Rating: **
Review Date: 3/21/26
Cast: Lai-Yin Poon
A documentary filmmaker wants to get some supernatural footage, so he takes his crew to Malaysia to open the sealed coffin of the evil Red Dwarf Witch. Of course, there's a curse attached to anyone who touches the tomb, but it's laughably left unguarded. After opening the coffin and unwittingly releasing the Red Dwarf Witch's spirit, reporter Stella Lok (Lai-Yin Poon) takes the team to Borneo for a vacation while the boss works on the film back in Hong Kong. As soon as Stella arrives, scorpions start to appear and people start dying in strange and mysterious ways. Stella is seemingly the source of the scorpion curse, which curiously has nothing to do with the coffin curse. It ultimately leads to a showdown with a Tibetan priest who finally exorcises the vengeful demon.
First of all, this film is NASTY, and written by the same person who came up with the infamous gross-out fest, "Centipede Horror" (1982). In addition to tons of scorpions, it also features some really unpleasant animal cruelty scenes, but Error 4444 fortunately includes a version that cuts those out, which amounts to a full three minutes.
While the location footage is gorgeous, there is a lot of filler material that plays out like a Borneo travelogue, which becomes tedious after a while. It suffers all the trappings of a low budget horror film, and although the acting is pretty weak, actress Lai-Yin Poon deserves some recognition for her physically demanding performance. Not only does she deal with scorpions crawling on her, but she has a couple of extended torture scenes that are really uncomfortable to watch, that you could never get away with filming today. I'm surprised they got away with it back then.
It's definitely a niche film for fans of obscure underground horror and macabre gore, and not for the faint of heart. That said, I don't recommend it.