Music
Released: 1982 [Hong Kong]
Genre: Horror
Sub-Genre: Thriller
Spooky Eastern, set in the well - known place of innumerable Shaw Brothers movies and combining this with really weird happenings, waft of mist and attacks in the darkness, what works quite well for the atmospehre.
The title gives the Plot: Chun Fang [ Lo Lieh ], a former swordsman who was once defeated by Master Lung [ Anthony Lau Wing ] , is ordered by Lung to make a lantern for him, for the upcoming lantern festival. Still with hate and vengeance in his heart, he decides to use human skin from Lung's wife and mistress to craft the lantern. And he also makes use of the sister of Tan Fu [ Chen Kuan Tai ] , one of Lung's rivals.
Tan Fu and Lung turn on one another, while Chun Fang continues his macabre work.
Underlying normal Swordsplay - flick , but with some gruesomes additions , a savage- masked maniac with theatrical movements, the underground lantern workshop full of separated heads, stretched skin and bone crusher, all that leads to - somehow trashy - thrills.
There are also excellent fight scenes , visual and aesthetic top notch shots and a quite abnormal Hero, the conceited and narcistic Master Lung. His rivals with Tan Fu is also rather ridiculous, they are fighting about a prostitue and the nicest lantern, but he still becomes the ( positive ) role model , the police is powerless.
In the raving final all meet one another, where's a great slow motion shot of Chun Fang's collapsing house, with the cops still standing on the roof, filmed from above.
Movie is pure cinematic trivial story, an unique mix of creepy horror and energetic swordplay action.
8/10
Buy the DVD here