Tag: undead

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mortal Kombat II

Director – Simon McQuoid – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 116m

***

Dragged into an otherworldly tournament a washed up 1990s action star must fight other contestants to the death to save the Earthrealm – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 8th

King Jerrod (Desmond Chiam from Joy Ride, Adele Lim, 2023) of Edenia loses the tenth fight in a to-the-death tournament to intergalactic despot Shao Khan (Martyn Ford from Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Matthew Vaughn, 2017), who thus takes over as ruler of Edenia, despatching Queen Sindel (Ana Thu Nyguen) when she attacks him and adopting the child Princess Kitana (Sophia Xu) as his own daughter. By the time Kitana (Adeline Rudolph from Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Brian Taylor, 2023) has reached womanhood, she has mastered such combat skills as her two deadly-bladed fans, under her personal combat trainer Jade (Tati Gabrielle), who is also her trusted ally and friend.

Meanwhile on our own planet, following a clip from one of his better movies – a brilliantly choreographed parody of 1990s action movies – washed up action movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban from Star Trek, J.J. Abrams, 2009; The Lord of the Rings; The Two Towers, Peter Jackson, 2002; Xena: Warrior Princess, TV series, 1996-2001) is approached by Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano from Shogun, TV series, 2025; Journey to the Shore, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2015; Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, Katsuhito Ishii, 1998)

and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee from The Meg, Jon Turtletaub, 2018; Battle of the Sexes, 2017; Home and Away, TV series, 2007) who appear a little like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) via lightning bolts in a car park following Johnny’s attendance at a fan convention to ask him to join them as champions against Shao Khan in the upcoming tournament to decide the ruler of Earthrealm and the fate of all mankind.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Sister Midnight

Director – Karan Kandhari – 2024 – UK, Sweden, India – Cert. 15 – 110m

***1/2

A young woman in an arranged marriage discovers herself to be a creature of the night… and one of the undead – genre-bender is out on UK digital from Wednesday, June 18th

A young woman travels cross-country by train, face veiled by beaded hangings, to join the arranged marriage husband she has (presumably) never met in their new, urban home. Uma (Radikha Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak best known here from The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, John Madden, 2015) don’t seem to know what to do with each other. Certainly not any sort of sexual congress as they unveil sitting beside one another for the first time. As the tale proceeds, sleeping with him comes to consist of curling up on her own on the other side of the bed from him. Later, her sleeping patterns will start to shift…

Theirs is a pretty basic home – a room with a mattress and a door out onto the bustling, main street outside. Her husband has a job, so goes out in the morning and comes back in the evening, although sometimes he goes out drinking after work and comes back later.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mr. Vampire III
(Ling Wan
Sin Sang,
靈幻先生)

Director – Ricky Lau – 1987 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 88m
***1/2
Stunt-filled action comedy in which a travelling con-artist in cahoots with ghosts helps a Taoist priest fight a gang of horse thieves led by an evil sorceress – out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, May 22nd as part of Eureka! Video’s Hopping Mad: The Mr. Vampire Sequels

The third ‘official’ Mr. Vampire film (i.e. to be made by Sammo Hung / Leonard Ho’s Bo Ho Films company).

Set in the early twentieth century of the original Mr. Vampire, this once again takes the constituent parts of the original and shakes everything up a bit to come up with something at once different yet recognisably the same.

Taoist priest Ming (Richard Ng) is not terribly good at the job, so is getting by as a con artist going from village to village banishing ghosts for anyone who’ll pay him, the con element being that he has two ghost assistants, the adult Big Pao (David Lui Fong) and the small boy Small Pao (Hoh Kin-wai from Mr. Vampire II) who act out the part of being banished. Real ghosts with a nasty habit of appearing and messing things up force him to move on.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Dead
And The Deadly
(Ren Xia Ren,
人嚇人)

Director – Wu Ma – 1982 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12 – 99m

*****

A couple planning an inheritance swindle convince their victim to play along then kill him, after which he comes back as a ghost to take revenge – classic and seminal HK kung fu comedy is out on UK Blu-ray in a 2K restoration.

Made three years ahead of Mr. Vampire (Ricky Lau, 1985), this puts all the elements of that film in place, apart from the vampires. Actually, they’re not so much vampires as hopping ghosts (jiangshi). There’s no hopping in The Dead And The Deadly, but there are ghosts.

Chu (Sammo Hung) becomes suspicious when best friend Ma Lucho (Wu Ma) dies, suspecting Mrs. Ma (Leung Mei Hei) and her priest companion (Chung Fat) of poisoning him. As becomes clear from an early scene in a brothel, Ma is not gifted with women, so Chu is surprised that his surviving wife is pregnant. What he hasn’t realised is that Ma is actually in on the scam and is only pretending to be dead.

But that changes about an hour in when Ma’s two co-conspirators kill him for real to get his money, as Mrs.… Read the rest