I’m sure most of you regular readers are more than familiar with the oft-told story of Taiwanese film history. As such, I won’t bother you by repeating the same old anecdotes. Instead, we’ll start with a look at what will be a modern landmark in that country’s cinema, its first ever zombie movie, the bluntly-titled Zombie 108.

Director Joe Chien’s take on that old staple, the lab experiment gone wrong/flesh-eating undead stalking the city is set in a Taipei ghetto, District 108 (you see now?) ruled by a likeable(ish) crime lord with whom a SWAT team searching for survivors must coexist with to get out alive.

With drugs, boobs and gratuitous pseudo-lesbianism covered early on, the teenage boy horror fan will feel immediately at home. Still, for the seasoned genre fan, this uninspiring if slickly put-together and ultimately quite fun mash-up of standard zombie romp and unpleasant torture porn will barely raise an eyebrow, let alone pulses, at anything other than the strikingly bad dialogue (“You’re a jerk as ugly on the inside as you are on the outside”) and weird, cack-handed plot devices.

Whilst on the subject of horror flicks exploiting lesbianism to sell DVDs, next up we have the classily-titled martial-arts with fangs comedy thriller Lesbian Vampire Warriors. Unfortunately the fact this movie doesn’t involve industrial irritant James Corden is about the best thing going for it.

Some spectacular high-octane kick-punch-stake combos are the order of the day as human vampire slayer Ar (Jiang Luxia), her very subtly hinted-at apparent lesbian lover Max (Chrissie Chau Sau-Na) and a family of non-people-snacking goodie-two-shoes bloodsuckers fight the creatures of the night.

With an aimless, irritating plot and bad acting even by horror standards, a deeply frustrating addition to the script is a sub-plot involving the undead suffering existential angst. This decentish stab at character development proves a tantalizing sign of a much better film trying to get out, leaving Lesbian Vampire Warriors as another also-ran.

Not that films about lesbian vampires and grunting zombies aren’t classy, but maybe you want a little more from your horror movies. You’re thinking twisty-faced Asian dead girls creeping towards the camera as incongruous sound-effects grind your mind into little bits, right? Well, you’re in luck, it seems, as a pair of films written and directed by Thai auteur Monthon Arayangkoon conveniently do just that.

Arayangkoon’s second feature, The Victim, stars the kooky Pitchanart Sakakorn as a wannabe actress who carves herself out a niche re-enacting murders for police bucks and, more importantly, exposure from an eager press. As so often happens in these cases, people start dying as our star becomes haunted by the ghosts of previous murder victims and in particular a beauty queen she starts to resemble.

Of course, there are plenty of shock-cuts and creepy images to gorge on, alongside some cool sound-design, though there’s also the nagging feeling that even by 2006, when this movie was made, this was already old hat. With Arayangkoon’s in-your-face direction immediately throwing everything at the viewer, though this thrill-ride is glossy, skillfully put-together and watchable, by the end you start wondering how many times this formula can be wrung out until there’s nothing left.

Well, apparently, at least one more time; 2007’s The House offers more of the same. Though this film’s female heroine is a journalist investigating a series of murders carried out by doctors living in the same house at different times, this might as well be The Victim: Part Two for all its similarities to the earlier movie.

Still as slick as ever, with some genuinely nasty moments, this haunted house story is a decent trawl through familiar territory executed well. It’s just a shame, then, that this skilled film-maker insists on telling the same story over and over again.

Watch the trailer for Zombie 108…

What’s the best Asian horror movie you’ve seen recently? Let us know below…