Flying witch heads!

August 14, 2009 7:56 PM

Help me identify this weird asian movie featuring a swordsman fighting demon woman whose head flies off, and whose lover hallucinates men in communist uniforms!

Today my girlfriend and I saw the band Infinite Groove Orchestra playing at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersberg, Florida. During their set, they projected various bizarre clips from random films. One clip seemed to be from an Asian kung fu movie of some sort. I think the language it used was a dialect of Chinese. There was a man peering into a room where two lovers were in bed. He saw that the woman had half of her face peeled off, and an eyeball drooping out. He powered up his sword so that it glowed yellow, and then charged into the room and attacked the woman. She turned out to be some sort of demon and they squared off.

At one point her head came off and flew at him. He threw his sword at the head and hit it and it exploded, but then came back together again. She then hypnotized her lover, some ordinary human, into thinking that the swordsman was some kind of military or government man in a tan uniform, waving money around instead of a sword. He then attacked the swordsman. I think after that the witch flew out of the window and then the whole place started exploding.

The clip was really fun to watch, and now I'm dying to know what film it was so we can watch the whole thing!

posted by One Second Before Awakening to media & arts (9 comments total)

I think this may be fantasy mission force, though I'm not sure. There is a segment in the middle where I seem to recall things like this happening, though I couldn't find any clips on youtube from that part of the movie.
posted by advil at 8:28 PM on August 14

Nang Naak?

Headless ghosts are called Phi Kraseu in Thailand.
posted by the cuban at 9:17 PM on August 14

I have no idea. But that does remind me of an anime with the line "Son of a bitch! Flying monster heads!"
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:51 PM on August 14

Sometimes Phi Kraseu is romanized with a "g" (Grasue), which may be of some limited help in searching.
posted by Falconetti at 10:37 PM on August 14

Thanks for the ideas so far! I'd like to add that the film's video quality led me to think it's from the 60's or 70's. Also, the special effects were very cheesy and old-school (for example, to show the swordsman's sword powering up, neon yellow was animated over it). For this reason I'm sure it isn't Nang Naak (though it does look like an interesting film). It may be Fantasy Mission Force, I'll look into that one.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 10:47 PM on August 14

The film is almost certainly Mr Vampire, which is a totally awesome kung-fu horror comedy with lots of classic scenes. Enjoy!
posted by laumry at 4:00 AM on August 15

The head coming of part reminds me of a Penanggallen, could it be one of these movies?
posted by Midnight Rambler at 8:37 AM on August 15

I've seen that movie, it's Mystics in Bali.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 10:37 AM on August 15

I'm pretty sure the film is, in fact, Mr. Vampire. I recognize one of the actors pictured in it's movie poster as the protagonist in the scene I watched. Thanks a lot for your help, guys!
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:36 PM on August 16