong, and asks him to get revenge on the man who killed him. Being a dutiful son, Billy agrees, but he quickly gets in over his head when he comes into possession of a book of spells his father’s killer needs to become invincible.
Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave is a fitfully amusing hodgepodge of horror and chopsocky. While it certainly has its moments, the valleys in between the peaks are often long and laborious. As a Kung Fu movie, it’s rather undistinguished as the fight choreography is pretty standard issue stuff.
However, the horror elements are goofy enough to make it memorable. According to the film’s mythology, evil spirits from Hell can be bribed just as easily as living men. This explains the hilarious scene where the villain is cornered by the heroes. Fearing for his life, he resorts to throwing a stack of hundreds in the air and shouts, “Count Dracula! Come to my aid!” There’s an explosion, and Chong and company then must do battle with Dracula while the villain makes a hasty retreat.
I actually had to stop and rewind this part to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
That scene is a keeper. Too bad the rest of the film is brutally uneven. For every ho-hum Kung Fu fight, there’s a scene with a zombie with Mr. Fantastic arms or a part where someone gets their heart cut out while fucking. Maybe if there was just one more sequence on the level of the Dracula scene, it might’ve been enough to tie it all together. As it stands, Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave makes for a decent companion piece to the similarly themed Billy Chong horror-martial arts flick, Kung Fu Zombie, which was released the previous year.
No comments:
Post a Comment