I think every now and then someone at the Shaw
Brothers just said what the fuck. Why not as they leaned back and smoked
some dope. There really is no other explanation for this film. It is a hashish
dream. How they got Run Run Shaw to agree is a mystery because I doubt that
he was inhaling. But director Pao Hsueh-li had made some good films for Shaw
- The Boxer from Shantung, Finger of Doom, Water Margin - though his previous
film Deadly Angels might have been a hint that he was losing it. And the
scriptwriter was the legendary Ni Kuang, so what could go wrong. Ok, do it
but you can't have any stars, a budget lower than a school play and keep
it to 70-minutes. Children should enjoy this wacky production of rubber monsters,
men in ape suits, laser beams from fingers, fire from mouths, a man with
claws, poisonous snakes up a girl's sleeves, a romance between a brother
and sister and a husband who can't keep his pants on. And in its way, it
is kind of great while also being bad on nearly every level except imagination
which it has plenty of to fill two movies.
Prince Tuan (Si Wai) has his night of lovemaking
turned upside down. After finishing with a look of great satisfaction on
his face, the woman Hong-mian (Gam Lau) tells him she is pregnant. Just tell
your husband (Shih Chung-tien) that it's his. Well, he has been away six
months so that might be difficult. And wouldn't you know it, the husband
named Yellow Robe, shows up then and gets into a fight with Tuan. Tuan uses
the family weapon - Yi Yang Finger - that shoots out laser rays from his
fingers to first disable him and then to cut off his legs. Yellow Robe still
manages to leap and get away but not before telling Tuan that he will be
back for revenge. In twenty years. He has some skills to learn. Then Tuan's
fiancée shows up to tell Hong-mian that she isn't good enough to be
a concubine. Was it an open house?. Can't a man just have a simple affair
without all this?
So, twenty years later the tale continues.
Tuen has had a son Tuan Yu (Li Hsiu-hsien) who refuses to learn martial arts.
It hurts, he says. Later this actor became better known as Danny Lee. He
decides to go out into the world to see if he really needs martial arts because
he is in line to be the Emperor someday. And the baby from Hong-mian has
been born. A sweet girl who her mother trains for revenge and tells her no
mercy. The daughter's weapon of preference is a large bone that shoots out
deadly darts. She is Miss Mu played by Tanny Tien-ni, an unusual lead role
for Tanny, one of my favorite character actresses. On his travels Tuan Yu
meets Snake Girl (Lin Chen-chi - Dangerous Encounter 1st Kind) who has hundreds
of trained snakes that she somehow manages to pull from her clothes or God
knows where else. She takes a liking to this silly boy who knows no martial
arts and saves him when the Poisonous Moth Clan captures him. But she gets
captured.
She tells him to go find Xiang Yaocha to
free her. Everyone he asks where she is, goes off running. No one ever comes
back alive. She turns out to be Miss Mu who always wears a mask - if a man
ever sees her face she has to either kill him or marry him. Tough call, especially
if you are her half-brother. Meanwhile, don't forget Yellow Robe who now
lives in a multi-colored cozy cave with stalactites. He has a servant with
a hideous face, an iron dome on his head, fangs, claws for hands and a liking
for young women. Yellow Robe has installed flexible metal rods in his legs
that allow him to shoot them out to kill. He also can spit out fire from
his mouth. It is time for revenge. And this is the normal part. It just gets
nuttier with brother and sister falling in love, having to fight a gorilla
and Tuan Yu acquiring powerful kung-fu by killing a giant red python and
sucking its blood. Ha, I told you I didn't need to practice. And eating a
poisonous green toad. The film flies by like a bat out of hell as if chunks
of the film were cut out - and some actors were deleted out, so I guess so.
Turn off your brain and float downstream.
