Census Bloodbath: No, Madam

Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Cantonese, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Year:
1982
Director:
Kuen Yeung
Cast:
Leanne Lau, Derek Tung-Sing Yee, Yueh Hua

Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Hell Has No Boundary (originally Mo jie/魔界) follows policewoman May Wong Lai-Fun (Leanne Lau), who is possessed by the vengeful spirit of a murdered little girl while on a camping trip. Her new murderous rage, naturally, makes her a better cop, but her boyfriend grows suspicious about the bodies that keep piling up around her as she rises up the ranks.

Analysis: Hell Has No Boundary is an unusually focused Hong Kong slasher, and by that I mean it combines three separate genres rather than 18. What we're looking at here is a slasher film mashed up with a possession film (those two subgenres certainly weren't unfamiliar with one another, even as early as 1982), with a light sprinkling of police procedural on top. It's all fairly straightforward, which allows it to channel early-80s Hong Kong's tendency toward excess directly into the kills and overall horror movie mayhem.

This is a pretty gnarly horror movie, with an imaginative streak a mile wide. The kills, while cheaply rendered and sometimes a little confusing, tend to take place in satisfying multi-stage scare sequences packed with bizarre imagery. By the time act 3 hits, the movie fully immerses its characters into a post-Exorcist, pre-Elm Street nightmare freakout realm that is drenched in bright green lighting and full of well-staged moments where props and environments shift without warning. It's a good time!

The way that the storyline plays out didn't quite rub me the right way all the time, because the possession's tendency to infect others made some of the plot feel too diffuse. However, that doesn't really matter. This is a movie that entirely takes place within the culture and ideology of non-Christian religion (I think Buddhism, given the presence of a swastika in one scene, but I'm no expert), and that makes for an exciting twist on a subgenre that had already been entirely played out less than a decade after the debut of The Exorcist.

Killer: Possessed May Wong Lai-Fun (Leanne Lau)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: May's horny new boss really gets it good. He is ultimately killed by being telekinetically wrapped up with toilet paper (I assume he's smothered?), but first he gets pinched by a crab in his bathtub, an event that I believe is implied to have severed his penis.

Sign of the Times: The movie's opening scene features May doing a Rubik's cube while her boyfriend drives her to the campsite, where they then relax with some delicious 1980s Coke and Sprite cans.

Scariest Moment: As the cops approach the site of a domestic disturbance, a knife protrudes through the door right in front of one of their faces.

Weirdest Moment: May vomits into the toilet, then uses a cup to pour the chunky toilet water over her head and then drink it.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 14; not including May's boyfriend's shadow self, who ultimately perishes when he makes the ultimate sacrifice.

1. Domestic Disturbance Man is shot.
2. Office Mean Girl #1 and
3. Office Mean Girl #2 fall down an elevator shaft.
4. Bird dies from exposure to evil energy.
5. Scammy Psychic falls down the stairs.
6. Prayer Lady has a knife telekinetically thrown through her throat.
7. New Boss is smothered by being toilet paper.
8. Flashback Girl is smothered with a pillow.
9. Naked Refugee is slashed with a sword.
10. Dagger Friend is shot by the cops.
11. May has a ceremonial dagger thrown into her and is burned alive.
12. Nurse is garroted in the shower.
13. May's Killer is decapitated with a cleaver.
14. May's Boyfriend stabs himself in the stomach.

TL;DR: Hell Has No Boundary is a pretty neat supernatural slasher import.

Rating: 7/10