Satanic Crystals (1992)

The first time I heard of Satanic Crystals was when I saw the trailer at YouTube. Wow, holy mother of shit. This looks fun! My reaction was something like that, and moments later I found it on a German shop and made an order instantly. Why wait? Why food on the table when I can own this über-cool Hong Kong movie that I never heard about before? That was my reaction, and I never felt a gut-feeling so strong and so true before. A couple of days later it arrived and I could finally experience this trashy masterpiece of exploitative Hong Kong-action!

The MacGuffin of this movie is two legendary multi-colored jade stones, hidden somewhere in Thailand. One man knows where they are, but after he’s killed (strangled in a very drawn-out sequence), two maps to the place is placed in the hands of the bad guys and the good guys and now they have to get there first. But the road isn’t that easy, because everything from female warriors, crocodiles and lions await them!

As usual I’m lousy to write down the story, because sometime I just don’t think it’s that important. Especially with a movie like Satanic Crystals, which just rely on being extremely entertaining and deliver as much fun as the budget allows. The lead is played by Leung Kar Yan, aka Beardy, who is some kinda private detective, cop, whatever, who joins the hunt for the “satanic crystal”. He teams up with some other dudes, one of them is Christoph Klüppel (who had a nice little career as a muscular action toughie in Thai action movies for a couple of years) and goes to Thailand to get rich.

From there on it’s just a sleazy, cheap, violent rollercoaster of martial arts mayhem, shoot-outs and machete wielding maidens! It seem like the bad guys is getting some local tribe to join them as protection, and they have a small army of female warriors with machetes who chop their way thru our heroes team of adventurers in some very nice action set-pieces. Other danger is lions and crocodiles, and of course people with guns who shoots at everything that moves.

It’s hard to tell who big budget the movie had, because it looks a down and dirty, with action scenes that never look perfect, but still delivers a lot of nice stunts á Jackie Chan and those crazy Thai stuntmen that seem to rule the world nowadays. We’re talking Ouch-That-Hurt-kinda stunts. But anyway, I doubt the budget was so big – but its clear that they spent the money well on a lot of money-shots.

But sure, Satanic Crystals is not a perfect movie. It’s pure exploitation with some very graphic sleazy and nudity, made only to entertain. So compared to the big Hong Kong-classics it might not hold up as a classy action movie, but from now on it’s one of my favorite crazy lowbudget movies from Hong Kong. It has a lot of talent, violence and craziness and easily beats out most of the shit being produced today in Hong Kong. This is so far from any boring Wuxia you come, and I think we all should be grateful for that!