Movie Review: Kung Fu Zombie (1981)

Kung Fu Zombie (1981) written and directed by Hua Shan

For October (Halloween month!), I am reviewing a sampling of Asian horror, working my way from least to best of the films I watched. Enjoy!

A criminal wants revenge against Pang (Billy Chong), the guy that put him in jail. He hires a wizard to help him but the magician is more bumbling than brilliant. He can raise corpses, thus creating zombies, but they do not do very much. The criminal sends his lackeys into town to lure Pang to the graveyard. They've dug a pit trap with knives at the bottom. The criminal winds up in the pit, getting killed. The soul of the criminal torments the wizard, hoping to get put into another body so he can get his revenge. Meanwhile, another criminal (a much more serious one) has come to town to get revenge on the whole family because of what Pang's grandfather did. Pang has been training with his father all his life for this fight. The dad is not interested in fighting, so Pang does the job. The wizard and the ghost wait outside, hoping to take the loser's body and put the ghost in it. That doesn't work out so well--Pang's dad dies from overcelebrating the victory and the ghost of the serious criminal winds up in the body of Pang's dad. The regular criminal, as a ghost, teams up with the serious criminal, as the zombie dad, to take down Pang once and for all.

This movie capitalized on two crazes in the early 1980s--kung fu movies and zombie movies. The kung fu fighting is plentiful and entertainingly over the top (many characters make impossibly high jumps in the air as they fight), though the bouts don't always make sense. The zombies are fairly low-gore and not very scary at all. As you might guess from the description above, the dominant genre for this film is comedy. Most everything is played for laughs and it easily passes the six laugh test. The production quality is low and I watched it dubbed on Kanopy (also available on Tubi). The dubbing is not that great either, but it does help in the comedy department. The movie aims to entertain and, with the right mindset, delivers the goods.

Slightly recommended--this is a rainy Saturday afternoon movie or a late-night indulgence, not great cinema.