We’ve once again entered Halloween season, giving me an excuse to write about monster movies, which is something I rarely get to do. To kick this October off, we’re returning to an old favourite source: Hong Kong film pioneers Shaw Brothers Studios, who gave us previous subjects Super Inframan and The Mighty Peking Man. Released between those two movies and directed by Mighty Peking Man‘s Ho Meng-hua (several actors from both movies also appear), The Oily Maniac takes some of those same aesthetics and puts them in service of a horror movie that combines seedy exploitation and blatant moralism, never a more potent mixture in the world of B-movies. As we are told in the opening text, this is based on “tall tales” from Malaysia (although I’d say they are better described as urban legends, especially considering they originate in the twentieth century) of an oil-covered night stalker called Orang Minyak, a figure who was featured in several Malaysian films in the decades before this. In this one, though, they take a figure who in the original stories was a frightening figure of violence against women and turn him into a supernatural avenger, with the film finding other ways to maintain the distressing tone suggested by its origins. Although by far the grimiest of the Shaw Bros monster trilogy (in more ways than one), that is sometimes offset by a comparable devotion to outlandish film making.
Obviously set in the tropical environments of Malaysia (that opening text proudly boasts of how they “extensively” shot the movie there), we find ourselves with a protagonist not unlike the one from Curse of the Golem: law office worker Shen Yuan (played by Danny Lee, who gets the hat trick of starring in all three Shaw Bros. monster movies, and later in John Woo’s The Killer), who was crippled by polio at a young age and has to walk with crutches, and is in love with Yue, daughter of the owner of a local coconut oil factory. The owner gets into a dispute with some gangsters who attempt to get control of his factory using debts and threats, and in the ensuing melee (where a dozen of the factory workers fight the hoodlums in a pseudo-martial arts manner) he kills one of them, is arrested, and is swiftly sent to be executed. Shen visits the old man in prison, whose last wish is to share a mysterious tattoo of symbols and writing on his back that he says will allow Shen to get back at the criminals, but only if only uses its secrets for just reasons (or else he will die horribly, apparently.) Shen digs a hole in the middle of his small thatched-roof house and chants some magic words, which summons a magic oil that transforms him into a gooey, seemingly invincible monster. Luckily, he does this just as two of the gangsters break into Yue’s home and sexually assault her, an unfortunately semi-frequent occurrence in this film, and Shen uses his oil powers to kill them off. But since there’s about an hour left in the movie, he’s clearly not done yet.
The titular slick individual travels around via cartoon oil blob accompanied by suspiciously Jaws-esque music, can regenerate lost limbs (including his head), and when the job is done, hoofs it in the least dignified fashion possible. While mostly strangling his victims or bopping them on the head (or spitting goo at them), at one point he beats someone to death with a bicycle that the victim had previously used to tail him. Although gaining his new powers from a magical ritual, Shen’s subsequent transformations involve him slathering himself with whatever oil happens to be available, whether it be at a gas pump or jumping into a barrel of it at a construction site. Meanwhile, the Oily Maniac is being pursued by the world’s most incompetent detective (when he investigates the law office, he tells the other officers that everyone there is a suspect “except the cripple”), who needs to have every lead handed to him. While never going as over-the-top as Inframan, the scenes involving the man(iac) himself are still heightened (and often involve him fighting a dozen people at the same time), as is the entire movie with all its quick cuts, unexpected zooms, and gauzy filters giving many scenes a manic dream-like quality.
The underlying contrasts throughout the movie are between the eccentric direction of the movie, the silliness of the monster, and the dark and sleazy nature of the plot. The idea here is to make it one part supernatural creature feature and one part Death Wish-style revenge thriller, and if you’ve ever seen one of the latter, you can pretty much guess the queasy areas the film ventures into. Although initially adopting the role of the Oily Maniac to avenge his friend, Shen eventually decides to become a more general righter of wrongs, and as someone who works under a scumbag lawyer and overhears many wrongs, he has a lot of things to right. If you didn’t think a movie about an oily monster could have a lengthy rape trial with a semi-graphic depiction of the crime (although the opposing nature of the defendant and victim’s stories, with each one saying the other was horribly drunk, is almost comical), prepare to be surprised! If you didn’t think a movie about an oily monster could have a woman trying to get recompense for botched breast surgery from an unlicensed doctor, showing the horrible scarring she was left with, prepare to be double surprised! As a bonus, in the moments preceding the unlicensed doctor getting avenged upon by the oily monster, we see her taking part in an invasive operation paid for by a pimp to make one of his sex workers “look like a virgin.” Every instance of nudity in the movie, of which there are a few, is intensely uncomfortable, both in the context and in the way it’s shot. It’s a classically gross exploitation movie.
Going back to that opening text, it tells us that the movie “…bears the moral that justice does prevail”, which I guess is sort of true, but as you can see it comes with some complications. Like most vigilante movies, the world around Shen is festering with corruption and depravity—one of the bigger perpetrators turns out to be Shen’s boss, who aside from just mistreating Shen, also makes shady deals with clients (as we learn, he conspired with the woman at the rape trial to sell a lie so they could split the damages paid, and she ends up getting oily justice as well), and we eventually see that he has been working with the gangsters from the beginning to get them that factory. Obviously he is destined to get his, although considering that he swindles both the victim and the doctor in the botched surgery case, I was a little surprised that Shen felt that the doctor deserved death (although working unlicensed, her biggest crime seemed to be incompetence)—this is the closest the movie gets to the vigilante street crime genre’s propensity for disproportionate retribution. Otherwise, the Oily Maniac is shown to be quite capable of avoiding collateral damage.
Shen himself is a bitter figure whose monstrous vengeance seems as much borne out of generalized anger than just getting back at the obvious villains. Aside from being disrespected by his boss and even the secretaries at his job, his love of Yue only ends in disappointment when she tells him she is engaged with another man (who is also a cretin working with the other villains)—he feels that everyone looks down on him because of his handicap, but he also at one points yells out “Women! Women!”, so maybe there’s a bit more there under the surface. Of course, he is also completely oblivious to the fact that one of his co-workers clearly has a thing for him, even making him dinner (great-looking curry!) which he ruins by coming in late and telling her that he already had dinner at Yue’s. After several oily murders, she eventually figures out his secret, and he tells her about his anguish at the monster he has become and his desire to end his own life once the top baddies have been dealt with. Considering how poorly the rest of the women in this movie are treated (the fate of Yue in particular is horrible and depressing), that she manages to get out relatively unscathed, and is even the one who figures out that maybe fire is effective against the oil man, is a surprise.
So, yes, it is difficult for me to call this movie “fun” even if most of the oily maniac stuff itself is as wacky as anything else in the Shaw Bros. trilogy. Whereas I would tell random people on the street to watch Inframan, this one requires some caution—the exploitation stuff is in full force here, making for something that is disturbingly lurid, just like the downbeat urban decay movies that it is clearly trying to play off of. There is something very old school about adding a supernatural angle to what could otherwise be a stock vigilante plot, especially since it seems to more openly play up the self-destructive nature of Shen’s one man justice campaign—as well, it is interesting to place that sort of plot in a setting that is much more vibrant than the colourless concrete of a big western city. Oily Maniac is a strange film, often going from scenes of gooey monster hijinks to downbeat and sickening treatment of women, so if you seek it out, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 