Evil Cat – review

Director: Dennis Yu Wan-Kwong

Release date: 1987

Contains spoilers

My friend Leila identified this film with a suggestion it is “a bit of a hotchpotch fusing vampire lore, Bakeneko and ghost possession with a magic bow” All this, of course, made me want to watch the film.

What we get is some late eighties Hong Kong fare with a more serious edge than many – there is a dedicated comedy cop character, Inspector Handsome Wu (Wong Jing), and the film is certainly not divorced from humour, such as jokes about the laziness of the apprentice, but it did take itself a bit more seriously I felt.

evil escapes

It starts in a quarry, with a large industrial vehicle. Part of the earth it is manipulating releases a strange light when disturbed. The foreman is called over and there is a large rock with writing on it. The workmen shift it (as you do) revealing a massive shaft. Suddenly light explodes out of the shaft. Elsewhere, Master Cheung (Lau Kar-Leung), is snoozing at a community play when he wakes realising the evil has escaped. We discover later he is at end of life due to cancer.

fight flashback

He gets back to his room and uncovers a couple of cases. One contains a bow and three arrows. A flashback sees his father, a Taoist priest 50 years before, fighting a person possessed by a cat demon. He manages to catch the cat in a net and holds it whilst a young Cheung stabs through his father (at his command), skewering his heart and passing into the cat. The way to kill it (without the spirit immediately possessing another) is by stabbing through the heart (with a particular wood). The cat is thrown down the shaft – it is the 8th time it has been defeated by the Cheung family, it returns every 50 years and Master Cheung must kill it one last time.

dead guard

At an industrialist’s tower block the new security guard shift is getting to work. One is sent to investigate a rancid smell. The industrialist, Mr Fan (Stuart Ong), is in a bedroom area with his PA Tina (Hsu Shu-Yuen, Vampire’s Breakfast). As they clean up he calls through for his driver Long (Mark Cheng Ho-Nam) to pick him up. Meanwhile the security guard finds a body in a pile of refuse, which comes alive and attacks him. Tina is still getting ready by the time Fan goes downstairs. All the guards are dead (we see one with a neck wound) and the door locked. He is chased through the building.

Fan in cat mode

Long is driving back (with the woman he had been dating in the car) when a figure, Master Cheung, appears in the road causing him to hammer the breaks on. The road is empty when Long gets out to look, but Master Cheung has already got in the rear seats and asks for a lift to the city. After complaints from the woman, they tie her to a lamppost and drive off. There is some banter, with Master Cheung seeing something off in Long’s future and giving him a protective amulet. When they get to Fan’s tower the cops and reporters are there – anchor-woman Cheung Siu-Chuen (Joann Tang Lai-Ying) happens to be Master Cheung’s daughter. Fan has gone home already. Later however, after Fan attacks Long he ends up going to Master Cheung and becoming his apprentice as they try and stop the cat demon.

Long and the cat

The end make-up of the cat was great, and the vampirism came in too ways. The cat drinks blood to achieve immortality within a chosen host and we also see the cat clearly sucking out lifeforce like an energy vampire. The cat does possess bodies and we get the use of prayer scrolls as a protection from the cat and a way to render the wearer invisible. The three arrows are made of the wood that can destroy the cat as well as the host and there is a comment that they are the last three pieces of this type of wood (though not what the wood is called). The bow is also meant to be magic. This was a good watch. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK