Y'know? In the whole time I've been doing this channel,I don't think I've talked about "Category III" films on here. It wasn't really by choice per se, it's just never really come up. So today? Let's change that! In its simplest terms Category III refers to a rating system that was introduced in Hong Kong in 1988. Now…I'm not best versed in the history of Hong Kong cinema, so do please bear with me, but from my understanding, prior to 1988, if you lived in Hong Kong, there was no ratings system for films released in cinemas. Instead, rather than policing who could go and see movies, they policed the movies themselves with stringent restrictions on sex, violence and even moralistic takes, an example being that bad guys couldn't be seen to win in the end. Assuming your film met the criteria set out (or could be edited to meet the criteria) your film would be pushed out to cinemas and anyone of any age could go and check it out.
This all changed however in 1986 when director John Woo released a movie called "A Better Tomorrow" , a gangster film that really pushed the boundaries of the then Hong Kong motion picture system. As such, there was an outcry from a cross section of the general public who were concerned that some films may have objectionable effects on children in parallels not TOO dissimilar to the Video Nasty outcry in the UK. After mounting pressure, a law was passed introducing "The Hong Kong Motion Picture Rating System" in November of 1988.
Similar to systems established in the UK, any film that was to be screened in Hong Kong from that date onwards would have to be submitted to the office for film, newspaper and article administration, who would extensively watch the film and grant it both a permit to be screened and a category rating depending on how explicit the content was, with only educational, instructional or religious films being exempt.
Cat I, IIA and IIB are advisory ratings, it's basically at the discretion of the theatre or the parent to determine if they're old enough to watch the movie or not. But Cat III DOES carry some legal implications and most movie theatres carry a legal right to check a person's ID before issuing them with a ticket to see a Cat III film.
With Cat III films being a bit of a broad church you never can quite know what to expect from them, some can be rather mild, a couple of scenes of heavy gore here and there, a few nude shots…that's your lot. On the other end of the wedge however you can end up with extremely graphic simulated rape films, movies of EXTREME torture gore and violence and much much worse.I think it's fair to say these films do NOT fuck around.
So! In order to ease into the world of Cat III nice and gently, today! We're going to be taking a look at 1991's "The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead" a sort of horror, sort of thriller, sort of martial arts movie, sort of action film with just a dash of comedy that within only the first 10 seconds of the opening title card alone, managed to more or less fully win me over! This ones pretty close to the "tame" end of the wedge, but still has a few moments that'd surprise.
The film opens with a montage of clips from moments we'll see throughout the film and a weird, border lounge sounding title theme. This is rather misleading because the rest of the film is effectively a bit of an explosion of ideas and not *quite* as laid back as the theme tune would have you believe. It's here that we're introduced to Shiang Chin-Fei, a history professor at a local university who's out on a field trip with a group of young female students. They're having a bit of a party out in the woods when all of a sudden, the moon turns blood red and a mysterious being erupts out of the shadows and basically massacres everyone, knocking Shiang out cold.
When he finally comes to, it's a bloodbath and he's almost immediately taken in by the police who interrogate him heavily before seizing his passport and releasing him when his brother turns up to pay bail. But the superintendent at the station puts two detectives on Shiang's trail to see if he incriminates himself when back out in the open. While heading away from the station, everything pretty much all kicks off AGAIN when Shiang spots a person who looks almost EXACTLY like the killer he saw in the woods. He almost immediately starts violently wailing on them until the detectives rush in and restrain him, they let him go with a warning that if he tries something like that again, he really WILL end up back at the station.
We then cut to later in the day and a scantily dressed woman called Shaman is enjoying some downtime with one of the detectives who's been trailing Shiang who goes by the name of Chen. Just as things are about to turn a little…heated. Chen gets a message through on the police radio to say that Shiang has been spotted at a particular set of coordinates…and that's problematic because those coordinates, are directly outside the house that Chen and his lady friend are currently hooking up in. They rush outside and it's revealed that Shiang and Shaman have a history together and that he's here to grab the last of his things from her place.Its here that the beginnings of the main plot start to form.
Later that evening a couple are out having sex in a car, when our killer from the opening of the film swoops in, kills the guy and kidnaps the woman. He returns to a makeshift shrine and after some caressing, he basically eats her flesh. The police turn up and begin trying to find clues as to what exactly has happened. When the guy who came to bail out Shiang from prison rocks up again to take some photos of the crime scene (and in particular its moustachioed shrine) before asking Chen if there were any leads on the case. This is Chow. Shiangs somewhat daydreamy brother, and here he's passing himself off as a private detective to try and find out what's going on. He's quickly escorted off the premises.
After searching the site they find some hair samples, which are later revealed to not be of any known human or animal on earth…oh and they also violently explode on a whim. Meanwhile Shiang and Chow head to the university's library, where they're greeted by a specialist librarian who, on seeing the photos of the shrine, takes the pair upstairs to a private archive of restricted texts. It's here that the pair learn of 'The Moon Goddess' a deity from Chinlan folklore based out of Cambodia.
As the story goes, in 300 BC a large number of natural disasters ranging from tsunamis to earthquakes to the moon turning blood red rocked the Cambodian regions. Apparently the tribes of Chinla kneeled and prayed for mercy, at which point a goddess descended from the moon and stopped all the disasters. The tribes were so pleased by this that they set up temples in her name and referred to her as the "God of all mothers" and the "Goddess of the Moon". They also find out that this goddess requires 3 female sacrifices to feast on every so often, or it is believed the natural disasters will return.
The guys put 2 and 2 together and realise that whoever is doing all of these murders must be doing so as part of some kind ritual for the Moon Goddess. And they pretty much head out to try and learn more. Meanwhile, later that night we're introduced to Ma-Tian, a pipe smoking gentleman all in white who seems to have some kind of connection to our blood feasting killer. He raises a concern to the killer that he's being a bit too cavalier and needs to tone things down a bit. He then gives the killer a strange contraption, telling him that in order to regain his full supernatural powers, he'll need a specific type of woman to feast on, and that the device he's provided will begin to bleed when he's near such a woman.
And, almost immediately it starts bleeding when he enters town…and wouldn't you know it, the woman he needs is none other than Shaman. Who is hanging around with Chen while he interviews the librarian that Shiang spoke to in order to find out WHAT exactly Shiang was looking into. With everyone caught up on each others business, our killer hops a fence and tries to kidnap Shaman, a messy fight breaks out in which the killers beaten, shot multiple times and eventually electrocuted in a pool, freeing Shaman and putting the killer in the morgue…where he seems to stay for about 20 minutes until he's had his nap. At which point he gets up and kills the mortician.
Back at the library, the librarian and Shiang are working late into the night to try to get to the bottom of what they're dealing with, and after some nice backing and forthing, the pair seem to be really connecting. Shiang has to leave for the night, but he tells her it would be nice to hang around in somewhat less formal circumstances sometime. Which the librarian seems keen on. Shiang heads out and almost immediately a blinding red light hits the librarian and we cut to Shiang sitting in a police station, being informed that the librarian was found both Decapitated and missing her heart.
He's clearly upset but Chen offers some good news, he's being removed from the suspects list and he can have his passport back. Chen takes Shiang and Chow back to Shamans place where the gang all have a drink and Shiang basically announces that he's going to go to Cambodia to figure out what's going on once and for all. At which point, we hard cut to Cambodia. Where we're introduced to a local tribe with a very in demand princess. She's the object of affection for most of the warriors and princes of the other tribes. The tribe have a simple test to see if the suitor is worthy, they just have to out manoeuvre her in an athletic display (either that or catch her…the subtitles wernt entirely clear) in either case shes fast as lightning, slippery as an eel and agile as a…agile thing. And no ones matched her yet.
It's here that our Gang arrive in Cambodia and 2 things happen simultaneously, almost immediately Shaman gets kidnapped by Mi-Tians goons and our killer rocks up in cambodia and meets our princess, the pair have a violent exchange in which she attempts to blow him up, and he wounds the princess SO badly she ends up passed out on the roadside, where she's found by Shiang and the guys, who take her back to the hotel, heal her up and try to get some more information out of her.
And this, in effect, leads us into our final act. As the princess reveals the killer's true identity, the guys realise that Shaman has been kidnapped and mount a rescue attempt and the true powers of the moon goddess reveal themselves. Will Shiang and his crew manage to stop the curse of the blood moon!? Will the princess put an end to the killer!? And will the other detective who quits the force half way into the film ACTUALLY have a point in this thing? Well…all this and more will be answered if you check out "The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead"
And I've gotta say, this film is an absolute delight. It's a buffet of ideas presented in a fairly clean and concise manner. There's a bit of something for most genre fans here and while, predominantly I'd say this was a martial arts film. I feel like it's a bit of a disservice to categorise this as "Just a martial arts film" because layered on top of that martial artistry we have a decent amount of gory horror, some well managed thriller elements, some tongue in cheek comedy and even a hearty helping of erotica. And it seamlessly dips in and out of all of these genres with tremendous elegance in my opinion, ultimately creating an atmosphere that was just a total delight to sit through.
From a script perspective the things pretty rock solid. We have a decent three act structure that transitions smoothly from beginning to middle to end at *roughly* 30 minute intervals, we have some, more or less rock solid pacing that helps keep the film on track and in the groove, and tonally I think they get the balance JUST right in terms of knowing when an audience will have had enough of one type of genre and when to start pivoting into another thing. For example, the fight sequences are lengthy, but they throw in some more traditional action while the martial artistry is going on in the form of guns, explosions and similar. They try to establish the lore of this world's history, but while doing so they'll also experiment with special effects or just weird visuals that stop those scenes from feeling like we as the audience are just being talked at.
This is a movie thats seldom dull by any stretch of the imagination, and, to be honest, the only floor I found in the whole thing was Shamans kidnapping, which here, is a bit of a scene stuffing moment. It felt to me like the film was underrunning by 10 minutes or so. So in order to hit the 90 minute runtime they basically created a scenario where Shaman got kidnapped and as a result it allowed the rest of the cast to detour into a subplot for 10 minutes to pad out the clock. It doesn't add anything really to the plot other than a VERY minor point about how Mi-Tian requires both Shaman and the history book of the moon goddess for some notorious purpose. Beyond that point, it adds nothing to the plot and about 5 minutes after the guys rescue Shaman from Ma-Tian he leads the group down into a cave system where he kidnaps her AGAIN. Which did annoy me a bit.
I'm also having some difficulty commenting on the dialogue written for this film, in part because it's not in english, and in part because the subtitles included in the copy of the film that I saw, had burnt in subtitles that were in broken english. It looks like whoever transcribed the film for English speaking audiences went down the route of literal translation because there were moments where I had to pause the film and spend a few seconds re-reading (and in some cases re-re reading) lines to not only try and make out what was being said (because the subtitles had no drop shadow, so if the bottom of the screen went white at any point, your not reading them anymore…) but also to then take what was being said and make it make sense in modern spoken English.
Of what IS here that I can talk about, I think there's some decent lines. This seems like a rather minimalist script, it doesn't really waste all that much time with line stuffing. It basically puts across what it needs to put across pretty concisely and then it gets on with the punching and the kicking. Which I think is for the best really. It's a really well crafted script, and having covered a fair chunk of martial arts and foreign action movies in my time. I'd absolutely say this was one of the more solid and entertaining offerings I've encountered.
The script was written by Ho-Kwan Lee he has 6 writing credits with his last being in 1992, being completely honest I don't know if any of these films are more memorable than this one. But this ones a pretty good party, so if this is his best credit. I'd say he did a bloody good job. The film was directed by Chun-Ku Lu. He has 40 directing credits with their last entry being in the year 2000. Again; i'm not 100% sure if they made anything quite as unique as this production in their career. But if they didn't. This is a hell of a good credit to have. Chun was really more of an Actor. With 54 credits in that field, and I *believe* He's still active on the scene in that regard. So I wish him well!
On the direction front, this ones actually pretty solid, this is a relatively complex production given the extensive amount of choreography required for the fight scenes, the wirework and the fact that a decent chunk of the film is shot at night and given all the effects and other weirdnesses that have to be factored into the production. The end result clearly shows that Chun-Ku was on the ball with this thing as we have a stylized end product that really pulls out all the stops, and he clearly had experience of managing all the various crews and teams as here? It really feels effortless.
The same could be said for direction of the cast, who are for the most part incredibly fluid in there delivery of lines, giving the film the exact tone they need, Chun-Ku has helped shape their performances into an animated, decently vocalised and consistent production that's allowed the cast to utilise the set space effectively, there's a real sense that they were encouraged to work with props and the features within the location as there's almost constant movement within the frame, which I thought was a really nice touch.
The fight choreography too here is nothing short of show stopping, we have several keen martial artists pulling out all the stops here, with soft touch combat and weapon play that's worked into incredibly complex pieces of choreography, only enhanced by the speed at which the sequences have been played out AND the choice to speed up the footage to for added freneticism. This is arguably some of the best martial artistry I've seen displayed in a movie in a long time. And implementing the wirework into these sequences as well is what really helps pep up the sequences, giving the whole film a definite lift that takes it from being pretty good, to something truly spectacular.
As for the cine? We're again playing with something really quite nicely handled. Shots have clear thought put into their compositional choices, blocking is implemented effectively and there's a wonderful use of colour throughout with pastels contrasting rich greens, reds and blues to create something very vivid and striking that suits the tone the films going for down to the ground.
There's a lot of experimentation on display throughout, especially within the more effect laden shots, and this willingness to try new things creates sequences that are varied, intricate and genuinely refreshing in a genre that has a real trouble with just locking off a camera and letting two or more people wail on each other, uncut (barring crash zooms) for 10 minutes. This is especially effective in the editing around the fight sequences where they've managed to not only frame the shots PERFECTLY so that the soft contact fighting feels weighty but also to hide any instances where they've had to go no contact. It also makes the scenes with swords, guns and more feel a lot more dangerous than they probably were. Which is EXACTLY what a good, solid sequence should do. It's tight, well handled and looks great. So a big thumbs up from me on this front.
Performance wise? Again it's pretty solid! As mentioned, the cast utilise their set spaces well, they're animate, deliver their lines fluidly, with JUST the right amount of passion and energy this kind of film needed to take it into a slightly more campier area. And critically, they aren't afraid to add a bit of darkness or pathos to their performances where required. Which is perfect for this kind of film as it creates a wonderful contrast of lighter more mirthy moments working in tandem with hard gore, murder and other bleakness. It's great.
Of note; Donnie Yen is a fantastic leading man here as Shiang working a full range across the runtime and effortlessly flipping from acting style to acting style as new situations present themselves. He's a fantastic performer and I can't wait to see some of his other movies to really get a feel on his range in other genres. Pauline Yeung also astounds as the Princess in this, having a real sense of independence and mobility that just isn't seen really in films from this time. She's straightforward, blunt, no nonsense and a total powerhouse here who swipes first and asks questions later. A fantastic performance quite honestly.
Ben Lam as Sgt. Chen is also good and solid, acting as a good foil to Donnie Yen and offering *Just* enough difference to Yens performance to compliment the rest of the cast nicely. That's not to play down the other cast members however, who also excel here. In fact, I honestly can't really think of a bad performance in this thing, everyone seems switched on, in the zone and most importantly it looks like they're having fun. Which is great to see and reflects nicely in the quality of the output.
And finally; The soundtrack! And I think the most distinct thing about this is simultaneously how generic the music is in this film and how tonally out of place it is for this kind of picture. It sounds like lounge muzak. If it was in a romance movie or a comedy, I wouldn't bat an eye, it'd just come across as overly generic, but a relatively reasonable fit. Here? Well…imagine if Terrifer was almost entirely scored with upbeat 80s pop. because that's basically what's happening here. And it's a frankly bizarre but somewhat inspired choice. I can't explain HOW it works, but it's a contrast that I very much got on with. And arguably, given how many of these martial arts movies I've see; it's one of the better scores outside of mainstream examples of the genre.
The Holy Virgin vs The Evil Dead was released on VHS in the UK in 1991 by Eastern Heros Video. I can't find a big box or ex-rental release for this title. It looks like it basically went straight to a retail release. While I cant find any information to suggest the film was cut on its release. Given the BBFC's absolute disdain for the martial arts genre, I'd be genuinely surprised if this movie came out in the UK in '91 without SOMETHING being trimmed out.
It was released on DVD in the US in the mid 2000's but it's long out of print, there's surprisingly little information on it available online and again, I can't tell for sure if it's cut or not. Finally in June 2020 Gold Ninja Video released the film fully uncut on bluray with a wonderful raft of extras and easter eggs, including a full feature commentary, a Donnie Yen retrospective, a trailer pack and not 1 but TWO additional movies included! It was a limited edition set with only 300 copies being produced, but they later ran a non limited, limited edition version that was available via an indie gogo campaign. Which I MORE than took advantage of.
The print quality here is a little rough around the edges, but Gold Ninjas M.O is to present these films exactly as they would have been found in video stores, what takes things to the next level is the fact they provide the supplemental materials that help give the films weight and add story, it makes them come alive in a way that just randomly stumbling on them wouldn't. which I think they've achieved quite nicely here, not only does the film look about as good as it's ever looked on home media, but the extras compliment this set brilliantly, and should it ever become available again, I'd absolutely suggest picking it up.
The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead was a rollercoaster of a picture, with stunning visuals and fight choreography, solid direction, a simple but VERY decently handled script, fun performances that were interesting and engaging. It's lively, weird and wonderful and I think it's one of the best martial arts movies I've seen in a good while. Definitely one I can recommend, I think this would probably pair up quite well with something like "Lady Terminator" So, if you're looking to blow the cobwebs off your martial arts collection, I'd say give this one a go!
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-holy-virgin-versus-the-evil-dead/1/
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