The Beheaded 1000 (1993)

Best movie ever!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It had potential to be a great movie. Good story plot and good actors. Action was mediocre but it isn't a kung-fu movie so no harm done. Wang Yu was excellent. Ching Siu Ho was good too. However, the most important scene, the climax, was what brought the score down. Er-Wu (Ching Siu Ho) was burdened to execute his master Ren De Tie (Wang Yu) and the scene, in theory, was suppose to be of a dramatic and sad tone...but it turned boring as it was unnecessarily dragged out (way too much talking) and the "funny" that was slipped in really killed the mood. The ending was okay but it would've felt more complete if Er-Wu himself rid all the "Blood Brothers" or "Ghostly Eight" with that magical sword that had so much emphasis built on it during the climax.

Jimmy Wang Yu stars as a famous executioner who is about to make his 1000th beheading. Chin Siu Ho plays his disciple and from there it gets really weird. I think every single person who dies in this movie comes back to life. There are a lot of special effects, sometimes fun ones. The worst part of this movie is that there are no good fight scenes and the acting is horrible. chin Siu Ho shows some real talent, but he can't carry the movie by himself./////////////////Picture and sound quality on the Image DVD is good.

*****WARNING: The Following may contain minor SPOILERS***** This movie not only has abundent decapitations, it also has plenty other limbs & organs (including sexual) which gets chopped off. This movie is certainly not for the faint of heart. I found it quite funny, but perhaps not so much for the intended comedic aspects as much as the odditty of some lines (a product no doubt of the language barrier or/and subtitles). I would only recommend this movie to fans of HK horror-comedies. As mentioned, this is a very violent film, already five minutes into the movie we get several graphic beheadings. There are also ghosts & people who possess magic. One gets to see a cleric grow to the size of a giant & hunt ghosts, a laser shooting skull statue, ghosts that shoot laser as well as very powerful proto-grenades. Unfathomable is a word I would use to describe some of the chain of events, dialogue lines, as well as choreographic, cinematographic, & editing choices.My rating, though, is a qualified one since I am not a huge fan of HK films (though I'm also Not not-a-fan) & my expereince with these, as well as my cultural & linguistical affinities, is highly limited.I give this movie a 1.5 out five. It gets one point for the (my own) hilarity factor, and it gets ahalf-a-point for those times in the movie where the formal beauty of the sets shines (but note that this is accompanied with some preplexingly poor choices, especially the bluntly superimposed laser-eque speciall effects).Regards,Eyal.