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After the
mysterious death of his son, Officer Cheung
starts to suspect that his family has been put under
the curse of Gong Tau - an oriental black magic that
is difficult to remove. Cheung and his fellow cops only
have one suspect - one that is very hard to track down.
But is he really the one doing all of this? And will
they be able to lift the curse before it's too late?
Category III horror movies are quite rare in the Hong
Kong movie industry these days since they learned that
non-violent horror movies appealed to a wider audience.
This really is a shame since we haven't seen anything
spectacularly disgusting since the "All Night Long"
movies from Hong Kong. Oh I should probably mention
that Category III is more or less Hong Kong's version
of the R-rating - only more brutal. At first it
seemed as if this was going to be another unsuccessful
Cat3 horror flick but due to great word of mouth,
this movie ended up making quite decent money. So is
it really that good? Well, no, but it's nice to see
a disgusting Hong Kong horror flick again as that
clearly is what they're best at.
It's kind of hard for non-Asian people to relate to
the storyline which revolves around a voodoo curse
put on a troubled family of three. After the death
of his son, Officer Cheung suspects that his wife has
been put under the curse of Gong Tau. What he doesn't
know is that it's the most complex version of Gong
Tau called Flying head Gong Tau (hehe, yeah), a curse
that is nearly impossible to lift. Meanwhile, his
fellow cops start turning up dead one by one under
mysterious circumstances and it all seems to be
connected in some way.
I have to say that the story is actually pretty well-
written. There's no padding, an interesting subplot
and a bunch of very likeable characters in here so
there's not a moment of boredom to be found in here.
I was also surprised by the high amount of full
frontal nudity from both males and females - something
which is very rare in Asian movies. However, as I said
before, the story is difficult for us non-voodoo
believers to buy and that's the movies' main downfall.
An entire movie about black magic just isn't all that
exciting since voodoo dolls are anything but scary
these days. I guess I've seen so many bad voodoo movies
in my days that I can't take them seriously anymore.
Other than that, Gong Tau was a pleasant surprise. It's
fairly entertaining, extremely gory, disgusting in
several ways and overall a pretty enjoyable ride. If
you, like me, miss the good old brutal Asian horror
movies, Gong Tau might not be the best movie in its
genre but for now, we'll settle for it in hopes of
getting more Category III horror movies sent our way.
It's the best Hong Kong horror flick that I've seen
in a long time so I'll definitely say that it's worth
checking out as it's all ready out on DVD.
A mangled cat, lots and lots of guts, a disgusting
mashed up hand and a whole lot more.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Surprisingly entertaining and gory horror thriller from
the country that mainly produces crappy horror flicks
these days - Hong Kong. It's nice to see that they've
brought some brutality and originality back into their
films and for that reason alone I'm going to have to
recommend this movie. It's not flawless but it's a
good way to kill some time with.
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