Last night's entertainment was
The Seventh Curse , also at
NetFlix.
Like a Chinese restauraunt, this one seemse to have something from Column A, something from Column B, etc... It's eitehr a martial arts movie with sorcery and mosters and gore...or a horror movie with action scenes ror...a little bit of everything (even a love story)
The story:
Dr Yuan Chen is sorta Hong Kong's answer to Indiana Jones, a medical doctor/adventurer/martial artiist. He opens the movie helping the police to rescue hostages from ..some group of bad guys. One of the hostages hs had a heart-attack and they need a doctor, so he goes in..along with a reporter posing as a nurse. Naturally, they beat up on the bad guys, etc..etc...This establishes that Dr Yuan is a smart. brave, and can kick butt barehanded or with firearms, and also that the reporter Tsai-Hung, is cute,perky...and doesn't know when to stay out of trouble.
After the event, and after Yuan has avoided Tsai-Hung at a social party because she wants to interview him and take artful, naked pictures of him, Yuen is attacked in his house by someone named Huh Lueng, who tells Yuan that he was been given a blood curse a year ago, that he only has a few days to live, and that he must go to Thailand with Lueng to break the curse, and then leaves. Yuan doesn't really believe him until later that night when his skin starts crawling and his blood bursts out in a *pop* from his leg. This sends him to his friend, who happens to be the cousin or uncle of our reporter, who says he has been put under a blood curse.
Which starts a flashback to a year previous, where Yuan was in Thailand on an expedition to get herbs that could help cure AIDS. Yuan takes a walk and comes across a lake with a beautiful woman swimming (said woman is named "Betsy", and that's a name translation that just came out all wrong). They meet briefly, and then she hears a noise and runs off. Back at the camp, the leader of the expedition says that she is from a near-by 'worm tribe', a dangerous tribe of magic. Yuan is warned not to try to find them, which he ignores that night, along with several others of the party. What they find is dome sort of detah ritual sacrifice to the "Old Ancestor", and Betsy happens to be of of the intended sacrifices. The rush to rescue the intended victims for the Old Ancestor, who looks a lot like Crow T Robot as The Cryptkeeper. They manage to rescue Betsy, but Yuan and his boss are captured. The boss is killed by the head sorcerer from the tribe, who then puts a curse on Yuan, Yuan manages to escape, but the curse starts to burst his blood vessels, until he is rescused from a spell from Betsy, who then disappears.
Now, one year later, the spell is wearing off, the blood curese is back in effect, and Yuan must go with Huh Lueng to Thailand to break the curse, and also break a curse cast on Betsy, and *also* rescue the children of Lueng's tribe who are being kidnapped by t he Worm tribe to be killed as part of a spell to make a "LIttle Ghost", some sort of flying monster baby thing. So they load up the guns, curteousy of tag along reporter Tsai-Hung, who happens to be rich, and head out to find the worm tribe and the sorcerer....all before the bursting blood in Yuan's body reachs the seventh burst, which will explode his heart. Along the way they battle tribesmen, the Sorcerer, an Old Ancestor turned into a moster, Tsai-Hung being kinapped and put under a spell to kill everything arnd her, and a band of monks on a giant statue of Buddha (in agreat fight scene)
Lotta fun...not much padding, lotta action, some fair gore....lotta fun
