Kung Fu Zombie (1981)
Starring Billy Chong, Tao Chiang & Shum Yan Chi
Directed & Written by Yi-Jung Hua

 

Now, I would like to share all that scummy sickness with the lot o' ya. I sure hope ya'll have had your rabies shots. Anyhoo, without further ado let's take a look at the very special barrel of radioactive waste I've scrounged out o' the stygian abyss for your reading pleasure this ish, eh?

On the autopsy slab for dissection today is KUNG-FU ZOMBIE, a downright deranged chunk of chop-sockey cheese I captured on one of my regular sleaze search safaris at the local 99 Cents Store. Coming across KUNG-FU ZOMBIE was an experience akin to love at first sight. When my eyes fell on those words, "kung-fu" and "zombie," smooshed together in a single title, my heart skipped a beat. There hardly exists a handful of combination in the English language as beautiful as this one. I smiled, I swooned, I smacked a cool, crisp one-spot onto the cashier's counter and walked out with my putrid purchase.

Once home, I lit some candles, turned on some romantic mood music (Machetazo being my poison of choice, ...a damn sight more sensual than Barry White if you ask li'l ol' me), dressed my D.V.D. player in lacey lingerie, and prepared to ram my love into its inviting disc slot. My "love" in this case being the aforementioned freshly purchased copy of KUNG-FU ZOMBIE. Then, with a swig of NesQuik strawberry milk swishin' 'round in my mouth and a fistful of bite-sized Charleston Chews clutched in my hand, I pressed the play button and let the magic begin.

Iconic Indonesian superstar and minor 70's/80's martial arts movie headliner Billy Chong (who reminds me a wee bit of Don "The Dragon" Wilson) plays Pang, your average badass foot-and-fist fighter who is also the progeny of an even more badass martial arts master who's 'bout as cuddly as a crocodile and twice as ornery. Unsurprisingly, this family of karate-kickin' skullcrushers has made more than their fair share of enemies. For example, there's a local mutton chop-sportin' ne'er-do-well, who Pang foiled during a robbery. This dastardly baddie also happens to have a friend, a sorcery-slingin' Taoist priest who teams with him in an attempt to take out Pang once n' for all. Unfortunately, their bizarre, poorly planned, and flat-out nonsensical scheme to, um, use the living dead to push Pang into a pit full of daggers... goes awry. Instead of Pang being the one to end up with a few extra orifices, it's the would-be robber who finds himself impaled upon the pointy ends of a zillion knives. He also gets zapped by a bolt of lightning. Just for the hell of it.

Hold on, it gets zanier. After that tragic accident, the blade-skewered criminal's ghost demands that his juju-master pal find him a new body to inhabit, so off they go in search of a corpse for the dead man to possess. Unsurprisingly, our resident practitioner of the dark arts isn't actually a very good practitioner of the dark arts. Case in point, when he tries to install his thug buddy's spirit into the body of a tough-as-nails ass-kicker named Lung, the dopey duo wind up bungling the ritual to the point where the incorporeal crime boss is still left floatin' about without a body, and Lung is turned into an uber-powerful Buddhist vampire. Whoopsy-daisy! Oh, and did I mention that Lung also just happens have a score to settle with Pangy-boy's entire bloodline, his own family being their longtime sworn enemy n' all? Did I mention that part?

Wait, there's more. 'Cause not too long after the incompetent sorcerer's messed-up mysticism transformers Lung into a rampaging hemoglobin-guzzler, Pang's mustachioed n' bushy-browed daddy-o drops fuckin' dead, which allows the priest's ectoplasmic chum to take control of the cadaver. Thus, throughout the course of the movie, in between a seemingly endless series of blunders and mishaps, Pang is faced with the not inconsiderable task of overcoming a Taoist wizard, a cape-clad bloodsucker who also moonlights as a martial arts mega-man, a few hopping zombies, and the reanimated corpse of his own evil spirit-possessed spastic pale-faced papa. All in all, the plot is about as coherent as a gibbering stroke victim. But it makes for a whole lot of off-the-wall, oddball, barrel-of-monkeys wacky fun. Yes it does. Yes indeedy.

Anyone who's seen a few Chinese horror flicks should be at least a little familiar with the concept of the hopping zombie, but that doesn't change the fact that it still looks silly n' strange as all hell every damn time. "Silly n' strange" is pretty much the way I'd sum up this entire movie in general, to tell you the truth, although I'd probably go for an alliteration triple word score by adding "stupid" to that description as well. Still, when I say "stupid, silly, n' strange" here, I mean it in the good way. From the cymbal-crashing one-man dance party/black magick ceremony that begins the film, to the scene where the putrid, rotten-faced ghouls dogpile their crime lord master in a pit o' daggers, to the scene where a mole-mugged goombah plays incestuous grabass with his cute, pigtailed niece, to the splatter-soaked scene in which a vampified Lung kicks the head o' some unsuspecting peasant clean off and laps up the geyser of gore that erupts from the neck stump, to the one where the most adorable freakin' puppy in the world gets turned into a stir-fried snack, to the climactic clusterfuck that sees our hero (covered with prayer beads and sticky notes) team up with that clumsy dang dumbshit Taoist in hopes of exorcising Pang's father and finally slaying the now nearly unstoppable blood-drunk Lung, to the hilariously abrupt (and somewhat baffling) ending, KUNG-FU ZOMBIE is a brilliant, beautiful, burning, brain cell holocaust. It's a horror movie! It's a kung-fu movie! It's a cheeseball comedy! It's all of the above!!! Kiss your grey matter g'bye, kiddies.

The humor on display is strictly moronic, ranging from outright slapstick to sequences wherein the ghostly gangster plays invisible pranks and fondles lady parts. The fight choreography, meanwhile, is actually quite good. Not great, but good. It's all done in that absurdly sped-up, slightly jilted style so indicative of low budget martial arts movies from the 70's and early 80's. Makes things feel like something out of a Benny Hill skit. Which of course adds that much more to the picture's charm. As does the fact that there's a curiously homoerotic element at work throughout the film as well (witness the shirt-shredding fight scene between Pang and Lung, or the numerous scenes of topless males dousing their glistening pectorals with buckets of water). The whole dang movie coulda used some more pretty fillies, if you ask me. I got visions of Amy Yip action bouncin' through my head. Then again, every film to come out of the Orient could use a li'l Amy Yip action if you ask me. Alas, if only wishes were horses (or, in this case, big-breasted Asian mega-babes), right? ::sigh::

Though this flick is often little more than a confusing mess, the sheer kookiness of it helps win you over nonetheless. KUNG-FU ZOMBIE definitely makes for a good "party movie." While watching, I couldn't help thinking, "Man, if only I coulda seen this bad boy on the big screen." Connoisseurs of the quirky and arcane should warm up to it instantly, as it is, to be blunt, completely nuts, and it's high energy level acts as a perfect complement to its goofy insanity.

Obviously this isn't the weirdest thing I've ever seen (though it would fit in snugly with everything Mondo Macabro has distributed). Nor is it the weirdest thing to come out of the H.K. motion picture industry (not by a loooong shot). But, if you enjoyed similar piece-of-dung chop-sockey schlock films like ROBO VAMPIRE or ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND, this oughta make you giddy with glee. It's no RIKKI-OH of course, but, hey, cinema that perfect doesn't grow on fuckin' trees ya know.

Well, that's all I got for you this issue, true believers. Thanks for stopping by n' spending time with me inside... The Cheapo Zone. Doo-dee-doo-doo, doo-dee-doo-doo, doo-dee-doo-doo.

Until next slime...
Stay sick!

Your pickled pal, William Weird.

Rating: 4 out of 5 green leaf hats
Recommendation: rent it
Best moment: Lung's hands and feet burst into flames... but he just keeps on fightin'