A Man of Nasty Spirit


Director: Jeng Wai-lung
Year: 1993

You know that a film is confused when Pauline Chan is the only person who keeps their clothes on and when actor Dennis Tang plays the good guy. Having Pauline stay fully attired in a Cat III film goes against the grain of common decency – that is why we are here. It is like going to a Clapton concert to listen to the bass player. And Dennis Tang always plays the bad guy in films; either a Triad snake or as in Behind the Pink Door, a sleazy rapist. This film made little sense in general but this role playing switch threw things into total confusion for me. There is really nothing much that comes to mind to recommend this film to anyone who has a life – fortunately I don’t so I plodded along till the end. There is a fair amount of sex but its so low budget all they could afford were women with small bosoms! They must charge by the ounce over there. Here is the plot as best as I could figure it out.
 


The maniacal Pope is the head of the Happy Religion. In truth though only he, his henchwoman (Lau Hoh-man) and his two henchmen seem to be happy because they are having sex most of the time. As part of the sex ritual, the henchwoman does a nude snake dance that was not quite up to the standards set by Waheeda Rehman in the film Guide. The other followers don’t look all that happy at all, but this being a cult they still follow the orders of the Pope. There is some nonsense at the beginning of the film where the Pope steals the top half of a book that will give him immense powers, but the bottom half of the book is retained by Dr Yue (Jack Lung) who then writes it in with invisible ink on the back of his master’s little girl, Bao. Later Bao is kidnapped by Pope and taught by him to fight and fly and is kept a virgin in case of emergency. But he is unaware that her back contains the secret for world domination because it is invisible of course!
 


You see Pope has a little vitamin deficiency. If he doesn’t have sex with a virgin every full moon he will age rapidly and die. The nearest village has to provide these girls but they are running low. When the Pope has sex with them, he transfers all their life force to him – leaving them dead of course but he is revitalized and always gives a cheer like a college frat boy in his first drinking contest. One such virgin has been chosen but the night before her rendezvous with destiny, her boyfriend comes to her and says he wants to die too, but she says well since I am going to lose my life tomorrow why don’t we do it – and he sensibly says “ok. That would be better than me dying”. So Pope gets spoiled goods – where is the Consumer Protection Agency when you need them – and has to take one of his stocked virgins instead. Ok – so where are Pauline and Dennis in all of this you may wisely ask. Pope has an inner evil woman and every now and then he manifests himself as a female – Pauline, who for reasons known only to herself dresses like a British Magistrate or Christopher Lee in Jess Franco’s The Bloody Judge. Dennis just shows up and falls for Bao (Chan Choi-lan), who has grown up to be quite the poppy strumpet and has big goo-goo eyes for Dennis. This is probably not a film that anyone involved chose to include on their resume.
 


My rating for this film: 3.0