I don’t have much to say about this one, but I did have a lot of fun with The Nine Demons, a recent release from Visual Vengeance. It has all the old martial arts movie stuff you’d expect like the sound effects and bad dubbing, but the supernatural element amps things up a bit. This seems, at first, to be a simple Faustian revenge story as Joey (why they Americanized the names of the main characters is beyond me, but it did make me laugh every time “Joey” or “Gary” was invoked by these characters) stumbles into the Black Prince of Hell’s lair and is given the power of, you guessed it, the nine demons.
The nine demons come in the form of dollar store Halloween decor skulls on a necklace. But when Joey does some psychedelic shit and puts on some eyeliner, they morph into a couple ladies and some kids, all flipping around and cackling. They’re great at killing, so revenge is easy for Joey. But there is a catch: all the demons need fresh blood every single day. Joey’s response? Go to a brothel and let the demons kill prostitutes every night.
Of course, the constant feeding of the demons creates a bit of a reputation for Joey, and…what am I even doing here? It’s crazy, and everyone has to fight every couple minutes. What else is there to tell?
The downside of the film is that the fighting isn’t all that spectacular. The demon shit is funny, but they get annoying after a while. This was certainly an interesting film, but it’s not nearly as enjoyable as it should be, what with the blood-thirsty demons and all. But if this was your shit from back in the day, Visual Vengeance has you covered.
Random Thoughts
The translated names are hilarious. Some of these dudes being called Gary and Joey is fantastic.
When Joey falls into Hell, the subtitles are “mysterious blooping.” Accurate, but still goofy as shit.
“Black Prince of Hell, please save Gary's life!”
The dubbing for some of these characters is Kung Pow-esque.
If part of my Faustian bargain was to feed nine back-flipping cackling demons fresh blood every single day, I'd tell the Black Prince of Hell to get fucked.
At one point the score to Blade Runner is used for ten minutes or so. Can…can you just do that?
“Just kill the really bad rotten ones, and then stop.”
One of the last big fights takes place on water with everyone wearing little water-skis on their feet. I appreciate how this goofy ass movie keeps upping the silliness ante.
Transfer and Special Features
There’s an audio commentary with podcasters, which I’m typically not a fan of, but if you’re really into this and want to geek out along with a couple people, I’m sure it’s great for that.
A couple featurettes with Justin Decloux in which he lists a bunch of movies I've never heard of. If you're as into this stuff as much as he is, I'm sure these are informative. But for me, I just get lost after the tenth movie I've never heard of gets name-dropped.
There’s a “Dirty VHS” version if you're nostalgic for how you first saw this as a child.
There’s an interview with actor Yu Tai-Ping.
There’s also an episode of a podcast about the film, but no way was I going to listen to a podcast on a blu-ray. I have a little bit of dignity left. But nice of them to include it, I guess?
Look, this is nothing against Visual Vengeance. Special features for obscure stuff are hard to come by, so hats off to them for compiling all this stuff. I'm just not into this film enough to go into a deep dive with it.
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