The Oily Maniac (1976)

Well that was something, wasn’t it? I’ve been accruing a fair bit of Hong Kong cinema in recent months, a lot of it Shaw Brothers stuff, and in today’s mail was the new Shaw-Shock box from Imprint… my only prior engagement with Shaws horror was the similarly special Black Magic, also from director Ho Meng Hua, but I shall soon have a few more under my belt. Despite apparently being set in the mid-60s, Oily Maniac just screams mid-70s in much the same way that film does; our hero is a disabled young man (Danny Lee, later of The Killer among lots more) working for a somewhat dodgy law firm who takes his own action against criminals by using a magic spell that turns him into a thing made of oil. This is pretty unrepentant trash (as the title may indicate) on multiple levels, especially the effects, with the titular maniac manifesting as a ridiculous-looking liquid slick; I kept wondering how the film fared with censors at the time, too, cos I also discovered tonight Hong Kong cinema had no ratings cinema until 1988… were kids able to see this monstrosity with all that sex and violence? I imagine this would be Category III these days without much trouble…

Anyway, the film’s music is great, probably because most if not all of it was lifted bodily from other American & European films of the time; you may recognise one cue from a certain film about a shark from the year before. Oily Maniac was something of a slow starter, but once I got into its slightly perplexing vibe I found myself enjoying it more and in the second half I actually became quite charmed by it. There were some bits I could only respond to with applause. Perfectly absurd, but sometimes you just have to admire this sort of thing…