Difference between revisions of "Hell Has No Boundary/Review"

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< Hell Has No Boundary
 
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The following year Yang Chuen delivered another ghoulish ghost story for Shaw Bros; the insane [[Seeding of a Ghost]]. Star Derek Yee, who plays Ah Chung, appeared in a whole host of Shaw Bros classics but has also had a very successful career behind the camera directing such films as the sexploitation satire ‘Viva Erotica’ and the brilliant urban noir thriller ‘One Night In Mongkok’.
The following year Yang Chuen delivered another ghoulish ghost story for Shaw Bros; the insane [[Seeding of a Ghost]]. Star Derek Yee, who plays Ah Chung, appeared in a whole host of Shaw Bros classics but has also had a very successful career behind the camera directing such films as the sexploitation satire ‘Viva Erotica’ and the brilliant urban noir thriller ‘One Night In Mongkok’.


As can be expected of all Shaw Bros horror output at the time ‘Hell Has No Boundary’ moves at a lightning pace right up to it’s bizarre and unpredictable climax which features the murder of a naked nurse, a meat cleaver decapitation and a character attacked by their own reflection in a scene which is almost identical to one in Sam Raimi’s [[The Evil Dead]].
As can be expected of all Shaw Bros horror output at the time ‘Hell Has No Boundary’ moves at a lightning pace right up to it’s bizarre and unpredictable climax which features the murder of a naked nurse, a meat cleaver decapitation and a character attacked by their own reflection in a scene which is almost identical to one in [[:Category:Sam Raimi|Sam Raimi]]'s [[The Evil Dead]].


{{Narcan}}
{{Narcan}}


[[Category:Reviews]]
[[Category:Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 15:34, 21 December 2019

Review of Hell Has No Boundary

Young policeman Ah Chung takes his girlfriend May on a camping trip to celebrate her birthday. That night May’s sleep is disturbed by nightmares of a crusty faced midget monster and in the morning she is behaving rather strangely. She viciously attacks a small boy with a roasting fork and attempts to drown him but when Ah Chung intervenes May seems unaware of what she has just tried to do.

The 2 return to their jobs on the police force but May is severely reprimanded by her superiors, Inspectors Ho & Wong, when she shoots dead a serial rapist who is holding 2 children hostage. May’s bitchy colleagues Dumb Sis & Lady Killer gloat, thinking that this means May is no longer competition for promotion, but the 2 of them meet a grisly end when the floor of the elevator they are riding collapses in a shower of sparks and they plummet to their deaths. It seems that anyone who irritates May meets a similarly gruesome fate.

When Inspector Wong maintains that May is not ready for promotion following the shooting incident he finds himself suddenly cornered in his office by a snake and a doberman. He survives the attack but his sister, Madame Chi, is convinced that he is under threat from an evil spirit. She tries to protect him with some hocus pocus of her own but ends up with a knife stuck in her throat. She still manages to communicate with Ah Chung from beyond the grave to reveal that he and May were brother and sister in a previous life. They were refugees during the war with Japan and a truly terrible fate befell the infant May. Her spirit has been waiting years for an opportunity to take revenge.

‘Hell Has No Boundary’ is a solid supernatural thriller with some haunting and harrowing moments. Supernatural scenes are strikingly lit with single primary colors, in particular red, which recall the hallucinatory extremes of Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

It’s less gory than other Shaw Bros horror movies of the early 80s but still has it’s fair share of gruesome goodies the most surreal of which must surely be the undignified death of Inspector Ho who, after a night out disco dancing with May, has his you-know-what nipped off by the claws of a crab before being mummified from head to toe by a supernaturally animated roll of toilet paper!!!

The violence and cruelty towards children in the film is genuinely unsettling particularly in the past-life flashback where we find out exactly what horrors instigated May’s ghostly mission of vengeance.

The following year Yang Chuen delivered another ghoulish ghost story for Shaw Bros; the insane Seeding of a Ghost. Star Derek Yee, who plays Ah Chung, appeared in a whole host of Shaw Bros classics but has also had a very successful career behind the camera directing such films as the sexploitation satire ‘Viva Erotica’ and the brilliant urban noir thriller ‘One Night In Mongkok’.

As can be expected of all Shaw Bros horror output at the time ‘Hell Has No Boundary’ moves at a lightning pace right up to it’s bizarre and unpredictable climax which features the murder of a naked nurse, a meat cleaver decapitation and a character attacked by their own reflection in a scene which is almost identical to one in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead.


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Narcan is the GCDb's esteemed UK contributor. As a youth his earliest exploitation film experience was a My Bloody Valentine/The Funhouse midnight double bill. Grindhouse icons that he holds in highest regards are Christina Lindberg and Frank Henelotter. Two of his favorite exploitation genres include Nunsploitation and Lucha Libre.

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