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The Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead
R0 - America - PanMedia Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (26th August 2006). |
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The Film
 After his ex-wife skinny-dips in their pool, Donnie Yen and his 5 students (all women, no less) get attacked by a long-haired flying dude, who seems to enjoy ripping the ladies apart, but not before ripping off their clothes, and who turns out to be a demon-thing-guy. The police blame and arrest Mr. Yen for these gruesome murders, and then promptly let him out on bail. Mr. Yen enlists the aid of a couple of friends to figure out who this demon-thing-guy is. So what do they do after that? They do what everybody accused of killing a bunch of people would do: they hightail it to Cambodia to find a virgin princess to help them fight a 2300-year-old demon. That's when the goofy parts start. If this short synopsis doesn't get your attention, then you simply won’t like this movie. You'll find it pointless and illogical, not to mention silly and badly acted. The logic is undeniably goofy, it's true, but it's a lot of fun to watch. In Hong Kong movies, usually the stars are normal and everybody else (especially the cops) have no idea how to proceed with simple step-by-step deductions and decisions. Here, everybody exhibits this incredible brain-numbing power or reasoning. The actors do what they can but the people that came up with the story are certainly a few frames short of 24fps. On the actors side of the movie, the cast is pretty decent. They can certainly handle the choreographed action. The cute-as-a-button Kathy Chow has a supporting role, and she gives what she has to. For no apparent reason, some of her close-ups are quite badly focused. I suppose Donnie Yen thought 'hey, she's cuter than me', and threatened to have the director fired unless he shot her out-of-focus whenever possible. Regardless, her scenes are not too demanding, but her performance is nice. Chui Hei-man, Pauline Yeung and one of the original girls-with-guns girls, Sibelle Hu, are the female leads, and they handle themselves well enough. Actually, Mrs. Hu is completely forgotten about halfway through the movie and you don’t really see Mrs. Yeung in the first half. Despite that, they are give adequate performances. The long-haired flying dude demon-thing-guy is Ken Lo, better known for being in a bunch of Jackie Chan movies. He again plays the bad guy and gives it his all. All he does is stamp around frown and smile menacingly. Again, nothing too demanding but Mr. Lo is completely in his character and gives it his all. Last but not least, there’s Donnie Yen, doing what Donnie Yen does: beating people up. He starts it out by kicking a bum to the ground and beating him senseless! Despite the fact that this is a Category III movie and will probably be known as ‘Donnie Yen’s Category III movie’ (although it's not his only one), the fights are actually pretty decent. The first time I saw the movie, I was actually kind of surprised. After watching 'Iron Monkey 2' and 'Satan Returns', I didn't expect a low-budget, Category III movie to have any great fights, but they're pretty nice. Donnie Yen and Ken Lo have a few nice interchanges together, as do Mr. Lo and Pauline Yeung. The choreography (by Fan Chin-hung and Willie Ho) and editing are decent and you do feel some excitement out of the fights. Some undercranking has been done, but it's not as bad as, say 'Legend of the Wolf'. There are also a few gunfights and those are well planned as well. If you want action, you'll get plenty of it in here and, as a bonus, it's done well! Despite the director obviously having no sense of tone or pacing, with a stupid music-traveling montage right before the final climactic battle, the movie goes by fairly quickly and with some enjoyment. The logic is mind-boggling and rather Kafkaesque, in the sense that it would take an absurd amount of energy to try to explain something very simple, and not in the sense that it makes sense. There's some nice action and plenty of naked boobies for the people who want those, as well. Like I said before, if the plot doesn't interest you, you won't like this movie. People who watch movies with demons who rip girls apart don't really care about character and logic. If they did, they wouldn't watch this movie. See? Perfect logic!
Video
King of the sketchy Hong Kong movies releases, PanMedia is responsible for this release. It's from the US and is R0. I'm pretty sure this is a port of a Japanese release. It's got burned-in English and Chinese subtitles, like a VCD. 1.85:1 non-anamorphic. If you're familiar with Universe Laser's older releases, you’ll know what I mean when I say the video is on par with older Universe Laser releases. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's far from perfect. There are specs and scratches throughout the movie. Some of them quite big in some scenes. The colours also bleed in a few scenes, most notably during the red scenes. The level of detail isn't what it should be. The picture is somewhat blurry and the colours flicker on occasion. On the other hand, the transfer is a proper one (i.e. taken from an NTSC master), though the master is probably a tape or VCD. The picture is essentially a VCD-quality picture but with a slightly higher bitrate. It's not terrible, but it’s closer to that than great, and the picture could definitely use some work.
Audio
The movie only comes in the original Cantonese track, in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. The track is adequate, and that's all I can say. The dialogue, score and sound effects all blend into something comprehensible, while not canceling each other out. The movie misses some of the punch it should have, but the track doesn't sound too tinny. It really won't stretch your speakers' capabilities, but you’ll be able to hear what you want to hear.
Extras
The only extras are a couple of Trailers. They're about 2 minutes each. One is for 'Crystal Hunt' the other is for 'The Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead'. They're the Japanese trailers (given it's probably a Japanese DVD and all). They're nice trailers, though, providing nice action, but very little plot (not like it matters much for the two movies, but still…). The interesting thing about this is that the trailers also advertise Donnie Yen's other movies (like 'Seven Swords' and 'SPL').
Overall
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