Chang Chen’s The Nine Demons is a fun bit of goofy martial-arts gobbledygook (meant with love). A total good time if in the mood for such things. Now on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance.
Any film that uses “Mysterious blooping” as a subtitle a few dozen or more times is alright in my book. And 1984’s Nine Demons, from director Five Venoms and Five Element Ninja’s Chang Chen (why not FIVE demons to keep it going?), and coming to Blu-ray via Visual Vengeance, does so in earnest. Nine Demons is a deeply unserious film. It’s Faust with a slight bit more butt kicking and flying skulls. Only a few more, since we know Goerth’s masterpiece had more action than you can shake a Bruce Lee at. Kidding aside, The Nine Demons, written by Kuang Ni, is a silly Saturday afternoon fare sort of flick. Take in 95 minutes of goofy adventure and fighting while lounging with some Fritos and good friends.
Speaking of good friends, that’s where Nine Demons starts. “Jimmy” and “Gary” (they have more proper names in the Chinese language version, but what’s the fun in that?) are besties, hanging out in town when they step into a fight just because. Uh oh, their dads, the local kung-fu Master and his right-hand man, see it, and they’re in trouble. Family trouble doesn’t last long when another temple leader holds a coup. One impressive and lengthy fight scene later, the dads are dead, and Gary is captured. The other just happens to fall into Hell (the source of those mysterious bloopings), aka The Black Paradise, whose entrance is only opened once every 500 years or so. He makes a deal with the Black prince of Hell, a wonderfully flamboyant Satan equivalent. He can get revenge thanks to the nine demons of the tiles and extra power. But you know, your soul is damned. The ol’ Phantom of the Paradise special.
There’s fun in how said demons are presented: flying skulls out of Housu, or as 8 kids doing wire-fu along with a lady, a Succubus in particular. They need to feed on living human blood every day. It’s just one of so many weird ass elements. This is a film where rules or storytelling don’t really matter. If it looks fun, sure. Why not. It all gets a bit jumbled along the way of who is who and why. Whether the original language was a mess or the tarnslation/dubbing went awry, who knows. That makes it more fun with the batshit awful dubbing.
That all just adds together for a total package of inane joy. The fight scenes are often lengthy, going, as would be expected for this film, over-the-top with people whizzing by one another on wires, flying here and there, climbing it all, haphazardly swinging prop swords at one another. It’s all done with a bright color palette (giallo lighting!) and larger-than-life costumes and sets. What fun!
The Nine Demons, or the Nine Venoms in some cuts, is a campy joy. Like the other title I’ve covered from Visual Vengeance, Born a Ninja and its sequel, it’s the sort of thing you know what you’re getting into: ready for a weird blast of cheap ass Asian martial arts imports, sourced from A VHS dubbed too many times (athough this looks much better), lost on the bottom shelf of the abandoned video store under a layer of dust. But you grab it like Indy in the temple in Raiders. Score.
The Packaging
Visual Vengeance puts The Nine Demons on a single Blu-ray, with the demon skulls on a green background on the disc. It comes packaged in a clear Blu-ray case with a reversible sleeve with new art by Uncle Frank, and original art from the release. It contains a booklet, a sticker packet (replicating VHS rental stickers), and a fold-out poster. It slides into an O-ring.
The Presentation
Like Born a Ninja, Visual Vengeance sourced The Nine Demons from whatever they can find. But mostly seems to come from a 35mm print, scanned to 2k. That said, it looks mostly good, but cometeism comes and goes with obvious damage that they couldn’t work around. It’s fine; it’s part of the fun. For more of said fun, they offer a VHS version which does look like what you would expect popping in a VHS of this flick (the run time is slightly different; I did watch it in this format but didn’t remember anything specifically altered. But different formats would run at different speeds back in the day.
Audio is both Chinese and English dub. I watched this dubbed, mostly, for the VHS experience. The Chinese and English have different musical soundtracks, too.
Subtitles are in English.
The Features
Visual Vencance does a swell set.
Commentary
Justin Delcloux and Dylan Cheung have a blast talking about the film and the people involved, as Chen was a very prolific director for Shaw Brothers. They try to make sense of the film as best they can, but it’s a totally fun track.
The Discovery of James Wu Kuo-Ren (and his Ninjas) (10m) & Late Period Chang Chen: Video Essay (20m)
Both of these feature Justin Decloux speaking energetically and absolutely filled to the gills with film-nerd knowledge. Love it, and his Shemp shirt! But really, so filled with info and given in a fun manner. Learned a lot.
Actor Yu Tai-Ping interview
Yu reminisces about work on the film and Chen. A nice touch. (10m)
In Chinese, subtitled in English
Unsung Horrors Podcast
An episode of a podcast (so audio on a still image) of the pair of hosts giving a lot of love to the film, clearly having enjoyed the insanity. A fun listen, added ot the long list of “podcasts to listen to when I’m sent on a Project Hail Mary mission list” 54m
Booklet
A nice bit of extra looks at the film and the world around it.
Final Thoughts
Visual Vengeance again provides an afternoon of silly entertainment, finding lost niche insane oddities. The Nine Demons is exactly that, and they put the care into giving a special presentation with both the regular, cleaned up version and the VHS type. Solid features shine that light into a different end of Hong Kong. Check it out, but don’t give Satan your blood for it.