Director – Chun-Yeung Wong, Screenplay – Ho-Kwan Lee, Producer – Ching Leung, Photography – Chit Wong, Music – Siu-Lam Tang, Art Direction – Sai Choi Weng. Production Company – Chung Ngai Movie Production.
Donnie Yen (Shiang Chi-Fei), Ben Lam (Sergeant Chen Yu), Pauline Yeung (Princess White), Hei Man Chui (Shamen), Sibelle Hu (Sergeant Hu), Robert Mak (Chow Yuan-Fat), Kathy Chow (Chor Yi-Yin), Ken Lo (The Moon Monster)
University professor Shiang Chi-Fei is holding a party when he sees the moon turn red. A monster appears and kills all of his students that are present. Chi-Fei is questioned by the police, suspected of being the killer. Released, he determines to look into mythology and learns about an ancient Moon Goddess who seeks to manifest and sends monsters out to claim maidens to serve her. The quest to stop the Moon Goddess’s manifestation takes Chi-Fei to Cambodia.
Hong Kong Cinema of the 1980s brought a wildly crazed body of films mixing traditional Chinese elements of the supernatural (ghosts, reincarnation, deities, Buddhism and the like) with elements like Wu Xia as in Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983); comedy – The Happy Ghost (1984); Mr Vampire (1985) and The Haunted Cop Shop (1987); romance – Ghost Lantern (1993); and the completely indescribable likes of A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which seemed to blend all of the above.
The Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead is an A Chinese Ghost Story wannabe. It comes with a title that appropriates The Evil Dead films – which at the time would have only consisted of The Evil Dead (1981) and The Evil Dead II (1987) – to make it sound like it is an entry in that series. Unfortunately, the title ends up being the most attention-grabbing thing that the film has on offer.
That said, The Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead is a weak entry merely tailgating in the genre. It comes with a great opening where the Moon Monster manifests as professor Donnie Yen is holding a party and slaughters its way around the various students – who are all women who end up being stripped of their clothes. (This is a film that goes right for a Category III rating – the Hong Kong equivalent of an X or NC-17 rating – and features plentiful nudity. Although apparently there are two versions of the film in circulation – one where the women are nude and one that has been shot with them clothed).
After a vivid opening, the film flounders around in search of a plot. Instead of what it should have given us – Donnie Yen and associates fighting the various supernatural entities – the film is all over the place with mundane subplots about Donnie trying to prove he didn’t murder the girls, the detectives following him and he trying to trace the mythological origins of the creatures. Things happen but it is not always clear why they do – the plot is not strong on making sense out of the scenario and offering logical rationale. Most of it is taken up by the detectives following Donnie Yen and it is only in about the last third of the film that the supernatural action element kicks in. None of this is too inspired.
Director Chun-Yeung Wong (also known as Chun-Ku Lu) mostly directed martial arts, action and crime films in a career between the 1970s and 2000. In genre material, he has also made the horror film The Magic Curse (1975); the Wu Xia Bastard Swordsman (1983) and its sequel Return of Bastard Swordsman (1984); and The Haunted Madam (1986).
Trailer here