Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on Monday, January 20 at 8:00 p.m. at the Music Box Theater in Chicago, IL. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Not all slashers are domestic, as we again test the “Is it Giallo or is it a slasher?” game with the Shaw Brothers-produced 1981 film Corpse Mania. It was directed by Chih-Hung Kuei, who would go on to create the strange Curse of Evil and the “I don’t have a word good enough to properly convey the level of strange” film The Boxer’s Omen.

Inspector Chang is beginning to figure out that all of the dead bodies in his area were visitors to Hong House, the brothel of one Madam Lan, and all fingers point to Mr. Li, a man who has already been jailed for defiling corpses, which really doesn’t seem like the kind of crime you get out of jail for due to good behavior. And he’s just bought one of Lan’s girls, the dying Hongmei. He pours flour and maggots all over her as she passes on, a feat that gives him a Category III boner.

Set in the 19th century, this starts with a house across from the brothel giving off the worst smell possible, leading the authorities to find a home filled with spiderwebs and a long-dead body that had been sexually used before it was murdered.

Sure, you might know who the killer is from the moment the movie starts, but give this points for his bandaged get-up, inventive stalking scenes and not shying away from the gore, including a scene where the killer gets a corpse ready for sweet lovemaking and then admires it the more it draws maggots.

From real maggots crawling all over its actresses and astounding blasts of blood to a dummy thrown off a roof that’s so fake that Lucio Fulci would stand up and laugh out loud, this movie has it all. Its fog and mood suggest a Hong Kong version of Blood and Black Lace with Bava taking a break from all the sexualized violence to deliver a kung fu sequence and an underwater throat slashing that reaches out for a gory glamour. As they said of his seminal Giallo, a pornography of violence.