The Golden Buddha (1966)

Bond Fever struck in the early 1960s and soon Bond-esque spy movies were made everywhere. It’s hardly surprising that in 1966 Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studio decided to get on on the act with a series of spy films, beginning with the Wei Lo-directed The Golden Buddha.

This is not quite the Bond formula since the hero is an ordinary guy caught up in intrigue against his will rather than a professional spy like Bond.

Paul Cheung is just a very ordinary businessman. He’s also an enthusiastic amateur student of both judo and karate.

On a flight to Bangkok he meets an old friend, Chan Chung Cheung. Paul gets off the plane carrying his friend’s briefcase by mistake. The briefcase contains a small golden Buddha statue.

He then finds his friend dead. Murdered. The little statue is worthless in itself but it is the key to something very very important. Something that the bad guys will kill for, the bad guys being the infamous Skeleton Gang.

Paul was in possession of the statuette in the briefcase. It has been stolen from him but he already knows the secret it conceals.

There are three of these little statuettes. Chan Chung Cheung’s brother Chan Chung Tai has one. His sister Chan Mei-nan has the other.

Paul is determined to solve the mystery of the statuettes because his friend was murdered and it is therefore a matter of honour.

Paul and Mei-nan have the Skeleton Gang after them and the police figure in the story as well.

The plot is not dazzling but it’s perfectly adequate.

Paul Chang Chung makes an effective hero. He doesn’t have the charisma of a Connery but he’s playing an amateur rather than a professional spy and he has that everyman vibe which works.

Of course a film like this needs beautiful women and The Golden Buddha is well supplied on that count. At least one of the women needs to be sexy, bad and dangerous. And the voluptuous Fanny Fan (promoted at the time as the Chinese Bardot) fits the bill admirably.

The chief villain has a whole bevy of bodacious babes to serve him and they’re all as dangerous as they are gorgeous. And this movie has a cute adorable heroine.

Shaw Brothers movies always had high production values and magnificent sets and that’s the case here as well. The secret lair of the Skelton Gang is a triumph of crazy pop art-inspired production design.

There’s plenty of great location shooting in Thailand which adds the necessary touch of the exotic.

The fact that the hero is an expert in judo and karate makes this a martial arts movie as well as a Bond-style movie.

Surprisingly there is some nudity.

The action is non-stop but the violence is not in the least graphic. This is a movie with the emphasis on fast-moving fun and adventure.

It doesn’t have the spectacular action set-pieces of a Bond movie nor does it have the inspired lunacy of the best eurospy movies but it has an engaging distinctive flavour. The Golden Buddha offers fine entertainment and it’s highly recommended.

It’s included in Eureka’s three-movie Shaw Brothers Super Spies and Secret Lies Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfer looks great (the movie was shot in ShawScope and in colour).

Ninja III: The Domination (1985)

Whenever I see the Cannon Group logo at the beginning of a movie I get a feeling of confidence. Whether it turns out to be a great movie or a not-so-great movie it will be fun. Ninja III: The Domination belongs to the not-so-great category but in its own perverse way it achieves a kind of quasi-greatness.

This is a psycho ninja chick movie. And any psycho ninja chick movie has got to be worth watching.

It begins with a bunch of people playing golf. Then a ninja shows up and kills everybody. Then the cops show up. Lots and lots of cops. Dozens of cops. The ninja kills most of them. Finally, having been shot about 98 times the ninja has had enough and he’s about to expire. But his story is not yet finished. Christie (Lucinda Dickey), a perfectly ordinary young woman, finds him lying in the bushes about to die and something weird happens.

One thing that’s cool is that we never find out why the ninja ran amok on the golf course. We presume someone hired him. We have no idea who that someone could be. Writer James R. Silke knows that we don’t need to know. This is not a mystery or a police procedural, it’s a ninja action picture.

The cop who interviews Christie, Officer Secord (Jordan Bennett) takes a shine to her. Christie doesn’t date cops. But Secord isn’t a quitter and his desperation to get into her pants is finally rewarded with success. And soon there’s a thing between them.

Christie has a sword, a katana. We soon have reason to suspect it’s a magic sword.

The cops who shot that ninja start to die in rather grisly ways. Maybe there’s another ninja about.

There is, in a way. That evil dead ninja has possessed Christie. She now intermittently turns into an evil lady ninja.

And there’s another ninja, Yamada (Shô Kosugi). He has an eye patch. We don’t know if he’s a good ninja or an evil ninja.

More cops get sliced up. Poor Secord doesn’t know what’s going on. Christie doesn’t know either.

Truly immense quantities of mayhem follow.

This is not just a psycho ninja chick movie. It’s also an incredibly bad rip-off of The Exorcist. And it’s a bit of an 80s dance movie as well. Lots of aerobics. And a video game movie. If something was fashionable in the 80s it will show up somewhere in this movie.

The acting is terrible. If you’re wondering why Lucinda Dickey did not become a major star then watch this movie and you’ll have your answer. The gal just can’t act.

But then this is not exactly a character-driven movie so that doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the martial arts action and there’s plenty of that and it’s pretty entertaining with a very high body count. And Miss Dickey can dance and trained dancers always handle fight scenes pretty well.

There are some really bad special effects as well, which adds further layers of fun. I have no idea why some of these effects were even there except that I think they wanted a video game vibe.

What do you want in a psycho ninja chick movie? You want a cool lady ninja and you want her to be totally nuts and you want her to leave a path of death and destruction behind her. That’s what this movie offers. It doesn’t offer anything else. It doesn’t need to.

Ninja III: The Domination is in truth a very bad movie but that’s what makes it fun.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray release which sadly doesn’t provide a very good transfer. On the other hand this is the sort of movie that is more enjoyable if it looks like you’re watching it on a VHS rental from Blockbuster back in the day.

The Seventh Curse (1986)

Even by the standards of 1980s Hong Kong movies Golden Harvest’s The Seventh Curse (1986) is wild wild stuff.

It was inspired by the hugely popular novels of Ni Kuang. He wrote at least 300 wuxia and science fiction novels, being noted for working extraterrestrials into detective and mystery novels. His two most popular novel series were the Wisely series, about a wealthy adventurer named (obviously) Wisely, and the Dr Yuen series. The Seventh Curse is a Dr Yuen adventure but it’s an original story written for the film. And Wisely appears as a supporting character.

At a dinner party the famous novelist Ni Kuang (played by the famous novelist Ni Kuang) recounts the latest exploits of Dr Yuen.

The opening action scene is absolute mayhem. It’s a raid by the Hong Kong equivalent of a SWAT team. It’s a big operation - there must be a hundred cops involved. The police call on Dr Yuen for help. A doctor is needed to treat a hostage held in an office building. His job is to set off a flash bomb to distract the bad guys.

We soon learn that Dr Yuen is not just an everyday medical doctor. He’s a martial arts expert, a crack shot, a medical researcher and an adventurer.

This guy is a totally awesome all-round hero.

But he has a problem. It’s a deadly blood curse imposed on him in Thailand.

He was part of a scientific expedition into the jungle, an expedition that encountered a particularly hostile tribe. That’s where he met Bachu. She was bathing half-naked in a river. Both Dr Yuen and Bachu fell foul of an incredibly evil sorcerer. The sorcerer presides over human sacrifices. Dr Yuen escapes.

The blood curse is a delayed action time bomb. Nothing happens for a year, then it activates, and now it will kill him in seven days. His only chance is to return to Thailand to find a cure for himself, and for Bachu.

In that opening police siege sequence Dr Yuen first came across Feisty Girl Reporter Tsui Hung (Maggie Cheung). Feisty Girl Reporters can be irritating but Tsui Hung is cute, sexy and adorable. Now she insists on accompanying him to Thailand - she smells a big story here.

From this point on the mayhem is non-stop with one great action sequence after another. Martial arts fans will not be disappointed. There's a huge amount of gunplay as well, and explosions.

And lots of crazy over-the-top special effects and plenty of gore. There’s a very obvious influence from Alien with demonic babies popping out of people’s chests. The intention was clearly to make the special effects fun.

Chin Siu-ho is terrific as Dr Yuen. He doesn’t look like an action hero. He looks a bit geeky. But in reality he’s a kind of Chinese Indiana Jones. He’s also very likeable.

Maggie Cheung is delightful and amusing and Miss Tsui Hung participates gleefully in the mayhem.

The location shooting was done in Thailand.

There’s a very small amount of nudity and no sex. This is all about the crazy witchcraft stuff and the action. I believe it was one of the films later retrospectively given a Category III rating.

This is a good-natured adventure romp that doesn’t take itself at all seriously. It wants the audience to enjoy the ride.

Director Lam Ngai Kai does a great job here. He went on to helm the fabulous Erotic Ghost Story.

The Seventh Curse is insanely entertaining. It’s not just bonkers. It’s beyond bonkers. But it delivers everything it promises and then some. Not surprising it was a major commercial success.

This movie is very highly recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray offers the original Hong Kong cut and the shorter Export Cut plus plenty of extras.

Circle of Iron (1978)

Circle of Iron (AKA The Silent Flute) is an odd one. It’s best known for being based on a screenplay by Bruce Lee. Well, sort of based on a screenplay by Bruce Lee. Lee and James Coburn wanted to do a martial arts fantasy film with lots of philosophising and reflecting Lee’s interest in Zen buddhism. Lee and James Coburn worked on the script with Stirling Silliphant. Lee and Coburn later lost interest in the project. The script was later extensively reworked by Stanley Mann. This is certainly not a Bruce Lee movie in any meaningful sense at all but he did provide the original germ of the idea.

There is martial arts action here but Circle of Iron is really trying to be an art film.

As you might expect it ends up being a total mess. To be honest it’s a bad movie. But it’s a weird fascinating oddball mess of a bad movie and it’s enjoyable in its own deranged way.

This is a quest movie, but it’s a spiritual quest. A quest for enlightenment. Yes I agree, that does sound ominous.

It takes place in a fantasy world which is a mishmash of lots of other fantasy worlds.

David Carradine gets top billing and he plays four roles. He’s kind of fun. I’m not a fan of his as an actor but he’s pretty good here. There’s an incredibly bizarre cameo by Eli Wallach as a man who has spent ten years in a barrel of oil trying to dissolve the lower half of his body. There are cameos by Roddy McDowall and Christopher Lee as well.

The central character is Cord, played by Jeff Cooper. He and David Carradine were great buddies which is how Cooper got the part. He certainly didn’t get it on the basis of his acting ability.

Cord is a martial arts champion who has to undertake a quest to find Zetan and the book. Or rather, The Book.

Zetan might be a sorcerer or a holy man or a warrior. Nobody is sure. Nobody knows anything about The Book except that it’s incredibly important.

Cord meets a blind martial arts guy who is never named. He plays a silent flute. Only Cord can hear it. Cord asks him to be his teacher.

Cord naturally has to go through a series of tests. Firstly he has to fight the dreaded monkey men. Then he encounters a warrior chieftain, Changsha (one of Carradine’s four roles). Changsa lends Cord one of his wives for the night. Her name is Tara (Erica Creer). Cord has dedicated himself to this spiritual quest and has taken a vow of chastity but Tara is really hot so that’s the end of his vow of chastity. This has consequences.

Eventually Cord will of course find Zetan and the movie then becomes even more New Age-y.

There’s lots of dialogue loaded with Spiritual Wisdom and Philosophical Questioning and general Mysticalness.

It was made on a modest budget but it looks great. The very incoherence of the visual style adds to the interest and there are some lovely images. There are definite hints of psychedelia. There’s great location shooting. It certainly succeeds in creating a dreamlike look. This is a world that perhaps does not even exist.

Despite its many flaws Circle of Iron is rather entertaining in its own weird goofy way. It tries so hard and it mostly fails but it fails in a likeable way. It’s definitely not boring. And it’s endearingly weird. Recommended.

Blue Underground released this one on DVD as a two-disc set. The transfer is extremely good. The pick of the extras is the interview with Carradine. The DVD is still easy to find and not expensive. I believe the only Blu-Ray release is the Spanish one.

The Magic Blade (1976)

The Magic Blade is a 1976 Shaw Brothers swordplay movie directed by Yuen Chor.

It starts with two master swordsmen, Fu Hung Hsieh and Yen Nan-fei, taking up a duel that was interrupted a year earlier. This time it will be to the death. The duel however is interrupted again - some very nasty very bad people are trying to kill them both. They figure out they’re up against the evil forces of the swordplay underworld. They decide to team up.

What’s at stake is not just a power play but possession of the Peacock Dart, a kind of magical super-weapon. The Peacock Dart would bring its possessor absolute power. It must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the bad guys.

The bad guys of course are determined to get the Peacock Dart. It’s to be found at the Peacock Mansion which is under the control of a venerable but fairly formidable old guy. That’s where Fu Hung Hsieh and Yen Nan-fei meet Miss Chiu. She’s the old guy’s daughter. She has no martial arts skills but she’s resourceful and brave. She’s also cute and rather sweet. She ends up teaming up with the heroes.

The chief bad guy has not put in a personal appearance yet and that won’t happen until very late in the movie. All that the heroes know is that he’s Master Fu.

Master Fu has employed five master swordsmen, all renowned killers and all of them evil and each has his own private retinue of fighters.

Also on the side of evil is the fearsome Devil Grandma, a kind of wicked witch type and it’s only gradually that we learn how twisted and evil she is. She has some really scary and unpleasant habits.

The action is relentless. There’s one complex fight scene after another. This is a Shaw Brothers movie so you know the fight scenes will be expertly staged but Yuen Chor also makes every fight scene different, and every one of them imaginative. The human chess match is a particular highlight.

In its later stage the film changes gears just a little. We discover that our heroes are not just human fighting machines. They’re not emotionless. They are capable of kindness (in particular towards a young prostitute) and there are some hints of romance. There are romantic feelings towards Miss Chiu. This strengthens the movie considerably. Heroes who are prepared to risk their lives to battle evil are all well and good but let’s face it we always have much more sympathy for a hero prepared to risk his life to save a woman he loves.

We also get to meet the femme fatale. She doesn’t rely on swords or throwing knives. She wields a much more formidable weapon - her sexual charms. And her sexual charms are considerable. At this point we also get some nudity which adds a bit more spice.

I love the fact that the visuals are superb but everything looks totally artificial. This is the world of myth, legend, fairy tale, folklore, whatever you wish to call it. This is not the real world. There are no overt supernatural elements. The only real magic is the Peacock Dart. But it is nonetheless a fantasy world. Of course all the swordsmen can perform impossible acrobatic feats.

It’s visually very impressive but this is not a pretty movie. This is a slightly sinister world, a dark fantasy world, a world in which evil is palpable. There’s darkness as well as light.

The female characters are quite varied. Some are good, some evil. And the femme fatale character even has some depth - we might not approve of her motives but we can understand them.

Master Fu is also a slightly more complex villain than one night expect - in some ways he’s a victim of his own success as a villain.

Insofar as there’s a theme running through the movie it’s that the pursuit of money and power is not so much morally wrong as futile. The price is too high. The more money and power you obtain the more of a burden it will end up being.

The Magic Blade has everything you could want in a movie of this type, delivered with energy and style. Highly recommended.

The Eastern Masters DVD provides a very acceptable transfer.

Fly Me (1973)

Shout! Factory’s Lethal Ladies Collection volume 2 offers three wonderfully trashy Roger Corman’s produced 70s exploitation movies, including the excellent Pam Grier vehicle The Arena plus Cover Girl Models and Fly Me. Fly Me is the one we’re concerned with at the moment. It was helmed by Cirio H. Santiago who did lots of these sorts of movies for Corman. The king fu sequences (yes, you read that right, this is a stewardess movie with kung fu) were directed by Jonathan Demme.

It’s set in Hong Kong, Manila and Tokyo and it was apparently filmed in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

At first it seems like it will be a typical 70s stewardess movie - some nudity, some jokes, some exotic settings, some melodrama. But take a look at that tagline about stewardesses battling kung fu killers. This is a stewardess action thriller.

There are of course three stewardesses (much the same formula as Corman’s nurse movies) and they’re all babes. Pat Anderson (who really is drop-dead gorgeous) plays new stewardess Toby. Toby is looking forward to some fun when the plane gets to Hong Kong and she’s met a handsome doctor on the flight who should be able to provide just that. And then Toby makes a grisly discovery - her mother is on the flight as well. And her mother is going to be on her next flight as well. Mother is determined to defend Toby’s virginity. Of course back in the 70s (if we’re to believe all those stewardess movies) trying to defend a stewardess’s virginity was likely to be an uphill battle.

Andrea (played by Lenore Kasdorf who is also pretty darned cute) has a problem. She was going to meet her boyfriend in Hong Kong but he’s disappeared. This is our first hint that this is to be a thriller.

And then the third of the trio of stewardesses, Sherry (Lyllah Torena), disappears as well. In fact she’s been kidnapped. And she’s about to be sold into white slavery.

Meanwhile Andrea is being stalked by those kung fu killers but fortunately Andrea is a martial arts expert (stewardesses needed a wide variety of skills in the 1970s). She’s also being stalked by a blind assassin.

The three female leads are not great actresses but they’re certainly enthusiastic. The other cast members are not so great in the acting department.

The kung fu scenes are not exactly of the standard you’d find in a Hong Kong kung fu movie of this vintage.

The plot is all over the place. Trying to keep three plot strands (one for each stewardess) going simultaneously is always a bit of a challenge and in this case the result is something of a confused mishmash.

The plot strands eventually come together, with the aid of some unlikely coincidences. This is not what you would call a tightly plotted movie.

 

Fortunately this is a Corman picture so when the action starts to flag you can be sure that one of the girls will take her clothes off.

The jokes become more sparse as the movie progresses but there are some genuinely amusing moments early on. In its later stages it relies more on suspense and thrills, but the suspense isn’t that suspenseful and the thrills aren’t that thrilling. Which doesn’t really matter. This is a silly goofy movie and we’re certainly not expected to take it the least bit seriously. It’s very much a popcorn movie.

The anamorphic transfer is a bit iffy with quite a bit of print damage early on. It’s not a major issue and in this type of movie it actually adds a bit more seediness so in some ways it’s a bonus.

Fly Me is not by anybody’s standards a good movie but if you’re in the mood for light-hearted entertainment with three pretty female leads who have trouble keeping their clothes on then you’ll probably enjoy it.

Most people are going to buy the Lethal Ladies Collection volume 2 for The Arena so if you think of the other two movies as bonus movies you’ll be well satisfied.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty (1984)

 Shaw Brothers, the most famous of all the Hong Kong film studios, is of course best known for its martial arts/swordplay historical epics. Which, it has to be said, they did very well indeed. In the 70s and 80s they also dabbled in erotic cinema. An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty, made in 1984, being one of the more celebrated examples.

The result is a movie with lots of swordplay action and lots of nudity and sex. You’d think that would be a winning formula, and you’d be absolutely correct.

What Shaw Brothers did here however was not merely to take their standard historical swordplay formula and add copious amounts of nudity and sex. This is very much a woman-centric movie, and the emphasis is on her emotional and sexual life (and for the heroine the two are one and the same thing). The sex is what the movie is all about.

The movie is set, obviously, during the Tang Dynasty (which lasted from 618 to 907AD). This was Imperial China at the peak of its greatness, both politically and culturally. Yu Yuan-gi (Pat Ha) is a young woman who has decided to become a Taoist priestess. You might think that this means that she’s a very spiritual woman. You would be wrong. She is a young lady obsessed with two things, writing poetry and having sex. For her the Taoist nunnery is merely a convenient place to rest and recuperate after exhausting bouts of poetry-writing and love-making.

Of course the disadvantage of a nunnery is that there are no men. That’s not a problem for our heroine. She likes sex with girls as well. She’s very adaptable. Nunneries also have lots of rules but this one seems to be very forgiving of those who stray from the path of spiritual enlightenment.

After a while she leaves the nunnery and lives a life of frivolous pleasure. She is having a swim when a guy plunges his sword into the water next to her. This gets her pretty excited. The sword belongs to hunky wandering swordsman, Tsui Po-Hau (Alex Man), with whom she hooks up. They have lots of hot sex, then he goes off and has some sword fights, then he comes back and they have more hot sex. Then one time he leaves and doesn’t come back so she goes back to the nunnery, repents of her wickedness, and proceeds to seduce her maid Lu Chiao.

Yu Yuan-gi is jealous of Tsui Po-Hau because men have it so good. It’s easy to understand why she’s jealous. The poor girl has a wretched time, living a life of ease and pleasure and spending most of her time writing poetry and having sex. It’s a tough life for a woman.

Yu Yuan-gi and Lu Chiao finally get expelled from the nunnery (apparently having lesbian sex on the premises is a bit too much even if you do offer to repent) so they move into a whorehouse. This makes no discernible difference to Yu Yuan-gi’s lifestyle. But trouble is on the horizon and Tsui Po-Hau will make his reappearance.

Pat Ha was just nineteen when she made this movie. She’s stunningly beautiful and looks equally good with or without clothes (not that she keeps her clothes on for very long). She’s also a pretty decent actress.

Alex Man’s performance is nothing if not energetic. Tsui Po-Hau is totally nuts but he’s nuts in a way that gets Yu Yuan-gi really hot - the two things he likes doing are lopping people’s heads off and having sex with her. What’s for a girl not to love? And she obviously loves bad boys.

The supporting cast includes an amazing number of extremely beautiful young women. There’s certainly no shortage of feminine pulchritude here. They don’t all take their clothes off, but most of them do.

If it’s a Shaw Brothers historical movie one thing you can be sure of is that it will look gorgeous. And that’s the case here. They may not have had Hollywood budgets but every cent spent on their movies ended up on the screen. It looks like a very expensive movie. The costumes are lavish, the sets are sumptuous.

Eddie Ling-Ching Fong directs in a suitably lively manner, showing some imagination but never succumbing to the temptation to go overboard with cinematic tricks. Ardy Lam’s colour cinematography is magnificent. The colours are overwhelming.

Compared to a much earlier (1972) attempt at a Shaw Brothers erotic film, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, this one has fewer fight scenes and more sex.

This is a strictly softcore movie but the sex scenes are quite explicit by softcore standards and they’re very erotically charged.

There are some problems with this film. The tone is all over the place and the heroine’s motivations are confusing and enigmatic to say the least. Apparently the original cut of the film was about an hour longer so this ruthless editing, although undoubtedly necessary, has left the movie making no real sense.

As to claims that Yu Yuan-gi is a feminist heroine - she is a mad, evil, manipulative and narcissistic monster who brings misery to everyone unlucky enough to cross her path. The film is based on the life story of an actual notorious poetess and courtesan of the Tang Dynasty who was apparently a pretty nasty piece of work.

One amusing thing about the movie is that Yu Yuan-gi makes a great song and dance about not accepting money from one of her admirers and claims to be proudly independent, even though it’s clear that her considerable wealth derives from her career as a courtesan. It’s typical of her essential dishonesty.

The Region 4 DVD (it’s available in Region 1 as well) offers an excellent 16:9 enhanced transfer.

All things considered An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty can best be described as an interesting, gorgeous, sexy mess of a film. It’s well made and the eroticism is powerful but it’s still pretty unsatisfactory.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

John Carpenter has had a very up-and-down career as a director, or at least it has been very up-and-down in commercial terms. Big Trouble in Little China, an over-the-top action adventure romp, was certainly a commercial low point. Like so many of his commercial failures it has attracted a loyal cult following.

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is a truck driver. He finds himself propelled into a world of black magic and mayhem when the fiancée of his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is snatched at San Francisco Airport by a Chinese gang.

Jack has the kind of experience that Alice had after going down that rabbit hole. Suddenly he’s in a bizarre world beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown, a world of monsters, magic and sorcery. This world is dominated by David Lo Pan (James Hong), an evil sorcerer who as a result of a curse has been trapped in a strange undead incorporeal state for more than two thousand years. To escape the curse he needs to marry a girl with green eyes. Wang Chi’s girlfriend happens to have green eyes. But there is another girl with green eyes, Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), who also has green eyes and she’s mixed up in this situation as well.

Jack doesn’t understand any of this but he’s the kind of guy who never runs away from a fight.

Things get stranger and stranger. There is a whole world beneath Chinatown, a world in which an epic battle between good and evil must be played out. Warring Chinese gangs fighting it out in the streets with machine-guns are one thing but beneath Chinatown black magic is by far the bigger threat.

What follows is a great deal of very entertaining mayhem. The movie opens at a brisk pace and that pacing never falters for a moment. The action is continuous and it’s executed with a great deal of flair and imagination.

The big twist is that Jack Burton thinks he is the hero but he isn’t. He’s the sidekick. Wang Chi is the hero. Wang Chi knows what’s going on; Jack doesn’t have a clue. It’s not that Jack is stupid. Maybe he’s not a intellectual giant but he’s not a fool. He’s simply completely out of his depth. He tries his best to play the hero but it doesn’t really work. 

Not that Wang Chi isn’t grateful for Jack’s help. Jack might not have much experience battling evil sorcerers but he’s brave and he’s loyal. He’s the ideal sidekick in fact. Of course Jack still thinks he’s the actual hero.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this movie is that every member of the cast understands the type of movie this is. They all understand what Carpenter is trying to do. And they all produce exactly the right kinds of performances. The performances are slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not in a sneering or condescending way.

Kurt Russell is quite superb. He has the square-jawed action hero persona which contrasts delightfully with Jack’s total unawareness of his own inadequacies. He’s funny but he never allows his performance to descend into outright parody. We might be amused by Jack but we never despise him. Wang Chi never despises him either - he appreciates the fact that Jack is risking his life in order to fight beside him against Lo Pan.

Dennis Dun is terrific also. Wang Chi is very capable but he’s no superman and he would never be foolish enough to do anything this brave except that he has to save his fiancée and he intends to save her.

Kim Cattrall is delightful. She’s no shrinking violet, she’s quite feisty but she’s not a clichéd kickass action heroine. She’s pretty terrified but she’s determined not to give up. Cattrall is funny too and she combines superbly with Kurt Russell. James Hong is an absolutely splendid villain. He’s thoroughly evil but perhaps just a tiny bit tragic. Victor Wong is wonderfully amusing as the tour bus driver Egg Shen who knows a bit more about fighting black magic than you might expect from a tour bus drive.

The action set-pieces are crazy and spectacular. Carpenter was clearly pretty familiar with Hong Kong action movies and captures the feel of that genre perfectly whilst still giving the movie his own distinctive signature.

The Region B Blu-Ray includes an audio commentary by Carpenter and Kurt Russell which is almost as much fun as the movie. They’re obviously great friends and they obviously had a blast making the movie and their enthusiasm for it is infectious. They get very chatty but there’s plenty of fascinating background on the movie as well. The Blu-Ray looks magnificent. 

John Carpenter is a director who has never really achieved either the commercial success or the recognition he deserves. That’s possibly because rather than playing safe he chose to do idiosyncratic movies like this one. It’s easy to see why Big Trouble in Little China bombed at the box office. In 1986 studio executives would have had no idea how to market such a movie and mainstream critics would have been bamboozled by it. It appears that the studio solved the problem by not promoting the movie at all.

In spite of this Big Trouble in Little China is enormous fun. Highly recommended.

The Devil’s Sword (1984)

In the 1980s the Indonesian film industry was booming. Indonesian audiences wanted action and thrills and that’s exactly what Indonesia’s film industry offered them, in movies like The Devil’s Sword.

Producer Gope Samtani knew how to assemble the necessary ingredients - a magic sword, lots of martial arts, lots of swordplay, plenty of black magic, an evil queen, a beautiful heroine and as much sex as the Indonesian censor would let him get away with. And he had the right leading man in handsome charismatic Barry Prima. Barry Prima wasn’t a great actor but he had the matinee idol looks to appeal not just to Indonesian audiences but to the export market as well.

The legend of the South Sea Queen had provided the inspiration for movies and comic books (and would be the subject of the classic 1989 Indonesian horror thriller Lady Terminator). The evil Crocodile Queen of The Devil’s Sword is basically a variation on the theme.

Magic swords forged from meteorites were another ingredient with guaranteed appeal for Indonesian audiences (and they show up in the folklore of many other countries as well). The magic sword in this movie can confer almost unlimited power upon the warrior who wields it. So naturally all the evil warriors in Java are trying to find the sword. The one man who can stop them is the most formidable of all the good warriors on the island, Mandala (Barry Prima). Mandala’s ageing guru has already paid the price fir trying to conceal the whereabouts of the sword from the evil warriors. So now Mandala has an additional motive  for foiling their evil plans - to avenge the mutilation of his guru.

Mandala is not the only one after revenge. Banyu-Jaga (Advent Bangun), the chief henchman of the Crocodile Queen, has kidnapped the husband of a village chief’s daughter. The daughter, who happens to be a formidable martial arts expert in her own right, teams up with Mandala. She knows the fate in store for her husband. Like so many other village men he will have to serve the insatiable lusts of the dreaded Crocodile Queen. She is determined to save the poor boy from a fate worse than death.

Along the way Mandala and his newly acquired sidekick will have to battle a collection of extremely fearsome evil warriors. Luckily the evil warriors have stated fighting amongst themselves so that’s thinned out their numbers a little. Unluckily, Mandala himself falls prey to the Crocodile Queen. His guru, the one who tried unsuccessfully to prevent the evil warriors from finding out where the sword was hidden and lost both his legs in the process, has to use his powers of telepathy to rescue Mandala.

Of course it all ends with a climactic fight in the Crocodile Queen’s cave.

This all sounds fairly typical of 1980s sword and sorcery movies, and it is. The Devil’s Sword does however have a few things that make it stand out from the crowd. The first of these elements is the skillful blending of local mythology with a standard sword and sorcery plot. The second element is the outrageous sense of fun. 

The special effects are fairly crude but they’re executed with so much flair that for the most part they work extremely well. The arrival of Banyu-Jaga on a flying rock is a particular highlight. There’s also a very cool cyclops monster.

The Crocodile Queen’s lair probably wasn’t a very expensive set but it looks terrific. This movie proves the truth of something I’ve always believed - energy, imagination and enthusiasm are far more important than big budgets.

The Crocodile Queen makes a wonderful villainess. The Devil’s Sword really pushed the edge of the envelope when it came to the amount of sex the Indonesian censor would allow. It might be tame by the standards if the time in regard to what is actually shown but it manages to create an incredibly sleazy atmosphere. There’s also a considerable amount of gore but the violence is so cartoonish it’s impossible to be offended by it.

This film boasts a host of colourful villains, all of them being satisfyingly evil in completely distinctive ways. The crocodile men are a nice touch.

Absolutely everything you could possibly wish for in a sword and sorcery movie can be found here.

Mondo Macabro have managed to find a remarkably good print. The 16x9 enhanced transfer really is quite superb. As always with this company’s releases the extras are fascinating and informative, the highlight being a truly bizarre interview with Barry Prima who must be one of the most delightfully eccentric movie stars in history.

The Devil’s Sword is a non-stop roller coaster ride of sheer unadulterated fun. If a movie it to be judged by how well it achieves what it set out to do then this is a truly great movie. Very highly recommended.

The Young Master (1980)

I’ve never been a huge fan of martial arts movies but I have slowly developed quite a love for the movies of Shaw Brothers Studio. I’m less familiar with the output of the major producer of Hong Kong action movies, Golden Harvest. After seeing The Young Master I’m inclined to think I might stick to Shaw Brothers productions in future.

This was Jackie Chan’s triumphant return to Golden Harvest and he wrote and directed the movie as well as starring in it.

I must confess that I have only the haziest notion of what the plot as all about. Two orphans, Tiger and Dragon, had been taken in and raised by the master of a kung fu school. Tiger betrayed his master by helping a rival school to win the lion dance competition, and was banished in disgrace. His master later relented and sent Dragon (Jackie Chan) to fetch him back.

Somehow the plot then gets involved with bank robbers and with Dragon being mistaken for an escaped criminal. The action sequences are non-stop and there’s little time for coherent plot development, but then coherent plot development is probably not what the audience for this film was going to paying their money to see.

It’s mostly played for comedy and the comedy is very broad and relies a good deal on slapstick. It’s a style of comedy that has never done much for me and as a result I found this movie to be pretty heavy going. Of course if you enjoy this type of humour your reaction to the movie is probably going to be quite different. It’s just a matter of personal taste.

The fight scenes are frenetic and spectacular enough but they lack the elegance of the fight scenes in Shaw Brothers movies. Again it’s a matter of personal taste.

The acting is as broad as the comedy. Jackie Chan is likeable enough.

I don’t want to put people off because really my fairly negative response to this film is mostly due to the fact that this sort of movie is just not my cup of tea.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972)

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan might sound like a softcore porn movie but it isn’t. In fact it’s a Shaw Brothers martial arts flick.

The Hong Kong studio was going through a phase of trying to snare a wider market by making more genre crossover movies. At around this time they made the surprisingly excellent Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires in partnership with Britain’s Hammer Films. Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan was an attempt to take the kind of period swordplay movies they usually made and add a fairly generous helping of sleaze. It’s a reasonably successful combination.

It takes place at some unspecified time period in China’s imperial past. Ainu is one of a shipment of kidnapped girls being delivered by brigands to Lady Chun’s brothel. This is a very exclusive and very expensive brothel, its customers being a good cross-section of the rich and powerful. Ainu is very uncooperative and her unwillingness to submit earns her a thorough beating after which she is raped by a number of very wealthy men who have paid  high prices for the privilege of breaking in the new girl.

Ainu (Lily Ho) becomes a very successful prostitute but she has a long memory. She intends to take her revenge. And this she does, in violent and spectacular fashion. She has become an expert swordswoman and she has a knack for conceiving elaborate plans to make her vengeance as satisfying and as fitting as possible.

Lady Chun (Betty Pei Ti) has meanwhile fallen hopelessly in love with Ainu. The brothel owner isn’t overly worried by Ainu’s campaign of revenge as she has convinced herself that Ainu returns her love. It all leads to a spectacular and gory finish with a nasty little sting in the tail.
There’s quite a bit of nudity but nothing very graphic, although the sexual violence might be disturbing to some viewers.

The sets and costumes are as lavish as you’d expect in a Shaw Brothers production. They were a bit like Hammer in their heyday in that they could make movies that looked a whole lot more expensive than they were. Add the usual gorgeous cinematography that characterised the studio’s efforts and you have a very handsome-looking movie.

The fight scenes are spectacular and quite gory.

More impressive even that the visuals are the performances by the two lead actresses, especially Betty Pei Ti as the beautiful but wicked lesbian madam (who is also an expert swordswoman).

It’s a tale of obsessive love and obsessive hate done with style and energy. If you don’t mind sleaze with your martial arts movies then there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had.