HEX – Early eighties HK version of 'Les Diaboliques' in which a downtrodden wife enters into a plot against her abusive husband when a newcomer arrives in the household. The inevitable murder happens, the scheme derails and it all seems to go a bit supernatural (or does it?). Many of those old Shaw Bothers horror films remind me of their Italian counterparts from around the same time in that they were often technically and aesthetically impressive in their delivery of cheap thrills, but really quite lacking in other ways, namely anything to do with nuanced plot, character, narrative etc etc. This is pretty much where 'Hex' is at. It looks great, but seems as wooden as hell. But, it's those 'cheap thrills' that are main draw for most of those watching 'Hex' these days, so how does it perform? Well, it's no 'Boxer's Omen', but, after a slightly sluggish first half hour, it gets pretty wild and before long there are rotting corpses running around and giggling severed heads and so on. It also goes a bit weird tonally in that it starts out as quite sombre but then reaches a point where it feels it can casually dip into low brow humour vis a vis a cross eyed man doing a massive piss amongst other examples. Although that 'humour' thing (yes, I am that miserable) has on occasion ruined other similar HK weirdos for me in the past, here it doesn't do too badly and just kind of adds to the randomness of it all. Good stuff which will appeal to anyone into bizarro horror from yesteryear.
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