Two Cents Film Club is here with the Scoop on the Goop!
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
The Shaw Brothers film studio is best known for their iconic martial arts films like The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and Come Drink with Me, among countless others.
But the Shaws were not strangers to other genres, particularly once the expansion of television began cutting into the profitability of feature films. As tastes changed, the studio tried to change with it, shifting from period martial arts pictures to grimy, contemporary action thrillers and even out-and-out horror.
Enter Ho Meng Hua. While Ho Meng Hua had worked at Shaw Brothers on wuxia film, he seemed to find his true calling going absolutely gonzo with their horror pictures, infusing his low budget nightmares with deranged imagery and stories, often derived from the culture and myths of the Malaysian Shaw Brothers Studios location.
One such legend concerned the Orang Minyak (literally “oily man” in Malay), a creature of the night that abducted young women. The Orang Minyak was said to be covered head to toe in black oil and gifted with fantastical abilities, able to evade capture because of its slippery skin.
In Ho Meng Hua’s riff, The Oily Maniac, the monster is actually a man. Shen Yuan (Danny Lee) is an ordinary enough man, just trying to manage life in the big city despite being left physically impaired by a bout of polio. But Shen Yuan’s life changes when he is gifted with a magic spell that allows him to transform into the squishy lunatic, a super-powered behemoth that begins wreaking havoc on evildoers across the city. But it’s not long before Shen Yuan begins exercising his power for selfish reasons, or for the city’s police to begin working in earnest to exorcise the oily maniac from the streets.
Next Week’s Pick:
With the remake of Suspiria a smashing success, people are also naturally discovering Dario Argento’s original fever dream on film. We’ve covered that one previously, but in honor of the master we’re gathering around another of his spooky and wildly colorful classics, Inferno, considered by many a spiritual sequel to Suspiria and the second of the “Three Mothers” thematic trilogy which deals with witchcraft. But no prior knowledge or viewing is needed to enjoy Inferno. Watch it (free to watch on Vudu or Kanopy, also available on Shudder & Amazon) and send us YOUR two cents! — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review on any MCU film to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
I literally had no idea what to expect with this one. The Oily Maniac is basically late 1970s Shaw Bros predicting the sort of movies Troma Entertainment would release in the mid-80s. It’s Swamp Thing by way of the Toxic Avenger, with a whole lot of exploitation mixed in. I was totally on board with the horror-vigilante angle that makes up most of the plot (goofy low budget creature effects and all), but there are frequent misogynistic & rapey digressions that drain the fun out of the experience. I’ve seen worse, more offensive exploitation movies, but The Oily Maniac never really manages to be more than a curiosity.
Verdict: Trick (@T_Lawson)
The Team
Any film that in any way inspired The Greasy Strangler starts with a strike against it. You may call me a bullshit artist, but The Greasy Strangler is an out out awful film. To say I’m not a fan would be a gross understatement and a legitimate miscarriage of justice. But, alas… we aren’t here to talk about that abomination.
The Oily Maniac is fun. It’s stupid and bizarre and not a particularly “good” movie, but it’s a ton of fun. My favorite moments were probably the maniac Alex-Mack-ing his way around the screen, though the ass whoopings the oily mess of a monster delivered were quite awesome.
My only complaint, if it could be called that, is that a premise this absurd deserves some goofy, poorly timed dubs. I tend to prefer my cheese dubbed (dubs over subs, y’all!), though admittedly that’s just me.
This may not be an oily masterpiece, but it’s an oily good time.
Verdict: Treat (@thepaintedman)
Yeah, no thanks. There are certainly engaging moments of low budget monster mayhem to keep you watching throughout The Oily Maniac’s relatively short running time, but, to put it bluntly, there’s just too much goddamn rape shit for this movie to be any entertaining. Yeah, yeah, don’t hold the entertainment of the past to today’s social standards, blah blah blah. But the simple truth is that The Oily Maniac is too lousy a movie to take seriously, so its only real value is as a goofy, campy curiosity. And it’s real hard to enjoy the goofy camp when the film takes such clear delight in ripping the clothes off the actresses so gross dudes can paw at them for minutes on end until a stupid looking monster runs in and starts smashing stuff. Although sometimes you don’t even get the stupid looking monster, you just get the rape.
Like I said up top, there are moments where The Oily Maniac is a fun time, almost all of which featuring the titular monster getting into martial arts tussles or parkouring his shit-coated Grimace-looking hide over walls and off buildings. At those times, you could imagine this film being discovered as a bad movie classic, but the film surrounding them is sleazy and leering in a way that’s just no fun at all.
Verdict: Trick (@theTrueBrendanF)
I wanted so badly to love this one — it’s been on my radar for a long time — but certain aspects make it a pretty rough watch.
All the creature stuff is actually delightful — the absurd effects are actually infused with some cool horror elements, and the transformations/appearances of the Oily Maniac, eyes aglow, accompanied by harsh musical cues and a primal scream, are both legitimately jarring and undeniably cheesy. I dig the lo-fi aesthetic and hero’s journey — to villain. The title character is both likeable enough to empathize with and chumpy enough to mostly abandon that empathy once he starts raging out of control.
But as my colleagues have noted, while the film can be deliciously mean-spirited (watching this blobby trash heap murder bad guys never gets old), that also extends to several leery scenes (including rape) in which various bad guys get handsy. So while I enjoyed the film’s horror and action aspects, the unnecessarily lurid vibes undercut it with an overall distaste.
Devil’s Advocate though, a year from now I’ll probably have forgotten about all the lurid rapeyness but still remember the cool bonkers shit, of which there is thanks plenty. Even if I never watch it again, this is so singularly wild and obscure that I’m glad to have it under my belt.
Verdict: Neutral (@VforVashaw)
Two Cents Verdict: Trick
Next week’s pick: