This film is by no means the best of the Hong Kong horror flicks of the seventies, but it is definitely the most offensive. It’s certainly the only movie I know of that contains rampant nudity, panty-sniffing, rape and vagina-hungry lizards!
LEWD LIZARD (CHONG), from 1979, is not only one of the most controversial Hong Kong horror flicks of the seventies, but also one of the rarest. As of early 2013 its sole home video appearance was via an eighties-era PAL VHS that’s been bootlegged ever since.
The film, FYI, credits two directors. One of them is Norman Chu, who also stars, being one of Hong Kong’s most long-standing and respected performers (his other credits include HK classics like THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, THE 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, KING OF BEGGARS and DREAM HOME). LEWD LIZARD is his only directorial credit, and, unsurprisingly, is often omitted from Norman Chu filmographies. It pivots on the idealistic young David, who’s madly in love with the luscious Shan Shan. Yet when he arrives home from college David finds that Shan Shan, in an effort to pay off her father’s mob debts, has married a wealthy businessman. David becomes determined to get revenge on Shan Shan and all womankind—and upon finding some tiny lizards at a beach decides he knows just how to go about it.
The first part of David’s evil plan involves stealing unsuspecting women’s panties. David then sniffs the panties to find those that are unclean, and uses the bodily fluids in them to create a special compound he injects into the lizards. What the injections do to the creatures is demonstrated in the following scene, when David, posing as a modeling agent, enters a former lover’s apartment, beats the gal up and lets the lizards loose. They promptly slither up the skank’s vagina and drive her mad with desire.
David subjects many more women to the lewd lizards. A police investigation is launched, and after a succession of false leads the cops ferret out David—and use Shan Shan to lure him into their clutches!
In truth this is a rotten movie, with a wildly inconsistent, scatterbrained narrative and filmmaking that’s about on the level of a seventies porn flick. It might also be safely called misogynistic, with a depiction of the fairer sex that borders on psychotic; note the wholly gratuitous rape that opens the film, and also the climax, in which the heroine offers to unleash the lewd lizards on herself. There are many unpleasant scenes of the “hero” beating up various women, topped off by at least one lurid close-up of twitching lizards crawling into ladies’ panties. For you porn addicts there’s also a scene of a woman’s breasts pressed against a shower window as the lizards invade her vagina.
If you can put up with such things, however, you’ll find a film as unforgettably bizarre as just about any other. It’s been said that the real job of horror/fantasy filmmakers is to show us things we’ve never seen before, and if that’s true than LEWD LIZARD’S creators more than succeed. Anyway, the real problem with this film is that it’s currently unavailable in anything other than multi-generation bootleg form!
Vital Statistics
LEWD LIZARD (CHONG)
Directors: Norman Chu, Yung Ling Wang
Producer: Liang Shu Yee
Cinematography: Wang Yung Lung
Cast: Norman Chu, Xiao Hua, Jiang Shan, Mike Tien