★★½
“The calamari fights back…”
Although almost a decade earlier than Lin Hsiao Lan’s slew of fantasy kung-fu flicks, this shares a lot of the same elements – not least an approach to narrative coherence best described as “informal.” This starts at the beginning, where we don’t even get introduced to the participants, before the martial arts breaks out. As we learn a little later, it turns out this pits Chu-Kwok Su-Lan (Shang-Kuan) against three members of the Devil’s Gang, in defense of her two, largely useless sidekicks. This is just the first of numerous encounters between our hero – yes, it’s another unconvincing male impersonator out of Taiwan – against various members of the group, and eventually their leaders, Gold Mask (Lo) and Silver Mask (Wang).
There is a loose justification for all of these flying fisticuffs: literally flying, in the case of the Mask brothers. For they zoom about on their strap-on wings, accompanied by VTOL airplane sounds, more befitting a busy day on an aircraft carrier. Anyway, the excuse is the pursuit of a legendary artifact called the Phoenix Sword, which was being transported to Master Chen in Dragon City. Its couriers are ambushed, yet manage to hand off the case containing the weapon to a random orphan, conveniently bathing nearby. The Devil’s Gang then kidnap Chen’s daughter, demanding another legendary item, the Dragon Sword in exchange for her safe return. Chen is having none of it, so recruits a bunch of his former students, including Su-Lan, to go after the kidnappers and rescue his daughter.
There is some other stuff. However, a) the above is all you need to know, and b) I’m not clear enough on much more, to be willing to commit fully to putting it on the Internet. In any case, this is definitely one of those films where, if you don’t like this fight sequence, just wait – because there will be another along in a few minutes. I suspect my rating might well be higher if there was a decent presentation of this film available. It only appears to be available in a severely cropped version, which half the time is zoomed in far too close to appreciate what’s going on, and in an English dub that leaves no molecule intact of the performances beneath it.
All that’s left after this scorched earth approach to the visual and audio elements, is to appreciate the berserk imagination on view. This reaches its peak at the end, where Su-Lan faced off on the beach against a pair of giant octopi. Their preferred method of attack is to squirt mini-octopi at him. While I can certainly appreciate the surprise value inherent in such an approach, it doesn’t seem very sustainable. As a finale, we then get Su-Lan against Gold Mask – who is no longer masked – on what looks like a children’s adventure playground. Again: none of this makes sense in the context of the story, something I felt tended to be aggravating rather than enjoyable. If you’re of a more relaxed attitude, you may well get more out of this than I did.
Dir: Hung-Min Chen
Star: Polly Shang-Kuan, Barry Chan, Lieh Lo, Hsieh Wang