Marasmus has no boundaries. The white jeep is racing at great speed along the mountain road to the sea shore. At the wheel, a young guy sips from an iron can of Diet Coke, next to the girl unsuccessfully collects a Rubik's Cube. Having broken up a tent on the shore and roasted two sausages and one chicken leg at the stake, the young people prepared for sleep. Could they have imagined that this night, their carefree life would end forever? Hearing, as if in a dream, some voices, the girl went outside and immediately fell under the influence of an evil spirit, and in the morning she seemed to be replaced. First, she harpooned a little boy’s leg and then threw him from a great height into the water, just for daring to drink their Diet Coke. Sadly, this behavior seems to have completely gotten away with a law enforcement officer (young people work for the police). Upon returning to her native Hong Kong, even more terrible things begin to happen to the girl, namely, people familiar to her begin to die one by one.
As you can guess from the description of the plot plot “Hell has no boundaries” is the most banal horror film on the planet. It was shot in 1982, at the once famous Hong Kong film studio Shaw Brothers, which by that time lived out its last days. These people approached the production of films with the same responsibility with which the Chinese approach the production of any other of their products, namely, stamped one hundred paintings a year 90% of which were shot in the genre of kung fu fighters. “Hell has no boundaries” is the 10% exception.
The great success of this film is the choice of actors for the main roles. Actress Leanne Lau did well with the image of a half-angel half-beast and even, obviously, an unplanned smile in the plot, from time to time, slipping on her face, does not irritate at all, but on the contrary gives a certain charm to her heroine and, of course, Derek Yi is one of the most conscientious people in Hong Kong cinema, who later filmed such masterpieces as “Protege”, “One Night in Mongkok” and “Incident in Shinjuku”, in his youth and acting career showed professionalism. He seems to be the only person who takes everything to heart and it is somehow even awkward to look at.
It is impossible not to mention a few memorable episodes that may not allow this film to finally sink into the abyss of oblivion, such as the one in which the main character in the middle of the night threw up in the toilet, and then she is forced to drink all this, as, apparently, for non-payment in her apartment turned off the water or a very funny scene happened to the authors at the very end, when the hero under the influence of an evil spirit Derek Yee climbed under the skirt to the nurse, and she thought that it was a nearby surgeon decided to flirt with her in this way. In Hong Kong, in general, mystical films have always been more funny than scary and classic horror films were given to local filmmakers with great difficulty, which is well felt in this film.
In the rest, Hell Has No Boundaries is no different in its level from the Russian TV series that are shown on our television during the day. The actors, looking at the camera, say banal lines, a huge number of blunders, which does not even make sense to mention, given that the film was made for three pennies, clearly on the knee, and most importantly it is not terrible. But everything is known in comparison, and of course it is incorrect to measure “Hell has no boundaries” and “The Exorcist” with one ruler. In Hong Kong, there were no traditions associated with the production of horror films, so you need to evaluate it only against the background of other horror films there, at that time and in this context, Hell looks quite, decent and today for all fans of Hong Kong cinema, undoubtedly, is a real rarity.
5 out of 10