10 Outrageous Asian Splatter Films You Need To See

Dr Yuan, the Hong Kong equivalent of Bruce Wayne, is in Thailand when he becomes smitten with Betsy, in no small part due to her penchant for transparent blouses and skinny-dipping. Discovering she’s about to be sacrificed in order to resurrect a creature known as Old Ancestor, Yuan saves the girl and halts the ceremony, much to the chagrin of its leader, a Marilyn Manson lookalike named Aqulala, who places him under “blood curse.”

Back in Hong Kong, Yuan is cautioned to “stay away from sex” lest the curse take effect, which our hero of course ignores. Informed by a pipe-smoking colleague that he now has twenty-four hours until his heart bursts, Yuan returns to Thailand to have the curse lifted, in the process battling kung-fu monks and rubbery foetuses that tear out the throats of their victims.

When the film’s central antagonist creates “Blood Devils” using the bodies of small children crushed in a stone press, you know you’re not in for subtlety, but it’s all so outrageously cartoonish that it’s hard not to be entertained. As in Ricky Oh: Story of Ricky, director Ngai Kai Lam runs the gamut from outlandish fight sequences to over-the-top gore, the pedal-to-the-metal pace ensuring a major setpiece every few minutes.