8/10
Brilliantly silly Hong Kong action/adventure/horror.
12 June 2007
Loaded with dazzling kung fu, silly monsters, stunts, and cheesy gore, and even managing to throw in the occasional naked oriental chick, The Seventh Curse is sheer entertainment from start to finish.

Chin Siu Ho plays Yuan Chen, a brave adventurer who rescues a beautiful Thai woman about to be sacrificed by the evil (and squeaky voiced) Aquala (played by Cat III fave, Elvis Tsui), leader of a bloodthirsty 'worm tribe'. Unfortunately, as a result of his bravery, he becomes the victim of a curse, which causes a series of arteries to burst from his body. With the seventh 'burst', he will die. However, this fate is postponed (for one year) by Betsy, the woman he has saved (who feeds him part of her breast!).

When, 12 months later, the curse inevitably kicks back in, Yuan Chen must once again head to the jungles of Thailand in search of the cure for his predicament: magical grains of ash from the eyes of a giant statue of Buddha. Unfortunately, this statue is smack bang in the middle of 'worm tribe' country!

Helping Yuan in his quest is a spunky reporter (a young Maggie Cheung), a Thai warrior (Dick Wei), and an expert in witchcraft (Chow Yun Fat). And he needs all the help he can get, since he not only has to battle the 'worm tribe' and its leader, but also a gang of kung fu monks, blood ghosts (vicious little buggers created from the blood of 100 children), and 'old ancestor', a skeletal zombie that can morph into a bat winged monster.

The fight scenes are fast, furious and typically 80s in style (meaning that quite a few people crash through glass); the gore is frequent, OTT and very messy; and the monsters are cheap and cheerful rubber creations that are impossible not to find entertaining—meaning that The Seventh Curse is an unmissable treat for any fan of weird Asian cinema.
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