by Simon Ramshaw
Lam Nai-Choi's “The Seventh Curse” opens with a wistful statement from its creator, prolific pulp writer Ni Kuang: “Everyone has many strange things happen around them every day. Every little thing, as long as you're willing to dig deeper, can be turned into a strange story.” He sits in a comfortable armchair, nursing a glass of brandy as Miss Asia contestants listen eagerly to his every word. One may almost think it's the introduction to a “Twilight Zone” tale, one of intrigue and philosophical musing within tales of the weird and macabre. Enter blossoming Hong Kong megastars Chow Yun-Fat and Chin Siu-Ho with a strange story of their own to share, one that blows the viewer's expectations out of the water with a cult Hong Kong horror-comedy gem, filled with booby-trapped ancient temples, flying kung-fu demons and many, many explosions of blood and gore.
The quiet, civilized opening scene immediately gives way to a bonkers SWAT raid that introduces us to our hyper-masculine hero, Dr. Yuan Chin-Hsieh (Chin Siu-Ho), who is not only an incredible cop, but he's also a great doctor and a swashbuckling explorer to boot. (Even Indiana Jones couldn't hold a candle to this guy!) There's only one problem in his seemingly perfect life: he has been stricken with a horrific blood curse after an evil Thai wizard made him swallow a fistful of bullets a year beforehand. Following advice from his wise, pipe-smoking master Wei (Chow Yun-Fat), he heads back to Thailand to fight the evil sorcerer once again to stop his veins exploding one by one.
This set-up is a great start for some hell-for-leather madness. The film doesn't want to stop to question if anything makes sense; all it cares about is getting to the next action set-piece, whether that be a village raid complete with impressive pyrotechnics and a terrific Jeep rollover or multiple kung-fu brawls with a blue-eyed skeleton. It's easy to see the comparisons with Lam Nai-Choi's later work, “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky”, another cult cinema staple that is less concerned with nuanced ideas than it is with bad taste spectacle and bloodletting. For pulp material such as Ni Kuang's novels, this is arguably the ideal approach: don't question anything, just jump into the adventure and see where the river takes you.
And what sights there are to see on this wild journey! Oliver Wong's terrific art direction sets the stage for some wuxia-style fight sequences in a labyrinth of underground temples and cursed burial grounds, and Japanese SFX veteran and “Gamera” suit designer Keizo Murase populates these spaces with some impressive creature design and gore effects. Take the aforementioned battle with the work's spookiest creation: the blue-eyed skeleton known as the ‘Great Ancestor'. Although it's easy to poke fun at the obvious wire-work (all the more evident from 88 Films' excellent 2K restoration), the fluid motion of the skeleton puppet actually feels like a worthy adversary for our martial arts expert hero, delivering punishing spin kicks at his head and sending poor Dr. Yuan face-first into the dust.
Most of the fun of “The Seventh Curse” lies with its extravagant style. Although the performances from beloved Hong Kong stars are hammy beyond belief, they match the tone of the material perfectly. A young Maggie Cheung as plucky, gun-happy journalist Tsai-Hung feels strangely at home in this fantasy universe, and even though all the recognizable faces from this production went on to do more nuanced and subtle work in the future, it's really fun to see them letting their hair down in a movie as silly as this.
Where the movie has aged poorly is in its dismissive treatment of women. Cheung's character in particular is either seen as a pesky annoyance to our male hero or a straightforward damsel-in-distress, and Chui Sau-Lai's exotic Thai love interest Betsy spends most of the movie in chains or completely nude. Balance that against our righteous heroes' gallantry and physical mastery of their foes, and what's left is a rather unfortunate relic of chauvinism at its peak.
Once again however, that's the type of problem many of us are willing to forgive in a dated “Indiana Jones” movie because of similarly impressive action and spectacle. View “The Seventh Curse” as an object of pure entertainment that's unconcerned with deep thinking or political subtext and there's a great time to be had in its brief 83 minutes of your time.
