The Vineyard

  

The Vineyard

1989

Director- James Hong

Cast- James Hong, Karen Witter ,Michael Wong,  Sherri Ball, Sean P. Donahue, Karl Heinz Teuber

            Veteran character actor James Hong (Blade Runner, Missing in Action, Big Trouble in Little China) is known for memorable supporting roles, but The Vineyard has him taking center stage. Hong wrote, directed, and starred in this entertaining, sleazy horror film.

            Hong plays Dr. Po, a renowned winemaker whose vintages are sold for enormous sums. In reality Po is a sorcerer who has prolonged his life thousands of years by absorbing the Chi energy of his victims. In some confusing way, his victim’s Chi is also used to make the wine, but that’s not that important.

            Po has a dungeon full of beautiful, lingerie clad women that he keeps chained up  until it’s time to absorb their Chi. The bound harem includes his wife who he found having an affair with one of the servants. After their energy is absorbed, the victims becomes  undead zombies. Po tries to keep the creatures buried with sacred earth, but they periodically climb out and roam around at night.

            As he needs a steady supply of energy, he invites a group of young wanna be actors to his island, under the auspices that he is shooting a movie. One by one they start meeting disastrous fates (including one that coughs ups spiders!). Po gets a surprise when one of the young people (Playboy Playmate Karen Witter) turns out to be a woman of a particular destiny and Po plans on sacrificing her to appease some  gods to which he  is indebted.

 

  

            James Hong’s most famous role is the demonic Mandarin David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China. On the off chance that you haven’t seen Big Trouble ,stop reading this and go find a copy as it is one of the most fun movies that you’ll ever see. If you have seen Big Trouble, The Vineyard could very well be an origin story for David Lo Pan. Both movies have 1) Hong playing an immortal sorcerer who alternates between young and old 2) a beautiful girl that must be sacrificed to appease the gods 3) plenty of Chinese lore. All that’s missing are three kick ass supernatural henchmen.

            Hong’s film career goes back to the mid1950s and includes literally over 400 acting credits. Surprisingly though, in a 70 year career, he only directed 3 feature length films.  He directed two exploitation films in the 1970s (Teen Lust and Hot Connections) and then nothing else until The Vineyard in 1989. The Vineyard isn’t an Academy Award winner, not by a long shot, but it is a competent, entertaining horror film. It’s hard to believe, with the sheer size of his career, that Hong never returned to the director’s chair. I don’t know if this has been by his choice or simply a lack of opportunities.

 

            The Vineyard has good practical effects and make up (having been made before CGI). It has a generous helping of nudity like any good video store era horror film. This isn’t the movie for someone wanting a subtle, character driven drama. But if you want something fun, then try The Vineyard.

Fun fact #1- Along with Big Trouble in Little China, James Hong starred in another  dark fantasy steeped in Asian lore, The Golden Child. That film also featured his Big Trouble costar, Victor Wong.

Fun fact #2- Still wanting more Asian themed James Hong horror? Check out the bizarre Ninja 3: The Domination.

 

Black Magic

 

Black Magic

1975

Director- Ho Meng Hua

Cast- Ti Lung, Lo Lieh, Tien Lie, Lily Li, Ku Feng, Ku Wen-chung

            Shan Chien-mi is a rather vile necromancer for hire that specializes in death spells and love spells. As such, much of his clientele is jilted and jealous lovers. As the story begins Shan is hired to kill a young couple in love. He does so but is discovered and run out of town by the local good sorcerer, Master Fu.

            Shan relocates to the big city and is hired by a con man to make a rich widow fall in love with him. Shan casts the spell but the con doesn’t pay his bill so Shan smites him with a death spell (note: always pay your debts to necromancers). As it happens, the widow, who is rather hot and hot to trot, has unrequited love for another young man so she employs Shan. Shan casts the spell but decides he wants her for himself so he puts a spell on her. Deception and intrigues abound until Master Fu finally catches up and saves the day. The final battle between Fu and Shan is way over the top silly, involving psychic lasers and force fields, but Shaw Brothers isn’t exactly Lucasfilms, so I think we can forgive the campiness since the film ,up to that point, is pretty solid.

 

            The intrigues make the film feel a bit like a soap opera but luckily the story is saved by some colorful scenes. Though not gory throughout, it does have some surprisingly effective horror imagery, usually involving the necromancer’s spells. He carves off flesh, sets corpses’ heads on fire, worms appear under people’s skin, etc.

            Shan is also a bit of a perv. It seems like one of the main ingredients in his spells is breast milk and he likes to get it straight from the source of his female clients. There isn’t a lot of nudity, this is Hong Kong in the 70s after all, but there is enough to add a salacious edge to the film.

            The most interesting part of the movie to me was the occult lore involved. I know next to nothing about Chinese sorcery, so I don’t know how much was genuine folklore and how much was Shaw Brothers creation, but it was bizarre enough (from a Western point of view) to seem like it was at least legitimate folklore. Things like, melting a corpses’ face to extract spell components, inserting bamboo into a pressure point to allow worms to escape, or eating centipedes to cure insanity make a welcome change to the Western horror that usually just involves splashing some Holy Water and waving a crucifix.

Fans of Shaw Brothers films will see a lot of recognizable faces, but otherwise it doesn’t feel like a Shaw Brothers film. There is no kung fu and I don’t think any of the Deadly Venoms make an appearance.

Fun fact- This wasn’t the Shaw Brothers only venture into horror. Though known for action films, they made several other horror films over the years. Their best known horror movie (in the West) was their collaboration with Hammer studios, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. They also made The Enchanting Shadow, the first movie adaptation of the Nie Xiaoqian story, which was the basis of A Chinese Ghost Story.

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

School of the Holy Beast (Holy Beast Academy)

1974

Director- Norifumi Suzuki

Cast- Yumi Takigawa, Emiko Yamauchi, Yayoi Watanabe, Yōko Mihara, Fumio Watanabe

            

     Maya (Yumi Takigawa) is a young girl who takes her vows and enrolls in a local nunnery. We soon find out that Maya is surreptitiously trying to gather information about her mother, who was also a nun and died there mysteriously. Maya crosses paths with Ishida (Emiko Yamauchi), a rebellious nun who delights in questioning authority and seems intent on getting herself kicked out.

Throughout the convent Maya finds a combination of repressed sexuality and religious abuses.  Along with the cruel nuns, the convent is visited by a sinister priest. Father Kakinuma (Fumio Watanabe who genre fans may recognize from his role as the villainous Yagyu in Lone Wolf and Cub) is a charismatic figure who the older nuns adore. He carries on affairs with the nuns and Maya learns a horrible truth; that she is his daughter. When her mother got pregnant, the Father abandoned  her and she was abused by the jealous nuns (who secretly wanted the Father’s attention) until she committed suicide.

The senior nuns learn Maya’s true identity and warn her to leave but she refuses. Maya is intent on destroying the convent from within and gets help from the rebellious Ishida. To deal with her, an Inquisitor is brought in on the pretext of sniffing out any heretical witches. Another nun is tortured to death and Maya herself is condemned but is able to turn the tables. She seduces Father Kakinuma, and reveals to him (after the sex) that she is his daughter and he has committed the damnable crime of incest.

Most examples of “nunsploitation” have two recurring themes; religious abuse and lesbianism. The best examples of both of these combining artistically in a movie are the Mexican films Satanico Pandimonium and Alucarda. School of the Holy Beast is not as sexually graphic as those films or other examples of 70s lezploitation. This is Japan after all with their taboo against showing genitalia (an odd taboo considering the other things that they are quite OK with; school girl tentacle sex anyone?).  

What the film lacks in graphicness it makes up for in creativity. We see two young nuns make love in a garden, a topless nun flagellate herself, two topless nuns forced to whip each other for stealing food, and the most memorable scene in the film, where Maya is bound with rose vines, the thorns digging into her naked breasts.

As for the religious abuse, this film seems much more relevant than perhaps it did when it was made. The abuse in other similar films is of the more abstract kind; accept our way of thinking, bow down to our authority etc. With the subplot of the Church covering up the Father’s sexual excesses, perhaps this film was rather prescient.

As is true with any nunsploitation film, School of the Holy Beast is filled with sacrilege. The most shocking is when a nun is forced to drink water with a crucifix between her legs until she urinates on it, which then serves as proof that she must be a witch. This is definitely not a movie for anyone who is offended easily.

Now, from my description, you might be expecting some bit of soft core torture porn along the lines of Ilsa She Wolf of the SS. Despite the themes, however, School of the Holy Beast is not really that prurient. While there are a fair amount of naked breasts, the nudity is only a means of storytelling and not the story itself. The movie reminded me of another Japanese film from the same era, Lady Snowblood. That story also involves a woman seeking revenge for something done to her mother before she was born.

I think maybe the most important thing about the film is that it’s a nunsploitation film NOT told from a Western point of view. In the West, most people are mono-religious, often seeing believers of other religions as (at best) naively ignorant or (at worst) an out-right threat to their own beliefs. But not so in Japan. As the expression goes, “Born Shinto, Married Christian, Buried Buddhist.” School of the Holy Beast gives us an East Asian slant on what has traditionally been a Western sub-genre.

Dangerous Seductress

  

Dangerous Seductress

1995

Director- H. Tjut Djalil

Cast- Kristin Anin, Tonya Lawson, Amy Weber, Joseph Cassano, John Warom

From Indonesia 

            

    The movie opens with a frenetic, violent chase. Police are in hot pursuit of jewel thieves. The chase ends with a crash and blood spilling on the ground. From that ground rises a succubus, the Queen of Darkness (Amy Weber). The problem is, only her head is formed. Her body is still rotted flesh and bones. She learns real quick how to solve that when a poor dog tries to gnaw on her leg bone and she lops its head off.  She absorbs its blood and this restores most of her body. However, she can’t go out looking for more because some kind of earth spirits have her pinned in place.

        

   Meanwhile, across some continents, beautiful blonde Susan (Playboy model Tonya Lawson, billed as Tonya Offer here) is finding out what a jerk her boyfriend is. Not only is he late coming home for their anniversary, he then beats her and rapes her! This has apparently happened before but she decides enough is enough and hauls ass.

            

     Susan’s older sister Linda (Kristin Anin) is also a beautiful blonde (good genes in the family I guess) who is working as a model in Indonesia. Big sister lets little sis crash at her pad while she goes off to some exotic locale for a photoshoot.  As it just so happens, Linda has a grimoire of Indonesian black magic because someone gave it to her for her birthday (because ,you know, that’s what you give people right?). She has left it lying around and Susan, not having any copies of TV guide, decides to give it a whirl. Not only is she able to read it but she summons the spirit of the Queen of Darkness, who appears in Susan’s mirror. The Queen promises her beauty and power if Susan will just let her use her body. Susan agrees and then goes out to do the Queen’s bidding.

    Susan walks the streets and haunts the nightclubs picking up guys, seducing them, killing them, and draining them of their blood. She then reports back to the mirror where she slits her own throat so that the mirror can absorb the blood for the Queen (that’s a pretty original idea, I have to admit). Things hit the fan when big sister returns home from her work trip.

            

    I have seen the film listed with the title Evil Queen, with a date of 1992, but its most commonly listed as Dangerous Seductress with a date of 1995, so that’s how I have it listed here.  Just watching the film, it’s hard to tie it to any particular era. It has a 70’s disco opening theme, the whole thing in general seems like an 80s B film, but the fashions are definitely 90s. All of the Caucasian expats filling up the background look so 90s you can almost smell the Drakkar dripping off of them.

   

   

 The director is Indonesian, and despite its American leading ladies and English dialogue, the film is very Asian and reminds me of the genre films being made in Hong Kong at the time. The beginning, especially, reminds me of the HK  movies of that decade, not because of its quality certainly, but the wild originality. The production values are low but the creativity is high where as in America things trended in the opposite direction. That pretty much summed up the difference between Eastern and Western cinema at that time.

            

     The film has something for everyone; shoots outs, vampirism, folk magic, underground spirits, a floating head, a dismembered  finger walking around. The one thing it doesn’t have is any nudity! A whole film about a succubus, staring a beautiful Playboy model, and there is no nudity? Tonya Lawson was in so many skimpy outfits, you think they could have tossed us a complimentary nipple, but no. This was typical though of Asian cinema at the time and to a much lesser extent even today. In the 90s, the Japanese might have been pervs making cartoons about school girls being raped by alien octopuses, but they shied away from explicit sex in their live action films. Even today there is a general taboo about showing genitalia. There are 2 scenes, one with the Evil Queen and one with Tonya, where the actresses are nude, but they’ve covered over the naughty bits with special effects to make it look like their nipples are glowing energy balls (!?!?). You can find uncensored stills on the interweb, but what print those are from, I don’t know. Well, in any case I’m sure that glowing energy nipples is somebody’s fetish.

            

     To put it straight, most people will not like this movie. Its low budget and cheesey. But if you want something different, or are old enough to remember getting bootlegged VHS copies of laserdiscs from Asia, then you may find something you like here.