Evil Cat
Lau Kar Leung has been waiting fifty years for
this day to arrive and it finally does. Evil has been resting deep beneath
the ground waiting for this day as well. Every fifty years this cat like
demon reappears in the world creating havoc and destruction. This is its
final and ninth life – but as in all its previous incarnations a member
of Lau’s family is waiting to do battle with it.
This obscure 1986 Cinema City film written
by Wong Jing is fairly enjoyable. Though it has a low budget horror/fantasy
look to it and a “B” cast, it still manages some cheesy special effects,
a bit of wire work, a couple good action scenes and a generally fun hyperactive
tone in which it does not take itself too seriously. The legendary
kung-fu director and actor Lau Kar Leung still shows some good moves at
his age here as he plays a man who has prepared himself by learning the
arts of kung-fu and magic since he helped his father combat this beast
fifty years previously.
The cat demon enters a high rise office building
and slaughters all of the security guards – ripping off heads and limbs
in the process – and only the president of the company Mr. Fan seems to
have survived. Later that night at his home, his driver Mark Cheng walks
out the verandah door and finds Fan kneeling down at the fish pond and
when he turns around he has a fish in his mouth and is snarling. He has
been possessed by the demon and now needs to kill Cheng.
In a wild car chase Cheng escapes and finds Lau
and the two of them team up to track down the demon to try and kill it.
Before long the demon shifts into a female body and this demon woman goes
on a killing rampage first at a hospital and then turns its wrath on a
police station. Wong Jing plays the investigating cop who doesn’t believe
Lau’s story that this woman is really a demon – not that is until he sees
her punch a hole right through a cop’s stomach and out the other side and
then casually rip off another’s head!
This is all rather gruesome fun and the pace of
the film picks up considerably over the last 20-minutes. This all leads
to the final showdown that doesn’t quite go as the viewer might expect.
My rating for this film: 6.5