The Princess and Toxicant (1977)

So much average

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

SUCCUBARE is one of those bizarre little black-magic themed Asian films that were all the rage in the early 1980s. It's stylised as a kung fu film and even features a role for kung fu star Carter Wong who shows up as a bodyguard. However, it's more like DEVIL WOMAN in terms of plot, with a number of witches holding sway over the locality and casting curses on the menfolk. There are some gruesome moments, typically involving the vomiting of worms and the like as in the various Shaw Brothers horror flicks, but the worst moments of the film are those involving real-life animal cruelty. One supporting character merely shows up to devour living creatures - mice, toads, etc. - and incredibly these moments seem to be played for laughs. There's also an ox execution reminiscent of APOCALYPSE NOW. It's rather unpalatable, and otherwise the film is too cheap and derivative to enjoy.

This Hong Kong horror film is loaded with animal cruelty.An ox is graphically killed and sliced apart on camera.Snakes,toads,lizards and mice are eaten alive in inserts by the same man at various times during the film and other reptiles and animals are tortured.Add a little bit of kung fu,martial infidelity and colorful costumes,mix in some curses and what you get is "Succubare".The main story is about a bunch of women who live in a remote town who put curses on their men if they leave town and don't come back in the allotted time.One cheating man's belly swells-up the size of a balloon and when a surgeon cuts him open,worms,snakes and centipedes spill out of his stomach as he wakes up and dies.The main plot deals with a man whose brother is killed by one of the spells and goes out to get revenge.What he doesn't count on is falling in love with the head priestess.Director Wai-Yip Wong fills the screen with atrocious acts of animal cruelty that lies head-and-shoulders above anything the Italians have produced.Still the story is quite interesting and fans of objectionable extreme cinema should give it a look.7 out of 10.

The animal-eating (geek) scenes were not as bad as you would think. After having watched Mondo Cane and Mondo Magic, these scenes are average. The grossest one was when the guy ate the head off the mouse. But they were so fast and few that they didn't bother me.Otherwise, the film was just sort of interesting. I always like hearing the silly voice-overs. They never sound like what you think the actor/actress would sound like in real life. I liked the bright colors worn by the princesses. The shots of weird looking bugs were cool too. The youngest princess looked REALLY young, almost 14 or something. The fight scenes were not as long and boring as most fight scenes, so that was good.3/10.

I was permanently scarred by this terrible film.The main action of the movie is nothing special. It seems there's a tribe of snake-worshipping people in a remote mountain region of Northern China, where women rather than men are the leaders and decision makers. I suppose among some men, this is enough to make "Succubare" a horror movie... Anyway, occasionally Chinese men would wander into the village, take a fancy to the local girls, seduce them and then abandon them. Unfortunately for the men, the women had put them under a spell, derived from snake venom, which would make them die horribly in 100 days -- their bellies swollen like a pregnant woman's with live worms and snakes -- if they did not return.Forget the cover of the US video. This has nothing to do with vampires, though there is one inept blood-drinking scene. The title itself is only marginally appropriate: "Succubare" is the Latin verb meaning "to lie beneath", and it's the root of the word Succubus, a female demon who would seduce men in their sleep. Actually, it's the MEN who are the seducers here.But it's not the main action of this ludicrous film that's so objectionable. It's the little side-incidents. I'll overlook the slaughter and butchery of an ox that's performed on-screen. The participants seem very experienced, as though this is an unpleasant duty they actually do in real life; and I'm sure they really ate the animal afterwards... though I resent having the act thrust in my face as "entertainment".What I WISH I could overlook (or HAD overlooked) are the numerous, totally extraneous shots of an unidentified man, who from time to time interrupts the story by eating living animals. He starts the movie by tearing apart a live snake with his teeth. In the course of the movie, he devours a bug, a lizard, a toad (I had to leave the room after this), and a whole mouse (I stopped watching at this point, and lost my appetite for days). Let me stress that this was totally unexpected, and had nothing to do with the movie... unless it's a cynical reference to love as it's portrayed in the film: a blind, selfish, predatory survival mechanism that tears apart the helpless... but then again, I'm probably just rationalizing to get the vileness out of my head...