Curse (Blood Sorcery / Xiong zhou) (1986) - Pan Asia Video Hong Kong VHS

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Yep, the back is a karaoke mixer advertisement...

A sickly man who can no longer perform in bed, bleeds profusely from his thigh, and envisions his noodles becoming bloody worms is admitted to the hospital after being found unconscious by a young doctor. Coming to, he tells a tale of being on leave as a war photographer in Vietnam in which he has a one night stand with a bar waitress. The girl's father finds out and demands he wed her upon returning from combat. The man agrees only, of course, to disappear which forces the father to befall an ancient curse upon him. A vengeful twist rears its head when the doctor's elderly father visits the ill man inquiring about the unusual story.

Maybe I don't get their appeal, but I've yet to see a cheap '80s "mystical gore" exploiter from Hong Kong that I care to watch more than once. Pang Ling's Curse, or by its better known title Blood Sorcery, is no different. It's just so bland, cheap, and packed with useless filler that its the definition of deflated expectations of zany Eastern goodness (i.e. - Mr. Vampire (1985), Magic of the Universe (1986), Lady Terminator (1989)). Despite some slimy shots involving worm infested wounds and cheeseball neon optical effects at the climax, the other eighty or so minutes is like a boring travelogue video set to a plot. It doesn't help that the picture quality is the pits and the English subtitles, full of terminally broken grammar, are either really hard to read or sliced off at the edges of the screen.