Horoscope II: The Woman
from Hell
Director: Steve Cheng
Year: 2000
Rating: 6.5
Steve Chang once
again brings us into his demented and nightmarish world of evil, black magic,
delusions, infidelity and worms. Lots of squiggly, wriggling worms. Oozing
out of the skin, large fat slippery ones being vomited out, thousands huddled
under the carpet and even served ala carte. Eating noodles and watching this
film at the same time might be a mistake!
From evidence as of late – Troublesome Night, Erotic Nightmare and Horoscope
I & II – Chang is quickly becoming the HK horror director to watch. Though
his films are certainly low budget, they are imaginative, edgy, suitably gruesome
and fast moving. Horoscope II (which in my mind should have been Erotic Nightmare
II as stylistically the films have much in common) begins with a jolt and
rarely lets up. But as the film mixes nightmares and reality, it becomes
increasingly more convoluted until the viewer is left in a foggy morass.
One really begins to wonder whether Chang himself started losing track of
reality vs. fantasy in the story line of the film. In trying to piece it
together later, much of it seems totally illogical – and even after the film
is over one isn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t – even the ending itself
is a judgement call. But it’s a fun and queasy ride getting there.
As in Erotic Nightmare, terrible things begin happening to what appears
to be a typical middle class HK couple living in a small tidy duplex. Simon
Yam is a doctor and his lovely wife is Pinky Cheung and their life seems splendid
except for the shadow of their dead child lingering over them. One evening
while preparing a barbecue, their friend Jimmy comes crashing into their
backyard screaming in agony with thousands of worms crawling out from his
skin. He sticks his hands into the barbecue to kill the worms, but the pain
continues until he finally takes an arrow (Pinky is a master archer) and
plunges it into his heart – bringing the pain and his life to a quick stop.
This horrific event is explained away as Jimmy taking liberties with women
in Thailand and having caught something!
In fact, he is a victim of the black curse spun from a Thai sorceress (Sophie
Ngan – the Asian March Penthouse centerfold I am informed – sorry no pictures
of her!) for having cuckolded her. Simon soon has reason to go to Bangkok
for a medical conference and when he returns he is a changed man. Moody, always
thirsty, aloof and a sexual aggressor. Pinky then begins having a series
of horrible nightmares and soon she (as well as the viewer) gets lost in
being able to tell reality from the dream world. At times, I think there were
even dreams within dreams. In her dreams she sees Simon having sex with the
sorceress and having his back scratched by her in heated passion. In another
dream, the woman plunges her hands into Pinky’s stomach and pulls out a newborn.
Pinky then sees that the woman in her dream has moved next door – and Simon
has scratches on his back and is vomiting worms.
Pinky Cheung simply dominates this film with a performance that looks to
be emotionally and physically exhausting. She is terrific as a victim caught
in a web of horror and magic that she can’t understand and doesn’t know how
to fight back against.
My rating for this film: 6.5
