Nostalgia Kinky

Visual Vengeance takes a step away from its usual classic SOV offerings for a dive into the world of uber-bizarre supernatural Chinese Kung Fu with Chang Cheh’s delirious The Nine Demons (1984). Featuring a new restored 2K scan and a host of extras, this new Blu-ray is a pretty packed affair. Available to order from MVD, The Nine Demons is a bizarrely essential work of Chinese action cinema.

An epicly weird Faustian/Petey Wheatstraw homage, The Nine Demons is the cinematic equivalent of the meds they keep behind the counter at the drugstore. Starring Sheng Chaing, Feng Lu, Tien Chi Cheng amongst others, this Cheh film is a colorfully trippy film featuring talking baby demon heads, murderous supernatural kids and enough fighting to satisfy everyone in the audience.

Chang Cheh is best known as the visionary director of such classics as The Five Venoms (1978) and The One-Armed Swordsman (1967). The Nine Demons arrives near the conclusion of Cheh’s influential career. Sixty at the time of its release, Cheh’s run was impressive, and The Nine Demons shows no sign of his age.

The Nine Demons is an exceedingly satisfying film just for its sheer strangeness. Technically, the film is a bit clunky at times, with Kuo-Ren Wu’s cinematography never being quite as interesting as what is happening on screen. Thankfully, the film’s editing by Shan-Liang Lin is tight and correlates with some of the wild fight choreography.

The highlight of The Nine Demons might be some of the marvelous costumes designed by Yung Huang. I loved these colorful designs, and Cheh makes great use of them throughout, often matching the colors with some of the film’s more outre lighting setups. The Nine Demons feels fairly cheap at times, with its delightfully obvious painted scenic background and tumultuous cinematic feel, but the film’s sheer insanity trumps any budgetary issues.

Visual Vengeance offers up a New 2K transfer from the original film elements supervised by film archivist Toby Russell. The results are pleasing, and miles above the old VHS release presented as a supplement, but it does look as though Russell had his work cut out at times. Despite some age and wear, this is the best The Nine Demons will probably ever look.

Extras are fairly plentiful on this new Visual Vengeance release. On top of the added-on VHS version, we get a commentary, two video essays, an episode of Unsung Horrors, and an interview with actor Yu Tai-Ping, plus the usual amount of promotional material. Oh and a tip, the English-language soundtrack offers an entirely different (lifted) score. It is quite wild going back and forth between the film’s audio tracks. Visual Vengeance also adds a nice booklet to go with its standard poster and slipcover. This is a fine release for a really wacky film.
Recommended.

-Jeremy Richey, June 2026-