Centipede Horror (1984)

In high school dvd was big and Circuit City and Best Buy had huge selections. They even carried cheap ass kung fu flicks that were at best grey market, at worst total bootlegs. I quickly learned that Gordon Liu was awesome and almost anything Shaw Brothers put out was gold. My appetite for kung fu mayhem grew until I really got into horror and then I forgot about the badly dubbed flicks until I discovered that Shaw Brothers also did horror flicks! I quickly gobbled up Human Lanterns, Seeding of a Ghost, Black Magic, Corpse Mania and that led me further down the rabbits’ hole. It’s honestly been about a year or so since I’ve watched any Hong Kong horror and Centipede Horror was a pleasant surprise.

The daughter of an affluent family travels to South East Asia (the film never refers to any specific country rather referring as the whole area as we ‘Mericans refer to Europe) where she runs afoul of a sorceror that causes giant poisonous centipedes to crawl on her skin and bite her. She’s taken to a nearby hospital and she begins to die from her wounds but not before live centepedes burst from her skin, right before her brother’s eyes. The brother then sets out to find the sorcerer and put an end to his black magic.

On the black magic flick scale, Centipede Horror resides above Black Magic, and probably Seeding of a Ghost but it’s no Boxer’s Omen either, which to me is the high water mark that will never be beaten. Centipede Horror isn’t particularly gory or sleazy but it is pretty gross. I mean these are giant ass bugs here. We’re talking over 6 inches long and an inch wide, crawling all over folks. They certainly look nasty to me. We even get a great scene of live centipede vomiting. Seriously, how eager to make a film do you have to be to be willing to put several giant live centipedes in your mouth?! Nasty. It’s a rare gem and I’m always game for some dueling Chinese sorcerer fights. A fun, funky flick that delivers enough to be worth a watch.

The problem here is the dvd presentation. It’s obviously from a VHS dub, though a damn good one and the film is subtitled but the titles are hard to read and were obviously burned into the VHS source. This isn’t a pristine restoration by any means but then again the folks at Apprehensive Films are selling it pretty damn cheap so it all works out in the end.

If you haven’t seen any of the aforementioned films, check those out first, but afterwards pick up Centipede Horror. It’s a gross reminder of how the rest of the world lives and how desperate some folks are to make a buck.

Gore: Mild

Nudity: Mild

Overall: 7/10