The Seventh Curse

source: The Seventh Curse

This movie is packed with action, gore and eastern occultism, all the necessary ingredients for my 10 star blessing.

The Seventh Curse is an effective and off the wall action/horror hybrid made in Hong Kong. This is for the most part set in Thailand where our lead Chin Sui Ho gets into trouble by trying to save a local girl from being sacrificed. They get caught and he must return to Thailand again to do battle with evil priest(played by Elvis Tsui) to rid himself of The Seventh Curse so he dosen't die. This is heavily driven by action and kung fu , which was choreographed well and looks great. Plus add some of the cheesiest looking monster f/x on celluloid, lots of nudity and gore, an early performance from Maggie Chung as a reporter and a short but memorable appearance from Chow Yun Fat who joins the party smoking a pipe and wielding a bazooka. Overall, The Seventh Curse is a very entertaining flick where all of its excesses work in its favor and for this, I am all in. Great movie!

Dr. Yuen (Siu-Ho Chin), a young, impetulant man (he is erroneously referred to as a cop in the summary), is on an expedition in Thailand to find herbs to treat AIDS, when he interrupts a local tribe's ritual in order to save a young woman with whom he's infatuated who is about to. He and the woman are soon captured and cursed, he with a Blood Curse, she with a Ghost Curse. A year passes and the Blood Curse arises to remind the doctor of his deed. He must venture back to Thailand to stop the curse from killing. Together with Dragon (Dick Wei), a Thai native who lives in the area Dr. Yuen visited, Wesley (Chow Yun-Fat), Su (Sibelle Hu Hui-Chung) and annoying reporter Tsui Hung (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk), Dr. Yuen travels back to the origin of the curse. It is a good thing Dr. Yuen carries and arsenal and is accompanied by Dragon and Wesley, because his own M.A. are not what one expects in a Golden Harvest Film. Dr. Yuen has 7 days to stop the curse or die. Each day at the same time, an artery bursts somewhere in Yuen's body. The 7th day, his heart will burst. Not exactly a countdown anyone wants. He has to deal with crazy Sorcerer Aquila, Aquila's henchmen, a bizarre "demon" which resembles a sperm with fangs and what is supposed to be a flying God to reach the Buddha concealing the cure for the 7th Curse. I do feel sorry for any black hued animal in Thailand after watching this. If you ignore all the times Dr. Yuen gets his butt handed to him, the M.A. in this is pretty good. The special effects are good for the era. A rocket launcher is used to save the day. So, if you like explosives and wasting bullets, this is a good one to watch. There are cameos of Golden Harvest vets in this movie that make up for some of the campiness. I gave it a 7 for the cameos and the M.A. sequences.

Most of my life grew up watching Hong Kong movie,they really know how to mix martial arts with other genre like comedy,horror that gave us many classics movie like:Mr Vampire,A Chinese Ghost Story..... the list go on and went i found out the director of Riki Oh(probably the most goriest and crazies kung fu movie ever) Ngai Choi Lam has made a horror comedy before that called:The Seventh Curse with Chow Yun Fat( my personal favorite Hong Kong actor ever) so i really excited to check it out and I'm kinda disappointed right now.Don't get the wrong idea i still appreciated for what it is: a dumb,silly over the top black magic movie mix with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom plus a ton of gore, kung fu fight scene featuring fake monks and a funny plastic skeleton called Old Ancestor soon later turned into a ridiculous winged monster(that totally look like a man in suit) fighting a small baby looking monster.If they keep the level of bizarre like this i would not having any problem but the things is the whole movie feel so rush and fast pacing that some scene in the movie just magically end without any explanation which make me very upset because i thought i was watching the cut version of the movie so i check the IMDb and found out it actually the run time of the movie: 1h 18min can your guys believe it ?

Anyone familiar with the Hong Kong movies from the mid- to late-eighties will know exactly what they are getting into here with "The Seventh Curse" ("Yuan Zhen-Xia Yu Wei Si-Li) from 1986. This is a typical action movie from that period of time, where Hong Kong cinema also blended into elements of comedy and, of course, martial arts into just every movie. As is the case with "The Seventh Curse" as well. The movie is rather enjoyable on several accounts though, although my main reason for watching it was because of Maggie Cheung and Chow Yun Fat. But aside from them, then the movie is actually a fun and good action comedy with a hint of supernatural thriller as well. Lots of action, a fast pace and a good story. The story in "The Seventh Curse" is about Yuan Chen (played by Siu-hou Chin) who has been stricken with a deadly Thai blood curse, a curse that will claim his life in a matter of days. In order to lift the curse, a special seed must be found and consumed. But the path to salvation in Thailand is filled with peril in the form of a wicked sorcerer, an undead ancestor and a tribe working to keep foreigners away from their sacred temple. For a movie from 1986, then I will say that the effects were actually quite good. Of course, by todays standards then they are fairly bad to look at and anything but dazzling. But I found the effects to be good enough, and the undead ancestral skeleton was actually quite cool. Wooden in his movement, sure, but cool in concept and appearance. And as cool as the skeletal ancestor was, just as equally bad was the strange 'ghost' creature that looked sort of a mutated hybrid of an infant and a scorpion. It was so badly made and so bad to look at that it was actually funny. One thing I did wonder about was why all Thai people in Thailand (or at least the ones in the movie) were speaking Cantonese and not native Thai. That was just odd. Perhaps a choice made back in the day to cater the movie for a Hong Kong audience and not have them reading subtitles. Perhaps it worked good enough back in 1986, but today not so much. "The Seventh Curse" is good entertainment if you enjoy these cheesy mid- to late-eighties Hong Kong movies. I did enjoy the movie and am rating it a 6 out of 10 stars.

I have seen true ULTRA-VIOLENCE in films many times in my life, but the last 10 minutes of this movie surpasses anything I have ever seen or imagined. BLOOD SPLATTERING every which way in frighteningly large volumes. This is the GORIEST movie I've ever seen. Make sure to get the German Director's Cut (81 minutes) ---FSK ab 18---, and you will love it!!! :-) Gruß an: Tony, Andy and Tobi.

The slick Dr Yuan who' s searching for an Aids cure stumbles across a sacrificial ceremony to an ancestral god in the jungles of Thailand. So he risks his life to rescue Bachu and because of that he receives a blood curse from the evil sorcerer. For about a year or so the curse was halted, but now it's starting to affect him again. Pockets of blood burst from his veins and the seventh time it happens will kill him, so he must venture back to rid this curse that could kill him in a couple of days. Honk Kong's take on an Indiana Jones film you could say, is rather over-the-top nonsense and incredibly comical. It fascinatingly dives into action-horror-adventure-fantasy mode, but there's no real substance behind it and cohesion. Though, saying that this mixed hybrid does equal a lot fun with it dabbling in black magic, martial arts, shootouts, sacrifices, gore, nudity and broad comedy. So basically this extravaganza is high on energy with its lively action set pieces and strong violence that overshadows the illogical and ludicrous plot that has some scenes which are totally unbelievable to comprehend. The way it starts out you may think it's just another normal action/martial arts film, but then you'll see how offbeat this adventure really is. Low-budget special effects fill the screen, which are fairly shoddy (walking skeleton, which are a bizarre sight) or there are some decent and memorable creations. Such as the little demon imp that looks pretty horrendous and that goes for the attitude too. The transformation scene of the ancestral demon, which kinda resembled that of the monster in "Alien", is pretty well arranged and it looks fairly good. The score was fairly forceful and energetic, but sometimes it got too sappy. Jumpy camera-work went hand-to-hand with the frantic pace. The performances were all over the place and some just got on my nerves. Chow Yen-Fat has only has a small role, but he makes the most of it. The dialogue is incredibly stilted tripe, but hey it goes with this camp and the humour on show was slapstick and rather juvenile. Well-staged and creative deaths are achieved to great impact. Graphic face peeling and bubbling, kids getting crushed, ripping body parts and body spilling out maggots are just some of those. The backdrop made great use of the dense jungle setting and that of the ruins and temple; especially the massive Budda set-up. We're also given a graphic climax with an abundance of guts and flesh and a big body explosion to end it. There's even room for a moral to end the story with and it's delivered in a rather cheesy way. It's nothing else more than exploitation/supernatural/action galore with tremendously high-spirited stunts (when they go flying by force they really fly across the screen) and buckets of blood.

THE SEVENTH CURSE is an unusual little film from Hong Kong, set in Thailand for the most part and featuring plenty of action and very little plot. It's a dark horror/fantasy that has its basis in the queasy Hong Kong horrors like BLACK MAGIC and HEX, as the central character discovers that he's been put under a 'blood spell' which spells imminent death unless he can kill the evil wizard who put him under it. This is the most popular of the Chinese film series featuring the character of 'Wisely', a pipe-smoking professor who fights evil in his spare time. Chow Yun-Fat essays the role here, but as this was before he really hit the big time, he doesn't have a great deal of screen time, although he does make the most of when he appears and that bit at the climax is a hoot. Chin Siu-Ho is a rather stolid lead, and the storyline gets saddled with an ultra-irritating Maggie Cheung as a reporter who tags along for the ride. But the supporting cast is much better: Joyce Godenzi (EASTERN CONDORS) shows up alongside Sibelle Hu, Kara Hui, Yasuaki Kurata, and best of all one of my favourite Hong Kong stars, Dick Wei, who ISN'T cast as the bad guy for a change! Seeing Wei rip up the screen on the side of good is a real treat, and makes this a film impossible to dislike. Elsewhere, THE SEVENTH CURSE is a film fuelled by effects-enhanced mayhem, featuring all manner of bizarre creations. There's the usual army of black-clad cult members, some acrobatic Buddhist monks, a couple of living skeleton monsters, and creatures that look like the alien from ALIEN in both baby and adult form. The effects are rubbery but fun, and there's plenty of artery-spraying gore for the horror fans to enjoy. Alongside ALIEN, a big inspiration here seems to be RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, as THE SEVENTH CURSE has the same kind of madcap, action-heavy exotic adventure. It may not be high art, but it is a lot of fun.

This could be discribed as a splatter version of Indiana Jones. Throw in some martial art scenes, stupid looking monsters and a dull Chow-fat, and The Seventh Curse is what you get! It's stupid and badly acted, but the entertainment value is huge. This is what entertainment is all about...