Joey (Ricky Cheng Tien-chi) and Gary (Chris Lee Kin-Sang) are two dudes adept at martial arts thanks to tutelage of their fathers, fathers who admittedly think they kick a lil’ too much ass in their village streets.
All changes however when an in-house betrayal leaves Joey injured, Gary captured, and their respective pappy’s tits up.
Joey tears ass into the countryside where he has a chance encounter with The Black Prince of Hell and his other dimensional hell-home, Black Paradise (a misnomer indeed as it appears to be a well-lit cave filled with flashing rainbow-hued lights and wacky electronic noises).
Anyway, Black Prince decides he’ll help Joey out and enlists his nine demons (which consist of eight giggling acrobat kids and a lady) to the cause by turning them into blood-drinking human skulls that fly around and give Joey a helping hand… or jawbone…
Joey gets balls deep into that Satanic shit too, as he dons a flamboyant costume, complete with a cape and silver eye-shadow, and throws magic around willy-nilly while lording it over the skulls and providing them ample blood to slake their preternatural thirst, while simultaneously aiding the downtrodden… my dude is like the Spawn of ancient China!
Although justice is served, Joey’s unholy power soon invokes the ire of the Fu Brothers… a family of martial artists other parties and he will need to defend his life before evil takes his soul!
Brought to us by iconic Shaw Brothers Director Chang Cheh (Five Deadly Venoms) this time under his own Taiwan-based studio, Hong Kong Chang He Motion Picture Co. Ltd., The Nine Demons becomes gloriously unreasonable rather quickly.
Oh, things start off pretty standard… Kung-Fu rivalries, betrayal, revenge… the usual biz… but once our hero goes to hell things become unhinged… and that vibe doesn’t let up until things culminate in an unbelievable battle fought while walking on water (and eventually ice) and bamboo!
To be fair, all of the Wuxia action here is fantastic and extremely plentiful as are the vivid, comic book palette and psychotronic horror elements… and the latter is the best part, as the skulls put the bite on anyone in their way and slurp sprays of blood with wild abandon… the whole thing comes off as if someone was describing both a Kung-Fu flick and a Ghost Rider comic simultaneously while suffering a massive fever!
The English language dub present here does nothing to make things any less insane, and it’s the way I recommend experiencing The Nine Demons as it provides a healthy dose of nonsense heaped upon the lunacy we already are being bombarded by (and fret not, the Mandarin language track is available here as well).
To accompany The Nine Demons, Visual Vengeance have provided a hellish assortment of special features which begin with a fun, info-laden audio commentary with martial arts film historians Justin Decloux and Dylan Cheung that provides plenty of detail on how The Nine Demons came to be made, and how Hong Kong Chang He Motion Picture Co. Ltd. came to be.
Following that it’s a duo of video essays courtesy of Decloux which focus on The Nine Demons‘ Cinematographer, James Wu Kuo-Ren and Director Chang Cheh respectively.
Other supplemental content includes: an interview with Actor Yu Tai-Ping, an audio only episode of the Unsung Horrors Podcast focusing on all that is The Nine Demons, and a rough as hell looking ‘Dirty VHS’ version’ of the film under the title The 9 Venoms, an image gallery, and the Visual Vengeance trailer for the film, which showcases the vividness of the new 2K transfer (sourced from original film elements and supervised by film archivist Toby Russell) utilized for this Blu-ray release.
The package also includes a reversible sleeve, a folded mini-poster, a VHS rental store-style sticker sheet, and a booklet featuring an essay from Author C.J. Lines.
This release of The Nine Demons is hands down one of the year’s ‘must owns’ for lovers of bat-shit cinema… and I’m glad someone had the orbs to combine a good number of skulls, blastin’ blood, and foot to face action!
