In Hong Kong cinema, the “Category III” label is the rough equivalent of an “X” rating in the United States – no one under 18 admitted. More than identifying extreme content, however, the classification denotes a certain sensibility in HK cinema since the late 1980s – an impulse to not only repulse but also to do so in the most confounding, counter-logical manner possible (usually in quivering acres of latex and gallons of profuse goop). While Category III classics like Riki-Oh and Three Extremes are better known to American audiences, Spectacle is proud to plumb the depths of dubious morals and devil feti to present a selection of lesser-known features from the genre.
In Cantonese + Mandarin with English subtitles.
Content Warning: sexual assault, necrophilia
FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 – 7:30PM
A nineteenth-century period piece with equal debts to giallo stagecraft and the excesses of Nekromantik, Corpse Mania consistently flouts expectations over the course of its runtime: you might first mistake the film for a restrained police procedural until director Kuei Chih-Hung reminds you, in the least restrained way possible, that the subject of his film is a serial necrophile with less-than-stellar housekeeping habits. In the true giallo fashion, however, things are not as simple as they seem, and the killer turns out to be only the center of a bizarre plot linking a constellation of figures from the Hong Kong underworld.
dir. Keith Li, 1982.
Hong Kong. 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, MARCH 5 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – MIDNIGHT
In the realm of family curses, none is less appetizing than that documented in Keith Li’s 1982 family drama Centipede Horror. A disgruntled wizard unleashes a plague of poisonous centipedes upon the descendants of his archenemy – the survivors are left to follow a trail of long-buried family secrets to a nightmarish realm of partially masticated insect legs and ambulatory chicken skeletons. For true bug fans only!