A Tale from the East
 
                               
Director: Manfred Wong
Year: 1990
Rating: 5.0
In the late 1980s Hong Kong passed a bill that mandated that Joey Wong appear in every period fantasy film. Or so it seems. She is for reasons unknown so much more magical when in period dress and with her hair flowing over her face. That is no more evident than in this film in which she has a role both in the present and periodic glimpses of her in the past. She was clearly born in the wrong century. This is a pretty flimsy attempt to cash in on her popularity in fantasy wuxia films. She was in lots of other types of film, but it is her winsome ethereal appearances in films like A Chinese Ghost Story I and II, Spirit Love, Demoness from Thousand Years, The Beheaded 100 and Reincarnation of Golden Lotus that she is best remembered for.



This is an oddity - it has a very cheap look to it but it also has an enormous cast of cameos from well-known actors. Amy Yip shows up for ten seconds looking sexy and signing autographs, Lawrence Cheng is a conductor of a Youth Orchestra, in the orchestra are Sandy Lam, Winnie Lau, Andy Hui, Simon Lui shows up near the end as an announcer, Alfred Cheung is a director of a wuxia film and Manfred Wong who actually directs this film pops up as something (I forget). None of them for more than a minute or two. And pointless. The main actors in our little ragtag film are Joey, the blank-faced David Wu, the comedy team of Jan Lam and Eric Kot, Billy Lau being as annoying as ever and most surprisingly, Ni Kuang as Wesley. Kind of an inside joke as he is the author of the Wesley novels and a zillion other books and film scripts.



There is a lengthy prologue at the beginning about a pearl from the Ching dynasty having powers, but in truth I missed much of it because of hard to read subtitles. I saw this on an Ocean Shores vcd which did not help the experience. But we begin in the present where Joey and her brother Billy are out late at night in the country and come across a man dressed as a warrior dropping gold bars. Billy sees opportunity and they take him home and clean him up and he is David Wu. He has come from the past - no idea how - and is looking for Little Princess (Chan Cheuk-yan - the little girl in Wild Search) from the Ching Dynasty. She though has hooked up with Eric and Jan by hiding in their truck while they are fixing the electricity in a home where they find a head in the refrigerator. They find her later and decide to take care of them.



Eventually all parties and Wesley team up to protect her from the Blood Devil who has also come from the past to get the pearl that the Little Princess has. Ok. Lots of bad wire work and idiocy - some intentional - but the final scene takes place in a large amusement park with a huge water slide and it wasn't bad.  Not sure where that was. Mainly goofy Hong Kong humor from Lau and the comedy team. Both Kot and Lam were at the very beginning of their film career but were quite popular as a music comedy team called Soft Hard.  Perhaps in a pristine blu-ray where it didn't look like every scene was shot at night would make this much better but I would guess that won't happen any time soon.