Movie Details
| Title: | Devil Fetus | |
| Director: | Hung Chuen Lau | |
| Year: | 1983 | |
| Genre: | Possession | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.07.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.07.06 | Terror Thursday | I wanted to see this movie again to see how it would play when it's not the last movie in an all-night marathon. My hazy recollection of my first seeing it makrs it as perhaps the weirdest movie I've ever seen, so I was wondering if it made any more sense when seen with fully consciouss eyes. Well, it didn't. It really didn't. This movie... somewhere around 75% of it is really slow and pretty boring, but the little bits and pieces that I like I REALLY like. The husband's pustule maggot face, the splitting-in-half-for-no-reason car, the wormy cake regurgitation, and especially especially the battle between the spirit and the monk... I think they are all things everyone should be forced to see at least once in life. A lot of the other stuff though, not so much. This also has some really great subtitling. My two phrases were "let's happy for a while" and "your second daughter-in-law was beaitched by a ghost." It's just one wrong letter but oh what a great new word it makes. Zack had a shirt with that saying on tonight to commemorate his seventh viewing of the film... that explains a lot. So, Zack also mentioned animal cruelty in his write-up. I didn't remember any at all so I was on close lookout for what was obviously fake and what coulda been real. Basically there's a dog and an eagle, with the dog playing the much more major role. Eventually this spirit possesses the dog and the main dude has to samurai sword him to death, ending with an extremely satisfying burst of blood shot into a woman's horrified face. All the dogfight stuff seemed to be cut specifically so they didn't have to hurt the animal, but then I don't think they had a budget for a fake dead dog as realistic as what they use later in the movie when its hanging or rolling over or a close up of the eye with a fake laser bean coming out of it into the brother's head (transferring the spirit) so I'm pretty sure they used a dog carcass for all that stuff. The eagly on the other hand, is really only in one scene where a Monk needs its blood then it jump cuts from the Monk putting a knife up to its throat to off-screen blood squirting into a cup. In talking after the movie, I started to wonder if it was the movie that made those conspicuous cuts or maybe just this particular print. I dug out the copy I have on my computer today and double checked. The dogfight scene is the same but there was indeed a shot of the eagle getting its throat cut! Poor eagle! At least it wasn't ripped in half and freeze-framed for end titles. |
| 07.10.05 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: AICN Horrorfest 2005 At the beginning of the night, when we were still fresh and innocent, Harry said that the last movie had the best title ever, and neither he nor Lars had seen it. Now here we are. The last movie of the night. Technically it's already daylight out but since we're all in the theater we don't know/care. The numbers have thinned, only the most hardcore are still present. Sitting there for about ten hours, stewing in our air-conditioned horror-adled geekiness. Lars silently approves of all of us with a gleam in his eye. As a treat, he unveils what the rest of the world will know in a few days: that Quentin Tarantino is coming back this September for QT6: the next multi-day film festival programmed by the man himself: Quentin Tarantino. We are the first people in the world (aside from QT and the Alamo folk... and the AICN folk.. and probably some other people too) to know about it. I remember reading about previous QT fests on AICN and being so jealous i would just close the window. I didn't even want to read the titles of the films he showed because all of Austin and their little slice of heavenly cool film community there could go and suck an egg as far as I'm concerned. Well, now I'm in that little slice of heavenly cool film community. In fact, at this moment I am in the red blood-gushing heart of it with maybe a hundred of my closest horror-gonzo bretheren, awaiting a movie with a name like Devil Fetus to start. I should mention that they had vintage horror trailers preceding every one of the films. Some really classic ones too. I can't begin to remember any of them but just believe me when I tell you that they were cool. Devil Fetus. chinese. made in the 80s. Very uneven in extremes. The bad scenes were pretty unbearable but the good ones... oh man were they goooooood. This woman buys this "vase" that really looks more like a giant phallus with a little demon holding onto it than anything that could ever hold flowers. She touches this thing while laying in bed and suddenly this greyish veiny monster is on top of her having his "way." These two kids try to look at it and she snatches it away from them and runs upstairs to admire it again. Her hubby gets home from like six months away or something and walks in to see the devil mid-coitus. He reverts back to the "vase" and he grabs it and smashes it down on the floor. Dust rises up to his face and it immediately begins to turn purple and massive fleshy pustules form all over. He then rips off half his face, revealing maggots and worms, and gets so disgusted that he leaps out the window to his death. The woman also dies. During her funeral, the priest dude sees inside the coffin that her belly swells all up and this titular devil fetus pops out. He puts some ban on it in the form of a few flimsy pieces of paper hung precariously over a small stone plaque and says that it will take her a dozen years before she gets to go to heaven or whatever. That's like, the first five minutes. After that, it's all about the two young boys grown up and blah blah blah, evil possession ensues, more furniture moves around, some pretty crazy stop-motion kung-fu-esque stuff happens, long story short one of the brothers kills the evil-possessed brother and he turns into the devil and he chops the devil's head off and the neck shoots out three or four snake/larva looking things with heads on them that he also chops off and it's all over. thank god. Other highlights include an evil-possessed dog getting the samurai sword, spraying enough blood into this girl's face that she actually spits out like a mouth-full of it. There's also the old help-i'm-caught-in-the-sauna-and-the-walls-are-closing-in head explosion against the glass door chestnut, done adequately well, and a few scenes of the evil-possessed brother chowing down on doggy and human flesh thrown in for good measure. It's pretty safe to say that the movie fit our collective mindset pretty well as a "last movie" and the really really terrible subtitles gave us plenty of laughs in between the gore-outs ("something evil has beaitched your brother!"). And then it was over, just like that. Slowly we scattered out into the early Sunday sunlight, a bunch of zombies let loose on the deserted downtown Austin area. Soon we covered the streets, small groups of black t-shirt wearing horror fans twitching from too much sugar and caffeine each heading to their cars or homes. Just over thirteen hours after leaving, I entered my too-bright apartment. I survived. I'm ready for the next one. |
