The number one source for the anger fuelling the film was the untimely death of the Shaw Studio's brightest star, Alexander Fu Sheng. Barely into his 20s, Fu Sheng had become the James Dean of the Hong Kong action scene, known for his love of fast cars, high rolling, and romancing women, one of whom was a budding pop star who grew up in Canada named Sally Yeh. Fu Sheng often played a hot-head with a heart of gold, and he carried that role beyond the screen.

There was no doubt that under the wing of phenomenal director Liu Chia-liang, Fu Sheng's star was back on the rise after a devastating accident left him with two broken legs. He stood to be as popular as Jackie Chan, who had really hit the big time in the 1980s and achieved a level of success hitherto unobtained by Shaw Brothers stars, most of whom had disappeared, defected to other studios, or were working with Liu. Alexander fu Sheng was, in many ways, the studio's best hope to prosper in the changing times.

It all came crashing to a halt, however, when Alexander's penchant for fast driving finally caught up with him. He died in a car wreck -- living like James Dean, dying like James Dean. His passing, which occurred during the filming of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, cast a dark shadow over the studio, which was dying a slow death of its own as Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest studio became the reigning king of Hong Kong cinema. With Alexander's death, the Shaw Brothers Studio watched any hope it had to compete with the new school disappear.

Fu Sheng was well-liked, and his death put everyone in a bad mood. It is this mood that colors the landscape of the film, which is relentless and oppressive. It opens on a battlefield, where the noble Yang family is ambushed and slaughtered. Before the credits are over, nearly everyone is slain. Only two Yang brothers survive -- Liu Chia-hui and Alexander Fu Sheng. Fu Sheng has gone insane after witnessing the murder of his brothers and father. Chia-hui is on the run.

Alexander returns home to his mother and sisters to deliver the bad news. Meanwhile, Liu Chia-hui seeks refuge at a Buddhist temple. He, too, is quite mad, driven by an uncontrollable rage and bloodlust. His demeanor doesn't exactly mesh well with the pacifist nature of the monks, but they take pity on him and humor his desire to become a monk.

The abbot of the temple visits the family to let them know their son is still alive, and his sister, played by the always wonderful Hui Ying-hung, sets out to bring him home. At the temple, Chia-hui practices pole fighting with a ferocity that upsets the monks, who explain to him that they learn to fight only to defend themselves from marauding wolves. Even then, they find only to defang the wolves, not kill them.

Of course, a toothless wolf would die a far more agonizing, drawn out death than one simply killed outright, but the movie doesn't bother with that.

When the men who ambushed the Yang family gang up and capture the valiant Hui Ying-hung, Liu Chia-hui leaves the temple to rescue her. The ensuing battle amid a pyramid of coffins is astounding. It has some wire work, but it's used fairly subtlely and not to achieve superhuman feats. The kungfu is fast and brutal, and just as the two Yangs seem beaten, Chia-hui's brothers from the temple show up to "defang the wolves." What follows is a chilling sequence in which the monks rip out whole sets of villain teeth.

The entire film runs at near breakneck speed, with the anger building and building until the stunning and cathartic finale. In the end, Liu Chia-hui is left wandering between two worlds, too violent to be a monk, yet too alienated to return to the troubled world. It's very much like the situation facing the studio and its stars. An uncertain future, unable to exist via the old ways, unable to fully grasp the new ways.

It's an explosion of emotion -- anger, frustration, madness, disappointment, confusion, and maybe a little hope. The humor Liu Chia-liang so often used is non-existent. The compassion is lost in the madness of the situation as the characters are swept up in the uncontrollable firestorm of rage. It is bleak, depressing, and ultimately open-ended. Liu Chia-hui's only revelation is that he is a beast unfit for life as a man or monk.

It's also one of the most effective, moving, and exciting kungfu films ever made. Everyone was on top of their game for this one, putting an extra effort into it to ensure that Alexander Fu Sheng's final film would be memorable. Indeed it is, even though his role in it is minimal because of his death. Eight diagram Pole Fighter is effective in every way -- as a parable about the fragile state of man, about the fragile state of the studio that produced it. Films would come and go, the Shaw Brothers studio would fade, but Eight Diagram Pole Fighter remains at the very top of my list.

Five Deadly Venoms is a unique film for the Shaw Brothers, and especially for director Chang Cheh, who's work is generally characterized by larger-than-life feats, heroic daring-do, and tons of violent kungfu action. In the case of Five Deadly Venoms, however, the film draws its strengths and appeal from the characters and well-paced plot. Sure, there is plenty of violence, and enough kungfu action to keep us all happy, but the true power of the film is in the performances of the group of men who would become known collectively as The Venoms.

Chang Cheh's career is best characterized by the three groups of actors he worked with. In the 1960s, he worked primarily with Jimmy Wang Yu and Cheng Pei-pei in sweeping swordsman tragedies. During the first half of the 1970s, he worked a lot with David Chiang, Ti Lung, and Alexander Fu Sheng. Toward the close of the 1980s, Chang's gang changed again. Lo Meng, Lu Feng, Kuo Chui, Su Chien, and Chiang Sheng became his regular group. Five Deadly Venoms is the film that made them who they were.

The plot revolves around a secret society of kungfu fighters, each one disguised by the mask of a different venomous animal: the scorpion, the snake, the lizard, the centipede, and the toad. Years after each man graduated, the dying teacherbeginsn to suspect that some of the fighters are using their kungfu for evil. He instructs his sixth student (Chiang Sheng), who has been trained in pieces of all five venom styles, to find the men and determine which ones are good and which have become evil. Those who are evil...well, you know.

The only problem is that no one knows anyone else's identity. So Chiang must first figure out who is who. In the kungfu world, your fighting style is your calling card, so it's actually not that difficult to find some of the guys. Snake (non-Venom Wei Pai), Centipede, and Scorpion have all gone rotten. Toad and Lizard are still righteous. The evil guys more or less know each other now, though they don't know who the good guys are.

What follows is an exciting kungfu game as each man tries to expose the other. The Toad Venom (Lo Meng) is the requisite "tragic sacrifice" to the gods of kungfu, in a scene that really shook me up as a kid. He was so cool! Liking the Toad Venom is akin to liking Curly. He's everyone's favorite, and when he's gone, it's just too much to handle.

Unlike Shemp and Curly Joe, the remaining Venoms are more than enough to carry the movie. And what a movie it is! The fights are very clever and highly exciting. The Lizard (Kuo Chui) can run up walls and stick to the ceiling! The whole thing is fast-paced, and it's one of the best written Shaw Brothers kungfu films. The acting is first-rate, as well.

Working with The Venoms really brought a whole new level to Chang Cheh's films. While they were often enjoyable, the Venoms simply outclassed everyone before them in terms of both acting and martial arts talent. Only the troupe associated with fellow Shaw Brothers director Liu Chia-liang was able to outshine the Venoms. Wei Pai went to Golden Harvest studios soon after this film, but the five stars who remained at Shaw Brothers became instant martial arts stars.

Many of their later films are even better than this one, but none of them have the charm that this one exudes. Crippled Avengers has twice as much great kungfu, but there's an undefinable something that elevates Five Deadly Venoms above the rest. Maybe because it was the prototype. Maybe because it's just that damn good. Suffice to say, it's one of the few Shaw Brothers films that has proven staying power. Decades later, new fans of the film are popping up every day.

That makes me quite happy.

At the same time, I hate a lot of big, dumb action movies like that third Die Hard film. Is this a contradiction? Hypocrisy? Well, don't try to figure me out. I'm one of those hedge mazes, baby, and you could get lost in my leafy green complexity.

Just because I don't need a film to be smart doesn't mean I don't want a film to be smart. It's icing on the cake. So I was delighted when I sat down to watch Nowhere to Hide, another in the increasingly long line of top-notch Korean action films I've been getting around to watching lately. On the surface it is a simple story of a cop chasing a killer. It plays to all the genre cliches that come with the territory: the cop is on the edge and has an unhappy (or non-existent) normal life, the criminal is cool and calculating, the cops are as brutal as the criminals, etc etc. If you were to read a simple plot synopsis, there would be nothing in it to suggest that Nowhere to Hide was anything more than a run-of-the-mill actioner no different than a thousand other films.

Obviously, I wouldn't have prefaced this whole thing with that bit about smart movies if there wasn't something more at play here than a run-of-the-mill action film.

There are, first and foremost, two rather spectacular things about the film that set it apart from the pack. First is the visual style, which manages to be unique even in today's atmosphere of style run rampant, with everyone seeming to forget that a movie needs more than "cool visuals" to be entertaining. If all you can do is make cool visuals, become a painter. We'll get to that later, because what I want to discuss first is the more subtle thing going on in Nowhere to Hide, primarily because it's something that doesn't get discussed too much since everyone is busy obsessing over the visual style and forgetting the rest of the film.

The most unique thing about this movie is it's near complete lack of gunplay. In a romantic comedy, this wouldn't be so spectacular a thing, but in an action film about out-of-control cops chasing a wily killer, one expects a certain amount of shooting to occur, or at least a certain amount of guys waving guns around over their head. Not so here, where guns are almost never a factor, save for one time. And in that one time, the fact that a gun has been used is a source of major concern for all involved. As such, at least from an American perspective, and from the perspective of someone who watches a lot of action films from all over the world, Nowhere to Hide is something surprising and unique, a counterbalance to the rather nonchalant use of guns in just about every other film in the genre.

No one would ever say that Hong Kong action films are free of gunplay. For American fans at least, John Woo defines Hong Kong action cinema (even if he was less popular in Hong Kong), and his movies are defined by the interaction of people and pistols. Even Jackie Chan, whose movies revolve around stunts and martial arts, frequently uses guns whenever he's playing a cop. In American films, guns are a given. The most famous cinematic cop in America is probably Dirty Harry, and nothing defined Harry like his Magnum. Even Nowhere to Hide's Korean contemporaries seem to embrace gun culture, as movies like Shiri were positively boiling over with high-caliber action. In each of these movies, and in many of the cultures themselves, guns are the first, easiest solution to any problem. Going into a dangerous situation? Go in with your gun drawn. Someone fighting with you? Point your gun at them and shut them up.

Detective Woo in Nowhere to Hide is, by any other measure, the proverbial cop on the edge. The big difference is that he doesn't use a gun. He doesn't even carry one, at least until the very end, and even then he is quite bad with it. Likewise, none of the men working with him use guns. Only one member of his force actually draws a gun during a dangerous situation, and the results are a source of torture for him from that moment on. On the flipside of the coin, none of the criminals use guns either. The main killer uses a sword, and when challenged, his fists. Everyone else, cops and criminals alike, seem to favor pipes and bats if they need a weapon. The distinct lack of guns in the film makes you call into question the entire concept of brutality and just what makes a brutal action film.

Because make no mistake about it, although it's a very twisted and offbeat comedy, Nowhere to Hide is a brutal film. Woo and his men are sadistic, constantly yearning for a fight, and not at all shy about beating confessions out of people. The sight of a cop socking a criminal in the jaw is considered brutal and abusive, thanks primarily to the flesh-on-flesh contact. For some reason, the same cop waving a gun in the face of the same unarmed man wouldn't really faze anyone so long as he didn't actually pull the trigger. So is it the firing of a gun that is brutal, or isn't the mere use of it even as a tool for intimidation, a way to get power over someone without a gun, something brutal as well? Why is the use of a gun so sanitized, so expected, and the use of a fist considered so base and animalistic? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why is a fist fight savage but the use of a gun not?

Personally, and I'm no pop psychologist, I think we simply relate more to the sight of someone getting pounded like a side of beef being tenderized by an Iron Chef. The threat of a fist in the face is a lot more real to most people than the threat of ever having a gun pulled on them. It's something we all understand more. To put a real-life spin on it, I'm pretty nervous around any physical altercation that involves me, even if it's one I could win (and those are few and far between). The fist fights I've been in have always been a source of great anxiety for me. Conversely, the night Scott and I, along with our friend Todd, had a gun pulled on us, fear never even ran through my mind. It was just like, "Oh hell, let's just get this over with. I have things to do." By all accounts, the chances of someone with a gun killing me are higher than someone beating me to death with their bare hands, but I was a lot less scared looking down the barrel of a gun than I am looking at someone's knuckles flying toward my nose.

Part of that has to do with the remoteness of a gun. Pull the trigger, bam. It's over. It's not like having to duke it out with someone, which is far more intimate, and thus I think, far more personally affecting. It's cold, technical, and removed. I'm sure the gun freaks out there will beg to differ, or perhaps demand to differ, but for me, there's nothing personal about a gun, even the ones snipers use and talk to like they were their intimate lovers. It's still a machine, more or less. There's also, and again this is from the perspective of someone who doesn't care for guns, something less respectable about them. Sure, if someone is shooting at me, I'd probably wish I had one to shoot back, but it takes no special talent to use a gun on someone. Any jackass in Phat jeans can do it. You can be a scrawny, spineless little kid, but you can still pull the trigger and kill someone.

Having to get into a fist fight means you have to rely on yourself, and if you are like me, your ability to get in a few sucker punches and surprises that will end things before you get your ass kicked. You can't fake fighting well. You have to be good at it, or at least better than the person you are fighting. For me, and this is just my personal outlook (I make no condemnation on people who like having a gun around), there is something far more respectable about going at it fist-to-fist. There is something more respectable to me about getting your ass kicked in a fight than there is in winning the fight because you have a gun.

Here in the US, that we have a gun culture goes without saying, though the degree to which we worship the firearm has been put a little more into perspective with our recent glimpses into the average life of someone in, say, Afghanistan. Compared to them, we've still got a long way to go. At least our toddlers have to sneak the guns out of the house. But regardless of that, there's no denying that America and the gun live side by side. They're in our Constitution. They're strapped to our police officers and sometimes even our shopping mall rent-a-cops. More than a few private citizens have them. No matter how many teenagers and computer programmers bring them to school or work to shoot up their peers, cries of outrage are let loose in response to even the mildest form of gun control. When our police force confronts a hostile situation, they do so with guns drawn, primarily because the people opposing them probably have their guns drawn, and despite what those pugilists in the Boxer's Rebellion thought, bare flesh versus hard steel rarely works out to the advantage of the guy with the bare flesh. Case in point: how did the Boxers do?

Nowhere to Hide presents us with a culture that isn't obsessed with guns, and by doing so, even if it was unintentional, it calls into question the differences between the two cultures, something that action films rarely think to do. When confronted with a hostile situation, even one in which they don't know if the other side is armed, the response of the boys in Woo's pack consists of clenching their fists and getting ready for a brawl. The film opens with Woo himself busting a large gang with nothing but his fists to back up his words. Eventually some friends show up, but they all have pipes. No guns. True, it's easier for a police force to operate without relying on guns when the criminals have to do the same, but then, that's all part of living in a culture that has not so enthusiastically embraced the gun as a God given right rather than a reluctant last resort.

Despite all this, Woo is considered violent and out-of-control. His tactics of beating the crap out of people were shocking enough to raise the eyebrows of censors when the movie was recut for the American home video market. For some reason, punching a suspect is considered more violent than shooting at them, or threatening to shoot at them. Sure, I don't want a cop shooting at or punching me, but if I had to chose, even though a punch in the face scares me, I'd probably take it over a bullet to the head.

With this added layer of thought about guns and the nature of violence, about how we become desensitized to the use of a gun because the use of a gun is so impersonal, Nowhere to Hide is suddenly a lot more complex than the otherwise straight-forward plot might have some people believe.

Joong-Hoon Park plays Detective Woo, a squat, brutish looking guy in a leather coat and floppy LL Cool J hat. He reminds me of a less spherical version of the pro wrestler Tazz. Woo is part of a controversial homicide unit where they're willing to beat a confession out of anyone they know is a criminal, even if that person is a teenager or a woman. Still, the only real sidearm Woo carries is a pistol that shoots a relatively useless puff of mace that never seems to stop anyone. When asked by his partner if he wouldn't feel safer with a gun, Woo laughs at the suggestion. He's a fighter, and he'd much rather risk his life in a fist fight than take the coward's way out by pulling a gun. His partner, Kim (Dong-Kun Jang), is younger and less shy about letting a gun get him out of a sticky situation every now and again. Even so, it's rare that he ever uses it, preferring instead to simply let a lead pipe upside the head be his fighting advantage.

When a man is murdered, apparently as part of some sort of underworld power play, Woo and his team are assigned the investigation. Even the assassin, Sungmin (Sung-kee Ahn) doesn't bother with guns. In one of the film's many superb sequences, he hits his mark with a sword during a downpour out on the 40 Steps, a famous landmark in Inchon. His back-up thugs chase away the other guy's thugs again not with guns, but with bats and blades.

A few shakedowns here and there, and a particularly amusing fight between Woo and a big guy named Meathead, lead the cops to Juyon (Ji-Woo Choi), Sungmin's girlfriend. The fight between Woo and Meathead is yet another example of just how different this movie is from most other action films. In nearly any other film, Woo would have pulled a gun on Meathead and said, "Alright, let's get going," and that would have been the end of it, and we wouldn't have thought anything was wrong with that. Instead, Woo refuses to even give a gun a thought, wanting instead to have it out with Meathead and subdue him physically. Again, it's curious that simply pointing a gun at the guy and hauling him in is considered fine, but refusing to use a gun in favor of fighting your opponent unarmed is considered barbaric. You could say that the gun is a way to avoid the violence, and then someone else could counter that by saying that even pointing the gun at someone is a violent act.

Even when the cops are waiting for Sungmin at Juyon's place, none of them use guns. Once again, they all rely on fists and feet. When the fight turns into a chase, the cops could end it simply by pulling out a gun and yelling, "Freeze!" Once again, that wouldn't strike anyone as unusual, even if the criminals were unarmed. They don't do that however, because for them, and for this movie, the gun is not an answer. It's not a short-cut or a way to get work done without effort. The cops would rather run themselves ragged in a foot chase than turn to a gun to solve things for them.

Of course, that could also be part of the reason Sungmin is able to escape. In another moment of humor - and this film is an action-comedy (just not slapstick) - Woo fires his mace gun off wildly, even when Sungmin is nowhere to be seen or is far out of the pistols range of what looks to be about three feet. That thing really is useless, which may or may not be additional imagery pertaining to the movie's attitudes toward our societal reliance on guns.

The one time a gun is used is by Kim, when a crazed man holds a kid hostage using a straight razor. During a moment of confusion, Kim fires and kills the criminal. By all means, it is a justified shot, and most movies wouldn't even think twice about it, except maybe to add some silly one-liner to tie things up nicely. Here, however, the shooting becomes a source of great inner turmoil for Kim, who can't fully convince himself that shooting anyone is a brave or right thing to do. "Never forget this feeling," Woo tells him, showing that for all his willingness to beat someone up, even Woo considers the use of a gun with great gravity. At no point do they condemn it. They merely suggest that one should always remember the consequences and never let the use of a gun become standard practice.

From colorful fall nights to the snowy dead of winter, Woo and his men continue to track the elusive Sungmin, leading to a confrontation on a train (with Woo disguised as a drink vendor looking like Angus Young from AC/DC), and finally a showdown in a rain-drenched construction lot. In the final confrontation of the film, Woo finally resorts to a gun, but it is ultimately useless, and he throws it down into a puddle of mud in favor of settling the score with his fists. The outcome of the final fight is also a twist on what one would expect from this sort of film, but by the final moments, Nowhere to Hide has proven it's anything but just another "this type of film."

The uniqueness of the film's approach to violence and action is matched by its uniqueness in style and appearance. It switches from washed-out, grainy black and white to vibrant, rich, almost overwhelming color. It slams recklessly between slow-motion and regular speed. It toys with lighting, angles, and composition as freely as the script toys with the expectations of a "cop on the edge" story. It is a beautiful film to watch, and the visual flare manages to augment rather than overwhelm. Some people use visual flash as a way to mask weak stories and bad movies. In those moments, the visuals and the effects become the reason for the movie, the center of attention when they should be there to help tell the story instead of covering it up. Though some of the tricks in Nowhere to Hide have no real point, they never overwhelm the story, and they never become annoying. They are simply another layer of what is going on.

As I stated earlier, the plot is simple even if the execution is not. Each of the characters fulfills a genre stereotype, though always with enough of a twist to remind you that this isn't business as usual. Sungmin is easy to dismiss as the cool, brilliant criminal because he dresses smartly, and the villains are always cool and brilliant. The big difference here is that he's neither cool nor especially brilliant, at least not as we actually see him once you strip away expectations you bring in from other movies. His girlfriend is a regular, though quite beautiful, woman in her early thirties living a very simple middle class life despite the fact her boyfriend is an underworld assassin.

Sungmin himself says no more than a few words during the entire picture, and those words are merely an observation of something obvious about a door. He's able to elude the police because he's somewhat careful some of the time, but he still makes the mistake of visiting his girlfriend once her identity is known (and without checking the place out beforehand). His attempts to elude the police on the train are slightly less than genius as well. In fact, in the story presented, there is nothing at all to suggest that Sungmin is brilliant, or even somewhat smart, or that he is a great criminal. These are all expectations we bring in with us, and it's something of a surprise to realize the movie has not played to those expectations. Instead, it's played on them.

By the same token, Woo and Kim are supposed to be the archetypal rogue cops, the kind who ruffle the feathers of the higher ups and always give the mayor a headache. Again, those are character traits we bring into the film with us and which the film quickly subverts. Rather than being angered by the violence, Woo's captain is annoyed that the men can't get more information with it. Despite the fact that they regularly beat up suspects during interrogation, there is never any indication that Woo and his men are ever disciplined from higher up or that anyone looks upon their actions with disgust or moral outrage.

By the book, Woo should be the hothead and his partner should be the by-the-books type. Instead, they're both hotheads, and it's the partner who tends to get careless with the gun. Although he's a bad-ass, Woo is also a human character. Though he loves a good fight, he doesn't always win them. A visit to his sister ends with him donning his new pair of gloves (a gift from the previous year's Christmas that he never opened) and frolicking off into the snowy night like a little kid. We do get the requisite talk about how the lines between cops and criminals are blurred, and how Woo only became a cop to keep himself from becoming a thug, but those are never central themes in the movie since, by comparison, the criminals get next to no screen time.

Despite somewhat broadly drawn characters, the movie manages to personalize Woo and Sungmin's girlfriend, Juyon. Even Sungmin develops a character despite saying almost nothing and only being on screen a few minutes. I guess he's sort of like Boba Fett. Again, it's because we all carry preconceptions of what these characters should be, and the movie allows us to fill them in and mold them slightly to our liking. You could write it off as shallow characterization, but I think it's too effective at drawing you in to be so hastily dismissed. Despite his thuggishness, it's hard not to like Woo. He may hit people, but he won't shoot them. He is never anyone other than who he is, and that's a refreshing honesty. His scenes with Juyon, the world-weary woman who has gotten involved in more than she wants to deal with, lend an air of melancholy to the film. These are, at heart, two very lonely characters who will find no release from their solitude. Sungmin will either be captured or disappear forever. Woo will always spend his evenings on a stake-out or sitting alone at home cooking up some ramen on a camping stove in the middle of his floor.

It helps the characters to have such accomplished actors behind them. Joong-Hoon Park is utterly superb as Woo, managing to drum up fondness for a guy who could be very easy to dislike if handled incorrectly by the actor. Instead, he comes across like a bully big brother who, just as you start to dislike him, does something really meaningful and sweet. Sung-kee Ahn as Sungmin is also accomplished, and by far the most experienced of the main cast. It is the quiet grace and strength with which he carries himself that allows you to fill in his character. That he can leave such an impression with so little time on screen is quite a feat. Ji-woo Choi is simply stunning, but beauty alone will only get you compared to Liv Tyler. As Juyon, she lends the film a sense of "everyman" (or everywoman) humanity and sadness. Dong-kun Jang, who plays Woo's partner Kim, is the least engaging of the main cast, but that's only because his character is the least engaging. He's there primarily to be Woo's sidekick, and although his character is given plenty to think and do, Kim never becomes as moving a figure as Woo or Juyon.

It's nice to see a movie with an older cast, something that a lot of filmmakers have forgotten about. Now, young folks are fine and all, but a fella like me can only take so many films about a guy in his early twenties who is supposed to be some seasoned FBI agent or hardened street cop. It's good to see some people with a couple lines in their faces amid this era of youth worship. No, it's not like we're watching Carl Olsen up there in action, but at least we're not expected to buy some fresh-faced lad of twenty as a grizzled veteran of the homicide department. Even Ji-woo Choi is close to thirty, which makes her positively ancient by Hollywood standards. Well, by all Hollywood standards except the one that allows Meg Ryan to still act like she's nineteen. Weird how in the 1980s, we had all these teens movies starring people in their thirties as teenagers. Now we have all these movies with supposedly older adult characters being played by people barely out of their teens. I fully expect to see a remake of Cocoon starring Aaron Carter, Mandy Moore, the members of O-Town, and in the role formerly occupied by Steve Guttenberg - Steve Guttenberg.

Not that we're entirely devoid of wrinkles here. Sean Connery still catches the eye, as does George Clooney. And that dreamy Robert Redford? He voted for Taft!

Lightening what would otherwise be a grim film is a truly wonderful and twisted dark sense of humor that keeps most of the proceedings feeling like something out of a cartoon. Amazingly, this doesn't really undercut the brutality or effectiveness of the film, which has enough serious moments to balance things out nicely. It's sort of like watching a Walter Hill film along the lines of 48 Hours, where there is plenty of dark comedy, but it is seamlessly blended with more sinister elements that result in a well-balanced film rather than something that veers wildly from one mood to the other without establishing anything. Sometimes the violence is used for humorous effect; sometimes it's deadly serious.

I'm a bit surprised that most critics and viewers are so dismissive of the plot as being non-existent. It's there, and it actually has quite a lot to say, even if it chooses not to do it through dialogue. Perhaps it's just me, and I'm seeing more than was ever meant to be there, but you know how it is. If I see it, then it's there, at least for me. That the movie has chosen to develop both plot and characters in a somewhat unconventional manner seems to get missed, or it simply doesn't work for some people. I thought it was delightful. Despite what you might think, I don't feel engrossed by movies that are nothing but visual flare and pointless action scenes. Though Nowhere to Hide is dripping with visual flare and action, never once did I feel it was the entire point of the film. Like I always say, you get out of a film what you put into it, and most people seem unwilling to look beyond the film's visuals and see anything more. Fine with me. I have no vested interested in convincing people that what they dismiss as nonsense is actually, at least to me, an interesting and subversive plot. In a world where movies have gotten so manipulative and so dumb, people hardly recognize something clever when it comes along. Rather than beat you over the head with it, director Lee Myung-Se allows his film to gather substance along the way, and apparently, it does with a subtlety lost on many viewers. I have no problem being in the minority in thinking that there is a hell of a lot more going on here than just cool visual tricks. The mov

ie even further subverts expectations by delivering violence that isn't particularly nice to look at. We expect well-choreographed shootout and fight scenes that play out like ballet. Nowhere to Hide gives us sloppy, awkward fist fights that look pretty much like fights do in real life. The movie isn't here to make violence look cool. In fact, it's often striving to make violence look absurd.

Ultimately, it's one of those movies you have to see for yourself and make up your mind about. Is it mindless fluff, violent nonsense, or an actual thoughtful and enjoyable piece of filmmaking? Is it all those things? I thought it was wonderful, but like I said in the opening paragraphs of this review, I'm often easy to please. It's the antithesis of movies by directors like John Woo, who of course, Lee Myung-Se gets compared to a lot by critics who don't know any other names in Asian cinema. Never mind that the movies and directors are nothing alike aside form the frequent use of slow motion. Nowhere to Hide lets you put your own notions into it, and if those notions are that this is all style and no substance, then that's what you'll see. I actually went in knowing very little about the film and director, and had no real preconceptions about what I was about to witness. I think that worked out well for me, because I ended up seeing quite a lot.

On top of that, I flat out enjoyed the film. It's unique in style and substance. It's expertly pieced together, beautiful and ferocious to behold. It's funny, twisted, gritty, and sad. Ten minutes were slashed from the American version of the film, which may be why people seem to miss so much of what's going on in it, so seek out the uncut 112 minute original Korean version. It's bombastic, it's flashy, it's innovative. It has something to say even if people seem not to hear it. But none of that matters much if it isn't an enjoyable film, and I thought Nowhere to Hide was simply fascinating. And hell, even if you think I'm full of it, at least the film is entertaining and cool to look at.

With a film like Young Taoism Fighter or Fantasy Mission Force, or the film up for discussion here, Bastard Swordsman, divining a comprehensible reason behind the lunacy is far more challenging. It's not that these films suffer from some insurmountable cultural barrier; though they may be based upon or reference classic and contemporary Chinese stories and comic books, such things, especially in the age of the Internet and a globally connected tangled web of shared pop culture, are hardly inaccessible to fans in the West. Many classic works have been translated, and many more have, at the very least, been well summarized and explained in English. The same goes for modern works of fantastic fiction, specifically the Hong Kong comic books and martial arts novels from which so many films draw their inspiration. They are not common knowledge, perhaps, but neither are they arcane secrets locked away in some box that can only be opened by someone who tests positive for Chinese citizenship, a national identity that is verified using such questions as, "Do you like to spit?" and "How do you feel about cleaning your ears in public?" Incidentally, although my relatives are American Southerners of Scottish decent, a good many of them manage to test positive for Chinese citizenship.

Neither, do I think, is this a symptom of filmmakers who are so deep and complex that it becomes a lifetime chore just to unravel their meaning. There is little of James Joyce in Jimmy Wang Yu. Although I have been wrong about some things in the past, I am firmly placed in my opinion that Jimmy Wang Yu did not have any deep-rooted meaning or message embedded in the random ghost houses, flying Amazons, and kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln by Chinese Nazis in Buicks that comprises much of the running time of Fantasy Mission Force. Nor do I think that the people who make these films are throwing weird stuff up on screen just for the sake of being weird, because in general, people who do that never come up with anything quite this weird. There is a twisted, feverish imagination at work in many of these films, and the situations and characters that are borne of these imaginations are possessed of a weirdness quite unlike any other type of cinematic weirdness. Maybe it comes from having multiple people dashing off different parts of the script mere minutes before each scene is scheduled to be filmed. Maybe it comes from taking one too many punches to the head. Maybe there is liberal consumption of Bruce Lee's old hashish brownies during scriptwriting sessions. Whatever the reasons, anyone who submerges themselves in the weird world of kungfu cannot emerge as the same person. Like facing the abyss, you come away both scarred and enlightened. Like witnessing one of H.P. Lovecraft's hideous otherworldly monstrosities, sometimes to merely gaze upon them is enough to drive you completely and utterly insane.

Throughout the 1970s, and the first couple years of the 1980s, the Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong was cranking three distinct types of martial arts films: there were the films of Chang Cheh and those who followed his style, all about brute force, heroic bloodshed, and male bonding between archetypal characters. There were the films of Liu Chia-liang, featuring more intricate, technically accomplished fight sequences, complex characters, and comedic touches. And though these two directors were the sole definitions of Shaw Bros. martial arts films in the West until very recently, current DVD releases of the Shaws' voluminous libraries finally turned hungry fans on to the third type of Shaw Bros. martial arts film: the artfully designed, lyrical, almost supernatural swordsman fantasies of Chu Yuan.

You could argue, pretty accurately, that Chang Cheh and Liu Chia-liang made kungfu films, while Chu Yuan made martial arts films. The films of the two formers were based on real weapons, real styles, and real historical periods (albeit historical periods that might not be realized with complete authenticity). Chu Yuan, however, based his martial arts films almost exclusively within the realm of fantasy, confined them to the mythical "Martial World," a fairytale version of ancient China populated by secret sects, supernatural styles, and fighters with mystic skills and fighting ability that bore very little resemblance to any form of actual fighting -- though I have a friend whose mother swears that there are some monks who really can fly and shoot bolts of concentrated chi energy from their palms. Chu Yuan shot almost entirely on sets, using highly stylized and extremely detailed art design to conjure up a world that was recognizable yet distinctly fantastic. You knew that the normal rules did not apply.

As the years wore on, Chu Yuan began to incorporate more and more special effects into his films. Relatively straight-forward films like The Bastard gave way to his successful run of swordsman films, many of which featured Shaw superstar Ti Lung navigating his way through a world populated by esoteric clans and secret societies hiding out in underground lairs stuffed to the gills with hidden chambers, trap doors, and wild Mario Bava-esque lighting. And the fighters in his film were increasingly likely to possess otherworldly martial arts skills that enabled them to fly and vanish into thin air. By the end of the 1970s, spilling into the 1980s, Chu Yuan went hog wild and indulged every artistic excess. His later films are crammed with even more characters, even more elaborate lairs, more stylized sets, and now the martial artists could do more than just fly; they could shoot multi-colored rays, spin webs, grow or shrink, and perform all sorts of other insane feats of a superhuman nature. They were Hong Kong's answer to American superheroes and Mexican luchadores.

Several directors followed in the footsteps of Chu Yuan, especially toward the end of the Shaw Bros. run at the top, when a faltering studio and the general sense that the Shaw product was outdated and stuffy when compared to what they were doing over at Golden Harvest (home of Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and Yuen Biao, among others) meant that desperate producers and directors were throwing every zany thing they could think of onto the screen in a last-ditch attempt to salvage some portion of the public interest. The slapdash desperation, dwindling budgets, and speedy shooting schedules, coupled with the fact that many filmmakers were trying to cram sprawling epic novels and comic book series into hundred minute movies meant that much of what was produced at the end of the studio's lifespan was as wildly imaginative and insane as it was completely incomprehensible and convoluted.

Somewhere amid the maelstrom of this "anything goes" free for all, we find director Lu Chin-Ku's delirious martial arts fantasy Bastard Swordsman, two films that are really just one long film split into two parts for easier consumption. Lu began his directing career in the 1970s with a series of generally nondescript, low-budget kungfu films. As an actor, he appeared in a whole passel of Shaw Bros. productions, including some of their more infamous titles, such as Bruce Lee and I, the softcore Bruce Lee biopic starring Danny Lee (John Woo's The Killer) and Bruce's real-life possible mistress, Betty Ting Pei. In the 1980s, however, probably as a result of studying Chu Yuan's films as well as attempting to mimic the special-effects laden films of Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung that helped usher in the Hong Kong New Wave, Lu decided to dabble in films of a similar nature. In 1983, he directed a duo of such over-the-top fantasy films for the Shaw Bros.: Holy Flame of the Martial World and Bastard Swordsman.

Bastard Swordsman started out as a 1978 television series under the title Reincarnated, starring Norman Chu and female lead Nora Miao, who appeared alongside Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon and Fist of Fury, as well as appearing in Chu Yuan's classic Clans of Intrigue. Norman Chu had been steadily working his way up through the ranks of Shaw Bros. martial arts stars, appearing in just about all of Chu Yuan's martial arts fantasies during the 1970s (including Killer Clans, Magic Blade, Legend of the Bat, Web of Death, Clans of Intrigue and, well, more than there's a point to list right now) as well as films directed by Chang Cheh and Liu Chia-liang. The action in the Reincarnated television series was directed by Ching Siu-tung, who would himself go on to pair with producer (and sometimes overbearing co-director) Tsui Hark to usher in the Hong Kong New Wave with films like Zu and Duel to the Death -- both of which happen to feature Norman Chu. Chu also appeared in Patrick Tam's The Sword alongside Adam Cheng (who would himself go on to play one of the other major roles in Zu), regarded by many as the first film of the Hong Kong New Wave -- a dubious claim at best, dependent entirely on how you define the Hong Kong New Wave.

The unique thing about Reincarnated -- the Chinese title for which translates literally to "Transformation of the Heavenly Silkworm" -- was that, unlike the Chu Yuan films that inspired it, it was not based on a previously existing novel. In fact, the success of the original television show inspired subsequent novels, as well as a sequel series and, finally, the Shaw Bros. produced two-part Bastard Swordsman movie, the Chinese title for which is the same as that of the Reincarnated television series.

For the films, and because he was already an established hand at the studio, they were able to once again cast Norman Chu (he did not appear in the sequel television series, and I doubt very seriously that, given the incompatibilities between paperback books and human anatomy, he ever appeared in any of the novelizations, though if he did, that would have been quite a surprise for whoever opened the book and found him stuffed in there) as orphan Yen-fei, the constantly bullied servant at the Wudong school, one of the most revered pillars of the Martial World. Despite the rep, it seems very few of the students at the school are all that great, and while they should be practicing their martial arts, they instead taunt Yen-fei like a bunch of elementary school bullies, surrounding him and calling him names while they all point at him, and throwing daggers at him -- just like in elementary school, like I said. It's hard to believe any of these students are grown men. I mean, seriously. Surrounding him and chanting names while they all point at him? Shouldn't these guys have outgrown that by the time they turned ten years old? Hell, though it's not featured in the film, it seems like they probably also made him eat bugs.

Yen-fei can find no relief from his childish tormentors. The school elders constantly judge in favor of the students, and the school master (Wong Yung), has a curiously zealous grudge against the harried orphan. Only the master's daughter (Lau Suet-wah, who has awesomely sexy eyebrows) treats Yen-fei with any sort of kindness, but being the abused black sheep of the school, he's forever too shy to pledge his love to her.

Yen-fei's not the only one with problems, though. The master and his brother (the superior martial artist and sort of the shadow master of the school) must soon show up for their regularly scheduled duel with the ruthless master of the rival Invincible Clan, who can't let a day go by without having his henchmen cart him over in a palanquin so he can laugh in everyone's face and toss some of the useless Wudong students around. I really wish the villains of the world were more like the villains in martial arts movies. Instead of just threatening us via Internet video, imagine what it would be like if the leaders of al-Quaeda instead arrived at the steps of the Capitol building to belt out evil laughter and point a lot, thus requiring members of Congress to file down the stairs in formation while wielding staves. The world went wrong the day our despots and villains stopped sitting in thrones surrounded by henchmen. Now Stalin -- I bet that guy would have shown up and cut loose with the evil laughter if he'd had the chance. It would have worked, too, because no American President ever looked more like a Shaolin monk than Eisenhower.

Although this Invincible Clan guy is kind of a prick, he also has good reason to laugh. The Wudong master knows there is no way he can possibly beat the guy. In fact, in all their assorted duels, they've never beat him, probably because his secret kungfu style is the Fatal Skill, which is a pretty direct and to the point skill that gets the job done and allows you to glow green. By contrast, the Wudong secret skill is the Silkworm Technique. Now how is the Silkworm Technique going to stand a chance against The Invincible Clan's Fatal Skills? Especially when no one in the Wudong school has actually ever mastered the Silkworm technique! To make matters worse, the Invincible Clan has decided that this year, if Wudong loses the duel, the Invincible Clan is just going to kill them all because, frankly, who the hell needs Wudong around anyway?

Meanwhile, we learn that Yen-fei has secretly been training in kungfu under the guidance of a mysterious masked man who has turned the youth into the greatest fighter Wudong has ever produced. However, in exchange for his training, Yen-fei has to swear that he will never let any of his fellow Wudong students know he knows kungfu. This becomes increasingly difficult to comply with as the Invincible Clan comes down on Wudong and a wandering swordsman (Anthony Lau) appears who also seems to have it in for Yen-fei and his school. In the end, Yen-fei is forced to flee while the Invincible Clan, his own Wudong students, and the members of a couple other martial arts clans from around the Martial World all seek to kill him and each other before Yen-fei can perfect his skills, unlock the secret of the Silkworm Technique, and sort out the piles and piles of intrigue and deep, dark secrets.

Compared to the wuxia mysteries of Chu Yuan, the first Bastard Swordsman movie is pretty straight-forward. There are a lot of characters, but it's pretty easy to keep everyone straight, as they all have distinct traits and personalities and, for the most part, play fairly major roles in the plot of the story -- as opposed to Chu Yuan films, where there are likely to be twice as many characters, many of whom appear and disappear with little or no explanation, and many of whom are so aloof and remote that it becomes a chore to tell them apart. The plot of Bastard Swordsman is the basic "innocent man must prove his innocence" plot made more complicated by the fact that no one can ever finish a simple sentence before someone else yells, "Shut up! I don't want to hear your lies!" and flies at them through the air while shooting brightly colored beams. If there is one fault to be found with the film, this is it, and while I understand that it helps propel us directly into the fight scenes, there are times when I wish someone would just take the ten seconds to say the one sentence or one word that would avert all this bickering. But I guess that's sort of the point, that people in the microcosm of the Martial World are too wrapped up in squabbles and power plays to do the one simple thing or say the one simple sentence that would eliminate so much tragedy.

None of what I've written so far in attempting summarize the basic plot sounds all that weird, and I guess few things do when they are boiled down to their essential components. The weirdness comes in the embellishments, and make no mistake about it, Bastard Swordsman is embellished with so much weirdness that it'll damn near blow your mind. We're not talking the sheer level of pandemonium attained by Buddha's Palm (another late-era Shaw Bros. martial arts fantasy), but make no mistake about it, this films is plenty crazy and derives its craziness not from astoundingly confounding plots (by wuxia standards, these films are very straight-forward), but from the supernatural nature of the martial arts and the special effects employed in realizing these powers on screen.

The same year Bastard Swordsman was released also saw the release of Ching Siu-tung's Duel to the Death, another film stuffed with magic ninjas, wizards, and flying swordsman, directed by the man who had worked on the original Reincarnated series and starring Norman Chu. Duel to the Death broke new ground and served as a massive leap forward in the quality of special effects presented in Hong Kong movies, thanks largely to the information brought back from America by producer-director Tsui Hark, who applied his newfound knowledge (he spent considerable time in the States studying Industrial Light and Magic special effects techniques) in excess in his own Norman Chu-starring film, Zu.

Bastard Swordsman, on the other hand, relied almost entirely on somewhat outdated, low budget tricks. Where as Duel to the Death was produced at Golden Harvest, then overflowing with cash from the success of upstart stars and directors like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung and only just emerging as the dominant force in Hong Kong filmmaking, the ambition of Bastard Swordsman is foiled by the limited resources available at the Shaw Studio, which was waning just as fast as Golden Harvest was rising. All the hot actors, directors, and choreographers were at Golden Harvest (and later, at Tsui Hark's offshoot Film Workshop). Shaw Bros. movies still had their audiences, but they were increasingly out of date and unpopular, and the few young stars the studio had were no longer under exclusive contract the way they had been in previous decades. Like England's Hammer Studios a decade before, the Shaw Bros. had gone from leader of the pack to creaky artifact. By the time Bastard Swordsman went into production, the once-illustrious studio was all but a thing of the past.

As such, none of the technical innovation that went into Duel to the Death or Zu found its way into Bastard Swordsman, which instead had to rely on the archaic methods that had served them in the 70s -- wirework and crude animation. Of course, now the sands of time have swept multiple eras up into one uber-era, and Zu and Duel to the Death are scarcely recognizable to newer fans as being any more or less crudely realized than Bastard Swordsman and Return of the Bastard Swordsman, and as things get mixed into a big ol' stew of "old stuff," it becomes a lot easier to look back on the special effects in Bastard Swordsman as over-the-top, colorful, and fun than it must have been to look at them in 1983 and see anything but cheap crap pumped out by a dying studio.

Naturally, everyone glows and has colored lights shining on them. Most everyone can fly, and a more accomplished martial artists can shoot colorful glowing beams out of their hands. Norman Chu's Yen-fei is drenched in animated blue energy when he summons his power, looking a bit like that Lightning guy from Big Trouble in Little China. Once he becomes a master of Silkworm technique, he can spin webs, toss his enemies about, and imprison them in a cocoon he can then kick and bash around until his foe is little more than a pile of rattled bones. But that's nothing compared to Chen Kuan-tai's secret ninja skill in Return of the Bastard Swordsman, which allows him to inflate his chest and use his heartbeat (while he glows, naturally) to take over the pulse of his opponent, which in turn allows him to make them cough up their own heart. But we'll get to that later.

That's all just the tip of the iceberg, as both Bastard Swordsman films are crammed with esoteric rites, rituals, and fighting techniques all wielded by a cast of increasingly outlandish characters. While Chu Yuan films were prone to stop from time to time for bouts of exposition and philosophizing, Lu's Bastard Swordsman rarely take a break from the ridiculous, over-the-top action. Very few and far between are the scenes free of guys shooting lasers at each other, or flying around engaging in sword duels. But while other such wuxia fantasies rely almost entirely on wild special effects-driven fighting, the Bastard Swordsman duo strike a healthy mix between supernatural martial arts shenanigans and genuine fight choreography. With action direction by Yuen Tak (one of those Yuens, the ones who adopted the name of their Peking Opera master, a group that also includes Yuen Wah, Cory Yuen Kwai, and Yuen Biao -- not to mention the guys who didn't change their names, like Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan -- but not the clan of Yuens that included Yuen Wo-ping. what is it with that surname, anyway?), both Bastard Swordsman films boast excellent hand-to-hand and sword fights that don't rely on wires or glowing animation of crackling blue energies.

Although people come for the weirdness and spectacle, Bastard Swordsman offers plenty of other elements that make it worth staying around. For starters, taking a note from Chu Yuan, Lu's film is packed with complex, well-developed characters. Chang Cheh always dealt in symbols and archetypes, while Chu Yuen favored more human (though still supernaturally powerful) characters. The cast of Bastard Swordsman falls somewhere in the middle, and much of the film's power comes from the quality job done by the actors inhabiting the characters. Norman Chu makes a compelling and empathetic lead. We root for him when he's the abused underdog, and we cheer for him once he begins to discover his true potential as a fighter.

But the real complexity is manifest in the leader of the Invincible Clan. He's sort of evil, sort of not. He definitely has a grudge against the Wudong, but we never really have a clear picture of whether or not Wudong is all that heroic by contrast. We never see them out defending the poor or performing kind acts, and frankly, what we see of most of the members sort of makes them out to be dicks. Who knows if they are really any more or less "evil" than the Invincible Clan? Invincible Leader is mostly considered evil because he does that laugh. But when he defeats the master of Wudong, he grants leniency in carrying out the death sentence, going so far as to issue a command that no one in the realm should lay a finger on any member of the Wudong Clan until he himself has time to kill them. When yet another rival clan attacks the Wudong and claims to be from the Invincible Clan, it's the Wudong who refuse to listen to explanation or investigate the situation, while the Invincible Clan vows to get to the bottom of who wronged the Wudong and violated the proclamation.

There's also the estranged wife (Yuen Qiu) and daughter (Candy Wen Xue-er) of the Invincible Clan leader, both of whom have secret connections to Wudong and Yen-fei, and both of whom are far deeper characters than "evil dragon lady" or "damsel in distress." Along with the daughter of the Wudong leader, they each play vital roles in helping Yen-fei unlock his skills and, with any luck, put an end to all the squabbling in the Martial World. That they play such significant, developed, and heroic roles in the film is definitely something Lu picked up from his Shaw Bros. peers Chu Yuan and Liu Chia-liang, both of whom were well known for featuring women in substantial roles while Chang Cheh couldn't wait to get the dames off the screen and get back to a shirtless Ti Lung being stabbed in the gut.

The rest of the Invincible Clan seems pretty noble as well, especially compared to the cowardly, squabbling, whining Wudong students and elders. Yen-fei definitely has more in common with the Invincible leader than he does with his own clan. Both men are striving to attain a level of martial arts prowess that will elevate them beyond the human sphere and grant them near godlike powers. If the Invincible Leader is a dick, if he tends to laugh a lot, if he sits with rakish casualness in his sparkly throne, it's probably because he is so dedicated to the attainment of the ultimate level of martial arts that he almost ceases to be human or relate to human morality. Yen-fei is similar, but his upbringing and his relationship with the three women keep him from becoming disconnected from his humanity.

Lu's direction is gorgeous, aided greatly by the cinematography which takes full advantage of the widescreen format. Along with the bright glowing beams of light, Lu splashes each scene with vibrant colors. The art design definitely owes a debt to Chu Yuan, but where as he likes to keep his films almost entirely set-bound, Lu Chin-ku mixes stylish sets with outdoor locations, reflecting perhaps his penchant for alternating between supernatural special-effects fights and more authentic sword fights and kungfu. Although Bastard Swordsman ultimately falls short of the elegance of Chu Yuan at his best, it's still a breathtakingly beautiful and meticulously constructed adventure.

Part one of the film resolves some of the major plot points it introduces -- specifically the sorting out of the Wudong intrigue and the appearance of the mysterious swordsman. However, it leaves plenty of other plot threads -- specifically the conflict between Yen-fei and Invincible Clan's leader -- dangling to be wrapped up in the sequel, which, conveniently, picks up right where the first film leaves off.

Oldboy comes to the west with a considerable amount of fanfare, having garnered awards at Cannes, as if such awards mean anything at all these days. I think at some point, every single film ever made will have won some sort of an award. Suffice it to say, there hasn't been a Korean film with this much stateside buzz surrounding it since Shiri and My Sassy Gal stormed the scene a couple years ago. And once again, what we have on our hands is a very cliche film in which everything that needs to happen does, but is presented so expertly that the end result is a hugely entertaining foray into an increasingly twisted tale of revenge. If Shiri was the Korean film industry doing the Hollywood action film several magnitudes better and more violent, then Oldboy is the same industry's response to the popularity of the genre-bending master of the sicko revenge film, Takashi Miike.

Drunken oaf Oh Dae-su (Shiri's Choi Min-sik) is bailed out of jail one night by a friend. On the way home to see his little daughter and wife after his night of carousing and doubtlessly drinking a lot of Hienekin and wrapping his tie around his head, Dae-su simply vanishes. He wakes up in a fortified hotel room, with absolutely no idea where he is, why he's there, or who is doing this to him. He is there for fifteen years until one day, the very same day he has finally completed a tunnel to the outside through his wall, he is given a new set of clothes and a fat wad of cash and simply released without any explanation whatsoever. Completely lost as to what has just happened to him, he vows to track down the people who did this to him and extract some answers by any means necessary.

It's a lean but exceptional premise for a film, indeed something that would seem right at home in a Miike or Hitchcock film, or even a Raymond Chandler novel. Oldboy possesses the same kind of quirky lack of balance that inhabits those works. It isn't long before Dae-su has managed to trace his way back to the hotel prison, and it doesn't even take that long to go fromt here to the person who paid to have him imprisoned. Oldboy's central mystery isn't who, but why. Dae-su must find out why he was imprisoned, first because the need to know is burning him up, and later because a sushi chef with whom he has struck up an awkward romantic relationship is placed under threat of death. Slowly, however, the film shifts focus even from that quest and we discover that Dae-su's revenge against his captors is secondary to the complicated revenge plot that has been hatched against him for reasons he can't understand. As he progresses from one clue, one fractured memory to the next, the revelations create an increasingly twisted and sick picture of what's happening.

Oldboy draws its strength primarily from the atmosphere. The slick direction by Chan-wook Park (JSA, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) not only result sin a gorgeous, colorful film, but it greatly augments the feeling of bewilderment and anger engulfing Dae-su. The slow move from a simple tale of revenge into territory that is truly bizarre is perfectly accomplished, once again illustrating that the best way to unsettle someone is to take a very familiar world and subtly, slowly warp it into something alien and grotesque. Oldboy does this so well that you hardly even notice that the film is getting increasingly sicker with each fragment of a clue that is recovered. Although Miike would seem to me to be the obvious inspiration for this type of film, Park's steady approach resists the gory excesses and lack of focus that identify Miike's films, which is why I feel it's apt to say Oldboy falls somewhere between Miike and Hitchock, or a particularly surreal old hardboiled detective novel. The web of ever-more perverse characters and realizations wouldn't be entirely out of place in a Raymond Chandler novel, populated as they were by pornographers, drunks, lecherous scumbags, and decadent California aristocracy. When the final pieces of Dae-su's torture snap into place, it isn't entirely unexpected -- I'd guessed what the revelation would be already -- but it's unsettling and effective regardless.

Although there is action in the film, it's hardly an action film. Having nothing better to do while locked in a hotel room for fifteen years, Dae-su decides to get into shape. One of the central elements to the overarching themes of the film is the transformation that takes place in Dae-su. When we first meet him, he's not necessarily a bad guy. He's just a useless chump. As wrong as what happens to him is, it's never the less responsible for transforming him into an entirely different type of person: physically fit, focused, determined. At the same time, we get the sense that this transformation has been engineered for him specifically so that he'll have so much more to lose when the hammer falls. His sudden explosion from being more or less entombed alive to being free means that every emotion, every feeling, every event is possessed of much greater power than would otherwise be. One of the first things he does upon obtaining his freedom is go to a sushi bar and order something, anything that is alive.

So although this is a character study more than an action film, the nature of Dae-su's heightened awareness of everything around him means that he's going to explode into fits of rage from time to time, especially when someone is standing in the way of him obtaining the next level of truth. There are a few fight scenes, and a couple particularly sadistic torture scenes that don't quite plumb the gratuitous depths of Takashi Miike at his most insane but are never the less grueling to behold. But, as with the series of increasingly twisted revelations, none of the violence seems out of place. The man has been locked up for fifteen years, after all, in solitary confinement, with no explanation as to why. He's bound to be a little frazzled, and within the context of his character, everything he does makes sense. Still, dental work performed by hammer is pretty intense.

When the hammer does fall, it's precisely because Dae-su is now focused and driven that he gets deeper and deeper into the secrets that lie behind his imprisonment and, consequently, the revelations that will conspire to destroy his present. These revelations never come across as contrived or happening simply because something needs to happen to propel the script along to its climax. The screenplay by Jo-yun Hwang andChun-hyeong Lim is perfectly paced and presents each layer as an organic and entirely believable outgrowth of the previous, even during the end when things begin to get exceptionally complex and a little far-fetched. Within the confines of the film's internal logic, however, they make perfect sense and remain solidly believable.

The film is peppered with bits and pieces of comedy, but it never dominates the situation, and the film remains for the most part, tensely paced and hauntingly grim. It's obvious almost from the beginning that no good is going to come of anything that happens in the film, and Dae-su is a sympathetic enough character that the knowledge that this is all going to end badly for him keeps you involved in the story. The villain of the piece, Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu) is acceptably freaky, but the film relies largely on the talents of Hye-jeong Kang as cute, beleaguered sushi chef Mi-do, who finds herself thrust into Dae-su's life seemingly at random, though the viewer knows it's very unlikely that anything happening to Dae-su is happening at random. Her career is really only just beginning, but she turns in a strong performance here, matching up very well with the far more experienced and accomplished Min-sik Choi. You know bad things are probably going to happen to her as well, and you really just don't want them to.

All in all, quite a nerve-wracking though enjoyable film. I really like Park's direction in this movie. It's slick without indulging into overkill. The color palette goes for the over-saturated, ultra-rich look that is enjoying increasing popularity, a welcome change for me from all the washed-out or blue/yellow tinted films we've been suffering through the past few years. It works to make the very normal world around Dae-su seem not quite right, as if there is something off-kilter and sinister and somewhat fairytale-like about it, albeit one of those fairytales where everyone ends up cooked by witches or eaten by trolls. After watching a string of really awful Korean sci-fi films that looked beautiful but were almost impossible to watch (Yesterday and Natural City), it was nice to see another Korean film that doesn't skimp on cutting edge production but also remembers to wrap it around a compelling, intensely tragic, and haunting movie

It's no secret that since the tail-end of the 1990s the Hong Kong film industry has had a rough time. After being gutted by gangsters for decades and plagued by the most rampant video piracy in the world resulting in films being available on bootleg VCD before they even opened in theaters, Hong Kong's once illustrious cinematic juggernaut found itself on thin financial ice. Big stars were either getting to old to perform as they once had or were simply packing up and heading for the greener pastures of America. The new generation of stars, culled primarily from the ranks of teen models and pop idols, did little to spark interest in the new generation of films.

Rough times for the industry means rough times for fans as well. Here in the United States, folks were hit with the double whammy of there being very few films worth seeing, and the few that were worth seeing were often snapped up by domestic distributors like Disney and Miramax, who would then do one of two things. They'd either stick the film in their vaults and forget about it, effectively eliminating it from circulation in the United States, or they'd do a horrendous dub chop, cut the film to ribbons, and mix in a cheap hip-hop soundtrack, being certain to include the song "Kungfu Fighting" by Carl Douglas in any and every Asian film possible. I really wonder at this point if the people who decide to put that song in these movies think they're the first to do it. Did they miss the last ten releases from their same company using the same song? Will the hilarity never be exhausted?

Of course, die-hard fans could always shop overseas and find most (but not all) titles available online in their original language and uncut, widescreen format. It was still a lot of hassle just to see a subpar film like Legend of Zu. Luckily, nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of decent new films, the void was filled by the past.

When Celestial Entertainment announced they'd inked a deal to release everything in the vaults of the Shaw Brothers studio onto DVD, complete with digital remastering, subtitles, and extras, many people had a "believe it when I see it" attitude. After all, such a deal seemed far too good to be true. The Shaw Brothers, of course, were one of the premiere studios in the history not just of Hong Kong cinema, but of global cinema as a whole. Along with Cathay Studios, the Shaw Brothers defined Hong Kong cinema and helped create what many consider the Golden Age during the 50s and 60s. Unfortunately, after their initial release into theaters, the vast majority of Shaw Brothers films disappeared, locked away in secret vaults and jealously guarded like some crazy long-haired drunken monk guards the manual for his secret style of Wild Toad Kungfu. A few titles snuck out in badly cropped formats with those subtitles where only about four words are visible and the rest run off the sides and bottom of the screen. More made it into the bootleg realm, also in inferior formats and often dubbed and edited. And even those that did make it out were almost exclusively the kungfu films of Chang Cheh and Liu chia-liang - fine films, but a tiny smattering of what lie hidden somewhere out there near Clearwater Bay.

In December of 2002, however, dreams became a reality, and the first batch of remastered Shaw Brothers films hit the DVD market. Suddenly, the dearth of quality new productions seemed less important. As long as Celestial kept a steady stream of old classics coming our way, it didn't really matter that new films offered nothing worth taking note of. There were more than enough unearthed classics to keep fans busy for years, and with such an aggressive release schedule (they do have over 700 films to get through, after all), there'd be little down time between waves of rediscovered treasure.

Initially, I'd been excited primarily about the idea of getting my hands on beautiful copies of all my old favorites. The first day, however, my focus shifted dramatically, and I fond myself far more excited about the prospect of delving into the unknown, the films and directors and stars I'd never seen before. And there are plenty of them. From weepy melodrama to pop-art go-go musical extravaganzas, I was in for one treat after another. And one of the yummiest treats was discovering, at long last, the films of Chu Yuan, aka Chor Yuen.

Chor Yuen is probably most recognizable as the evil Mr. Koo from Jackie Chan's Police Story. Before he was whacking Jacking with an umbrella and causing him to fall off speeding double-decker busses, Chor Yuen made a name for himself as one of the most accomplished and artistic martial arts directors in movie history. Where most kungfu films were happy to point the camera at a couple guys and let them wave their arms in each other's faces, Yuen was determined to maintain and build upon the more stylish, lyrical, and poetic artistic approach of early masters like King Hu while throwing in plenty of visual flare that seems to have been derived from ground-breaking Italian productions like those of Mario Bava: lots of mist, splashes of brilliant color and surreal lighting, and unique use of the camera as something more than just a thing to point at people.

Equally detailed are the sets employed in each film. While cheaper, less ambitious films just plopped the hero and villain down on top of that grassy hill or the rock quarry looking thing where 90% of all kungfu fights in the 1970s took place, Yuen placed his films amid lavish sets that became as essential to the film as the characters themselves and help lend to them a dreamlike elegance missing from so many of the more straight-forward films of the era. Each scene looks like a painting, filled with swirling mists, swaying cherry blossoms, and flowing silks. Yuen's "villain lairs" were often more outlandish and inventive than anything seen even in the wildest dreams of the old Batman series. They were caves full of spooky lighting and boiling pits of fire, or temples filled with sparkling gems and booby traps.

The final piece of Yuen's puzzle comes in the form of fabulously labyrinthine plots where every single person has something to hide, nothing is what it seems, and everyone will be crossed and double crossed as often as possible. Part fever dream, part detective novel, the stories behind Yuen's films were often the handiwork of famed martial arts novelist Lung Ku. Martial arts adventure novels in China have always been astoundingly complex, filled with hundreds of characters and sometimes dozens of main characters. Most famous among the classic tales is The Water Margin, also known as Heroes of the Marsh and 108 Heroes. These novels have served as the basis for scores of movies including new wave classics like Swordsman (written by Louis Cha) and Golden Age gems like Brave Archer (also from the pen of Lung Ku). Despite the era and despite the author, all the film's share the traditional love of complex, sometimes confounding plots.

Previously, deciphering the events in one of these movies was a Herculean chore. The only versions available were often cropped on the edges so that fully half the action fell off the screen, and subtitles went with the picture. For any given line of dialogue, you were lucky to get three or four words that didn't drop off the bottom or the side edges of the screen. Thus, if any character said something more complex than "Yes," or "Kill him!" you were in trouble. Since films of this nature offered so many twists and turns and so many characters with secret identities and agendas, keeping track of the plot was well nigh impossible. Luckily, the DVD releases of these films rectify the situation, providing viewers with the full scope of action and subtitles that are actually placed in a position where you can see them. From time to time, even this doesn't make some of the more outrageous plot twists any more comprehensible, but at least we're in a better position to enjoy what's going on. And what better place than one of Chor Yuen's coolest films to begin?

Ti Lung stars in Clans of Intrigue as the accomplished swordsman Chu Liu-hsiang. His heroics and reputation have earned him a life of luxury which he spends in his decked-out palatial boat where he is attended to by three drop-dead sexy female assistants, not unlike Derek Flint or L. Ron Hubbard. His idyllic life is upset when a maiden from the Palace of Magic Water (played by Bruce Lee film veteran Nora Miao) arrives to accuse him of murder. Seems that someone has assassinated the leaders of three of the great martial arts clans, and the word around that ever-tumultuous Martial World is that Chu is the man responsible for these heinous deeds.

Determined to clear his name and unmask the true killer, Chu sets off on a investigative quest that bring shim into contact with a variety of clans and killers, all of whom seem to have some strange secret that connects them to the murders. Along the way, he first fights and then befriends a swordsman for hire (played by the impressive Ling Yun) and the daughter of one of the slain clan leaders. He's also badgered at every turn by a mysterious masked killer in red and a variety of icily beautiful hit women from the Palace of Magic Water, who are lead by Betty Pei Ti. And did I mention the mysterious monk or the subplot about orphaned ninjas?

Clans of Intrigue, like most Chor Yuen - Lung Ku collaborations, keeps the viewer guessing primarily by providing a twist at every single opportunity. While it's not always the most logical turn of events, it certainly keeps you watching and paying attention. Unlike the more brutal kungfu dramas of Chang Cheh, Chor Yuen emphasizes story and characters over kungfu action. Ti Lung is more than up for the challenge of carrying a character-driven story, even though his character is in many ways the least complex. Ti Lung was always one of the best all-around performers at the Shaw Bros studios. He was handsome, majestic, and equally adept at drama, comedy, and deadly kungfu action - all of which he gets to display here. The character of Chu Liu-hsiang is rarely serious or at a loss for words, and his reaction to everything seems to be to smirk, make a joke, then kick some ass. It's nice to see him in a role unlike hi usual Chang Cheh roles, where he would invariably have to take off his shirt and get stabbed in the belly.

His polar opposite is the mysterious swordsman in black played by the enigmatic Ling Yun. With motives less pure than those of his compatriot, Yuen's grim killer-for-hire is the straight-man of the duo. The rest of the cast round out the film nicely. Nora Miao is as beautiful as she is talented, and Chor Yuen always gives his female characters something interesting to do - another of the many things that set him apart from his contemporary Chang Cheh and links him more to past masters such as King Hu (who, incidentally, directed Yuen Hua alongside Cheng Pei-pei in the ground-breaking Come Drink With Me) or another of Shaw's up and coming directors, Liu Chia-liang -- who made a hero out of Kara Hui Ying-hung when very few heroic female characters existed in the Chang Cheh dominated kungfu films. After the trendiness of wu xia (fantastic swordsman) films wore off and was replaced in the 1970s by grittier, more brutal, and less lyrical kungfu films, female heroines tended to disappear from Shaw Bros martial arts epics, thanks primarily to Chang Cheh's domination of the market. He was much more interested in male bonding than in women, and his films reflect his own macho tastes. Contrary to reports that Shaw Bros. producer Mona Fong was the driving force behind eliminating women from heroic leading roles (out of jealousy, as the story goes), it seems the blame lies far more on Chang Cheh. It wasn't until Chor Yuen and Liu Chia-liang became the dominant forces behind the studio's martial arts films that we saw a return of the valiant female fighter.

As the heroic Black Pearl, Shaw Bros stalwart Ching Li is simply wonderful. With her "best friend's cute little sister" good looks and quality acting chops honed in dramatic roles like the schizophrenic young woman in When Clouds Roll By, Ching Li was a real force to be reckoned with. Chor Yuen was certainly fond of her, and he used the talented young actress in both Clans of Intrigue and Legend of the Bat as well as Killer Clans, Magic Blade, and the director's comedic blockbuster House of 72 Tenants among others. She also has the distinction of being one of the only female stars to every carve a decent character out of a Chang Cheh film, that of the doomed woman in Blood Brothers. She also got to do some ass-kicking in Chang's early Ti Lung - David Chiang "spaghetti western" kungfu film Anonymous Heroes. Her mixture of true acting ability and athletic prowess made her one of the most versatile and enjoyable to watch female stars in Shaw Bros film history -- quite a feat when youn consider that puts her int he company of women like dramatic actress Linda Lin Dai, Ivy Ling Po, Lily Li, and kungfu superstar Hui Ying-hung.

The venerable Yueh Hua stars as Ti Lung's friend and ally, Monk Wu Hua. As with nearly everyone else in the film, he is far more than he appears to be, and his role in the story keeps you guessing as to his true motives and history. Yueh Hua plays the character with a wonderful subtlety that imminently displays why he was considered one of the Shaw Bros. most treasured performers. Few and far between are the films with such an impressive ensemble cast of men and women who are actually allowed by the story to live up to their potential as both characters and actors.

Another of Chor Yuen's trademarks was his eye for beauty and his tendency to add a little flesh and spice to his films. A naked female rear here, the glimpse of a breast there did a lot to titillate viewers even though it was shot with the same striking artistry as the rest of his film. Clans of Intrigue is no exception to the rule, and Yuen serves up some decidedly adult fare with the lesbian overtones between Nora Miao and Betty Pei Ti. In fact, there are versions of the film that contain a steamy kiss between the two women, though that particular instance is missing from the official cut of the film as was presumably only added for international distribution. Its absence, and the absence of a flash of frontal nudity during a bathing scene involving Betty Pei Ti, have lead some to claim erroneously that Celestial - the company who has remastered and released the film onto DVD - censored the print. This is not the case. The moments were never officially part of the film as it played in theaters, though those of you in desperate need of seeing Bruce Lee's favorite female co-star kissing another woman can still get an eyeful thanks to the DVD's stills gallery. Neither scene is vital to the movie of course, nor has any real bearing on the action that isn't communicated through other scenes. It's just, well, you know us and our fondness for nudity.

That's not the only place the film plays with gender, however. In a series of twists that foreshadow the gender-bending antics of Hong Kong new wave films like Ching Siu-tung's Swordsman II and Swordsman III: The East is Red, as well as Ronnie Yu's Bride With White Hair, we get not only the cult of sword-swinging lesbians but also a character who is able to change genders at will and wreak all sorts of havoc as a result. And while it's not exactly part of the gender bending subtext, the shots of a paralyzed Ti Lung sitting in a flowery white swing above a misty perfumed pond look like something right out of your better gay nightclub floor shows. Not that toying with gender was anything new. Kungfu films have always enjoyed doing things like taking beauties such as Cheng Pei-pei and Shang Kuan Lung Feng and dressing them up as men. Unconvincing men, but men never the less. And Hong Kong entertainment in general has a fondness for men in drag that remained unsurpassed until the advent of the Spanish-language cable network Galavision.

All of Yuen's work in these adaptations of Kung Lu novels, and indeed much of the director's work in general, is infused with a more feminine quality than the films of other directors in the genre, even other directors like Liu Chia-liang who appreciated female heroines. Part of this comes from intricate delicacy of Yuen's set-pieces. They are, as stated previously, absolutely gorgeous. Part of it comes from the fact that his female characters are allowed to be strong and feminine where most female kungfu stars were simply women acting the same as the men. There's nothign wrong with that, of course, but the fact that Yuen protrays his women as women, with their own unique character traits, makes for deeper, more interesting figures.

It's perhaps ironic, then, that Chor Yuen is also known for upping the anty when it came to exposing female flesh. Not that nudity was anything new to the kungfu film, and in fact in comparison to many films fromt he same era, Chor Yuen's films are relatively tame in the amount of nudity they show. They only seem saucier because the director handles it in a very adept way. It's not the amount of flesh that is revealed, but the way Chor Yuen reveals it. There is nothing vulgar or obvious about his handling of the saucier bits. They're quite poetic, and because of that, quite erotic. It's that classy handling of the material that makes it seem much naughtier than it really is. It's because he makes what little nudity there is really count, instead of just giving us a parade of gratuitous boob shots during rape scenes. It's, well, hot. As such, even his coy use of female nudity seems artistic and feminine in its touch. And that's the touch that probably explains why, despite his fondness of nubile young nudes, Chor Yuen has garnered so many female film admirers who are turned off by all the chest-beating maleness of Chang Cheh. Chor Yuen's heroines can be naked without ever seeming debased, and his heroes can read poetry and give each other flowers without seeming wimpy. Like everything else surrounding the director's work, it's really quite refreshing and very unique.

As an action film, Clans of Intrigue doesn't disappoint, though it is heavier on discussion than some people might want. Chor Yuen's work is the missing link between the classic wu xia films of the 1960s like Come Drink With Me and Temple of the Red Lotus, and the wildly over-the-top new wave swordsman films of the 1980s such as the Swordsman trilogy and Zu. Although the relative obscurity of Chor Yuen's body of work has caused it to be overlooked when drawing the map of Hong Kong film trends, its availability on DVD will hopefully allow the director to take his rightful place as one of the most innovative and influential directors in action film history. Without his work, it's likely the much-talked-about flying swordsman films of the 1980s and 1990s wouldn't have come to pass, or at the very least, would have looked remarkably different. Directors like Ching Siu-tung and Tsui Hark owe a tremendous debt to Chor Yuen. That said, Clans of Intrigue is not the kungfu blow-out as delivered by guys like Chang Cheh. While it certainly doesn't skimp on the sword fighting and jumping over high castle walls, it's not the center of attention. That position belongs to the esoteric plot.

But when the action does heat up, it's frequently fast-paced and impressive. The final duel between our trip of heroes and the characters eventually unmasked as the villains of the piece is phenomenal. For starters, you've never seen so many double-crosses in such a short amount of time. Moreover, one of the characters, upon having their hand chopped off, angrily picks up said hand and flings it with such force that impales another character. You just can't get much tougher than that, unless you're the guy in Story of Rikki who uses his own intestines to strangle his opponent.

The Chor Yuen films have been the definite highlight of the recent Shaw Bros. DVD releases, and Clans of Intrigue is a sumptuous example of why. It is extravagantly filmed and directed, sporting eye-popping artistry and visual flare, lavish sets, mind-numbingly complex plotting, beautiful women, heroic men, and sword fights galore. While the team of Lung Ku, Chor Yuen and Ti Lung would top themselves the same year with the exquisite Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue proved vastly popular - and rightly so. It's a tremendously impressive film, and it spawned a sequel called Legend of the Bat, reuniting Ti Lung and Ling Yun in another tale of intrigue and deception. If you are looking for a good introduction to one of the most astounding and unjustly unrecognized talents in Hong Kong film history, then Clans of Intrigue is indeed a grand place to begin.

The desire to mimic James Bond and, in doing so, perhaps mimic a little of the success, was hardly the sole property of America and Europe, however. Bond was as big in Asia as he was everywhere else in the world, and Asian film industries were just as quick to cash in on the trend with their own particular twist on the superspy genre. As with their European counterparts, a good many of these films are impressive and fun despite having smaller budgets than Bond. The Asian spy films were able to compensate for the financial difference the same way European movies did, exploiting the one thing American films of the same nature did not have: location. Eurospy films could "trot the globe" for peanuts considering how easy it is to go to a different country in Europe. Since many of the films were often co-productions between two or more nations, even a modestly bankrolled Eurospy actioner could find itself in Paris, Rome, Venice, Milan, London, Berlin, Madrid, or any number of lavish locales in between. In Asia, it was much the same, and a production from Japan or Hong Kong could actually save money in many cases by trotting down south and shooting the exotic scenery of Thailand or Indonesia. Both continents had built-in globe-trotting at their disposal.

Cheap American spy films, on the other hand, were stranded. Where were they going to go? New York, Los Angeles, and Vegas may seem exotic in an international context, but there was nothing in any of those cities Americans hadn't seen a million times before. Sure we had Hawaii, but shoestring budget exploitation films couldn't afford to fly there any more than they could fly to Tokyo or Copenhagen. Unlike Asian and European exploitation film crews, American crews were pretty much stuck, which is why so many of the American offerings in the genre are so dull, trying to pass California suburbs off as Prague or St. Petersburg. No one wants to watch a spy jet set off to Iowa or Toronto.

Of the Asian countries who got in on the spy craze, Japan had the best-known films outside of their own market. The Japanese films tended to seize upon the most eye-catching pop-art aspects of the genre and blow them up tenfold into something that resembled a sumptuous blend of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Alfred Hitchcock's many espionage thrillers, and Barbarella. Although less well-known than their Japanese brethren, and often slightly less polished, Hong Kong's entries into 1960s spymania are nothing to sneeze at, and some of them take the pop-art psychedelia even further than it was taken in Japan. Unfortunately, where finding old Japanese spy films can be difficult but eventually rewarding, digging up Hong Kong spy films was a study in unending frustration. The films simply weren't in circulation anymore - at least until recently.

When the Shaw Brothers studio finally sold its vast film library for distribution on DVD, it meant that along with all the kungfu adventures for which the Shaws were best known in the West, we'd also be seeing some of their forays into espionage films, and if we were seeing what the Shaws had to offer, then we were doubtless seeing some of the best, or at least most expensive, examples of what Hong Kong had to offer. One of the first of the Shaw Brothers spy films to find its way back into the light is not exactly a spy film, but neither were a lot of the European films that became part of the genre. As long as someone was wearing a smart suit and being shot at by guys in sunglasses, then we can call it a spy film. Golden Buddhas has more than enough of that to keep fans of cloak and dagger doings happy, not to mention the fact that it has sexy ladies, hidden treasure, exotic locales, and a fat guy in a gold lame super-villain outfit. And I haven't even begun to describe the lair.

Golden Buddhas begins with our dashing man Paul Chang Chung as Paul, which is convenient. Chang is a top notch "dashing" lead, certainly better than contemporary Peter Chan Ho, who was plenty likeable but rarely believable as the suave ladies' man he often played. Chang is another one of those men they just don't seem to make anymore. He's not quite a Cary Grant, but he reminds me a lot of Toho Studio's number one super-suave leading man from the same era, Akira Takarada. What all three of those gents have in common (and what would later be embodied by men like Chow Yun-fat and...well, just Chow Yun-fat, I guess) is the ability to lend an everyman quality to sheer elegance, or maybe it's adding a touch of sheer elegance to an everyman character. As James Bond, Sean Connery had class to spare, but existed at an unobtainable level. No one could be James Bond. He never had to deal with the mundane aspects of life, like doing laundry or going grocery shopping. The elegant everyman, as defined by Cary Grant, was clever and sophisticated and charming, but he was also real, or at least more real than James Bond. Grant may still be jetting around fighting international villains, but you also see him staying in crummy hotel rooms, struggling to cook himself some dinner, going to a regular job, things of that nature. They were real-life flares that made Cary Grant's persona seem almost obtainable, because we saw him dealing with the normal stuff.

The same goes for Akira Takarada and Paul Chang Chung. The characters they played were always smartly dressed and one step ahead of the game, but they also had everyman qualities and problems that made them seem more believable. James Bond created a myth, something one could aspire to but never hope to actually achieve. The elegant Everyman, on the other hand, was something that you could hope to one day become if you could just turn off the GameCube and stop scratching your ass while making lunch long enough to learn a little something about presenting yourself with a degree of class and respectability.

Paul Chang Chung's Paul is a businessman on his way to Singapore to seal some manner of deal. On the flight, he meets and old friend from the judo club who is on his way to Bangkok to attend to some sort of family business. Both men carry the same briefcase. Can you guess what happens? When Paul is forced by inclement weather to stay an extra day in Bangkok, he discovers the mistaken briefcase identities and decides to use his time in Thailand to get the proper case back. Well, first he gets sidetracked to a massage parlor full of willing girls, then he goes to get the case back. I mean, a man's got to have his priorities straight, doesn't he?

The problem with getting back his own briefcase gets complicated when he discovers his old friend with a rather large stiletto knife stuck in his chest. Paul isn't too terribly upset. I guess they weren't close friends, just old friends. He grabs the contents of his briefcase, shovels them into his friend's briefcase, and heads home intent to not get tangled up in the whole affair. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that assassins and thugs are suddenly coming out of the woodwork and chasing after Paul, demanding that he turn over to them the secret of the Golden Buddha - a small statuette he discovered in his friend's briefcase. Before too long, Paul is on the run and trying to figure out the riddle that will, with aide from his friend's beautiful sister and portly brother, unlock a fortune in buried treasure. The key to the whole affair lies inside the Buddha, and inside the two Buddha's possessed by the victim's brother and sister. In a refreshing twist, the police are involved but Paul is not on the run from them or mistaken as his friend's killer or anything like that. The cops just sort of like to hang around and pretend they are reading papers.

The premise is simple enough, but the thrill is always in the execution, and director Lo Wei delivers a tightly paced adventure film that never feels especially serious but also never veers into total comedy. In retrospect, it's tempting to apply the term "camp" to a film of this nature, but camp implies a certain degree of intention on behalf of the filmmaker to spoof a certain genre or turn the wackiness way up a la the old Batman television series. There's nothing in Golden Buddhas to make one think they weren't taking the film seriously. It's outlandish, yes, and certainly garish and over the top, but it lacks the wink - and, thankfully, the smarminess - of most films that put themselves forward as camp.

It doesn't matter, really, I suppose. Campy or not, all that counts is whether the film is enjoyable, and Golden Buddhas definitely delivers the goods. Being able to make a film fast-paced but coherent, quick moving but not hyperactive and short of thought, seems to be a lost art form. Many contemporary films feel they must either be slow and ponderous or edited so choppily in that MTV style so as to cause seizures in a good many viewers, primarily because these films rely entirely on action scenes to propel the movie forward and provide the sense of pace. A film like Golden Buddhas, or a James Bond film, knows that there are other ways to keep the plot feeling fast without relying on explosions and jump cuts set to blaring techno music. And of course few were better than Hitchcock at being able to inject non-action scenes with a sense of urgency and tension. Films from the 1960s in particular, knew how to use characters and dialogue to keep your interest.

That's just what Golden Buddhas does. There is plenty of action, most of it in the form of energetic but dreadfully choreographed fist fights, but the film doesn't rely solely on those scenes - which, given the quality of the fights, is probably wise. The character of Paul is, like many of the characters in this and similar films, one dimensional. But it's a good dimension, and the script makes the most of it. He's a good guy, handy with a gun or a judo throw, not above bedding a beautiful dame in the name of, well, bedding beautiful dames. He is, in a word, likeable. He's charismatic, and that makes him interesting even if he's not a deep and complex study of the human psyche. When you have interesting characters, it goes along way to giving you an interesting film, a film where you don't have to rely on special effects and explosions to keep the viewer's attention.

The other characters are predictable, but that's not a negative. After all, spy films became popular because they followed a formula and found ways to tweak and alter the formula while still staying true to it, like how I started adding a dash of molasses to my recipe for Kentucky Derby Pie. Paul finds himself with two women in his life, as the hero in spy films often did - and remember, I realize this isn't a spy film per se, but it has enough of the genre clichés to keep it in the company of your finer Eurospy films. One woman is noble and good, the other is sinister and evil. Both are sexy. We start out with Fanny Fan, who is an absolute drop-dead bombshell of a vixen with sex appeal in spades. She starred in at least one other Lo Wei-directed spy caper for the Shaw's, 1967's wonderful Angel With Iron Fists. If she didn't make a lot more movies than I've turned up, then it's a real shame because she has a beauty and a body that will turn your head and keep it in that position. She's wonderful as the femme fatale of the piece, an operative of the mysterious Skeleton Gang who is out to steal the secret of the Golden Buddha before Paul and his allies can solve it.

And she shows off her derriere. That may sound base and piggish, but it's also worth noting since this film was made in 1966, a time when bare bottoms were still rare in anything but b-grade exploitation and those nudie cuties about Florida nudist colonies being menaced by a gorilla. Our introduction to Fanny's fanny while fully clothed in a tight mod dress and swaying provocatively back and forth as she sashays down the hallway is plenty good, to boot, or should I say to booty? Oh, that was just awful.

Okay, enough about naked behinds. I can try and pass it off as my professional interest in Hong Kong cinema's willingness to pursue nudity in a mainstream film while the supposedly more liberated West was still playing things coy, but in the end - so to speak - you know the basic fact behind the matter is that I simply appreciate nudity. I appreciate Fanny Fan Lai. Put the two together, and well, you can figure it out.

Our more modest heroine is Jeanette Lin Tsui as the sister of Paul's murdered friend and possessor of one third of the Golden Buddhas's secret (her older brother has the other third). What Jeanette lacks in terms of Fanny Fan's bombshell appeal she more than makes up for with an enchanting beauty, graceful demeanor, and plenty of elegant 1960s dresses. For the most part, she's not nearly as actively involved in things as your better Bond girls from the same time. By 1966, we'd seen Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore doling out judo throws (Goldfinger) and Claudine Auger as Domino doling out harpoon guns to the chest (Thunderball). Jeanette's damsel-in-distress is less interesting for her lack of ability, but she's not entirely useless. She at least cracks a vase over a guy's head and, as far as I remember, never trips and falls while running away from the bad guys. That's got to count for something.

The supporting cast rounds things out nicely. A young Wo Ma (or younger, anyway) plays one of the cops, who as I mentioned earlier, made me happy by being ineffectual (as always) for most of the film but not resorting to the tired old "mistaking the hero for the killer" routine. People know Wo Ma best for his parts later in life, such as the Taoist ghost slayer in Chinese Ghost Story. He spends most of his time here reading papers on the street corner. Director Lo Wei himself makes an appearance as the villain of the piece, and I have to say this is one of the greatest screen villains of all time, not so much for his character, which is typical and somewhat uninspired, but for his fashion sense, which would send even 1970s-style David Bowie or Elton John into a fit.

The man wears amber sunglasses, a shiny gold foil suit (with standard "evil villain" high collar), black knee-high boots, and a cape with a giant pointy collar. Now that, my friends, is a quality megalomaniac villain's wardrobe. While Pierce Brosnan may have brought back the era of a hero with keen fashion sense, the villains of today are woefully inadequate when it comes to selecting the proper attire for trying to throttle the world with your iron grip. These days, they're all in dull brown military uniforms and business casual from J. Crew. Hardly any villains these days wear capes, let alone a gold foil Nehru jacket. Where's the style? Where's the flamboyant flare that lets the world know you are not a man to be trifled with? The leader of Golden Buddhas's ruthless Skeleton Gang - now there is a man who knows how to dress the part.

That, in fact, leads to what may very well be my favorite part in the entire film. I'm not going to spoil anything when I tell you Paul manages to foil the evil plans of the Skeleton Gang, which were pretty small considering what a lavish lair they have. For an organization with tentacles in all parts of the world, with a vast space age underground lair and hundreds of henchmen and attractive female agents, you'd think they'd set their heights a little higher than recovering a small chest of jewelry. I'm sure it was valuable stuff, but I bet the Skeleton Gang spent twice as much as it was worth just trying to get the thing, which is especially silly when you realize after the not entirely shocking twist that they could have basically had the thing for free with almost no effort. Anyway, once Paul foils their plans we get a lovely shot of the gang and their leader being hauled off like common crooks by the cops - still decked out in all his outrageous supervillain gear. I bet he'll be especially popular wearing that in some dark, dirty Bangkok jail cell.

The leader's fabulous outfit is simply one part of the overall beautiful look of the film. The budget may have been smaller than a Bond budget, but it seems to have been larger than the budget for your average Eurospy film, or at least better utilized. The film looks grand, full of eye-popping color and space-age décor. The Skeleton Gang's lair is a thing of beauty. Ken Adam himself, the set designer for the Bond films, would be impressed by what Lo Wei and crew managed to pull of with much more limited resources. The thing is an amalgamation of every swanky space station, secret lair, and bachelor pad ever seen on the screen. When the film isn't traipsing about the labyrinthine corridors of the evil lair, it's reclining in an exotic lounge, parading around a series of gorgeous Thai travelogue footage, and otherwise taking advantage of the fact that Shaw Bros. productions threw together some of the most beautiful sets ever.

Of course, not everything is perfect with Golden Buddhas. The plot does have at least one major hole, which I mentioned above. Absolutely nothing in the movie was necessary. The Skeleton Gang could have recovered the treasure of the Golden Buddhas with almost no effort, but they chose instead to go running about shooting at things, getting into judo fights, and ruining a variety of lattice work. Luckily, the film is enough fun for you not to really care, and given the clothes the leader of the gang favors, it's possible he's simply not all there and the easy route never occurred to him. Of course, the easy route rarely makes for an interesting film, either.

The other strike against the film is the abysmal fight choreography. There are a few shootouts, but most of the action comes via fisticuffs, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a worse example of how to stage fights. Even the fight scenes in those Frankie Avalon beach parties were better than the ones here. It's not that they aren't energetic - every time there is a fight, Paul Chang Chung and his opponents go at it with gusto, flinging each other across the room, through the windows, bouncing across the bed, things of that nature. The problem lies in the fact that not a single punch lands anywhere near its target, and everyone does that jerky "turn my head to the left, then to the right, then up, then down" movement when they're being hit. The film fares better when Paul breaks out his judo moves, and one fight scene between him and another judo master after Fanny Fan is drugged by her own treachery is actually decent. But most of the fights are straight-up fisticuffs, and they look really awful. It can't be excused by the film's date, either. By 1966, we'd seen plenty of superb fight scenes, many of them in other films from the Shaw Bros. studios. Golden Buddhas loves a fight scene, but it can't execute one very well. Still, the energy and the fact that the film is basically one wild, outlandish ride make the awful fight choreography enjoyable despite itself.

Finally, while the acting is relatively solid throughout, one has to question the matter-of-fact nonchalantness with which Paul handles the mysterious murder of his friend. We can assume at first that he simply wasn't all that close to the guy, and that would be understandable. But then he goes through all this crazy mess with the Golden Buddha statues, risks his life, and when asked why explains that it's because the dead guy was his friend, and he owes him. Ah well, nothing to get annoyed over. After all, do we want to watch Paul Chang Chung bed Fanny Fan, judo chop everyone in sight, and run around in a space-age secret lair, or do we want to watch him cry and question how life could be so cruel?

Golden Buddhas is tremendous fun and a real treat for fans of 1960s spy films despite there being no actual spies in the film. It's still got plenty of intrigue and sneaking about, and the production is sumptuous. Fans of zany 1960s art direction will be in heaven. The plot won't keep you guessing from beginning to end, and it does have that one giant hole, but otherwise it's fairly serviceable and keeps things moving at a brisk but not thoughtless pace. Best of all, the mysterious treasure turns out to be actual treasure, and not some note that says, "Peace on Earth" or something.

Not that I'm one to judge a movie solely on the merits of its leading lady's rump nor on its inclusion of what is still, in my opinion, the paramount of women's pant technology. You know me. I'm a classic guy with classic tastes, and while booty shorts and flares may be alright for some of you, I'll take the more demure and alluring look of capri pants, a nice cocktail dress, or one of those cheongsam dresses any day over the vulgar obviousness or careless sloppiness of today's fashion. But that's just me, and like I said, you can't judge a movie purely on it's willingness to cater to my retro taste in both male and female fashion or my longing for a return to the days when we wore clothing that actually fit us.

Luckily, the film that follows the rump-shaking opening is a wonderful, breezy affair from the heyday of Hong Kong cinema. It was a time when the silver screen was ruled by the likes of Linda Lin Dai and the subject of this particular movie, Grace Chang. Grace was the reigning queen of Cathay Studios, one of the greatest and most respected studios in the history of Asian film. Few and far between were the films that didn't feature Grace singing, dancing, and flashing her million dollar smile at the camera. She was the total package - a wonderful singer, a unique beauty, and an utterly captivating actress. Unfortunately, the bulk of her work - and indeed the bulk of Cathay's films in general - were unknown outside of Asia. They disappeared after their initial theatrical runs, and only a few ever showed up on any home video format. When the rare film did make it to video or DVD, it was almost always without subtitles. Thus, some of the most important films and names in Hong Kong's impressive cinematic history remained virtually unknown to new viewers.

In 2003, however, fortune smiled on fans of classic cinema from around the globe when Panorama Entertainment inked a deal to release a slew of old Cathay films on DVD complete with English subtitles. Though the deal was less trumpeted than Celestial's similar deal to tap the hitherto hidden history of the Shaw Bros. Studio for home consumption, it was certainly no less historic or important. And while the fact that most of the Cathay films are dramas, musicals, and comedies in black and white means that western Hong Kong film fans (traditionally very action film oriented) will be paying less attention to them than to the Shaw Bros. releases, any film buff worth his or her salt knows that just because a film isn't in color and doesn't feature a shirtless Ti Lung getting stabbed in the belly doesn't mean it isn't worth watching. For fans of filmmaking from the glorious decades of the 1950s and 1960s, the tapping of the Cathay well is a glorious event.

It's fitting that Panorama's Cathay releases are hitting the shelves the same time as the Shaw Bros. releases. They were, of course, the primary competition for the Shaws (and both studios shared some major stars, including the impish Peter Chan Ho and the regal Linda Lin Dai), and their history is similar to that of the Shaw Bros. Like Shaw, Cathay had its roots in Southeast Asia. Studio founder Loke Wan Tho began making films in the late 1930's when his family began establishing theaters in Singapore. As was often the case at the time, companies who made movies usually also owned their own theater chains (a practice that is coming somewhat back into vogue with the establishment of UA theaters in America. It never really went out of vogue in Asia). Loke's theaters were state-of -the-art, and after the close of World War II he cemented a deal to distribute British Rank films in South Asia. In the 1950's, Loke moved the business to Hong Kong, purchased a studio lot, and formed MP & GI, which would later change its name to Cathay.

As with the Shaw Studios, Cathay was keen on seeking out and developing new talent, then signing them to exclusive contracts. While the Shaws initially had a good balance of male and female superstars that, during the 1970s, eventually became primarily male-dominated thanks to the popularity of Shaw kungfu films, Cathay was always a woman's world that was known for a stunning array of actresses who easily overshadowed their male counterparts at nearly every moment. Cathay built its success around a core group of female stars that included Linda Lin Dai, Jeanette Lin, Julie Yeh Feng, Lucilla You, Betty Loh Ti, Li Mei, and of course Grace Chang, among others. Cathay films and stars were highly regarded by critics and fans alike, and the studio exhibited a consistently high quality in the vast majority of what it produced. But, as we all know, nothing gold can stay, especially eras.

By the mid-60's the studio began to decline. Loke died in a plane crash in 1964, and the Shaw Brothers productions began to eclipse those of Cathay. The Shaws simply had more money to throw into their projects, and they lured away a number of Cathay's biggest stars, chief among them Linda Lin Dai. By the end of the decade, the Cathay Studio had lost nearly all direction. Whimsical romantic comedies and dramas, especially in black and white, were no longer as popular as they had once been. Cathay was sold to a young upstart studio that would eventually do to the Shaw Bros. what the Shaws ultimately did to Cathay - drive it out of business. That upstart studio was Golden Harvest, the eventual home of everyone from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan.

But there for a while, no one could match Cathay in terms of star power and picture quality. And if your studio has to have a poster girl, you can sure do a heck of a lot worse than Grace Chang. It doesn't take long to immediately fall in love with her and start putting her name atop your list of favorite actresses. There's something special about her, something unique. She's not a classic beauty, but that makes her beauty all the more memorable. Her popularity is, instead, driven by her undeniable charisma and overpowering charm. Where Hollywood (and indeed Hong Kong) was full of sultry sirens and bombshells, Grace Chang was the woman you could always trust to be your friend, to be dependable and friendly and down to earth. You could also count on her to sing you a song. Unlike many actresses who were featured prominently in Hong Kong musicals, Grace could belt out her own tunes.

Grace was born in 1934 in Nanjing but grew up in Shanghai. It was there, in what was far and away the mainland's most cosmopolitan and swinging city, that she trained in Peking Opera. After the tumult of World War II and the Chinese Civil War, Grace and her family moved to Hong Kong in 1949. She made her film debut in Seven Sisters (1953) and joined MP & GI in 1955. Her film and singing careers soared after that, and she quickly became one of the top stars of stage and screen. Her singing talent even garnered her an appearance on America's Dinah Shore Show. She married in 1964, and like most Hong Kong actresses, her marriage heralded her virtual retirement from show business. She still makes occasional appearances though, and she's left us a tremendous film legacy that new fans are only just now beginning to discover.

Mambo Girl, the first of Panorama's Cathay DVD releases (and chronologically, the earliest film), is an excellent way to get to know the work of both the studio and Grace Chang. Although for the most part it's a breezy musical comedy, unlike most films from that particularly light-hearted genre, it has a darker, more serious current running through it that allows it to make a social comment without seeming too heavy-handed. As the story of the making of the film goes, Grace was performing for troops in Taiwan and had them so enthralled with her mambo dancing that they started calling her Mambo Girl. Scriptwriter Yi Wen was then inspired by her popularity to write a quick little film around the name. Another story, as told by Grace herself, maintains that the idea for the film came during an evening at a nightclub where Cathay founder Loke was so impresses with her dancing and singing that he decided a movie should be made. Whichever version of the story is true, the fact remains that someone somewhere saw Grace singing and dancing and simply had to make a movie for her where she could do the same.

Grace stars as Li Kia-ling, the celebrated Mambo Girl as she is known on campus. She's the all-American (or All-Hong Kong, I suppose) gal who gets good grades, always treats her fellow students with equality and respect, and is a vastly talented singer and dancer. I guess they don't have students like this anymore. They've sort of gone the way of those 1950s scientists who knew everything about history, geology, astronomy, physics, and handling various handguns and rifles. I suppose its students like Grace Change who grow up to be those professional know-it-alls like John Agar, though I have a hard time imagining John Agar busting out the mambo moves.

Kia-ling's life is pretty good. Aside from being the sweetheart of the campus, she has a cool little sister and a father who owns a toy store and, when neighbors come by to ask them to turn down the mambo music, tells the neighbors to take a hike. Rather than being the movie parent who attempts to crush the musical dreams of his child, he encourages her at every step and is just about the coolest movie dad you could hope for. Her father is played by Liu Enjia, probably one of the best male leads at Cathay and one of their only men to not be overshadowed by the ladies. He's a big, fat jolly guy, after all, and it's hard to overshadow big, fat jolly guys. He was Cathay's go-to man whenever they needed a solid father figure, and he's best known for his roles here and in the successful cross-cultural comedy The Greatest Civil War on Earth.

All the boys at school fawn over Kia-ling, chief among them Peter Chan Ho. If you watch enough musicals and comedies from either Cathay or the Shaw Bros., you better get used to Peter Chan Ho. He seems to star in dang near every one of them, and for a relatively average looking guy, he's managed to romance everyone from Grace Chang to Linda Lin Dai to Cheng Pei-pei. I really wish I had this guy's agent. Peter's a ubiquitous fixture in the musical films of the 60s and 70s, and he's a pretty likable guy who emanates an everyman kind of charm. He's not always believable in his roles, especially when he plays a lady killer kind of character, but he has a certain underdog charisma about him that, while not nearly as magical as Grace's, makes you root for the guy. When Peter and the boys aren't studying, and they rarely seem to study, they're following Kia-ling around and urging her to sing and dance. You know the scene. It's been in countless musicals, and in the background is always a guy I simply know as Tennis Racket Lad. If you ever seen a musical comedy set at the beach, a college campus, or a summer resort, then you've probably spied the Tennis Racket Lad. He's the guy in the chorus of nameless friends who, when song and dance breaks out, always has a tennis racket which he pretends to strum like a guitar. I've seen Tennis Racket lad in at least a dozen films, and I'm sure he shows up in a dozen more.

Kia-ling's life is turned upside down when her little sister discovers the older sibling she idolizes is in fact adopted. When she confesses this to her best friend, who also happens to be incredibly jealous of Kia-ling's popularity with the boys, the girls, the teachers, the janitors, and everyone else in Hong Kong, word gets around to Kia-ling's friends, and eventually to Kia-ling herself. Although her rival tries to make it a point to insult our darling Mambo Girl, none of her friend seem to care. She's much too charming, and her adopted parents are so cool anyway. Kia-ling, however, is upset by the revelation and wants to seek out her real mother. Along the way, she will discover the true meaning of family, and there will be many musical numbers.

Running just under the surface is a message about the many Chinese people finding themselves in Hong Kong, especially after the revolution and Mao's increasingly totalitarian (and deadly) handling of the country. Multitudes of Mainlanders suddenly found themselves separated from their motherland and seeking shelter in the arms of Hong Kong. Seeing parallel between Kia-ling and the Mainland immigrants, between her choice of biological mother or adopted parents versus mother China or the adopted homeland of Hong Kong, doesn't take a genius. But it does, as I said, lend the film a deeper quality than one usually finds in these sorts of films.

Let's face it though, no one is going to seek out a musical comedy called Mambo Girl in hopes of gleaning insight into the mental state of Chinese people seeking to make new lives for themselves in Hong Kong. For a movie like this, what it has on the surface is just as important, if not more so, than what lies beneath. And the surface of Mambo Girl is a pure delight. Grace's performance is wonderful, and the music is catchy and enjoyable. As one would guess from the title, much of the music is infused with a Latin vibe, something that was very popular with lots of pop music from the era. Grace's mambo numbers swing, though the lyrics are just about the squarest things imaginable. I doubt Yma Sumac or other mambo legends belted out words like, "You're a lucky girl. We call you the Mambo Girl. You are the sweetheart in your family. You are the queen in the school." Not exactly lyrical spiciness to go with the beat, but the infectious tunes will stick with you regardless of how corny the words may be.

The musical numbers are nothing lavish. They're fairly well grounded in reality and most take place in nightclubs, sporting fields, or people's living rooms. The dances aren't extravagant either, but instead look like something an actual person might do. Well, make that an actual person who knows how to mambo and cha-cha. If I was the "actual" person, it'd look less like a dance and more like some old man having a seizure. The fact that movie embraces these modern dances and modern modes of dress so energetically is also a mark of distinction. Many films of the era reflect old fashioned mores regarding singing and dancing, especially as a way of life. How many movies are there where a woman falls upon hard times and is forced to eek out an existence as a nightclub singer, a profession that garners her much attention but no respect? Kia-ling's parents, on the other hand, break from tradition by enthusiastically supporting their daughter's talents and preaching the benefits to mind and body of having some good, clean fun. It is another way in which her adopted parents symbolize the new, modern Hong Kong and new, modern ideas. By contrast, Kia-ling's real mother is the type of lonely torch-singing forlorn woman we see in so many other movies. A product, if you will, of outdated thinking and ideals.

The supporting cast does their best to keep pace with the leading lady. Liu Enjia is wonderful as her father, Peter Chan Ho is likable as her boyfriend, and Kia-ling's real mother is suitably tragic in true melodrama form. For an interesting Shaw Bros connection, future Shaw empress Mona Fong (who was one of the major players as a producer at Shaw Bros, and quite possibly as powerful - if not more powerful - than the brothers who lent the studio their name) makes an appearance as a singer in a nightclub Kia-ling visits in search of her real mother. The real shining star among the supporting cast is Kitty Ting Hao as Kia-ling's younger sister. She's cute and energetic, and her performance is superb. Tragically, she was one among many of the Cathay stars who had a rocky life and ended it via suicide. She died in Los Angeles in 1967 at the age of twenty-seven. Similar sad stories seem to plague far too many of the Cathay women.

Despite that somber footnote, Mambo Girl is an energetic, fun, pluck-at-your-heartstrings musical that will win you over solely with the charm of its leading lady. It's a refreshing change of pace for people who know Hong Kong cinema primarily through kungfu films and more modern actioners. Mambo Girl takes the conventions of the Hollywood musical and integrates them seamlessly with Hong Kong sensibilities. Ultimately, you can't feel sad watching the movie, especially when the time rolls around for the big musical mambo finale. Relatively low-key in comparison to other musicals, even other black and white ones, it's a quality, retro romp that just might have you reaching for the nearest tennis racket.

Kungfu films also serve as a road map for building rewarding, emotionally rich familial relationships, teaching us the most productive way (snake fist) to deal with conflicts within the family structure. The landscape of kungfu films is littered with films in which a son and a father, or a daughter and father, or two siblings, must struggle both against one another as well as together against a greater outside threat. This often manifests itself as some wholesome bonding activity, such as jumping from pole to pole over a field of knives, or trying to grab the chicken bits out of each other's rice bowls. Visit any modern family or marital therapist, and you find that, nine times out of ten, they employ the same -- or at least very similar -- methods for working through the issues that complicate interpersonal relationships.

House of Fury is a more modern look at the nuclear kungfu family, and while its look and style have been updated for modern sensibilities, the core message at the center of the film remains consistent with the many that came before it: the family that trains in kungfu together will deal out swift kungfu vengeance together.

Anthony Wong stars as Yu Siu-bo, a somewhat boring practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and physical therapy. He delights in spinning outrageous yarns about his past adventures fighting ninjas and assorted supervillains, a practice which embarrasses his two teenage children, college-age slacker Nicky (Stephen Fung, Avenging Fist, Gen-X Cops, Gen-Y Cops) and high schooler Natalie (Gillian Chung, one-half of the Hong Kong pop superduo Twins and star of The Twins Effect), both of whom assume their dad is just a world-class bullshitter. At least, they assume that right up until a wheelchair bound psycho named Rocco (your buddy and mine, Michael Wong) shows up hoping to drag the identity of a retired secret agent out of Siu-bo. Suddenly, the two siblings realize everything their father has ever told them has more or less been true, and now they're caught right in the middle of a frenzied kungfu battle between their father and Rocco's thugs. Luckily, this being a kungfu film, dad trained his kids well.

House of Fury is a family film in more ways than simply being about the evolution of the relationship between two children and their father (involving the "tall tale" characteristic that allows me to actually compare the themes of a film full of crazy flying ninjas and kungfu and Tim Burton's Big Fish). For starters, the number of familiar old faces on parade is more than enough to counterbalance the presence of shining new stars like Gillian Chung and Stephen Fung. Anthony Wong is a welcome addition to any cast, and when he's interested in his role, there are few actors in this world that are finer at their craft. He's top notch as the good-hearted but drab Siu-bo, padding about the place, weaving spectacularly crazy adventure tales, and talking to a photo of his dead wife. He's both comical and poignant without ever being overly saccharine. He plays the comedy and action as well as he does the loneliness of the character. Inhabited by Anthony Wong, Siu-bo simply feels like a real guy. When his secret comes out and he jumps into action, he's just as much fun. His best friend and patient is the aging Uncle Chu, played by Hong Kong movie stalwart Wu Ma. We've seen Wu Ma for decades, and watching him in action) even if it's heavily aided by wires and CGI) is great fun. He and Wong represent the older generations perfectly.

Additionally, one of Rocco's henchmen is played by Japanese actress Yukari Oshima. Fans who were around in the 1990s will remember Oshima as on of the "girls with guns" superstars that dominated the first half of that decade with hard-hitting kungfu and gunplay action. Although most of the movies from that era remain MIA in DVD or have been released only in cheap dubbed, pan-and-scan quickies, fans of the films and the women who made them remain devoted to the genre and the actresses who defined it -- Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan, Yukari Oshima, American Cynthia Rothrock, and of course, Michelle Yeoh. Oshima, who got her start as part of Sonny Chiba's Japan Action Club and appeared in the sentai series Bioman before making the jump to feature films and super-stardom in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, was always my favorite. Like many of the stars of girls with guns action films, Oshima made the move to Filipino-produced imitations of the genre when it died out in the late 1990s, then seemed to drop off the radar entirely along with everyone else except Michelle Yeoh, who managed to parlay her girls with guns street cred and friendship with then-darling of Hollywood Jackie Chan into a role in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies then into a plum role in Ang Lee's wuxia crossover film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the fame and money from which she used to produce and star in two abysmal adventure films, The Touch and Silverhawk in which, if nothing else, her acquaintance with Jackie Chan has rubbed off on her the tendency to cast herself as characters half her actual age.

It would seem that Yeoh pulled a Harrison Ford -- sucking up all the fame that could have been distributed amongst her co-stars, leaving the likes of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima in her dust, all but forgotten save by a few die-hards still clutching old VHS copies of the Angel Terminators films or Kickboxer's Tears.

Seeing Yukari Oshima pop up again, looking as gorgeous and deadly as ever, was a real treat for me, and honestly, the main reason I even rented House of Fury. I'd heard good things about the movie, but most of those were from Jackie Chan, and since I believe he played the role of executive producer, I didn't consider his opinion entirely unbiased. But any role, even a small one, for my favorite girl with the thunderbolt kick, was enough to snare my attention.

On the other end of the scale are Stephen Fung and Gillian Chung (and to a lesser extend, Gillian's fellow Twins member and Twins Effect co-star Charlene Choi). Fung, like a seeming endless parade of pretty young faces that started way back with Aaron Kwok and continued through Ekin Cheng and on to Fung, has been regarded as the "hot new thing" that is finally going to salvage Hong Kong cinema from the doldrums in which it's drifted for years, revitalizing the industry and returning to it the spark and magic that made the 70s, 80s, and first half of the 90s so memorable and beloved. He hasn't fulfilled that expectation, but then, it's not really fair to expect it of him. Of the host of hot guys who emerged at the turn of the century to become the somewhat unmemorable and interchangeable faces of the next Hong Kong new wave (which has also yet to really materialize), Fung was a fair enough performer, but he was always a little hollow and cardboard and unspectacular. It was hard, especially for fans who weren't screaming teenage girls, to tell one hot new thing from the next, even when they were all collected together in movies like Gen-X Cops. Thus, when a director wanted to make a "real" film, they still went to the last men standing from the 80s and 90s -- Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, and of course, Anthony Wong (Stephen Chow doesn't make the list, simply because he's always been sort of a whole film industry unto himself). Thus, especially for me, guys like Fung, Edison Chen, and Nick Tse continue to fail to make the same impression as the guys from whom they were supposed to inherit the mantle.

What Stephen Fung is to the men, Gillian Chung is to the women. As one-half of the pop megastar duo Twins, producers hoped she would carry the name recognition to become a movie superstar where so many other hopeful starlets have simply been swallowed whole, unable to become the next Brigette Lin or Maggie Cheung or, quite frankly, even the next Hsu Chi, or even the next Joey Wong Tsu-hsien. Funny, isn't it? Back in the 80s and 90s, Maggie Cheung was most often described as "irritating" or "insipid," known as she was for little more than being the squealing, whining girlfriend in Jackie Chan's Police Story films. And Hsu Chi? She was just some softcore porn nobody. And now? They're two of the biggest, best respected actresses on the international scene. Who would have guessed it, watching Police Story or whichever the hell The Fruit is Swelling film it is that stars Hsu Chi?

While Gillian is no Hsu Chi, and she's certainly no Maggie Cheung, she's still a pretty solid performer with a lot of charisma. Handled properly, and should there ever be more than one good script every other year coming out of Hong Kong, she does indeed show the potential to become something more than a cute face that will disappear in a couple years. Stephen Fung -- I don't know. He's still kind of a bore, and he still doesn't exude much charisma. I have hope for him, but not nearly as much as I do for Gillian Chung.

As for Chung's Twins partner, Charlene Choi, there's really not much that can be said about her in this film. She has a very small role that doesn't really give her much to do beyond tease Stephen Fung's Nicky for a couple scenes.

I would be remiss, however, if I left my review of the cast at the above. That's a lot of good actors doing good work up there. How can I celebrate them without screwing up my courage and looking at the performances of American-born actors Michael Wong and Daniel "Michael Wong for the next generation" Wu. Wu I first encountered in Gen-X Cops, and I was awed by how spectacularly awful he was. Daniel Wu originally went to Hong Kong simply to "get in touch with his roots," get the feel of the place from which his parents came. An extended stay lead to some modeling work, and from there he found his way into film. He seems like a decent guy in interviews, but that doesn't change the fact that he was really unbelievably horrible in Gen-X Cops. However, each subsequent movie in which he's appeared has seen him improve in tiny increments, so that by the time we've gotten to House of Fury, he is merely bad. And if nothing else, Daniel Wu rolled naked on the beach with Maggie Q where as I simply watched him roll naked on the beach with Maggie Q. Wu was never sold as the next Andy Lau, Tony Leung, or Jackie Chan, but if he keeps working at his craft, he could, at the very least, be the next Aaron Kwok or Leon Lai.

The same can't be said for Wu's countryman, Michael Wong, though Wong did have Ellen Chung naked and grinding away on him in one movie, so that caveat about our relative accomplishments still stands. Michael Wong has been plying his acting craft for a couple decades now, and in every film in which I've seen him, he has wowed me with his ability to never get any better no matter how much experience he has. It's amazing just how consistent he's been over the past many years. It's a sustained level of badness of which Keanu Reeves could only dream. It's absolutely astounding. He never gets better, but he never gets worse. Michael Wong is superhuman in his ability to sound like every role is his first role. And despite being surrounded by world-class veterans and promising young upstarts, Michael Wong manages to deliver the exact same bad level of performance he's always delivered, doggedly refusing to let the presence of Anthony Wong cause him to accidentally step up his game.

I have no idea how Michael Wong has sustained his career for this long. He's good looking, but not that good looking. He's fit, but he's not any good at kungfu and only marginally passable at performing other forms of action choreography. In all aspects of his acting career he is merely below average -- so much so that he's not even bad to the point of being funny. Well, no, sometimes he's funny-bad (witness his anguished plea, "You've gone over to the dark side!" in The First Option), but mostly he's just bad. And yet, the man has never gone wanted for roles. Usually they're in B-team movies, but from time to time he manages to sneak into an honest-to-goodness movie like House of Fury. He must totally baffle his brother Russell (New Jack City and Joy Luck Club, plus a bunch of his own movies, as well as some television work). As for me, I embrace Michael Wong. I don't really like calling anyone "the Ed Wood of." but if ever there was an Ed Wood of acting, it has to be Michael Wong, and I love him for it.

Of course, all my love can't make anyone think that Michael Wong is any good in House of Fury. He's awful. He's so bad he makes Daniel Wu look good, though he doesn't make Daniel Wu in Gen-X Cops look good. You might think that Wong is trying to play Rocco as a cool, calculating, emotionless man consumed by vengeance and just failing at the characterization, but anyone who has seen Michael Wong in any movie before will simply say, "No, that's just Michael Wong. He can't act." His soft-spoken monotone is made even worse by the fact that he's surrounded by performers the caliber of Anthony Wong and Wu Ma, and even young Gillian Chung. Heck, even charisma-vacuum Stephen Fung seems positively animated and warm next to Michael Wong's utterly bizarre performance as the wheelchair-bound Rocco. And in case you think that strapping Wong with a wheelchair means he's not going to have a bad action scene, think again. Action choreographer Yuen Wo-ping (he of too many decades and too many credits to list) figured that the best way to get a decent action scene out of Wong was simply to film him in fast speed rolling around in his wheelchair. Sadly, director Stephen Fung (more on that in a moment) resists the natural urge to set the entire scene to "Yakkety Sax."

The final piece of the main cast is this kid named Jake Strickland. I have no idea who this kid is (this is his first and currently only listed film credit), but I assume Yuen Wo-ping discovered him on some youth martial arts circuit and couldn't resist throwing him into the film as Rocco's son. As an actor, he's not much, but then, what do you expect from a fourteen-year-old American making a foreign language film. He's still better than Michael Wong (both he and Wong deliver their lines in English). The kid is really just here to twirl a staff and kick some ass, and in that sense, he's surprisingly good. Hong Kong films have always had better luck with martial arts kids than American films -- just compare any of the Three Ninjas to that little kid with the perfectly spherical head kicking ass alongside Jet Li in New Legend of Shaolin and My Father is a Hero. It seems that being a decent kiddie kungfu performer doesn't really have much to do with race (obviously), but instead has to do with whether your action director is Yuen Wo-ping or John Turteltaub. Jake Strickland looks fantastic in action, and his fight with Anthony Wong is priceless. Wong is torn between the fact that he doesn't want to beat up a fourteen-year-old kid and the fact that this fourteen-year-old kid is kicking his ass and flipping around with a staff and running up walls, and it makes for a great fight scene. I don't know if we'll ever see Jake Strickland again, but he does a fine job here -- and he has a great name for being either an action star or Hank Hill's boss at the propane shop.

The rest of the action is a pretty good mix between old style kungfu, wire-fu, and a little CGI enhancement here and there. Stephen Fung and Gillian Chung are not accomplished martial artists, and from time to time you can tell that, but most of the time, Yuen Wo-ping poses them and flings them about pretty well. Their fight with Yukari Oshima and the rest of Michael Wong's thugs is a stand-out moment, as is the finale (in which, among other things, Stephen Fung also faces off with Jake Strickland). Anthony Wong, of course, is no martial artist either, but the man has been around long enough to have picked up the tricks of the trade, and he looks good in his few action scenes. Even elderly Wu Ma gets in on the fun. For years, I railed against the tendency to cast non-martial artists as kungfu masters, then mask their lack of skill with wire tricks and flashy editing -- a trend that was largely championed by Yuen Wo-ping (with plenty of help from Ching Siu-tung and Tsui Hark). In my old age, I'm getting soft, or simply accepting that the days of Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and Yuen Biao are over -- even for Sammo, Jackie, and Biao. House of Fury delivers fantasy kungfu but it does it well, and from time to time, it allows itself to be a throwback, if not to the glory days of Sammo Hung choreography, at least to the solid, no-wires choreography that made Yukari Oshima and the girls with guns genre so much fun.

Now comes the funny part. Although I continue to be unimpressed by Stephen Fung as an actor (calling him a hot young thing really isn't fair -- he's only a year or two younger than me), I was surprised to see that as a writer and director, he's surprisingly accomplished. I have no idea hos much of House of Fury was directed by Fung, and how much was the work of his mentors Yuen Wo-ping and Jackie Chan, but the fact is that Stephen, for whatever amount he directed, showcases a steady hand and the ability to let the film's story speak for itself, rather than piling on lots of irritating flashy editing and intrusive directorial tricks. Surrounded by such talent (as well as Willie Chan, another producer on this film and cohort of Jackie Chan), Stephen Fung may not emerge as the next Jackie Chan in front of the camera, but he has an excellent chance to emerge as the next Jackie Chan behind the camera. There are definitely some signs of the old Jackie and Sammo directorial styles, which were also influenced by the directorial work of Lo Wei (who directed Wu Ma, among others like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee) and Bruce Lee himself. Although House of Fury boasts the wirework and CGI that seems to be part and parcel of modern kungfu films, the direction itself is surprisingly down to earth and reminiscent of the good ol' days.

Fung also co-wrote the script, along with Yiu Fai-lo (previously the screenwriter for the dreadful Jackie Chan flop Gorgeous and the even more dreadful Andrew Lai horror disaster The Park). Given how dreadful Yiu's previous scripts are, I have no problem attributing the bulk of the work on the script for House of Fury to Stephen Fung. As a guy in his early thirties who no doubt grew up a fan of everyone from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, this is exactly the sort of movie you'd expect him to write. However, we've seen thanks to countless gigabytes of fanfic that being a fan of something doesn't mean you're going to write a good story about it. Fung's script, on the other hand, is well-written, well-paced, and surprisingly.I don't want to say complex, really. Touching? Maybe that's it. Let's just say it's good. The homage to Bruce Lee exists in the title and in some of Anthony Wong's fight choreography, but other than that, it doesn't play much of a role in the story. At this point, though, fans of Hong Kong cinema should be used to gratuitous Bruce Lee gags and imitations. It's almost as if Stephen Fung wanted to make an 80s style Hong Kong action film and knew that he couldn't do that without throwing in some random Bruce Lee allusions.

Bruce Lee nonsense aside, what Fung has done is write a very good modern-day reinvention of all those old "quarrelling kungfu family" movies that were made in the 1970s -- right down to a "sitting at the table" kungfu fight over bits of chicken. Although being a fan doesn't make you a good writer, a good writer who is fan enough to throw in obscure homages like that makes for a real treat. The relationship between the family is also well-written. The whole "discovering the secret past" thing isn't anything new, but Fung executes the story well. The central theme seems to be that the older generation shouldn't be dismissed, that they have plenty to teach us, and sometimes their rambling stories are true, or at least interesting. As an avid listener to my grandfathers' stories about World War II -- many of which seem as embellished as Siu-bo's stories about fighting ninjas that can vanish into thin air -- I understand and fully appreciate the message at the heart of Fung's cracking good kungfu movie. It seems especially apropos in a film that owes so much and pays such close attention to the films of the generation before. In fact, to stick with the analogy about my grandfathers and World War II stories, it's easy to see the films of the 70s and 80s as "the greatest generation." Whenever anyone talks about the Golden Age, they inevitably point to these films. The next Jackie Chan, we say. The next Tsui Hark (if only Tsui Hark could be the next Tsui Hark). The next Chinese Ghost Story or A Better Tomorrow. And amid all that are the new films and new actors, largely dismissed, often disdained, living in the shadow of the greatest generation, looking at them with a mix of awe, contempt, and envy and the knowledge that they will never live up to but will always be compared to those films.

Also central to the plot are the two fathers, Siu-bo and Rocco, and different ways in which they have raised children adept at kungfu. Siu-bo trained his children hard, but there's a tenderness to his training as well. He does it because he knows one day someone might come for him, and by default them, and they'll be better off if they can defend themselves. For the most part, however, they are allowed to be regular young adults who regard their father as a bit of an oaf. Similarly, Rocco has trained his son in the martial arts, but in his case, it's to use him as an instrument of attack. And Rocco's son is an interesting juxtaposition to Nicky and Natalie. Where as both Nicky and Natalie are involved in active social lives (he works at a marine park, she is involved in school plays), Rocco's son is a shut-in who knows little beyond his PSP and staff fighting in the basement. He's like one of those anime otaku who collect martial arts weapons, except that he can actually use his.

Something that makes the script more complex than it might otherwise be, however, is the relationship between Rocco and his son. Rocco isn't necessarily a heartless villain. He's in a wheelchair because he was a special ops sniper assigned to assassinate some terrorist leader. However, an agent for the Hong Kong secret service needed said terrorist alive for a different assignment, and in order to prevent Rocco from killing the man (Rocco was working for the United States), he attacked and crippled him. Now all Rocco wants is revenge on the man who paralyzed him -- and Siu-bo happens to know who that agent is. So it's not like Rocco is simply evil -- and we see this when, after he's nearly killed in the final showdown, his son drops his staff and runs to protect and plead for his father's life. Obviously, Rocco isn't a complete dick, and the scene is nice even if Jake Strickland and Michael Wong are both bad actors.

House of Fury finds a way to embrace that as it reconcile its young protagonists with their father. With new and old talent both in front of and behind the camera, House of Fury is more than just a lot of fun (though it is certainly that); it's the closest we're going to get, in my opinion, to mixing the past with the present. It's not a ground-breaking film, but it's plenty enjoyable in the same gee-whiz way that the films of the 80s were., with al the same ham-handed goofiness and melodrama that people seem to forget was so omnipresent in those films. Sure, it doesn't best the best of the 1980s. It's not Dragons Forever or Project A. But if more new films were more like House of Fury -- fast-paced, action-packed, a blend of legit kungfu choreography and special effects, but also full of good humor and heart -- then maybe we wouldn't miss the past and bemoan the future quite so much.

As such, there was considerable pressure on Miike, both artistically and professionally, to prove that he wasn't out of the game so quickly. Never one to favor subtlety, Miike decided to more or less put all his chips on the table and throw himself into a mega-budget (for low budget filmmaking), special-effects laden fantasy film based on the yokai stories of old. The yokai -- a seemingly endlessly bizarre parade of creatures based on Japanese folklore and pure imagination of the authors -- found pop culture popularity in manga format as Ge Ge Ge No Kitaro, which was published in Shonen Magazine from 1966 until 1970, though it found a home in many other manga magazines with the word "shonen" in the title. Ge Ge Ge No Kitaro was about a young boy, Kitaro, with a host of magical abilities and the mission of reconciling the world of goblins and ghosts -- yokai -- with that of the humans. Kitaro's own father was a yokai (if I recall correctly) who died before Kitaro was born. However, possessed of a desire to keep an eye on his son, he literally keeps an eye on his son, becoming a disembodied eyeball that resides in Kitaro's empty left eye socket (which is usually covered by Kitaro's floppy hair). The comic was created by Mizuki Shigeru, and the town in which he lived serves as the backdrop for the story in Great Yokai War.

Ge Ge Ge No Kitaro made the leap to cartoon television show in 1968, and has enjoyed several reincarnations since then. I would love to see the original series get some attention stateside, especially since all I've ever seen of it are third generation bootleg VHS tapes with no subtitles. Still, a ratman with the power to expand his scrotum to hot air balloon proportions is an international language that needs no translation (sadly, said creature doesn't show up in Miike's film, though you just know he wanted him to). Both the manga and the anime owe a great deal to Mizuki Shigeru's interest in Japanese folklore, yokai, and the Shinto religion. The entire yokai mythology isn't entirely dissimilar to rural folklore from the west, in which a variety of spooks and goblins, both benevolent and evil, inhabit the world around us (but especially the woods).

Yokai are probably best known to Western fans thanks to three live-action films produced by Toei Studios in the late 60s and were absolutely packed to the gills with outlandish creatures, including the crowd-pleasing, jig-dancing bamboo umbrella with one eye, one foot, and a huge waggling tongue. I first saw one of these films back in 1993 or so, when my friend Pat got a tape from one of his friends, who had just returned from Japan. The tape was unsubtitled, of course, but it was pretty easy to figure out what was going on. And anyway, you hardly need a comprehensible language when your movie is crammed with kappa, dancing umbrellas, women with super extend-o necks, weird little guys who look like they have a turnip for a head, and all manner of other insane monsters. A couple years ago, those three movies found their way to domestic DVD, and I was happy to actually be able to understand what was going on -- to say nothing of finally seeing the other two yokai films, which until then I'd only seen bits of in the trailers that were on the old tape we had.

Things were pretty quiet on the yokai front for many a year, until Sakuya, Slayer of Demons came out and boasted a gratuitous but never the less welcome cameo appearance from the core yokai cast of yesteryear. Unfortunately, Sakuya is a fairly flawed film that mixes quality supernatural fantasy action with grating "little kid" humor that becomes well nigh insufferable thanks to the amount of self-indulgent whining. When a kid character is so bad that it can ruin guys with medieval bazookas fighting a giant spider woman, you know a line has been crossed.

When Miike dusted off yokai mythology for his movie, I can't say I was excited. I wasn't excited because, frankly, I'd just started a new job and I wasn't keeping up with the overseas entertainment industry, so I had no idea Miike was even making a yokai film until the dang thing came out and I started reading reviews. I've never been a huge Miike fan. I liked the Dead Or Alive films (even the oft-maligned third film), Fudoh, and Gozu. Visitor Q and Ichi the Killer bored me to tears, and everything else didn't do much more than elicit the response, "Eh." Oh, City of Lost Souls. I liked that one, even though it seems pretty well maligned, too. So the point is that I don't get all rabid and excited the way I do for, say, a new Sabu film (not to be confused with Miike's film, Sabu). Speaking of which -- what the hell, people? Every piece of crap Miike and Kitamura drop downt he back of their pants gets a "special edition" DVD in the United States, but no one has touched a single Sabu film? That's just flat-out insane. Even Kiyoshi Kurasawa films get DVD releases here (which is fine by me), and yet Dangan Runner, Drive, and all the others from Sabu remain MIA.

My take him or leave him attitude toward Miike thus established, I can admit that when I heard about Great Yokai War, I was pretty excited. All those monsters and potentially insane battles seemed like a perfect match for Miike. When I further heard that it was supposed to be a kid's film, I didn't fret. There are plenty of good kid's films, especially from Japan. When I heard that the main character was himself just a kid, my enthusiasm ebbed a bit. I was still smarting from that horribly annoying kid in Sakuya, and I wasn't itching at the opportunity to revisit that particular type of disappointment. Still, the recommendations kept flowing in, so I decided it was high time I checked out Miike's yokai blow-out myself.

Great Yokai War was conceived not so much as a remake as it was a celebration of the original film's 40th anniversary. Rather than acquiring the services of a tested children's film director, rights holder Kadokawa Group decided to snag grindhouse shock auteur Takashi Miike as director, a move that may remind some of you of Toho's decision to put cult film fave Ryuhei Kitamura in charge of the 50th anniversary Godzilla film. In my opinion, Kitamura's Godzilla film is an absolute disaster, but fans are sharply and vehemently divided on that topic. Would the yokai fair any better under the protection of a man best known for movies in which a whore is drown in a kiddie pool of her own feces, a middle-aged woman squirts gallon after gallon of milk from her breasts, or a woman gives graphic birth to a fully grown yakuza? It was a pretty bizarre decision, but that's only because the fact that Miike has made more innocent and sensitive fare (Bird People of China, Blues Harp, and even a previous kid's film, Andromedia) is often lost amid the jumble of exploding guts full of ramen noodles and giant robots with giant penises.

One of the other defining characteristics of Takashi Miike's oeuvre are the lengthy and often grindingly dull stretches of filler stuffed between more substantial set-pieces. These occur not so much because Miike has to pad out the running time as because Miike's genuinely wants to make actual plot and character development a part of his spectacle, and he just happens to fail at it more times than he succeeds. Still, points for ambition, and it's that ambition, even when he fails to realize it, that makes him a better writer and director that Kitamura, who is happy to dispense with character development and plot altogether and joyously embrace over-the-top non-stop action (which has worked to his advantage many times, and against him at others). But Kitamua and Miike both have shown a similar faltering over aspects of their stories that don't involve the gross-out gags or breakneck action. In their defense, this is hardly a problem that afflicts them alone. The question remained, though, how would Miike handle the narrative of a film of this scope? The scenario lends itself to making a Kitamura-style action blow-out, but the old yokai movies succeed primarily because the characters are charming and endearing.

The quick impression of Great Yokai War was that it was pretty good, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. Shot on DV as most of Miike's work is, and heavily dependant on CGI for backgrounds, the film possessed a cheaper look than I wanted from it. Fortunately and unfortunately, CGI has made a quantum leap forward in terms of quality when it's used for backgrounds and set dressing, which means that when something is a bit crude, it's threadbare nature is all the more noticeable. The CGI work in Great Yokai War comes off as a tad clumsy, which seems a pretty silly criticism from me considering how much I enjoyed the patently ludicrous and unconvincing puppets and make-up that comprised the yokai themselves in the old films, as well as in this one. All things considered, it's a relatively minor quibble, but it just feel like the CGI could have been realized a bit better.

As a fan of the old films, I was also disappointed that the original gang of "primary" yokai are used for little more than cameo and background players in this new adventure. I know that's just me being stodgy, and I should be thankful that anyone at all wants to put a one-eyed, one-legged, tongue-waggling bamboo umbrella in a film, but I missed that thing having more of a role, to say nothing of the turnip-head thing with the grass skirt. I guess I should have learned some of the proper names of these monsters and ghosts. The kappa once again gets a major role, as he did in the old yokai film, and I really have no complaints about the astoundingly cute water nymph in the skimpy kimono playing a major role (do great legs, a beautiful face, and elf ears make up for weird green webbed hands and feet? I'll only know when I'm faced with the choice in real life, which should be soon, by my calculations), but besides her and the kappa, the rest of the main yokai cast are underdeveloped and underused. One of them is a flying shroud, another is a bellowing red-faced guy, and then there's a guy who obsesses about azuki beans. Most of these parts are filled by veteran Japanese actors, but half the time you'd be hard-pressed to recognize them if you didn't already known for whom you were looking.

Any fears that Miike is going to pull punches because this is a kid's film will be quickly dispelled by the beginning of the film, in which our young hero Tadeshi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) has a nightmare about the annihilation of Tokyo, highlighted by a psycho woman in a cheek-revealing white mini-dress (western audience fan fave Chiaki Kuriyama from Battle Royale, Azumi 2, and Kill Bill) and towering, snow-white beehive hairdo. We also get a small-town farmer discovering that his cow has given birth to a slimy, moaning calf with a vaguely humanoid face and a tendency to trill out portents of darkness and doom. Now this is the sort of kid's film I can get behind. As a fan of frightful and fanciful fare from a very young age (though I was terrified by Disney's Pinocchio), it always irritates me when a film is judged "too dark" or "too scary" for little kids. Those were exactly the sorts of movies I loved growing up, and it pains me that modern children are subjected to increasingly bland, insipid entertainment simply because someone, somewhere might think that a kid would get scared. Hey, guess what? Some kids think its fun to be scared. Others like to be wowed by Grimm's Fairytale style stories full of the macabre and menacing. Yeah, some kids will run screaming for the door, but I figure a parent should be a pretty good judge of what will scare and delight their child versus what will just terrify their kid and make them wet the bed. From the beginning I realized that, regardless of what I might think of it as an adult, Great Yokai War is exactly the sort of movie I'd embrace as a child. And I decided this before I'd even seen the sexy water nymph.

After a jarring intro that is signature Miike, the film settles down for the next hour or so in an attempt to get its cards in order before the 52-pickup free-for-all of the finale. Tadashi is a young boy who has moved to a rural village with his mother after a divorce. His father and older sister remained in Tokyo, though only his sister plays any part in the story. The father is a non-entity, undoubtedly a reflection of the MIA fathers who are committed entirely to work, much to the detriment and alienation of their wife and children. Tadashi is having a hard time adjusting to life in the village, where the local bullies pick on him for being a city slicker who ain't down with the ways of the tougher country folk. These being small-town Japanese bullies, they do things like encircle and taunt him lightly, as opposed to the rural elementary school bullies with which I was familiar in Kentucky, who would forego taunting and jump straight to shoving your head in a toilet or throwing coleslaw at you during lunch.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the bulk of humanity (humanity's utter obliviousness to the world around them is a lynchpin of the story), a grim-faced villain named Kato (Etsushi Toyokawa, playing it completely straight-laced despite the insanity of the situation) and his whip-wielding assistant Agi (Chiaki Kuriyama) have established a base inside a giant filth-belching industrial factory, where they use black magic to convert the kind and peace-loving yokai of nature into hideous Shinya Tsukamoto-style cyborgs covered with rust and grime and saw blades. Obviously, Great Yokai War is another in the long line of Japanese films with overt pro-environmental messages -- something I've always thought was as admirable as it was ironic coming from a country that dammed all its rivers and can't get enough delicious, delicious whale meat. Still, you can't really make a proper yokai film set in modern times without dealing with environmental concerns, as the yokai themselves are intrinsically tied to Japan's countryside and natural environment. Tackling a yokai story in the modern era means the domain of the goblins is going to be in direct conflict with modern society. Kato himself is a human who has become a demon. Incensed by the way humans use items then cast them away with total disregard, he has decided to harness the resentment and hatred in the world and use it usher in a new era of darkness.

At a village festival (during which we get a fleeting glimpse of a town square monument to Kitaro himself, a bronze statue which really exists and is part of the hundred-statue yokai monument in the town of Sakaiminato, which is also home to the Mizuki Shigeru Museum, which also makes an appearance in this film), Tadashi is chosen by the ceremonial kirin to be the Kirin Rider, the young lad in charge of defending the village from evil until the next festival. This would be a fun ceremonial post for a young boy to assume were it not for the fact that actual dark forces are threatening Tadashi's new home. Tadashi's grandfather (played by the legendary Bunta Sugawara, of Battles Without Honor and Humanity fame, among others), who alternates between bouts of lucidity and senility, seems to be the only one who understands that Tadashi's new title may be a bit more than a novelty, but it's hard to tell exactly how much he understands.

Things begin to get weird for Tadashi when he is told by the bullies that the Kirin Rider has to journey up to Goblin Cave to retrieve a sacred sword. Once again, although the yokai may be recognizably Japanese, the set-up of the story is universally familiar, or rather, it's familiar to anyone who grew up anywhere near the dark, menacing woods or a house that was rumored to be the home of a witch who ate little kids. It proves that, while the cosmetics of any given story may be particular to a certain country or people, a common chord runs through all the stories and gives them an instantly recognizable and universal appeal.

No sooner has Tadashi set out for Goblin Cave than the yokai start coming out in droves and Tadashi finds himself charged with learning how to be a true Kirin Rider and stopping Kato's apocalyptic scheme. The "chosen one" plot is pretty standard fare for the fantasy genre, in which a seemingly unprepared an incapable person is selected to be the "chosen one" and must discover the strength within and defeat the evil, so on and so forth. To Great Yokai War's credit, it never once actually uses the phrase "chosen one" or "chosen one foretold by the prophecy," so hats off to it for that. The magic, however, is rarely in the uniqueness of the story, but rather, in your execution of tried and true material. Takashi Miike splits his time between working well within the bounds of what we expect from a family-friendly fantasy and pushing it toward greater depths of maturity. The end result is never quite as thrilling as it should be, but it's still plenty fun and has to be commended for its attempt to be something more than just mindless kid's movie fluff.

For starters, there's the sexual tension underlying some of the action. Most obviously, you have Chiaki with her rear hanging out the back of a tiny micro-dress, snapping a whip and cackling hysterically (seems that has become her trademark). On the other hand, you have river nymph Kawahime (Mai Takahashi -- is she the same Mai Takahashi who got debunked as a fake psychic by James Randi, because if she is, that'd be pretty cool), who wears an open-sided tunic with nothing on underneath, showing off a lot of thigh that she doesn't seem to mind the young boy steal a caress of every now and then. Although perhaps sounding a bit inappropriate for a kid's movie, that's only because adults tend to forget what it's like to be a kid, especially an eleven-year-old boy who is just starting to discover, you know, those feelings. At the heart of Great Yokai War is the story of a boy exiting his boyhood and entering his teen years, on his way to becoming an adult. Obviously, some sort of sexual discovery, even one as restrained and innocent as it is here, is going to play a part in the kid's life. I don't know that an American film would take the same chance, which is funny given the voracious way in which American pop culture sexualizes the young.

In fact, it's this concentration on the age-old "boy becomes a man, or at least less of a whiny little kid" motif that gives Great Yokai War it's most effective and surprisingly poignant moment: after the great yokai war has been waged (which is actually a war between a kid, a couple yokai, and a crazy evil guy, with the rest of the yokai just sort of showing up as spectators and revelers), Tadashi has retired his obligations as the Kirin Rider and done some growing up. The fuzzy little yokai who becomes his closest friend (realized via a very crudely animatronic plush toy, which for some reason didn't bug me as much as the crude CGI) tries desperately to get his attention, but Tadashi is a man now, and with maturity he loses the ability to see the yokai who played such a significant role in his life.

The moment is badly undercut by Miike's inclusion of a pointless zinger to open the door for a sequel, but I can almost overlook that based on the strength of the scene otherwise. Since the theme of humans discarding the things of their past plays such an important role in propelling the action, it makes the journey from youth to maturity even more effective. In fact, that theme works on a surprising number of levels. On the surface, there's the simple concept of humans throwing stuff away and polluting the planet, and those things coming back to haunt us. Or eat us. Whatever. On a deeper level, there's the idea that musty old folklore characters like the yokai are being discarded by modern society -- both by the simple act of the society in the story moving on and becoming less in tune with natural surroundings and the spirits who inhabit them, as well as in the real world, where kids seeking modern entertainment have no real interest in a bunch of weirdos from a manga series that was popular in the 1960s. And finally, you have the concept of discarding the things you cherished in your past as you enter adulthood. It's a moment perfectly realized, as corny or weird as it may sound, by a cute little fuzzy critter who looks like a toy trying to get the attention of a young man who once cherished him but has since moved on.

Counterbalancing Tadashi's journey is a journalist who was saved as a young boy by Kawahime and has spent the rest of his life trying in vain to recapture that moment and relive his past. He's a particularly interesting idea (though not an especially well realized character, unfortunately) in an era where much of our adulthood is dedicated to recapturing and romanticizing our childhood (romanticizing largely taking the form of pretending like every single thing that ever happened during the 70s or 80s played a significant role in our lives and constitutes a beloved memory, instead of admitting the reality of the situation, which is that 80% of everything you see on VH1 wasn't that important to you as a kid no matter what commentators born ten years after the date being discussed might be telling you). Although I didn't think his character came of as interesting as he should have been, the journalist does boast the film's best comedic scene, when in the midst of the great yokai royal rumble and all this talk of Kirin Riders, he is being pushed and battered by ghosts he cannot see, at least until he discovers a crate of Kirin Ichiban beer and begins drinking himself silly, at which time he can see the yokai once more (which, aside from being funny and brilliant use of product placement ties in nicely with the common idea that aside from kids, only senile old folks -- like Tadashi's grandfather -- and the town loony can experience the fantasy world, probably because they have been reduced in one way or another to a more accepting and childlike state of mind).

Themes of lost youth and environmental destruction aside, we can evaluate Great Yokai War from a purely action-adventure standpoint. You'd think this would be Miike's strong point, and that he'd be weak on the bittersweet exploration. In fact, the opposite is true. The action is not especially bad or good. It's just never compelling. There's a great battle in the Goblin Cave involving Tadashi, the giant goblin King Tengu (Miike regular Kenichi Endo), Agi, and her army of chainsaw-armed industrial robots, the final showdown between Kato and Tadashi is surprisingly lackluster (though I do like that it's a happy bean that wins the day), though there is a nice thematic continuity in the finale, as Kato randomly discards Agi in the same way humans discard their possessions. The big throwdown between the vast population of yokai who descend upon Tokyo thinking that a festival of darkness is begin staged is clever (the yokai never even seem to realize they're actually fighting a war with Kato's mechanized demons)

There are other clever bits thrown in that show Miike really put a lot of time and effort into writing the script (the first time he gets screenwriting credit, if I'm not mistaken). When Kato's demonic creation (the entire factory becomes a huge demon, in one of the film's moments of good CGI) descends upon Tokyo, a man dismisses the confusion outside by casually quipping that, "It's only Gamera." In a moment of darker humor, a panicking provincial policeman attempts to shoot a rampaging mecha-beast, but his aim is so poor that he misses the monster entirely and manages to hit the monster's intended human victim square between the eyes. Less successful is the comic relief courtesy of the kappa (a turtle-like humanoid, played by Japanese comedian Sadao Abe, who also appeared in Higuchinsky's excellent surrealist horror film, Uzumaki), though he does manage to score a laugh or two, which is more than you can say for most comic relief.

The acting is uniformly good, and each of the players who inhabit the yokai manage to make them human but also bizarrely inhuman. They're familiar, but you can't fully relate to them. The yokai are realized primarily through the use of old-fashioned make-up, masks, and puppetry, though a few are rendered or assisted by CGI, such as the woman with the snakelike neck, the paper wall with eyes, and maybe the stone wall that walks and talks (yokai can get pretty far-out). Kawahime is the most complex of the goblins, aside from being the hottest even with her weird amphibian hands. She began life as a discarded effigy and was rescued by Kato, only to spurn his offer to join him in destroying humanity. At the same time, she is torn between her resentment of mankind and her love for those she saves from drowning. As the young hero Tadashi, Ryunosuke Kamiki manages to avoid being annoying for most of the time, though Miike doesn't seem to have much more for him to do than stumble around and yell a lot. The yelling gets kind of tiresome, even if that's what a kid would really be likely to do when confronted with a massive host of goblins and chainsaw-wielding cyborgs. Still, when he's allowed to, he rises to the occasion and makes for a relatively painless pre-teen hero.

Great Yokai War just barely misses being a great film, but there's really no shame in merely being a very good film. Miike's pacing is still uneven, and while he succeeds with some character development, he fails at other times, making for some spots that drag. The yokai are never as fully realized characters as they should be, with the exception of Kawahime. It's nice to see so many old familiar faces -- both human and yokai -- and as a nostalgia trip (there's that lost youth thing again), Great Yokai War is a lot of fun. As a kid, I would have loved it. As an adult, struggling to remember youth, I merely liked it a lot. Whatever the case, it's a triumphant return for Miike, and with a film that was apparently very near and dear to his heart. I my not have like dit quite as much as I'd hoped, and it has it flaws, but all in all, Great Yokai War is a madcap good time at the movies.

When innovative Shaw Bros. studio director Chor Yuen teamed up with martial arts novelist Lung Ku and the Shaw's top kungfu film star, Ti Lung, they made beautiful music together. In 1977 the trio collaborated to create two of the best martial arts films ever made, Clans of Intrigue and Magic Blade. The success of the films, as well as their recognition as some of the greatest looking films to come from the martial arts genre in decades, made it a pretty simple decision to keep a good thing going. Less than a year after audiences were dazzled with the complexly tangled web of swordplay, sex, and suaveness that made up Clans of Intrigue, the trio got together for a sequel called Legend of the Bat.

Legend of the Bat was a curve ball for fans of the first film, which was a period piece about a great swordsman framed for murder and his quest to clear his name and uncover the true perpetrator of the crimes. For the sequel, director Chor Yuen and novelist Lung Ku rocket the action hundreds of years from the setting of the original, weaving a touching tale about an aging baseball player's one last chance to relive the fame and glory of his early years, all told through the eyes of a dying crippled boy who once asked the baseball player to hit a home run for him.

I'm lying, of course. Legend of the Bat is, in fact, about Ti Lung smirking and stabbing people and trying to unravel a mysterious plot chocked full of secret identities, ulterior motives, and booby trapped lairs. In other words, it's more of the same, and the same is worth getting more of when it's as cool as Clans of Intrigue.

Ti Lung is on hand to reprise the role of Chu Liu-hsiang, the cool-as-ice, sexy-as-all-get-out swordsman who can beat any man, woo any woman, and lives in a floating boat-palace where his every need is attended to by three hot female assistants. Once again, it'd be remiss of me as both an espionage and martial arts film fan if I didn't note just how similar Chu is to American super-spy and all-around Renaissance man of mystery, Derek Flint. Both of them are tended to by a bevy of beauties who not only look good, but can also kick your ass or get taken hostage if the need ever arises. Both of them live in high-tech (for their respective times) ultra-cool bachelor pads. And of course, they can both out-fight, out-think, and just plain out-cool any villain who gets in their way.

Also returning for another dose of wu xia action is Chu's mysterious and not altogether righteous sidekick, the killer for hire Li Tien-hung, played once again by the steely-eyed and grim Ling Yun. Our two heroes, or rather our hero and that really pissed off guy who hangs out with him and stabs people, are once again drawn into a winding, twisting plot when they investigate a gathering of martial arts clans and find everyone dead save for one lone man in white who has no memory. They soon meet up with a kungfu couple in search of a potion that will cure the wife's terminal illness, and they also discover that someone has put a price on the head of Chu Liu-hsiang. All roads lead to a mysterious masked man known only as The Bat, who lives on a secret island in a cave-palace filled with elaborate and outlandish booby traps. The Bat is in the business of granting wishes - some noble, most diabolical. Chu and Li must first brave a ship full of "people who are not what they seem to be" where they will make a variety of enemies and allies. Then they must traverse the truly mind-blowing caverns of Bat Island in search of the man who seems to be the root of much of the evil plaguing that ever-plagued-with-trouble Martial World.

The sequence on the ship feels like it's Agatha Christie meets Shaw Bros. swordsman action. For the first half of the film, we meet one character after another who is not what they seem, and then in many cases after that character's secret is revealed, we find out later that they're still not what they seem and have a whole new set of secrets to reveal that will once again realign them in the plot. It's classic Chor Yuen - Lung Ku storytelling, and once again, while it might not always make sense, and while it sometimes seems to be twisting the plot just for the hell of it, it's a wonderfully enjoyable ride that is much more interesting than just sitting down to a movie starring Ti Lung, David Chiang, and Wang Lung-wei where you have to guess which character will eventually be exposed as evil, given the fact that Wang Lung-wei has eventually been exposed as evil (or simply started out evil and stayed that way) in roughly 99% of the movies in which he ever starred. For all the convolution that gets thrown onto the screen, Legend of the Bat truly keeps you guessing as to the motives of most of the characters involved. Only Chu himself is a certainty. We know he's a stand-up guy. Everyone else, even his sidekick Li, keep their motives up in the air for the first half of the film. It's fun stuff.

By the time we arrive on Bat Island, most of the loyalties of the main characters have been sorted out. There are still plenty of ancillary characters to show up during the finale and throw things for a loop, but at least we know who our core group of heroes will be as they begin to challenge the labyrinth of mazes and pitfalls that comprise the island's defenses. It's here that Chor Yuen really goes all-out with the stylized set design and turns the surrealism up to eleven. The caverns are awash in Mario Bava-esque multi-colored lighting and mists, with rocks and waters glowing green, purple, blue, red, and yellow. It all looks very much like some of the sets from Hercules in the Haunted World. The Bat's henchmen wear outlandish "wild man" uniforms, and before they manage to reach the inner sanctum of his compound, our heroes must escape from a cage suspended over a pit of bubbling acid, traverse a raging pool of fire, and overcome a room full of icy glaciers all while fending off spear-wielding goons.

I've always wondered where villains go to hire construction crews to build their fabulously ornate and intricately booby-trapped lairs. Can you get union workers to build a lake of fire, or do you have to sneak off and hire the Mexican guys hanging out on the corner looking for work? Is there a firm that specializes in converting networks of caves and volcanoes into lavishly-lit secret compounds? And who sews the zany costumes for all the villain's henchmen? Where can you buy silver foil jumpsuits, or in the case of this movie weird wildman duds, by the gross? Legend of the Bat finally gives us a glimpse, albeit superficially, into the logistics of constructing ridiculously complex evil lairs when the original architect of the Bat Island caves shows up for part of the action. He is, of course, a brilliant man who let his fascination with fashioning fire pits and acid pools blind him to the fact that the strange masked man who placed the order might end up using them for evil purposes. I guess guys who build hollowed-out volcano bases and caves of death are sort of like all those guys on the Manhattan Project who were so happy to be working on crazy scientific and mathematical quandaries that they didn't realize until too late that they'd just created the most devastating weapon in the history of the world and would thus have to come up with some sort of prophetic and deep thing to say upon witnessing the fiery fruition of their labors. By my reckoning, if we hadn't kept Oppenheimer and the others busy with inventing the atom bomb, they would have probably just gone off and outfitted Hitler's bunker with an acid pit and one of those rooms where spikes pop out of the wall and close in on you.

Today, would be designers of evil lairs spend most of their time drawing little dungeon maps so elaborate that they have to use that scientific graph paper instead of the regular stuff. Imagine how much weirder the conflict in Afghanistan would have been if the first time we got reports from inside one of Osama bin-Laden's cave hide-outs, the soldiers had said, "Well, the lake of fire with the giant snake in it was rough, but we were able to throw Geraldo Rivera in to distract the monster. Still, it was rough going once we got to room that filled with molten lead and the tunnel that was illuminated by strobe lights and lava lamps." That was always bin-Laden's big problem. He spent all his money on that Al Quaeda gymboree we saw those guys practicing on whenever they replayed that "Al Quaeda training video," apparently concerned that international terrorists may have to negotiate monkey bars and track hurdles when performing their evil deeds. As far as evil masterminds go, his cave lairs were a disgrace. Compare them to our own secret underground city where we plan to send our leaders in the event of an emergency. Now that's an underground lair fit for a Bond villain.

As far as lairs go, The Bat's pad is pretty sharp. Of course, in a Chor Yuen film almost everyone lives in luxurious digs. Even peasant dwellings look surreal and beautiful. This movie gives us not one, but three boat-palaces. You have Chu's place, which is quite nice, and you have the transport ship, which looks like it was inspired by all the intrigue on board the Orient Express of old. And then you have the yacht that comes by to pick up our heroes after a big battle, and that one's just as ornate as Chu's place. None of them reminded me in the least of my grandpa's bass boat, and at the time I always considered that to be one hell of a vehicle. The Bat's lair not only has all those booby trapped chambers and places where the architect seemed to be able to manipulate the powers of geology itself to form ice mountains and rivers, but he has a cool misty throne room full of wild lighting, various treasure chambers, and other alcoves and nooks where strange and beautiful things are placed.

As with Clans of Intrigue, every scene takes place on a Shaw Bros. studio set, allowing Chor Yuen total control of every aspect of the appearance of his film. And once again he drapes each frame in flower blossoms, flowing silks, lattice work, secret chambers, and grand banquet halls. Every inch is meticulously designed and detailed in the extreme. At no point does Yuen skimp on a set simply because we're not there for very long. He's never happy to go with the simpler, faster sets that many directors settled for. Even in the most inconsequential of places, Yuen goes to extravagant lengths to create overwhelming eye-candy.

But you can't build a movie on eye candy sets and a cool villain's lair alone. As with the first film, Legend of the Bat is carried by the complexity of the plot and the charisma of the leads. Ti Lung is grand as always, though in all honestly, he almost seems to be along for the ride this time around, content to simply hang around while all the other characters indulge in machinations and Machiavellian schemes. When the time is right, he steps up and doles out some sword-swinging justice, but since his character is the only one free of hidden agendas, he is in some ways the least interesting of the bunch. Clans of Intrigue had the same phenomenon - and I hesitate to call it a "problem" since the actions of all the other characters are so thoroughly engrossing. Chu's job is to cruise along, smirk, and do some killing when the time is right.

The rest of the characters are a wild bunch. Once again, we have the filial daughter out to save or avenge her father. We have the kungfu couple with noble hearts driven to commit evil deeds by the desperation of their situation. We have the unkempt guy who could be a vile thief or a noble hero. There's the mute guy, the amnesiac, a bunch of kungfu masters and clan leaders with dubious intentions, the mysterious Bat, and a glorious gang of butt-naked female assassins. With all those people running around and flying through the air, it's no surprise that our hero Chu is satisfied with just sitting back and watching it all unfold, allowing himself to get lost in all the insanity. We also have Derek Yee on hand, the good-looking younger brother of Ti Lung's frequent co-star David Chiang. Yee would go on to a lead role in Chor Yuen's Death Duel a few years later, as well as a starring role in the phenomenally bizarre Buddha's Palm, beore settling down to become a director of some acclaim with movies like Viva Erotica and C'est La Vie, Mon Cheri to his name. Yueh Wah returns from the first film as a different character, this time as one half of the doomed kungfu couple opposite Ching Li, also returning as a different character.

Unlike Clans of Intrigue, messing around with gender roles isn't a key ingredient. There are plenty of interesting female characters, but none as complex or engrossing as Betty Tei Pi from the first film. Ching Li is on hand to play the "pure" female hero (one of two, actually), though she's less active and entertaining than her more fight-active character Black Pearl from the first film. Still, she's one of my favorite Shaw leading ladies, so it's always a pleasure to see her in action. With Chor Yuen, we usually get multiple female leads, at least one "ice queen" villain and one "pure" heroine. The ice queen, of course, is the one most likely to shimmy out of her robes and give the fellers a show, while the pure heroine, conversely, keeps her clothes on and fights sometimes for justice, but usually out of a filial obligation to right some injustice done to her family. While Legend of the Bat has its fair share of women with questionable motives, it lacks any real, strong female antagonist. The female protagonists, on the other hand, are in abundance but not quite as complex or disturbed as heroines from other films. Not a bad thing, necessarily. I know Chu Liu-hsiang was probably tired of female heroes who spent the first half of the film trying to kill him (they only try to kill him a few times), and the women on hand are hardly poorly realized characters. The lack of any dynamically complex female characters on par with Betty Tei Pi's tragic queen of the martial underworld, Princess Yin-Chi, does keep this one just a notch below Clans of Intrigue in terms of characterization.

The story, however, is just as confusing and twisted as the first film. Characters pop up and disappear with frightening frequency, a carry-over trait from many works of Chinese literature where we not only got dozens of main characters, but also had many of them come and go with little or no warning. Ultimately, it's a more realistic portrayal of how people drift in and out of events and lives, often without fanfare or resolution to whatever conflicts involved them. On the minus side of things, however, you need a flow chart to keep track of who showed up when and jumped out of which window only to show up again at the very end with some grand revelation. The question is never who has something to hand or who will unveil an aforementioned grand revelation - everyone but Chu has at least a couple, even the seemingly minor characters. The question is always what the revelation will be, and just how zany is it? While the mysteries at the core of Lung Ku's stories - which are essentially detective novels dressed up in a swordsman's flowing robes - may lack focus, they certainly don't lack for entertainment value. Legend of the Bat is, like its predecessor a wonderfully written, if not totally believable, mystery-adventure. But then, are you going to worry about it being illogical for Character A to turn out Way C in a movie where old guys can chop their own arm off and then carry on a conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened to them?

The martial arts action, which is after all what draws many people to these movies, is on par with that from Chor Yuen's other accomplished films, though as with those, it is also not the central focus of the movie. We are, once again, set in the Martial World, which is always plagues with tumult. Some reviewers have commented that the concept of the Martial World, this bizarre intangible association of boxers and swordsmen, heroes and rakehells, is what keeps the films of Chor Yuen more inaccessible to Western audiences than those of Chang Cheh, where most of the plots involved revolting against evil government officials or avenging someone's death - stuff to which everyone can relate, or at least stuff everyone can understand. The Martial World, on the other hand, with all its secret societies and esoteric kungfu styles, is a concept more difficult to grasp.

I don't entirely agree. While it's true that there's nothing quite like the concept of the Martial World with its blend of intrigue and supernatural powers, it's also not entirely unlike the equally esoteric secret societies that comprise the Mafia underworld. And Mafia films are, needless to say, hugely popular and very well understood in the West. As with the Martial World, the underworld is full of sects and clans and families fighting each other for dominion over things that entirely understandable to the outside world, such as extortion turf and linen service rights. Like the heroes and villains of the Martial World, the underworld is full of tricky characters, double-crosses, and violent battles. The concept of the Martial World, then, is not so foreign as some might make it seem. The only real difference is that there was always a very low probability than Don Corlione would leap up from his leather chair, fly across the room, and blast some low level Mafioso with energy beams flowing from his palms. But he did have a pretty keen lair.

Chor Yuen's film usually focus on swordsman action, drawing as they do their inspiration from the classic wu xia films of the 1960s. The martial arts on display in Legend of the Bat are a wild and wonderful mixture of sword fights and kungfu clashes with plenty of supernatural abilities on display. People can punch through walls, jump over buildings, fight off dozens of attackers, and chop off their arm without giving it a second thought. Chu can walk without making any noise, and there's a blind character who can see and fight in the dark as well as his sight-gifted adversaries can in the light. There's nothing entirely over-the-top. No one shoots laser beams out of their eyes, and no one can really fly, but if you're looking for authentic, realistic martial arts action, a Chor Yuen film as about the last place you should be snooping around. His action pieces are as artfully crafted and highly stylized as his sets, and they are more things of grace and beauty than knock-down, drag-out acts of pugilism. Even with that said, the final duel is pretty brutal, and there are some wonderful, no-nonsense sword fights, particularly the one between Ti Lung and a whole gang of masked assailants.

If you liked Clans of Intrigue, or if you like any of Chor Yuen's mid/late 1970s swordsman films, then you're not going to be disappointed by Legend of the Bat. Byzantine plots, swordfights galore, beautiful women, handsome men, and exquisite sets make for another mind-blowing martial arts mystery. Ti Lung is wonderful, and he's the least interesting thing about the movie. It's a worthy follow-up to the first film, and it's a thoroughly pleasing slice of clever martial arts mayhem.

Anonymous Heroes is one of the films in the new batch of Shaw Brothers releases that very few people have seen since its initial theatrical release, which has proven to be a real shame. The Iron Triangle of Ti Lung, David Chiang, and director Chang Cheh are in prime form here in a film that may not be a classic but sure is a heck of a lot of fun. You know, if people dying by the dozens constitutes your idea of fun.

David Chiang plays an impish con man, which of course he did in about a thousand other movies as well. Ti Lung is his friend, a guy you can't really call a hothead since he always seems to be having such a good time when he starts fights. Along with their female sidekick Pepper, the trio of rascals are recruited to help a revolutionary steal a giant cache of weapons from the local warlord, who like all wrlords during this period in Chinese history, has a handlebar mustache. Given the prominence of a train in the film, I was waiting for him to twirl the stache and tie Pepper to the tracks. WHich might not have been entirely out of place since Anonymous Heroes possesses a very "Western" feel to it, and I mean "Western" as in cowboys and The Wild Bunch. Or Amitabh Bachchan and "Sholay."

In fact, comparisons to The Wild Bunch seem especially apt. Both films plant their anti-heroes in a pivotal time when lawlessness is giving way to petty warlords, which are n turn struggling to maintain their power against the rising national tides that would eventually bind the country together. Both have high bodycounts. Both feature the protagonists outwitting a bunch of soldiers for most of the film. The main difference, besides the clothes of course, is that ANonymous Heroes lacks the emotional punch and bleakness of Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent western. Chaing and Ti Lung are simply too playful for most of the movie for there to be any real emotional impact. Plus, this being a Chang Cheh film written by I Kuang, you have a 99% chance of guessing the eventual fate of the heroes anyway. Our hindsight into this probably saps it of some power as well.

But that doesn't stop it from being a tremendously enjoyable. Ti Lung and David Chiang shine with charisma, and even during some of the more contrived scenes (it sure is easy to steal 3000 guns from the army), their charm will win you over. The action consists mainly of our two heroes fighting a hundred people at once while Pepper stands in the corner and shoots the occasional officer (which is more than most women in a Chang Cheh film get to do). As is oftent he case with these films, the set-up makes it esy to suspend your disbelief and just go with the flow. It doesn't matter that "this would never happen in real life." You want to watch a movie full of things that could happen in real life? A movie full of people making Hot Pockets and filling out tax forms? Be my guest. I'm much happier watchign David Chiang and Ti Lung fend of entire regiments while armed with nothing more than a pistol, fists, and some hats they can continuously flip on and off their heads to look cool.

While Celestial has yet to really dip into the classic kungfu films like Five Masters from Shaolin or Master Killer, seeing more obscure gems like this is a real treat. This is going to be a good couple of years to be a kungfu film fan, and Anonymous Heroes is a fine example of why.

At the same time, or rather slightly before, in 1981, a wild bunch of Australians released a little film called Road Warrior, a sequel to a rather good, intense "society on the edge" film called Mad Max. Both the original and its sequel (let's all pretend there was never a third movie made, and the world will be a happier place) starred a handsome up-and-comer named Mel Gibson, and I feel safe in saying I expect big things from him at some point in his career. In much the same was as Conan, Road Warrior become a phenomenon and sparked an entire genre of post-apocalyptic movies features guys in shoulderpads driving around in the desert and shooting each other with crossbows.

Of course, most of these films lacked a few key elements that made Road Warrior such a hit. For one, Road Warrior was exciting and action-packed. Most of the imitators were not. For another thing, Road Warrior had good writing, good acting, good music, and a wild cast of characters. Max, our hero, was the classic spaghetti western antihero. And then you have the hooting feral kid with the razor blade boomerang, the goofy guy in the gyrocopter, the stunning female warrior with the Kim Novak eyebrow action going on, the little weasely guy who gets his fingers cut off, Vernon Wells with a pink mohawk and assless leather pants, that guy who went on to be in Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn, and of course, a bodybuilder in an iron Quiet Riot mask who carries his own set of loudspeakers around and calls himself The Humongous.

And need I even mention that this is the movie that gave us the phrase, "Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!" Even if the movie hadn't been good, that alone justifies its existence.

The legion of imitators, on the other hand, tended to lack these key components and were, instead, ninety or so minutes of sullen guys trying to pass bad acting off as end-of-the-world angst. You got cheap sets, lame stunts -- especially compared to the spectacular stunts in both Mad Max and Road Warrior -- and bland as dry white toast characters. And worst of all, in order to mimic Road Warrior as best they could, almost all of them are set in the desert, barring the offshoot genre where some muscular guy is in the Bronx (which shifted the rip-off material from Road Warrior to Escape from New York). It made sense for Road Warrior to be in the desert. After all, Australia has a lot of desert, and in the context of the film, we can assume that only a few people even bothered to brave the outback. It wasn't like the entire country moved into the desert. But if the film is set in America, why would everyone live in the desert? We have nice countryside, and last I checked, one of the many affects of a nuclear war was not changing everything into the Sahara Desert.

More than likely, they were just aping Road Warrior and also discovered it's a lot easier and cheaper to have your post-apocalypse in a desert than in a city. Sort of like one of those sci-fi films set a hundred years in the future but all the action takes place in "an amusement park designed to look exactly like a small American town in 1985."

Still, as stupid and cheap as many of these knock-offs were, which again seemed to come primarily from Italy, a lot of them were also tremendous amounts of fun. Their shoestring budgets and slapdash structure often resulted in some entertaining stuff, though not always entertaining in the way the makers might have intended. New Barbarians, despite everything that is wrong with it, is one of these entertaining films.

I've noticed that you can trace b-movie trends through the years simply by looking at an Italian director's filmography. Enzo Castellari started his career in spaghetti westerns, then in the 1970s moved on to low-budget black action films (with a couple really blatant Jaws rip-offs thrown in for good measure), and then into the exploding post-apocalypse film, where he actually made many of the genres more amusing and entertaining entries, including 1990: Bronx Warriors, Desert Warrior, Escape from the Bronx, and the movie we're here to discuss, New Barbarians.

Giancarlo Prete stars as Scorpio, since all post-apocalypse type guys have to have cool names like that. You don't ever hear about a guy named Mike saving a tribe from marauders. Prete worked with director Castellari on several films, and even managed to score a part in cult fave Ladyhawke. Scorpio is your typical wasteland wanderer. He has a suped-up car, though to be honest, most of the suping-up seems to consist of randomly attaching fins and little sticky-out bits of chrome to your car. However, we can tell Scorpio is a cut above some mullet working on his Camero in the front yard, because Scorpio had the good sense to install a keen green-tinted plastic observation bubble in his car. This, of course, serves no purpose whatsoever. In one of those boss custom vans with the Yaz artwork airbrushed on the side, you can use an observation bubble because the back of the van can get dark, and sometimes when your laying back there, sparking one up with your baby as you listen to Toto, you want to be able to stare up at the stars and talk about your dreams. Sure, we've all been there, right?

But this is a car. There are windows all round you. Why do you need an observation bubble? Well, I guess because it looks cool and he can turn the light on and get the slick green glowing effect. Who am I to question Scorpio? It's not like I've survived the end of the world or anything, though I did survive seeing Cats.

At this point, I need to get a little something off my chest. Like many of you, I was a child of the 1970s, and I cling to that notion and that decade as my heritage, primarily because I really hate that 1980s synth rock crap. Gary Numan my ass. Having been squeezed out in 1972, I feel I have enough conscious years during the 1970s under my belt to claim it as my fatherland. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying disco was good, because we all know disco was a fart straight from the sour bowels of Satan himself, and I'm not a big fan of feathered hair. But the 1970s gave us many wonderful things as I've discussed multiple times in other reviews and need not retread here.

With that established, I have to confess that as much as I may make fun of them, I sometimes really wish I had been one of those 1970s van guys. You know, I could drive my Chevy custom with a wizard brushed on the side out into the desert to just think and look at the stars. I could cruise around town listening to Skynard and James Taylor and Golden Earring, who I once saw play live at the Louisville Riverfront Festival along with Foghat. I could put the moves on my baby in the back, which would of course be done up with some boss, red shag carpet. I could wear tight jeans and smoke pot with friends while saying, "Dude, they are so right. We really are just dust in the wind." I could take my baby by the hand in the back of my Chevy van after making clumsy but sweet love to her, and give her the whole "Freebird" speech about how I'm a wandering spirit who can't be held down to any one place. She would understand, because she's cool that way, and one day she would stand on the edge of town, a lonely tear rolling down her cheek, as I kissed her good-bye, climbed into my van, and rambled on to the next town. "See ya around, Keith Allison," she'd say to herself as I disappeared into the setting sun.

Yes, the van guy -- philosopher morons. A dying breed in today's world of high tech computers, electronic music, and these Limp Bizkit fans with their piercing and their loud rudeness. In this modern age, there seems scarce little room for a lazy, introspective dreamer downing a Coors in the back of his van and really empathizing with the melancholy lyrics of "Beth." And I sit here, surrounded by mountains of steel and concrete, awash in a sea of technology that accomplishes nothing, drowning in a deluge of boundless information and no wisdom. I sit here, and I pine for the simpler days that passed me by. I sit here and I shed a solitary tear for the last of a dying breed, the van guy. To you I raise my glass and say, "carry on, my wayward son."

Scorpio is a van guy, or he would have been a van guy if the world hadn't ended. You can see it in his eyes. As things stand, however, he spends most of his time driving around aimlessly in the desert, making one wonder where he gets his gas (I get mine at the taco stand -- thank you and good night! You're a wonderful crowd! I'm here all week).

There's this bunch of goofball survivors who have a caravan of crappy "future" cars going through the desert. Then there are these guys called the Templars who, just like the actual Templars did when they started getting insane and corrupt, go around hassling people. The movie opens with the caravan under siege, and mere minutes into the film we get brutal yet incredibly fake looking decapitations and mass slaughter. That's a good way to open any film, and I wish more films opened with gory mayhem, especially films that deal with Meg Ryan and her struggle to find a meaningful relationship in this crazy modern world of ours (hint for Meg: look for a van guy). Now if You've Got Mail or Hanging Up started off with a scene of nomads being slaughtered, then maybe I'd be interested.

The Templars kill people in a variety of ways. Sure, there's the simple killing and stabbing and shooting, but why do just that when you can mount a razor blade fan on your running board and drive around chopping people in half with it? Sure, being able to use some of your weapons requires an amazingly coincidental set-up, but you know how people are. If you are trying to run them over with your razor blade fan dune buggy, they will oblige you by running slowly directly to the left of your car and will even stumble when you need them to so you get that good cleaver to the head effect.

So we can deduce that the Templars are not the nicest of fellows, but to be honest, how would you feel if you had to wear all white padded outfits with oversized shoulderpads? Scorpio has a couple run-ins with these guys, more by accident than as a result of him trying to help anyone out. We get the less-than-shocking realization that, at one time, Scorpio was a Templar himself, but turned his back on their cruel ways so he could drive around in the desert causing them grief. Along the way he picks up a sexy lady and Fred Williamson. Of course, if you have Fred Williamson, a sexy lady can't be far behind.

Fred, who had also worked with the director before on GI Bro (oh brother), plays Nadir, and obviously he's a total bad-ass in a casual way. When I think of all the action stars who I would not want to cross, Fred Williamson tops the list. The man is simply the paramount of outdated cool and tough. How can you not love a guy who, in the late 1990s answers the question "Have you ever thought of marketing and selling your trademark cigars?" with the reply (paraphrased from memory) "Hell no! What would I do if I saw some punk walking down the street smoking one of my cigars and looking like some sort of faggot?"

Williamson represents one of the film's key cool aspects. Usually, when a white hero has a black sidekick, the black guy is comic relief or, despite being better than the white guy, ends up captured and having to be rescued. Look at The Matrix. Does anyone honestly believe Lawrence Fishbourne needs Keaneu Reeves' help in a fight? I didn't think so. In New Barbarians however, Williamson kicks ass from start to finish and never once makes a mistake. He's the one who has to bail the white guy out, not the other way around. He's the one who doesn't need help, even though he's smart enough to take it when it's offered. And he shoots dynamite bow and arrows like Bo and Luke Duke! All hail Fred Williamson!

I can't remember a damn thing about the woman except Scorpio beds her at some point and she probably does get captured. She's not a very interesting part of the story.

Scorpio is also friends with a wily little juvenile mechanic played by Giovanni Frezza, known to cult film fans the world over as "Little Bob" from Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetery. At least this time around he hasn't been dubbed with the most annoying voice ever in the whole universe, so you can actually get to like him. He is the ace repairman who customizes Scorpio's car. Like Nadir, he's far more competent than Scorpio at pretty much everything you can think of. I started wondering why Scorpio was even the hero of the movie, since he's easily the least memorable of all the guys.

Eventually, Scorpio bungles his way into getting captured by the Templars, and the main Templar gets to give the whole, "Join us, and together we could rule the land!" speech, though you have to wonder why they are so intent on ruling a patch of very dead and worthless desert. When Scorpio refuses they tie him up and shock the whole audience by raping him. Yep, you heard right. Most sleazy action films, especially ones set after the fall of civilization, feature at least one woman getting raped, but how many have the bravado to leave the women alone and simply rape the male lead? Not too many, as I can recall, and while it's not "good," it was certainly unexpected and daring.

Back in college, I took a course on literature and war. In it, we read a short story in which the narrator was a member of a tribe of gorillas who descend into madness and warfare. Quite a good story, really, and an interesting study of how animals behave when faced with impossible odds. One of the many things the dominant male gorillas did as the violence progressed was to begin mounting lesser males. The same thing happens in prisons, of course. More times than not, it is not a sexual act, let alone a homosexual act. It's simply a desperate display of power. It's a way to showcase your dominance over weaker members of the tribe. I'm not saying that New Barbarians is by any stretch of the imagination dipping its toes into the pool of analyzing the human psyche and what happens to it when its plunged into an environment of progressively more violent decay. More than likely, they just thought it would be shocking and unusual to victimize the male hero for a change. But if I was backed into a corner and was unable to escape the question by flashing my eye spots, at least I have ammunition for the argument, though quite frankly, I can't imagine any instance where I'd be backed into a corner and forced to debate the social and psychological implications of Scorpio getting sodomized by a Templar.

Anyway, this gets Scorpio fired up for taking out the Templars once and for all. After escaping their evil clutches when they all take off to do a little massacring, Scorpio commissions Little Bob (okay, so that's not his name in this movie, but still...) to make him a see-thru bulbous plastic suit of armor. This is easily the most disturbing thing ever. Imagine, if you can, if you dare, a vaguely out of shape David Hasslehoff (more out shape than Hasslehoff himself) squeezing his hairy, oiled-up beefiness into a clear plastic container, then running around wearing nothing but a pair of bikini briefs underneath as he blows things up. That's pretty damn frightening, and I'm sorry for even planting the image in your head.

Scorpio gets help from Nadir and Little Bob, who actually do just about all the work and killing. Nadir has the explosive-tipped arrows, but rather than firing them, he just takes off the arrowheads and throws them at people. It seems a bit of overkill to use an entire stick of dynamite's worth of explosives for individual guys, but the end result is lots of exploding people, or rather, lot's of exploding mannequins. We're not talking high tech here.

While Little Bob and Nadir single-handedly take out the entire Templar army and save the caravan people, Scorpio lumbers about awkwardly in his little plastic outfit until the head Templar finally stumbles across him for the final showdown. Does Scorpio end the reign of terror, kill the Templar leader, then wander back off into the wasteland? Well, what do you think?

There are a lot of adjectives one could apply to this film, but the most appropriate seems to be "absurd." Scorpio is obviously a loser. Everyone in the whole world is more competent than he is. But hey, all he wants to do is drive his car, baby! For a post-apocalyptic world, things sure are easy to obtain. Williamson has an expensive patent leather outfit that looks shiny and new. No one seems to have any trouble finding endless amounts of ammunition for their exploding arrows and bullets, and no one is hurting for gasoline. And these are cool explosives people have. Sometimes they will blow up entire compounds, while other times they will just blow up a barrel. The head Templar's gun seems particularly versatile with the level of explosive action it can generate.

And I have to pull Road Warrior into the fray one more time. Max: dusty, torn-up leather outfit. Scorpio: trousers, a fuzzy Sonny Bono sheepskin vest, and then that frightful naked bubbleman outfit. And you wonder why not as many people remember Scorpio.

Of course it's the absolute absurdity of this film that keeps it entertaining, though the awkward but frequent violence and action certainly help out. I mean, the film makers really tried to have a lot of cool brutality and car stunts; it's just that they failed miserably every single chance they got, and that in itself is worth enjoying to no end. The acting is on par with what you'll see on display at your local community theater, and the Templars in particular are positively Renaissance Faire-esque in their talent. Fred Williamson is, as you would suspect, Fred Williamson. Who would tell him to do anything differently? And why would they want to in the first place? You cast Fred Williamson because you want Fred Williamson. When you want a bad-ass who never shows weakness and never makes a mistake, you cast Fred. When you want a spastic nerd, you cast Eddie Deezen. If you put them in the same movie, that's money in the bank. Unfortunately, Eddie Deezen is not in this film.

New Barbarians is bad. It's really bad. It's also amazingly entertaining and full of energy. Despite the cheapness on display and the ludicrous scenario, there's no denying that the film delivers plenty of action and violence, and the whole thing is tremendously fun. If you are looking to explore the polluted waters of post-apocalypse films, then the work of Enzo G. Castellari are the perfect place to start, and this is one of his wildest, most enjoyable films.

It wasn't always like that, though. Most of the elements in these martial arts films that we take for granted - the cranky teacher, the sassy student, the goofy kungfu style - are all rooted in ancient literature and performance but are relatively new to film, or as new as anything born in the 1970s can be. The martial arts have a long tradition of comedic elements being woven into stories about them, and most of this stems from the popularity of the Monkey King, Sun Wu-kong, whose immortal hijinks and kungfu clowning have pleased audiences for generations. Born in the epic 16th century mythology novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng-en, the character of the Monkey King was a wise-cracking rebel with little regard for the politics and protocols of Heaven. Put him in charge of a sacred garden full of peaches of immortality, and all he's gonna do is get drunk, eat all the peaches, and stumble on over to Lao Tzu's place for more hijinks. Monkey was rude, disrespectful, and impish. For that, he became one of the most beloved literary figures of all time.

Peking Opera troupes frequently did performances revolving around some prank or other that Monkey was involved in and audiences ate it up with the same voracious appetite Monkey himself displayed when he took care of that holy peach garden. Stories about Monkey allowed the performers to incorporate a variety of acrobatic stunts and hijinks that, in turn, delighted audiences. Plus, it was a nice break from all the serious romantic tragedies people usually had to endure.

Inspired by the success of the Monkey King on page and stage, street performers also started working comedy into their routines. After all, watching some serious guy stand on the corner and twirl his sword might be interesting for a little bit, but after a while you're going to tire of the scowl and wander off to check out the guys who are shouting, doing flips, and generally turning their acrobatic martial arts displays into a block party. It simply made for better theater.

When motion picture creation rolled around in the early years of the 20th century, Hong Kong's first films were little more than stage plays on camera. Drama progressed, but martial arts films remained fairly theatrical in their presentation until men like Kwan Tak-hing revolutionized the way people thought about making kungfu films. When the modern era of martial arts filmmaking began in the 1960s with the Shaw Brothers wu xia (swordsman) films, whatever sense of humor the Monkey King had instilled in the martial arts was drained entirely. The Shaw Brothers films were blood-soaked tragedies full of feudal honor and revenge. Things rarely worked out well for the characters, and while many of the films were exceptional, no one is going to sit around and tell you that Trail of the Broken Blade is a raucous comedy.

When martial arts movies started making the transition from swordsmen films to kungfu films in the 1970s, the grim tone was carried over. Jimmy Wang Yu and Lo Lieh, two of the biggest star of the wu xia era, were also two of the first men to start making kungfu films. Jimmy Wang Yu made Chinese Boxer and Lo Lieh was hot on his heels with Five Fingers of Death. Although the focus shifted from knights in white tunics to gritty hand-to-hand combatants, the somber tone and tragic elements were still prevalent. It wasn't until Bruce Lee came on the scene that people started thinking about adding some laughs to the mix to lighten things up.

It's interesting that one of the criticisms of Lee by people who are generally unfamiliar with his work was that he had an imposing screen presence but was weak when it came to lightness and comedy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did Bruce Lee completely change the way kungfu films were choreographed by introducing technique when previously most films just had their combatants waving their arms at each other, but he also helped alter the overall tone of the kungfu film. He alerted people to the fact that even I a relatively serious film, you could still get some belly-laughs. Nowhere was this more evident than in the movie he wrote, directed, and starred in, Way of the Dragon.

The humor wasn't exactly high-brow. It was bathroom humor - literally. But respectable or not, it was something new. You wouldn't catch Jimmy Wang Yu putting squat toilet sight gags in one of his films. Unfortunately, Lee's career was cut tragically short, so we'll never know exactly where he might have taken the genre, but the seeds he planted forever changed things. After Lee's passing, a new generation of actors and directors were set to take over the scene, and they brought with them a sense of humor that was in sharp contrast to the brutal, romantic films of the first half of the 1970s.

Chief among the new stars was a rotund fella by the name of Sammo Hung. Hung had cut his teeth as a member of a Peking Opera troupe alongside other rising stars like Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, and some guy named Jackie Chan. Where as the previous generation of martial arts stars, those who came before Bruce Lee, had generally been classically trained actors with little prior knowledge regarding the martial arts, Sammo represented the new breed whose doors had been opened by Bruce. Sure, he was trained as an actor and acrobat, but like many members of the Peking Opera school, Sammo supplemented his theatrical training with hardcore martial arts training. By the time he left the school to pursue a film career, Sammo was an accomplished fighter, choreographer, stunt man, writer, and even director.

Perhaps even more than Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung possessed a natural understanding of what making a kungfu film meant. He understood the difference between what worked in a real fight and what looked good on screen. He understood how to make moves and styles that were too outrageous to work in real life seem completely believable in the context of a film. Given his background as a performer and martial artist, it's no surprise that he also brought with him a Monkey King like sense of warped humor. Although his early jobs as a stuntman and fight choreographer earned him a reputation as one of the best in the business, it wasn't until he wielded enough power to really shape a film in his image that the revolution began. 1977's Iron-Fisted Monk, the first film directed by Sammo, set a new standard for fight choreography, revealing to people that Sammo's talent as both a fighter and a choreographer had only been hinted at in his previous films.

At the same time, Sammo's classmate Jackie Chan was wandering down the same road toward kungfu hijinks. Chan starred in a series of go- nowhere kungfu films under the directorial lead of Lo Wei, but in 1976 the duo collaborated on a screwball kungfu film called Half a Loaf of Kungfu, and suddenly things were looking up. Instead of trying to pass Chan off as a serious presence, the movie allowed him to ham it up in a variety of silly situations. Chan was able to tap into his inner Monkey King, and the results, while not entirely classic, were certainly worth noting. 1977's Spiritual Kungfu followed the same basic formula.

In 1978, though, it all boiled over.

In that year, Jackie Chan starred in Drunken Master, directed by Yuen Wo-ping, and Sammo Hung directed and starred in Warriors Two. Kungfu films had been incorporating more and more comedic elements into their goings-on, but these two movies more than anything pushed the whole thing over the edge and gave official birth to the kungfu comedy as we know it today. Drunken Master laid out the formula that would become far and away the most used plot in the subgenre, that of the curmudgeonly old master, the lazy disrespectful student, and their eventual need to work together to defeat some seeming insurmountable evil.

While the plot of Drunken Master may serve as the basis for nearly every kungfu comedy that would follow, it was the mental state of Sammo Hung that would provide the genre with it's dominant tone. Sammo's films have always been possessed of a certain degree of schizophrenia. On more than one occasion, a scene that starts out as a study in slapstick physical comedy will suddenly turn deadly serious and tragic without any warning. I don't pretend to know what goes on in the mind of Sammo Hung, but at least a portion of it is prone to sudden turns of dark moodiness. This split personality approach to a film would become the prevailing mood of most kungfu comedies. In one scene, the madcap hijinks are flying left and right, and in the next scene, with no transition or warning, things become heavy.

In 1979, director Joe Cheung tried his hand at the kungfu comedy with the film Incredible Kungfu Master, starring a well-respected but not well-known martial arts actor by the name of Tung Wei. When last we saw Tung Wei, he was getting slapped on the head by Bruce Lee and lectured about not staring at the finger when you should be marveling at all the heavenly glory. The movie was a bug success, thanks in no small part to the fact that it starred Sammo Hung, who was one of the two hottest properties in the business at the time, possibly the hottest since he was the total package where Jackie Chan was still considered primarily just an actor. Hot on the heels of their success, the Tung Wei - Joe Cheung tried it again with 18 Fatal Strikes, a less successful but still enjoyable entry into the kungfu comedy genre which unfortunately got lost in the shuffle that year since there were roughly ninety-three thousand similar movies made at the same time. Still, the fact that it was a relatively low-key affair adds to its charms, and it stands up well as an example of everything that is good and bad about the genre as a whole.

The story is a study in the kungfu comedy formula. Tung Wei stars as Shou Tung, a lazy bumpkin who whiles away the hours on what appears to be a twig farm with his brother Tai Pei. Tai is played by none other than Shih Tien, whose name may not be familiar but whose face certainly is. The guy was a fixture in damn near every kungfu comedy that got made, usually as some sniveling conniver who taunts the hero endlessly. He is in a slightly different role here, but he still manages to whine a lot. One day while the brothers (or half-brothers, I guess - they have different mothers) are out collecting twigs, or rather while Tai Pei is collecting twigs and Shou Tung is sleeping, they happen across a badly wounded monk who, as we learn in the film's opening scene, is one of the great leaders of the rebellion against the Ch'ing dynasty.

The monk Wang apparently got on the wrong side of Ch'ing heavy Wong Wu Ti, whose utterly bizarre "Shaking Eagle" fist is well nigh invincible, not to mention incredibly annoying. Any time he busts out the style, Wong Wu Ti prefaces it by shaking around like a Bollywood dancer and making a sound not unlike what you hear if you dump a bag full of broken glass on a concrete floor. This in itself isn't so bad, but whoever did the dubbing for this movie makes Wong Wu Ti emit the most grating, ludicrous "whooo hoo wooo aahhh" noises I've ever heard. Kungfu film fans expect goofy noises from dubs, and heck, often from the originals, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a more ludicrous sounding cacophony that what Wong Wu Ti rattles off. I'm guessing that his style is so effective because, upon seeing some dude with long white hair bust out the "shaking my tits with arms wide open" move you expect from your more mundane strippers while he hoots like a total buffoon, even the best trained martial artist doubles over with laughter, thus leaving himself open to a fatal blow from the man acting like a chicken. His style makes the technique and gibberish of Rudy Ray Moore seem subtle and refined by comparison.

Shou Tung takes the monk home while Tai Pei delays searching soldiers. Back in their hovel, Shou Tung engages in a variety of hilarious exchanges in which he looks at the monk, and the monk grimaces and spits blood in his face. Oh, the wackiness! Nothing is funnier than having a dying monk spit blood in your face. What's really odd is that it never occurs to Shou Tung that wiping the blood off might be a good thing. Perhaps he knows that monk is just going to execute the gag again, so there's no real point. This does, however, illustrate one of the key elements in kungfu comedy - that being that the comedy is rarely all that funny. A monk spitting up blood isn't normally considered a source of amusement outside of a Gwar concert, and likewise, many of the situations played for comedic effect in kungfu comedies aren't especially funny. Some of them are downright serious. The comedy doesn't come from the situation, but rather it comes from the reaction. Okay, so a monk spits up blood on someone. Not a big deal. But when that someone reacts by making a silly face while "wah wah wahhhhh" music plays, we're clued in to the fact that this is all supposed to be a reason to chuckle, so chuckle we do.

Most kungfu comedies rely on the mugging of the star and generic comedy music to relay the fact that something funny is going on. Jackie Chan became a true master of mugging for the camera - to the point where it almost became the only thing he was able to do. Plentiful are the scene sin which something would be relatively straight-forward and serious if the star didn't follow it up by making the funny "it's a living!" face while someone dubs in a rim shot or something. 18 Fatal Strikes is no different. Almost all of the comedy is derived not from a funny instance, but from a funny face following an otherwise normal occurrence. Thus, a monk with severe internal bleeding becomes the source of much frivolity.

Another aspect of the comedy in kungfu comedies is that jokes often get driven into the ground. No sooner do we think the whole blood- spitting monk thing has been played out than Tai Pei comes home so he, too, can have blood spit in his face.

Shou Tung and Tai Pei also fulfill the requirements of a hero in a kungfu comedy. Both are interested in the martial arts, but neither is very good. They're too lazy to practice, and as a result, their kungfu is about on par with that of David Carradine. Few and far between are the kungfu comedies devoid of the bumpkin hero, and that's because people like bumpkin heroes. We can laugh at them, but we can also cheer for them. Heck, Shou Tung is basically a farm boy who dreams of fighting in the rebellion and one days meets a wise old master who serves as his teacher. Just call him Luke Skywalker, probably the most famous of all bumpkin heroes. Luke even whines like the bumpkin hero of a kungfu comedy. He wants to go to the Tashi Station to pick up some power converters; Shou Tung wants to go into town to buy some steam buns.

Shou Tung and Tai Pei also fulfill the "odd couple" relationship with their master. Where as the classic films of the 1960s and early 1970s relied on a feudal sense of honor and reverence toward the master on behalf of the student, the students in the comedies of the late 1970s were often far more Monkey King-esque in their relationship with their master. They lie, cheat, and try to scheme their way out of hard training. The master, in return, generally pronounces them as being "goddamned useless!" Heck, the Monkey King even ate his master once! Instead of the traditional code of loyalty, the kungfu comedy takes the hustling capitalist approach to martial arts training. The student will do anything it takes to get ahead.

Such a drastic change in attitude was brought about partly because of the change in the economic situation of real-life martial artists during the 1960s. At the end of the decade, as the wu xia genre waned and the kungfu film had yet to be fully born, a lot of professional martial artists suddenly found themselves falling upon hard times. Interest in the arts waned amongst the public, and what had once been a decent job as a teacher or as an actor suddenly fell apart. Kungfu masters had to adapt, and many of them did so by falling in with triads, by doing what it took for them to survive with the skills they had. It's one of the many factors that contributed to the rise of gangland involvement in the Hong Kong film industry.

When the brothers discover that their favorite lady at the local restaurant is also part of the rebellion, they themselves find their roles becoming increasingly entangled with the political players. This means they suffer some mighty beatings at the hands of Wong Wu Ti's henchmen. Abbot Wang aggress to teach the brothers the eighteen secret styles of the Lo Han fist, Shaolin's greatest fighting technique, although he himself only knows a few of them. I guess they'll just wing the others. Unfortunately, the use of the Lo Han form tips off the bad guys that Shou Tung and Tai Pei are hanging out with the monk. In order to convince them to turn over the rebel leader, Wong Wu Ti's cronies murder Tai Pei's one true love, and then fulfill the "Sammo schizophrenia" even further by murdering Tai Pei himself!

Quite a twist, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. After all, if we continue to look at 18 Fatal Strikes as an example of all the conventions of the kungfu comedy, Shou Tung has to experience a tragic loss that causes him to find the determination to become a great kungfu master in order to seek revenge. Kungfu comedy heroes generally find themselves caught up in situations where they have very little at stake personally. Before meeting the monk, the duo is simply living in their own carefree little world. Sure they know about the ongoing rebellion against the Ch'ing dynasty, but it's not exactly something that affects their lives any more than the Ch'ing dynasty itself affects their lives. Even after meeting Abbot Wang, their relation to the greater forces at work is tangential. It is only when a tragedy befalls one of the characters that resolve is discovered. At that point, however, it is still a personal matter far more than it is a political one. Shou Tung doesn't fight Wong Wu Ti in the name of revolution. He does so out of a desire for personal revenge.

The finale is also a perfect example of what makes the kungfu comedy tick. Up to this point, we've seen very little of Wong Wu Ti other than in the beginning and at a point here and there throughout the film, often doing nothing more than sitting in his fancy throne. Who sells these evil kungfu masters their thrones, anyway? They all seem to have one. In a kungfu comedy, the villain is usually outlandish and, after the student and the teacher, is the most important character despite the fact that he generally has very little screen time. This is done in order to preserve the mystique of the character, to avoid overexposing him to the audience. Wong Wu Ti is much cooler when there is an air of menace and mystery about him. When we do see him, he has a tendency to constantly leave his victims for dead when, in fact, they were just playing possum. How many times is this guy going to fall for that trick?

To draw another parallel to Star Wars, take a look at Boba Fett. That guy does next to nothing in the entire movie, until a blind guy bumps into him and he gets eaten by an immobile hole in the sand. The very fact that he has next to no screen time is what allows the character to maintain the air of being a total bad-ass. The only different is that in kungfu comedies, the villain eventually leaps up in the final scene to prove how tough he is. Boba Fett just screamed like a little girl and fell in a hole. The less we see of Boba Fett, the better off his character is.

Kungfu comedies also exist in a time vacuum. From the first time we meet Wong Wu Ti, to the final frame of the film, we're given no indication about how much time passes. Once the plot is established, everything remains static. The world does not change. By all accounts, the series of events in the film should take years, but it could just as easily take place in a matter of days or weeks. Time is irrelevant. Wong Wu Ti sits in the same garishly lit throne room until it's time for him to go out and die in the final fight scene.

This warp happens partly because of limited budgets. Kungfu comedies are largely character driven, even if those characters are broad clichés, because the limited time, money, and locations available to the average Hong Kong film production were severely limited. You can't track the progress of a countrywide revolution on the back lots of a studio. 18 Fatal Strikes was a decent enough production, thanks no doubt to the success of Incredible Kungfu Master, that they could afford some location shooting for some scenes, but for the most part it was limited in scope. In these circumstances, the characters drive the story, and all other considerations, including historical accuracy or the passage of time, become irrelevant. That's why you can have so many films set during the Ch'ing dynasty but completely devoid of the baldhead and pigtail haircut that was required by law. Some films at least paid lip service to the historical facts by pasting a pigtail onto the end of the star's regular hair, but simply figured that historical details like that were less important than having the actor available to shoot another film a week later that was set in modern times.

Timewise, all that is important to a kungfu comedy are the three stages of the plot. Those stages are the only real way in which the passage of time is handled. Stage one revolves around introducing and establishing the character of the carefree protagonist. Stage two contains a steady build-up of action that builds up the conflict between the hero and the villain. The third stage sees the conflict resolved as it should be: through kungfu fightin'. As long as the film progresses through these stages, the actual duration of events is inconsequential. This is why so many kungfu comedies, 18 Fatal Strikes among them, end almost the very second the hero lands the fatal blow on the villain. That blow was the goal of the entire film, and once it is over, the universe in which the film exists ceases to be.

18 Fatal Strikes is a good example of the kungfu comedy genre because it fulfills all the requirements, showcases the strengths of the formula, and also spotlights the weaknesses. The strengths come primarily from the characters and the action. Tung Wei and Shih Tien are both fabulous in their roles as wisecracking hillbillies thrust into a national political struggle. Although few people seem to talk about him nowadays, Tung Wei was a decent actor and a great martial artist. He's easy to identify with because he's not that big and not that handsome. He's a regular Joe, physically built sort of like me except that where he had six smaller, harder muscles in his abdominal region, I have one larger, softer pillow. He's also an accomplished choreographer, and the fights here are superb. While they may not be up to the lofty standards of Sammo Hung at his best in films like Warriors Two or Prodigal Son, Tung Wei and crew throw together some impressive, fast-paced, hard- hitting action. Except for the whole "Shaking Eagle" style, most of what we get is a fairly straightforward variation of authentic Shaolin forms. That in itself sets 18 Fatal Strikes apart from the larger pack of kungfu comedies, which are full of "Rubbish Fist" and "Happy Style."

Another thing that makes 18 Fatal Strikes a little different is the inclusion of Ms. Sheng, a virtuous and accomplished female fighter. Kungfu comedies are notoriously misogynistic, and women in the films are generally given nothing more than to do than shriek like harpies or be kind and demure up to the time when they get murdered. 18 Fatal Strikes does have the demure girl who gets murdered, but it also has a woman who can hold her own in a fight. While we get to see similar characters in movies like Half a Loaf of Kungfu and the films of Liu Chia- liang, it was still a rarity that a movie was made in the mold that didn't feature a shrew as the lead female.

Aside from that, though, 18 Fatal Strikes is formula kungfu comedy through and through. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you. After all, something becomes a formula because it generally works well. And 18 Fatal Strikes may be flawed, but it's also satisfying and entertaining. It's biggest weakness is indicative of the biggest weakness in all kungfu comedies - the inability to make the comedy work with the seriousness. At his best, Sammo Hung was able to make the two work, even if their coexistence was an often jarring affair. Most directors, however, ended up with an awkward mix of slapstick hijinks and tragic seriousness. 18 Fatal Strikes certainly suffers from this, but not so much that it proves fatal to the film. It's still a problem, though, and in fact it's a problem that continues to plague Hong Kong films to this day. The humor of the film is undercut by the tragic deaths of Tai Pei and his girlfriend, and the emotional impact of such sad events is similarly subverted by all the mugging and hamming that's been going on. The end result simply doesn't mesh together.

Still, you come to expect that from most kungfu comedies, and you can overlook it so long as the movie delivers the goods on other levels. 18 Fatal Strikes does just that. A simple but effective story and top-notch kungfu choreography more than make up for the clumsy handling of humor and tragedy. It's not a classic of the genre, but it's a good workhorse example of what it has to offer. The Monkey King would probably enjoy it.

Now before you fire off an angry email telling me how great Tony Leung is, keep in mind that I am not referring to the Tony Leung who starred in Ashes of Time. Nor am I referring to the Tony Leung who starred in Tom, Dick, and Hairy. No, feeling that the Hong Kong film industry wasn't complete with just two guys calling themselves Tony Leung, writer-director Leung Hung-wah decided that he too would become Tony Leung, joining an ever-growing cast of characters favoring that particular name combination.

Leung Hung-wah got his start in the early 1980s as an actor in a few films not many people remember. In 1986, he penned his first screenplay, Ghost Snatchers, which starred Michael Wong and Sammo Hung's knock-out (in more ways than one) wife Joyce Godenzi. When Leung crossed over into directing, his interest in low-budget horror films became apparent. Mystery Files was his first directorial effort, and in 1999 he followed it up with A Wicked Ghost, an obvious though entirely dismissible attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Japanese horror film The Ring.

As anyone who has tested the waters of the world of Hong Kong horror well knows, it's a strange place even in the world of horror. Action, kungfu, melodrama, slapstick comedy, and chills are often thrown together in a mish-mash of styles that rarely work well together, giving one the impression of watching several different movies at once, sort of like those Thomas Tang/Godfrey Ho ninja movies. Although there are several good Hong Kong horror films - most notably Chinese Ghost Story and Mr. Vampire -- even those are difficult to accept as pure "horror" within the boundaries set by Western expectations. Chinese Ghost Story is more a fantasy film, and Mr. Vampire is as much a kungfu comedy as it is any sort of horror film.

Part of this vast difference in approaches can simply be attributed to the fact that tastes around the world vary. Chinese audiences have different expectations of what a horror film should be like, and since they have a wealth of local mythology from which to draw, there's no real need to plumb the depths of Western genre traditions for ideas. Hopping vampires may not be scary to Western audiences, but how scary is some old count in an opera cape to your average cranky old Chinese guy? For every werewolf there is a Fox spirit; for every zombie there is, well, a kungfu zombie. For every Medusa there is a witch whose head comes off and flies around the room screaming at you.

On the opposite side of the coin is Japan, a country which embraced Western definitions of horror and ran with them so successfully that, in the view of many people, Japan has become the preeminent producer of the world's finer horror films now that the Americans and Italians have run out of ideas. Japan and the West have always had closer relations than China and the West (that whole World War II incident not withstanding). It hasn't always been a smooth relationship, but it's always been a relationship. Western film had a big influence on Japanese films, and Japanese films, in turn, ended up having just as big an influence on The West. Throw a rock in a video store, and there's a good chance you'll knock over two Don "The Dragon" Wilson movies and at least one film that steals plot points from an Akira Kurosawa film.

Japan's approach to horror was to take Western influences and put a decidedly Japanese spin on them. Nobuo Nakagawa revolutionized the genre with films like Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan and Jigoku, one of the world's first "splatter" films. They are distinctly Japanese, but they're also familiar to fans of classic horror films. Hell, a good ghost story is a good ghost story regardless of whether the people in it are wearing kimonos or overcoats. Japan continued to play with classical notions of horror, tweaking them enough so that they were unique and fresh while still not being completely alien to foreign viewers in the way many Hong Kong productions were.

In 1999, the film The Ring hit the screens and threw gasoline onto a smoldering fire that had been started by films like Wizard of Darkness, Birth of the Wizard, and by the horror comics of HP Lovecraft-influenced Junji Ito. Japanese film and manga makers discovered that Japanese girls have a voracious appetite for tales of horror, especially when the protagonists are people they can relate to - namely, other girls. That this whole batch of books, comics, and movies gets dubbed 'schoolgirl horror" is somewhat misleading, conjuring up as it does images of tales roughly on the level of an RL Stine book. On the contrary, many of the films are quite good, quite scary, and surprisingly gory. They are a natural progression from the fact that horror has often favored female protagonists. The big difference is that the gals in these films were less likely to do incredibly stupid things thanks to the fact that the writers creating them were far better than your average slasher script penman.

In the wake of The Ring's success, the whole genre acquired mainstream appeal, and "Ring" movies themselves became something of a cottage industry. A sequel to the original was put into production under the name Raisen or Spiral (not to be confused with another schoolgirl horror film, Uzumaki, which can be translated as meaning "Spiral"). Ring director Hideo Nakata, who was not involved in the sequel, didn't like the way it carried on the vision of his film, and so he set out to make his own official sequel, simply known as Ring 2. There was a television series, a third "prequel" called Ring 0: Birthday, and a Korean adaptation of the same original novel called Ring Virus.

Somewhere amid all the noise was Tony Leung with his Wicked Ghost film. Along with Bio-Zombie, it's one of the few Hong Kong horror films to bear a resemblance to the style preferred by the Japanese and Western horror films, though there's enough esoteric Chinese superstition in it for it to maintain its own cultural identity. While not exactly a rip-off of The Ring, A Wicked Ghost certainly steals willy-nilly from the superior Japanese film as it weaves its own mythology of an angry ghost lashing out from beyond the grave. The most obvious example is the appearance of the ghost itself, which manifests as a pale white woman with long, ragged black hair hanging in front of her face. Similarities to Sadako from Ring are unavoidable. She even has the same weird herky-jerky way of walking.

The plot steals the same basic structure as well, though to its credit, it does change it enough so as not to be a complete act of plagiarism. Trouble begins immediately when a group of friends are playing one of those "let's summon up some ghosts" type games at a party. The game requires them to each slit their finger, drip blood into a bowl of water then take turns drinking it. You know, I played my share of supernatural ghost-summoning games when I was younger, and I have to say that I draw the line at any game that involves slicing my finger and drinking the blood of my pals. Most people I know are hesitant to even drink from the same cup as one of their friends, let alone gleefully consume a mixture of their precious bodily fluids. When you add to it the fact that you have to mix in "some oil from a dead body," it really just becomes time to call it a night. It's not even that it has anything to do with being afraid of ghosts; there just have to be better games you can play with your friends than ones involving you drinking dead body oil and blood.

One of the friends, Ming, seems to agree with me, and he'll have none of this drinking of bloody water and corpse oil. His friends go ahead with the fun, and before too long, ghostly wind blows through the apartment and one of the friends, a guy named Rubbish, has died of extreme fright after seeing a ghost. His face is frozen in an expression meant to convey either "I am terrified beyond the comprehension of mortals" or "I'm hungry." Just as the impetus for the action - a group of friends who invoke an otherworldly force and are then mysteriously killed off - mimics the same basic plot from Ring about a group of friends summoning a similar force after watching a cursed videotape, so too is the horrified expression a somewhat less effective imitation of the look of fear all the victims in Ring take with them to the grave.

Continuing to pull wildly from Ring the movie introduces Ming's reporter sister, Cissy (Gigi Lai), and her (seemingly) ex-boyfriend, Mo, a teacher who seems to possess psychic powers and an uncanny though very handy knowledge of all things supernatural. Similarities between them and female reporter Reiko and her ex-husband and resident psychic teacher and expert on the paranormal, Ryuji, is purely coincidental. Mo is played by one of the better actors to never really hit the big-time, Francis Ng. He's got talent enough to lend an air of credibility to an otherwise outlandish film, although his effectiveness here was somewhat undermined by the fact that the film did not shoot with synch sound (as was common in Hong Kong up until a year or so ago) and the original actors did not do their own dubbing in post-production. So instead of Francis Ng, you get someone doing a weird soft-spoken Francis Ng impersonation.

At one point, the film even shows a second-long clip of the disturbing Sadako video from Ring, though it has nothing to do with the actual plot. There's also the old man who is the key to figuring out much of the mystery, a body that needs to be properly laid to rest in order to end the curse, and the revelation at some point that what they thought was the answer was, in fact, wrong. For people who have seen Ring, the greater plot is very familiar indeed, and that hurts the film. It hurts mainly because this movie is no Ring, and having so many images and elements lifted from the superior film means you're going to sit there for much of the film thinking about how much better Ring was.

Ming and Mo figure out that the spirit-raising game has summoned an angry ghost who is tricking everyone into killing themselves. Efforts to figure out a way to stop the ghost are confused when people with no connection t the game start dying as well. And why is it that Ming, who didn't take part in the game, can see the ghost? As in Ring, it becomes a race against the clock to solve the mystery before it claims the lives of more people. Although built in pretty much the same fashion as the plot from Ring the writing here is not entirely derivative. There are some fairly unique twists and surprises that keep the movie from being a complete joke. Although undermined by the huge amount of cribbing of images and scenes the film does, somewhere beneath the Ring-exploitation was a halfway decent story that never got a fair chance.

Mo's weird little crackpot theories about the transference of emotion are actually somewhat interesting within the context of the film, though I always wonder why every professor in every horror or sci-fi film is always featured in a lecture scene during which they're espousing some half-baked pet hypothesis. I had my fair share of crackpot professors, but none of them spent the entire class period rambling on about the "the lost amulet of Nagath-nor" or anything like that. Yet film professors are always on about something similar. Mo's lecture is about how emotion can become a sort of energy that can be transferred from one source to another. That's why we feel sad when we watch a sad movie or feel angry when we watch Saving Silverman. As far as crackpot theories go, it's not a bad one, and it ties in well with the plot of the movie revolving around a murder victim (who was an actress, just to keep the theme going) who transfers her rage in the form of a ghost.

The most notable different between the films is in the female reporter. While Reiko was the driving force behind the action in The Ring, Cissy's role here is more or less disposable. She's there to shout at her brother for hanging out with people who summon demons, and she's there to be a convenient link between Ming and Mo. The love triangle between her, Mo, and her fiancée Jack attempts to give her character some reason for being in the film, but it's never really developed to the point that it matters much. When Mo accepts the ghost's curse alongside Cissy in the end so he can help her survive the attack, it could just have easily happened without the underdeveloped subplot involving Jack. The subplot doesn't hurt the film; it just doesn't add much to it.

With Cissy relegated to the ranks of screaming woman, her brother Ming, who works closely with Mo to unravel the mystery surrounding just what ghost it is they've awakened, picks up the action. Although he's on screen a lot, Ming fails to develop into an interesting character. When the plot throws us one it's many somewhat successful curveballs toward the end, the fact that it involves a character as bland as Ming saps it of some of the power. Additionally, the fact that almost no character other than Mo generates any sort of sympathy means that the movie fails to create any sense of urgency or tension. With Ring, a mounting sense of hysteria grew from the fact that we actually liked Ryuji and Reiko, and we even liked their weird little son. We didn't want to see them succumb to the curse. We wanted to see them succeed, and we wanted that because the film took time to establish positive character traits for them. With Wicked Ghost, we meet most of the cast during the séance, and their next scene is the one in which they die. In between, there is nothing to make us feel like we should care one way or the other.

Even with all his screen time, Ming doesn't fare much better. Part of the problem again is the dub job. Dubbing Hong Kong movies was pretty much the way things were done, and still are for most low-budget productions. It was a practical decision more than anything. Shooting synched sound is expensive, for one. Since Hong Kong films were seen by as many Mandarin speakers as they were Cantonese speakers, and since the differences between the two dialects make them more or less different languages, the films would be dubbed anyway for the Mandarin speakers. Not shooting with sound also meant that multiple productions could occupy the same limited real estate in Hong Kong for location work. Most of the time, the actors would come in and do their own voices, and the end effect was such that you could hardly tell. Sometimes, certain actors would even dub their own Mandarin tracks as well. And of course, Jet Li was almost always dubbed by someone else regardless of the language, because he has a chipmunk voice.

Why they went with entirely different actors to do the dubbing in Wicked Ghost is beyond me. How expensive can Gigi Lai and Gabriel Harrison (Ming) be? A good actor can survive a bad dub job, which is why Francis Ng emerges in fair condition, but Gabriel Harrison is pretty green, and his facial expressions and body language are not effective enough to compensate for the lackluster dubbing. In one scene, as he watches his girlfriend become possessed by the ghost and attempt to kill herself by eating a party mix of pills, the general idea is that he's too paralyzed by fear to simply rush over and stop her. The weak voice work combined with Gabriel's pouty expression make it come across as if he's simply too lazy or unconcerned to walk across the room and deal with the problem. The viewers have to keep reminding themselves that there's a ghost in the room, because the movie itself fails to communicate that.

Looking scared is harder than you might think. Your average terrified person doesn't stop to make a mental note of how their face contorts when they're seized by terror. The common manifestation is to simply scream and scrunch your nose up. If you've ever been really scared, and I mean really really scared, you know that screaming is one of the least likely reactions to the situation. It's actually a lot subtler, and Gabriel Harrison hasn't got it down yet. Hiroyuki Sanada has a wonderful look of terror at the end of Ring when he has his revelation about the ghost. It's a face twitch and a look of bewildered horror that is beautifully communicated. When you see it, you can nod and go, "Yep, that's the look of a terrified man." Although it's an unlikely source, another of film's greatest looks of terror comes in the beginning of Ghostbusters. When Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis are running out of the library after being frightened by a ghost, the "I'm about to puke" look of panic on Akroyd's face is priceless, and even though it's a comedy, it's a perfect glimpse of a genuinely scared person.

Harrison's best offering is to look vaguely confused. It doesn't do the trick, and especially in the scene where his possessed girlfriend is gobbling prescription drugs, it works against his character.

As Cissy's fiancée Jack, Mok Ga-yiu is somewhat successful. He plays one of those guys who is sort of a dick, but not in a way where you can really just hate him. He doesn't actually do anything bad; he just seems like he might. Gigi Lai is an experienced actress, but she's given so little to do here that it really doesn't matter one way or the other.

Technically the film is somewhat awkward. Hong Kong horror has always favored weird point-of-view zooms and Hitchcockian weird angles and camera tricks. There's nothing in Leung's direction that is so bad you could brand it an outright fault, but the movie does possess the look of what it is: someone's second film. There's an inexperience to the proceedings, and that results in tension lost. Leung hasn't really got down how to build anxiety or deliver a sufficient pay-off. Most of the films attempts at scares consist of something popping into view along with a blast of "fright" music. Unfortunately, it telegraphs just about all these instances, so you don't even get the cheap jump. Although the plot manages to rise above what you might expect, the actual composition of the film never escapes predictability. With a few exceptions, you know when the scare attempts are coming, and you know what they're going to look like. It's a marked difference between this movie and Ring, which I found to be one of the most successfully and genuinely scary horror films I'd seen in a long time.

A Wicked Ghost isn't totally without chills, though, and from time to time you can catch a glimpse of potential in Leung's work. The trappings of Chinese superstition always lend an air of eeriness to things, but Leung's most successful segments come when the investigation into the origins of the ghost lead Ming to an abandoned village that was the scene of a mass murder/suicide spree in which sixty-six people were killed in a span of three days. The setting itself is creepy by default, even in broad daylight, but when Ming wanders into a decrepit temple, Leung has one of his best moments. The camera pans around in point-of-view style, taking in all the decay, but when it comes back in the direction from which it came, we begin to catch glimpses of hunched over figures kneeling in the rubble. It's the film's most effective moment, although the shot in which Ming sees the ghost clinging to the back of one of his friend's is pretty good as well.

Likewise little images here and there, like the long-haired ghost sinking slowly into a pond or a scene in a washroom where the ghost of an old guy just wanders in to freak people out. There's also a decent scene in which a character morphs into the ghost. Sure, the movie fails more than it succeeds, but the successes are actually pretty creepy. Leung manages to subvert the familiar world by placing these otherworldly apparitions in very run-of-the-mill settings with nothing special about them. Traditionally in Hong Kong horror, supernatural shenanigans are accompanied by someone shining green spotlights all over the place, green being the color of all things ghostly in Chinese mythology. Leung avoids the obvious in this respect, opting instead (possibly because of budgetary constraints) to play the scenes straight. For me, seeing some creepy ghost limp around an otherwise normal apartment is scarier than if that apartment was suddenly bathed in a green glow. One of the most effective ways to unnerve people is to warp what they think they know.

And then there's the ghost, Mei. Yes indeed she's 100% a rip-off of Sadako from Ring. But you know what? Even in light of that, she's still a little spooky. Sadako had one of the most effective, creepy appearances of any creature in any horror film. Just imagine glancing out the window to see her standing on the corner of the street, slowly coming toward you. Sadako's look was a stroke of horror genius, and any movie that rips that look off is going to reap a little residual chill from it. Original? Not in the least, but it still works.

Flashes of good filmmaking are part of what make this movie frustrating. It's not without its merits. Although shamelessly distilled from The Ring, the story is not bad. Revelations about the fate of the woman who would become the vengeful ghost result in a sympathy for her that is, unfortunately, somewhat bungled in the finale. There are enough twists to keep the story interesting, and if more thought had been put into the characters, the movie might have survived being a Ring knock-off and acquired more of an audience. It's a fairly accessible mix of Chinese myth and good ol' fashioned ghost story that translates into any culture, but the slapdash nature of the characters is shallow even for a horror film.

The final scene is something of a flawed gem as well. There is no real resolution to the problem of Mei slinking around and killing people. Sure, Mo and Cissy manage to break the curse on them, but what about all the other people? In a nice bit of writing, the woman who had a husband who was willing to kill her in order to save himself is moved by Mo, who in contrast to Mei's husband is willing to sacrifice himself in order to save Cissy. It would seem at first that this act has quelled Mei's murderous rage, but then Jack goes and attracts her attention, and we see that it's really only Mo and Cissy who have been saved. What becomes of Mei and of the other innocent people who were unwittingly cursed remains unknown.

A Wicked Ghost is more ambitious than it is successful, but even ambition is an admirable trait in a movie that could have just been a rip-off with no attempt to do anything different. From his filmography as writer and director, one has to assume that Tony Leung loves horror films, and as I said in the beginning, I appreciate his attempts to keep horror in Hong Kong alive. As flawed as A Wicked Ghost is, there is effort put into it. Tony Leung isn't just some Wong Jing type who will dash any old crap off to make a fast buck off a trend. No, Leung may have been hoping to cash in on Ring's success, but he was also looking to make a good film. There's effort behind the direction, effort behind the writing, and there's effort behind the acting. That the effort is never fully realized or that it is undercut by bad dubbing doesn't change the fact that the attempt alone is worth at least one viewing.

Within the realm of Hong Kong horror, A Wicked Ghost looks better despite it's sundry flaws. It avoids entirely the tendency toward sophomoric slapstick comedy that so many other Hong Kong horror films can't help but indulge. It plays itself straight and with more respect for classical horror than you usually see from Hong Kong. It also manages to be more than just a series of shots in which five people scream and run from one room to another, which is a description that fits more than a few Hong Kong chillers. The fact that it steals fromRing means that it also attempts to be as good. It isn't, but it's better for having tried. Characters are bland, but they're not annoying. Well, Jack is sort of annoying, but we can forgive him. There is a lot that isn't good about this film, but there's a lot that is could, or could have been could with just a little more tweaking.

One thing that keeps the movie slightly alien to non-Chinese viewers would be the rather blasé and at times downright callous attitudes toward death some of the characters exhibit. Part of this can be attributed to the bad voice acting, but part of it just grows from a culture where the dead are dealt with in a different fashion, like constant companions hopping around the netherworld. My favorite example of this is in a scene where an older guy is on an elevator and is suddenly approached by the ghost of a dead loved one. Perhaps you would react with fright, or maybe you'd just go into shock. His reaction is simply to make a sort of annoyed face and go, "Leave me alone. You're already dead." Within the framework of Hong Kong horror films, people don't react especially strongly to death because the assumption is that ghosts exist, and that is that. There's very little skepticism presented. In light of that, it's not so difficult to understand why people aren't more upset by death. They know whoever has died is still lurking around somewhere; they're just in a different form.

To say A Wicked Ghost is one the better straight horror films in Hong Kong isn't saying much. For one, there just aren't that many films like it that play it straight with the horror instead of resorting to slapstick antics, softcore porn, or kungfu - or all of the above. Hong Kong has never been shy about mixing genres, after all. What does exist really isn't very good. Biozombie is a decent measuring stick since both are from around the same time, and both are more in line with American and Japanese horror films than is usual for Hong Kong fare. Biozombie is a better-looking movie, with a bigger budget and better acting. A Wicked Ghost is the more enjoyable film, in my opinion, because the characters aren't nearly as shrill and the plot endeavors to be more than just run-of-the-mill video game mentality nonsense. It tries to be somewhat intelligent, somewhat peculiar. I'd watch it again, where as I'm a lot less likely to ever want to endure all the shrieking and idiotic comedy of Biozombie.

It isn't entirely successful, but truth be told, I enjoyed A Wicked Ghost. It's an underdog of a film. Sort of sloppy. Not fully realized. Full of problems, not the least of which being the fact that it steals en masse from Ring, sometimes just for the hell of it. But by God, despite all that, the movie tries hard. Tony Leung puts his heart into writing a script that strives to be more than a collection of scenes in which people run around screaming. He summons up the spirit of a good horror film, and although it doesn't quite materialize, the end result is still interesting and, at least for me, fairly enjoyable once I got over the Ring rips. I appreciate that it sticks to horror convention and doesn't wander all over the place in an attempt to be all things to all audiences. No kungfu, no wacky hijinks, no lame comic relief characters. Just straight-up horror. It's still a rarity in Hong Kong, and that makes this film something special.

Far from a perfect film, but not a bad film, A Wicked Ghost deserves a look if for no other reason than it tried to be something a little more than the usual fare. If you're a fan of Ring and all the associated works that came with it, then you should check out this movie, even if it's just as a curiosity piece. If you're just looking for some interesting horror, you could do worse than A Wicked Ghost. If the future of horror in Hong Kong rests in the hands of Tony Leung, we won't be getting any high works of art, just like he won't be getting any big budgets. But we've got a guy over there who seems to genuinely likes horror and who seems to want to experiment with it a little. We've got a guy who might do something pretty good in the future, and who will at least be interesting to watch progress.

It's most likely because those films, even the ones lurking right down there near the bottom of the barrel, appeal to that part of me that always assumed he would be doing much the same thing as Indiana Jones. Swinging on vines while being pursued by angry natives, decoding secret messages hidden in ancient tomes, and of course, wooing some beautiful librarian or professor type as we board the night train to Turkistan or some such exotic locale where men in tight suits and fezzes would attempt to assassinate me in order to protect some terrible secret that has been savagely guarded for a thousand years. It was a given that this would be my life, just as it was a given that those assassins would never actually succeed. After all, no one wants to dream of the day they are successfully murdered by a guy sunglasses and a fez. There was no question that I would never end up as some goofball sitting in front of a computer monitor all day synching up graphs and slides to droning streaming video about mutual fund management.

And even as I sit here, fund management videos close at hand, I've never fully given up on the hope that one day I'll lead a life of adventure, romance, and intrigue, or at least mild excitement. Call me a dreamer, an eternal optimist, or just pathetic. No matter the mounting evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe that all my life has in store for me is video editing and the consumption of Hot Pockets. Come hell or high water, I will live the sort of life that allows me to regale bored friends and acquaintances with tales of the time I visited the far reaches of the globe, even if I wasn't raiding tombs for priceless artifacts or battling secret sects while riding the Orient Express.

Of course, such dreams also require me to ignore the fact that the world is a far less exotic and mysterious place than it was seventy years ago. The Orient Express is no more, and even the far reaches of the globe tend to afford one easy access to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not that I think the rest of the world should continue to exist as it did in the 19th century purely to provide me with an exotic playground, but there's still a sense of loss anytime you travel thousands of miles and multiple continents only to end up watching Tango and Cash on television.

Much like me, there are filmmakers out there who defy the reality of our world and still crank out the occasional adventure film. Emboldened by her newfound position as the most recognizable female action star in the entire world, Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Yes Madam, Tomorrow Never Dies) decided to become such a person by bankrolling her own big-budget adventure film. Michelle Yeoh took her earnings, invested them in establishing her own production company, and set out to realize what must be one of no more than a few remaining unfulfilled dreams: to make her own movie, at least as producer.

The ingredients she lined up on her counter were impressive. She would star, of course, because she's Michelle Yeoh, and she's cool (my words, not hers). Acclaimed cinematographer Peter Pau (The Killer, Bride With White Hair, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Swordsman) would give it a whirl as director. And her cast would be international, but not with a bunch of nobodies, as is usually the case when Hong Kong films sign up Caucasian actors. No, she'd get some recognizable faces. Maybe not A-List Hollywood actors, but The Truth About Cats and Dogs' Ben Chaplin is at least somebody, and he's certainly proven he's possessed of some skill when it comes to his chosen profession. Richard Roxburgh as the villain would lend additional credibility to the Caucasian cast, having as he does under his filmographic belt hits like Mission Impossible II and Moulin Rouge.

Finally, taking a note no doubt from many of Jackie Chan's more recent productions (including Who Am I and Mr. Nice Guy), and a lot of recent Hong Kong films in general, the movie would be made in English with an eye on overseas success. Filming in English seems more and more popular these days in Hong Kong, perhaps because their films are far more popular with overseas cult crowds than they are with the local folks. Just when we thought the Hong Kong film industry could get no sicker, 2002 handed them one of their worst years ever. The film Psychedelic Cop was supposed to be a big deal. It was pulled from theaters after one week when no more than ten people went to see it - and that's ten as in ten, not as in I'm exaggerating to make a point. With so little interest on the home turf, it's no big surprise that a lot of people making Hong Kong films are banking on overseas distribution and putting success in the US DVD market above the seemingly hopeless scenario presented at home.

Anyone who has struggled through Gen Y Cops or China Strike Force will tell you that Hong Kong films shot with primarily English dialogue can be a nightmarish affair. The dialogue, for one, is often painfully awkward and obviously written by someone who doesn't speak English as a first language. Often times, despite the presence of English words, the sentences still sound like a foreign language. Why the native English speakers mouthing some of the dialogue don't correct it on the fly I do not know, but the end result is sometimes amusing, usually stupefying. The second problem is that many of the actors speaking the words are, to put it lightly, pathetic. In the case of Chinese stars struggling with English dialogue, we can forgive them. For all those native Americans and Canadians, on the other hand (and this includes the Asian ones), there's no excuse for some of those readings. Daniel Wu, I'm looking in your direction.

The Touch avoids the problem of misunderstanding its English by being written by - or at least corrected by -- people who have it as their primary tongue. The scriptwriting duo of Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud (who also collaborated on the superb Running Out of Time and the, shall we say less than superb, Black Mask II) hail from France, but they at least have English language actors who bother to make sure the dialogue doesn't come out sounding like some bizarre moonman language. This is Michelle Yeoh's film, after all. She's proven herself not just fluent in English, but also able to act quite well in the language. And the white actors are real actors, not some Caucasians they picked up off the street on the way to the shoot. Chaplin and Roxburgh and most of the supporting cast can do the job. Unfortunately, there's also Brandon Chang. When looking for the most laughably awful actor in both Cantonese and English, people often cite poor old Michael Wong. Well, Daniel Wu makes Michael Wong seem like Daniel Day Lewis. Brandon Chan, then, makes Daniel Wu seem like, well, Michael Wong I guess. They get more painful with each step down the ladder.

There is one unfortunate side effect to Michelle surrounding herself with competent Caucasian actors -- her own acting comes across as fairly wooden. When she's in action, she's fine, but when she's dealing with the dialogue, she invests very little emotion into most of it -- which is especially painful during her soul-searching romantic scenes. But we'll come to the romance soon enough.

Making the film seem more like a sure thing, at least as Saturday matinee fun fare, is the fact that Michelle decided to go with a rousing Indiana Jones style adventure full of sweeping locales, hair-raising action, and a hint of mysticism. She'd done this once, early in her career with Magnificent Warriors. Though uneven thanks to some ill advised drama and some even worse comedy, Magnificent Warriors delivered Michelle in top form as a swashbuckling kungfu heroine. If it wasn't Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was at least better than High Road to China.

Sadly, if Magnificent Warriors was on the level of High Road to China, The Touch, at it's best, is a good episode of Relic Hunter.

Now I confess that I actually enjoy many episodes of Relic Hunter, if for no other reason than Tia Carerre in her bust-enhancing adventure woman outfit can brighten even the grayest of Saturday afternoons. But I would never put even the best episode of Relic Hunter on the list of things that need to be made into sweeping full-feature adventure films. They work because they remain on the small screen. The Touch takes the same short-comings and silliness present in Relic Hunter, then magnifies them tenfold by sticking them on the big screen.

Michelle Yeoh stars as Yin, an accomplished circus performer who's ex (Ben Chaplin) dabbles in tomb raiding, if you will. A series of events lead her and Chaplin on a quest to recover a sacred treasure before it falls into the hands of the evil Karl. Richard Roxburgh plays Karl, and while he chews all the scenery required to turn in the standard satisfying over-the-top villain, I can think of a lot better names for your main villain than Karl. Nothing against the Karls of the world. I know quite a few, and all of them have been pretty nice guys. But Karl sounds more like a guy who will come over and help you fix a tire on your car than it sounds like the name of someone bent on wielding magic power beyond the comprehension of mere mortals such as we.

Maybe I'm wrong, and the Karls al have a secret plan to one day rule us all, but in the end I'm much more apprehensive about your Fritzes and your Napoleans and any of those guys who have names that resemble something menacing, like Victor von Doom or Sidney Scythe or anyone called Damien. You know guys with names like that are just itching to accidentally get super powers and then lust after domination of the entire planet. They never seem to realize that ruling the planet isn't all jewels and harem girls. They're also going to have to deal with trade disputes and coming up with a workable prescription drug plans for the seniors of the globe. Just once I'd like to see Doctor Doom have to delay his plans to build a universe-warping death ray because he has to attend a meeting with the head of the Department of Sanitation.

Karl seems at least partially aware of the fact that his name isn't entirely menacing, so he makes sure to spell it with a "K." That increases the menace somewhat, but with his distinct lack of a goatee, Karl is still not all that imposing.

Karl, despite his friendly working-class name, is one of those grade-A prick type of villains who always yells at his henchmen and calls them idiots in front of the other henchmen. I never understood how these guys get ahead in the villain world. For starters, they always seem to hire incompetent boobs. Maybe these villains wouldn't have to shriek at their underlings so much if they were able to pick decent underlings in the first place. It's your own fault for hiring idiots. But even if you're saddled with a bunch of bumblers, how does it advance your chances of success to constantly remind them of what losers they are? It's not like any of these criminal masterminds do it in a way that translates into "tough love" or would inspire their minions to try a little harder next time. No, they just yell, "Pathetic fool!" in their shrillest Cobra Commander voice. I'm surprised more of these guys don't find themselves with a bullet in the back of their head.

At least some of Karl's men are adept at the job of being evil, and the ones who aren't are actually somewhat funny. Of course, competent or not, they all get their asses handed to them by Michelle as she and Karl race one another to an ancient hidden temple full of booby traps. Complicating matters is the fact that Karl has taken Yin's astoundingly dense little brother as a hostage. And they get his girlfriend as an added bonus.

So okay, nothing terribly original in the plot department, but I've forgiven that countless times and am always willing to do it again. A story can be old and formulaic as long as it's told with a dash of style. The Touch doesn't entirely succeed in that aspect. Peter Pau, who remains a cinematographer at heart, captures some gorgeous scenery, but I'm always hesitant to compliment the cinematography of a film set in places like the Gobi Desert or the plains of wild Africa. I mean, it doesn't take a maestro to set a camera up on an epic vista and capture images of an epic vista. Instead of praising people who let the scenery do all the work for them, I think we should give out an award for cinematographers and directors who shoot in dramatic places but manage to really screw it up.

No, the film's dramatic scenery certainly doesn't let it down. Nor does the cast. The problem is all in the script, which is tired and predictable and not entirely thought out. No, let me backtrack. The problem is mostly the script. The eye-poppingly awful CGI effects during the finale also contribute a hearty portion of laughable badness to an otherwise average adventure film. The main aspect people look for in a Michelle Yeoh film is fun action and fighting. There's a decent amount of fighting here, some of it pretty good and some of it leaving a little to be desired. Michelle we can all buy as a kungfu bad-ass who can sail through the air, but poor Ben Chaplin looks out of place as an ass-kicker. Sometimes an action film is full of people who struggle through dramatic scenes in anticipation of their next action sequence. Ben is the opposite. With each awkward punch, he looks like he's just biding his time until he can toss out another impish quip. He's a good actor, and he acquits himself fine in the acting department in this film, but the man is no action star.

Choreography comes courtesy of Phillip Kwok, aka Kuo Chui of Five Deadly Venoms fame. He seems to be building a solid career as a guy who can make white people look good in martial arts action (working recently on Brotherhood of the Wolf). And I suppose technically he succeeds here. It's not that Ben Chaplin looks terrible when he breaks out the martial arts. It's just that he looks like, well, Ben Chaplin. He's too recognizable as "the nice guy" to be believable as a fighter, and the script isn't meaty enough to make the casting work. It is, however, smart enough to let Michelle handle most of the foot-to-ass action, and she looks good as always. She certainly doesn't show her age, and the wires only interfere with the action from time to time. Most of the action is martial arts based. There are no car chases or anything like that, and contrary to nearly every other "exotic locales" type of adventure film, no one knocks over a street vendor's fruit cart.

Comedian Dane Cook is the real surprise in the film as Karl's bumbling brother. It's a stock character, and one that generally proves more painful than funny, but Cook performs well and gets quite a few chuckles even with slightly tired material. The rest of the cast has to look wise and troubled or evil and angry. Chaplin and Yeoh are both charming performers, but while they have ample "buddy film" chemistry, they have zero romantic chemisty. Their tired role as "former lovers thrust together for a wild adventure" feels as unrealistic as it is painfully overused in films. Why is it that folks in film can't go ten minutes without finding themselves reunited with a former flame in order to conquer some zany obstacle? They're simply not believable as star-crossed lovers brought together once again by a fabulous adventure, and as much as I hate to say it, most of the blame lies on Michelle. Even though we've all seen her flex considerable dramatic muscle, she looks much more comfortable jumping off a trailer to kick some guy in the head than she does in her supposedly tender scenes with Chaplin.

The music was composed by none other than Basil Pouledouris, best known for his incredible Conan the Barbarian score. It's good stuff, but hardly as memorable as his classic barbarian brass.

One of the things that really serves to undermine the film's effectiveness is the atrocious CGI during the finale. Bad special effects are fine and all, but these are really bad, and not even in a fun way. The film's international release was pushed back because distributors didn't want to release a movie with computer effects that would make people long for the realism of The Last Starfighter. It doesn't help that the entire finale is devoid of any emotional impact at all. Bad effects can be saved by a fun yarn, after all. A lack of any emotional impact means that there's very little around to redeem the awful effects, which look like something you might be able to produce after half-assing your way through the beginner's tutorial on whatever CGI effects program they used. The story meanders on with such thinness that it becomes impossible to feel engaged by any of the characters. The film's finale drums this in as what should have been a major dramatic twist elicits nary more than a second of "Nooo!" style screaming before everyone seems to forget about it entirely. If the characters don't care about the characters, why should we?

And that's what really keeps the film from being the adventure romp it was meant to be. There is no emotional engagement. The characters are not unlikeable, but they're pretty bland. There's no lovable rogue like Indiana Jones nor tough woman like Marion. Heck, there's not even anyone as compelling as that bald Nazi with the mustache who got chopped up by the plane propeller. Aside froma ll that, your heroes and villains need to dress cool. Most of the people here look like they just stepped out of a J Crew catalog, and while J Crew clothes may be fine for yachting and reading GQ, they're not suitale attire for globe-trotting adventure. Michelle gets it right once they get to the desert, but everyone else still looks like they just got off their job as a waiter at some hipster restaurant in the East Village. The Touch, for a lot of reasons other than garb, never bcomes more than another in the long line of films that imitate Raiders of the Lost Ark without understanding how to work with the elements that made that film such a fantastic and enduring adventure.

The pacing is wildly uneven. It takes a while to get things going, and once they are in motion, they sort of sputter along like the jalopy Michelle and Ben attempt to drive across the desert. The big budget bloats the film, but the script can't keep up with the size. Thunderball was a bloated action-adventure film, but it still kept a brisk pace and wry wit that helped it avoid being crushed by its own weight. Not so, here. The Touch can never rise above its own contrivances. I understand it was a labor of love for Michelle. All I can do is say that it was a nice effort, and I wish her better luck next time. She knew how to collect all the pieces. Now she has to learn how to make them work together.

Ultimately, The Touch as a whole never lives up to its individual parts. So many wonderful ingredients went into the film, but the end result was more of a mess than a grand confection. The film just feels flat and uninspired despite the charm of the cast and the beauty of Pau's camerawork. The end result of The Touch is a movie that should have been great, and instead is just sort of okay. I certainly didn't regret watching it, and it has some decent moments. In a movie like this, though, the flashes of fun only serve to make the lackluster quality of the rest of the film all the more evident. It's definitely not going to be the international hit they were probably hoping for. Instead, it's a mildly entertaining adventure film that stumbles over it's own weak story and doesn't offer up enough high-energy elements to make you forget that what you're watching isn't very good. It's not Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's for sure, but at least it isn't Treasure of the Four Crowns.

Although most plots can be similarly boiled down to their base element, few are the movies that actually outline the entire plot with the first two lines of dialogue. Fewer still are the movies where reducing the plot to a single sentence doesn't result in you missing out on at least something. But such is the case with Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion, a movie that lays out it's entire story when, in the first scene, an old kungfu master tells his young female student to go find the master's brother. That's it. What's truly astounding, however, is how a movie with such a simple plot can boast such convoluted storytelling. By the end of this whole martial arts mess, your head will be spinning with a whole lot of nothing, leaving you frustrated and more than just a bit disappointed.

A big part of what makes Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion so disappointing, besides the fact that it's more or less a study in never-ending tedium, is that it stars Angela Mao Ying, one of the all-time greats and one of the top five ass-kickingest female movie stars of all time (she sits atop the pile alongside Pam Grier, Claudia Jennings, Zeenat Anan, and Etsuko Shiomi). Along with women like Polly Shang Kuan, Mao was one of the first women to make a name for herself as a kungfu star after women like Cheng Pei-pei and Lily Li blazed the path in early swordsman films. Working frequently with Sammo Hung as a stunt and fight choreographer, Mao clawed her way tot eh top during the early 1970s with her combination of fists, feet, swords, and grace. She was none too hard on the eyes, either.

Angela Mao got her start in martial arts when she began training as a member of a Peking Opera troupe in 1958 after having already spent time training in ballet. That's a lot to do by the time you're eight. By the time I was eight, I think I could ride a bike and melt an army man with a magnifying glass, but none of that was going to help me become a kungfu star. Also in the troupe was a young actor named James Tien, who should be a recognizable name and face to any old school kungfu film fan. Tien starred in hundreds of martial arts films, including Bruce Lee's Big Boss and Fist of Fury.

Mao got her first role in 1967, when Huang Feng cast her in his upcoming film Angry River. Huang Feng is also the guy who would give Sammo Hung and Carter Wong their big breaks, and the same magic worked with Angela. After a few movies, most notably The Fate of Lee Kahn directed by Taiwan's legendary King Hu, Mao caught the eye of some guy named Bruce Lee, who got her a short but memorable part as his character's sister in Enter the Dragon. Although she doesn't last long in that movie, seeing a woman on screen kicking some ass kungfu style was more than enough to get people interested in her.

She made a series of films alongside Carter Wong, a kungfu workhorse who has never gotten he credit he deserves (even after puffing himself up all big in Big Trouble in Little China, the best of which was When Taekwando Strikes, which also starred Korean martial arts master Jhoon Rhee. While working on the film Hapkido, she also developed a partnership with Sammo Hung, who would go on to choreograph several more of Mao's best films. With movies like Enter the Dragon, When Taekwando Strikes, the British-Hong Kong co-production Stoner (with George Lazenby!), and the brutally violent Broken Oath under her black belt, Angela Mao carved a place for herself in the kungfu star hall of fame.

But it's safe to bet that Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion didn't do much for building her reputation. It's not a good film, especially compared to some her other work. It has all the right elements: cool and esoteric kungfu styles, old masters, intrigue and treachery, Angela Mao and Don Wong Dao. Nothing comes together though, and the end result is a tiresome train wreck of a film that stretches ten minutes of story into a feature length film.

Mao stars as a young swordswoman who, as we now know, has to go find her master's brother, who has mysteriously disappeared. What follows is a full film's worth of Angela wandering around aimlessly in a village looking for this guy, while various kungfu factions attack her for no real reason. Don Wong Dao shows up from time to time to fight, and later assist Mao in her bland quest. Characters and factions are introduced with absolutely no development whatsoever. A character whose identity is obscured throughout the whole film is eventually revealed to be exactly who you think he is. People who act nice but seem like they might be hiding evil sides are indeed hiding evil sides. This movie is full of shady characters and mysteries, yet not a single one of them is in the least bit interesting.

As someone who considers himself not without a small degree of expertise regarding old kungfu films, I'm used to convoluted plots and films that throw so many characters at you that you need a flow chart and an Oracle database to keep track of them. Traditional Chinese storytelling has always been fond of tossing characters at you left and right, often with little explanation of where they came from and little explanation of where they go. Heck, the classic martial arts epic Water Margin has what? Well over a hundred main characters? The fact that people come and go with suddenness mimics real life well, but it also makes for some confusing storytelling. You get used to it after a while though, and with a little work and concentration, keeping most of the players straight and sorting out the threads of plot is not that difficult.

A story has to at least make you want to sort everything out, though. The Shaw Brothers classic Brave Archer has tons of characters and a story resembling a bowl of spaghetti, but the movie is so good that it's worth the effort to get it all straight. Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion instills in its sundry characters not a single interesting trait, making the job of sorting them out unrewarding, and ultimately darn near impossible since most of the characters exhibit no characteristic that sets them apart from any other character. It's just an assortment of guys in wigs stroking their fake goatees as Angela Mao walks from building to building. Although character development has made good kungfu films great (witness just about any Liu Chia-liang film), it's never been a necessity for making a good kungfu film good. You can get by without it so long as your movie delivers something interesting. Even static, one-dimensional characters can be interesting. No one watches Kungfu Zombie to see the dynamic evolution of Billy Chong's character. But Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion really pushes things too far. Not only are the characters bland to the point of insulting the adjective "bland," but the film doesn't give you anything else to make up for it.

You know when someone is trying to tell you a very simple joke or a story, and they keep pausing, having to retell one part, stammering, messing up, and generally aggravating you to the point where you want to throttle them and just scream, "Spit it out, man!" - that's what this movie is like. What should be a minute-long anecdote becomes twenty minutes of mind-numbing boredom that almost makes you break down and cry. Likewise, what should be a short film with a simple plot becomes stretched past the breaking point. An endless procession of dull scenes involve Angela Mao walking into someone's compound and asking them if they know where her teacher's brother is. They all say no, and as she walks away, the camera zooms in on whoever she was talking to, who will then stroke his goatee in a devious manner. It's about as subtle as a moustache-twirling villain in a black coat and top hat tying maidens to the train tracks.

And why do we care anyway? All we know is that some guy is missing. We don't know anything about him. Why would someone kidnap him? Why should we even care? When Angela Mao finally finds the old coot, the revelations about who is evil and why he's been kidnapped are hardly worth the pain the rest of the film has caused. The reasons for the kidnapping are events that don't even have anything else to do with the entire film! Geez, by this point I would have taken a revelation like, "Evil Ma killed your father!" even if no character named Evil Ma had been in the film up to that point, and then Evil Ma shows up out of nowhere for the final duel. But we don't even get anything like that. The rescue of the old man is sort of like getting all worked up about one of those firecracker champagne bottles only to pull the string and, instead of a pop and shower of confetti, the cardboard bottom just tears off and a wad of paper falls to the ground.

From time to time, a fight scene interrupts Mao's random questioning of beard-stroking guys. Often times, the fight breaks out because Angela just waltzes into a courtyard unannounced and starts swinging her sword at people until someone asks her to explain, then everything is okay. Maybe if she would announce her intentions before barging in and sticking blades in people, these fights wouldn't break out. Normally, you would want a fight to break out in a kungfu film. After all, that's what makes them kungfu films. But when you see the fights here, you'll realize with no small amount of anger that they are about as interesting and energetic as the scenes in which Angela Mao walks down the street to her next destination.

And just when you think things can't drag any more, the movie takes a break for a five-minute long fan dance sequence that boasts all the energy of an old man pouring molasses on a cold Dakota morning. The intricacies of the dance seem to hit their zenith when a woman at one end of a row walks slowly to the other end of the row and the evil master, obscured behind a curtain for no good reason since it's not like we give a rat's ass who he is, gets to laugh and stroke his goatee. This entire sequence drags so bad that time will actually reverse while you are watching it. Normally, the ability to reverse time is a good thing, but unfortunately it will only reverse time to a point earlier in the film, and you'll have to watch it all over again.

Mao is not a bad martial artist, but she needs a good choreographer. With one in place, the girl can shine like the sun, but without one, you'll wonder why she became such a star. Let's just say there was no Sammo Hung working on this film. The kungfu fights are just painful to watch, and not in a good way. People seem to move at half speed. Everything consists of "flail arms, tumble forward" type of choreography -- the sort of stuff that makes a Jimmy Wang Yu fight look complex. When things threaten to get halfway interesting, such as when Mao faces off with a female fighter and her exploding lotus-wielding minions, the sluggish, clumsy nature of the fights more than negates to esoteric novelty of a bunch of guys who, for some reason, have their screams dubbed by women (they don't scream like women - women are actually doing the screaming) as they hurl exploding plastic lotus blossoms at our heroine. Whoa re these people? Well, they're allied with one of the beard-strokers, but if anyone bothered to write out exactly what the alliances are in this film, they forgot to actually shoot those scenes.

The movie flirts with being almost watchable in a scene where Mao must negotiate a house of traps type fortress that is full of hidden swordsmen, balls of fire, flying saw blades, and stone lion statues that spit acid. Even with all that cool stuff, Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion still manages to be dull. Even Treasure of the Four Crowns showed more energy. The final fight scene is just as awful as everything else that came before it. The combatants move as if they are in slow motion. What the hell? Is everyone doing tai chi in this movie?

There's really nothing worth watching here. Angela Mao fans, of which I am a big one, will only mourn her participation in such a dreadfully uninspired and uninteresting movie. Likewise, people who are wondering what Angela Mao is all about certainly aren't going to be convinced of her greatness by Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion. If you are a student of taking one simple plot and stretching it out seventy minutes past its breaking point while, at the same time, trying to recount even the simplest fact in the most convoluted fashion imaginable, then maybe this movie is worth your while. For everyone else, this thing is just a failure on every level you can think of, and maybe even a few new ones that didn't occur to you until you had to do something like sit through that fan dance sequence. If anyone can drum even the slightest interest in anything that happens in this film, they are certainly more determined and forgiving than I am. I hate to write bad reviews, or at least to write bad reviews without finding something of value amid the garbage, but this movie just leaves me speechless when I try to dream up any redeeming quality. Angela had a couple nice outfits. I'm afraid that's the best I can do.

In Enter the Dragon, Angela Mao guts herself with a jagged shard of glass rather than suffer the villainy of her attackers when they corner her in an old dockside warehouse. I felt like doing the same thing to myself in order to escape this movie.

Point is, I don't know a lot about video games. It's just not a medium that I have ever gotten into. So I can't comment very authoritatively on anything that was made after, say, Crazy Climber, but I have never the less seen a lot of video game related movies. In fact, I've seen just about all of them. And while some video games really do have a rich enough mythology or back story to serve as a decent foundation for a movie (Resident Evil, Silent Hill -- even if you don't think the movies were good, the games at least provided enough meat for the framework), many others do not. Of course, that doesn't stop them from being made into movies anyway.

Such is the case with DOA. As best I can gather, DOA started life as a beach volleyball video game, with the hook that all the characters were hot cartoon chicks with tiny bikinis and huge tits, and you could somehow set the jiggle rate on their boobs. Then somehow the DOA games became fighting games, with the attraction being the same. The approach was twofold in its success. First, it was simple, sleazy titillation. I mean, hot chicks with bouncy boobs in tiny bikinis, engaging in lots of activities that require their jiggly parts to jiggle? What's not to like? Secondly, the games tap into the fundamental desire of just about all guys to, at least for a while, be a really hot chick. I'm pretty firm in my belief that most men harbor this fantasy, and I think nowhere is it more obvious than in the tendency of men to always play the hot chick character in a video game. Chun Li is nothing if not a symbol of ten million wanna-be gender-benders.

You can support or detract from my theory all you want, but what's most notable about DOA is that "hot chicks play volleyball and fight" as a plot is pretty much the single greatest plot ever invented and the sole reason the technology of cinema and video games was invented. Thousands of years of intellectual evolution and technological innovation has finally resulted in my ability to watch a movie with the plot, "hot chicks play volleyball and fight."

DOA the movie was directed by Hong Kong action director Cory Yuen, who has a track record that boasts more high points than low and who specializes in turning attractive women into on-screen kungfu bad-asses. Under his tutelage, Cynthia Rothrock, Joyce Godenzi, Michelle Yeoh, and Shannon Lee were all transformed into believable martial arts powerhouses (OK, Rothrock was already a kungfu powerhouse; he just figured out how best to choreograph her). And while Hsu Chi, Karen Mok, and Vicky Zhao may not have been 100% believable as ass-kicking superwomen, that doesn't change the fact that Yuen's So Close was completely awesome. Yuen is also one of the few Hong Kong directors to have a big hit as a director in the United States, that hit being the Luc Besson-produced The Transporter starring Jason Statham.

When news that there was going to be a DOA movie produced first hit cult film fandom, there was a lot of eye-rolling and "yeah, whatever, man" reaction. But when it was further revealed that Cory Yuen would be director, ears (among other things) pricked up and a lot of action film fans were suddenly a lot more willing to give the film a try, even if the inevitable PG-13 rating meant it would be all tease. If anyone was going to be able to direct a dumb fun "hot chicks play volleyball and fight" movie, it would be Cory Yuen.

So people waited. Trailers played, and the reaction was tentatively positive after the initial negative reaction. Sure, the movie looked colossally goofy, but it also looked like it would sport high energy and be a lot of fun. And then the release date came and went, and there was no movie. DOA vanished, bumped from the release schedule and shelved for any number of reasons, the most likely of which was probably, "Wow, this movie is awful." Which is a shame. I mean, how bad could the film possibly be? They released Norbit, for crying out loud, and Epic Movie. And those had to be worse than DOA which, if nothing else, at least would feature hot chicks playing volleyball and fighting.

DOA eventually began to trickle out to theaters in other countries, though it still remained absent from American theaters, and fans of Cory Yuen, action movies, video games, and hot chicks in bikinis started looking to foreign DVD releases to see the movie.

Was it worth the wait? Or the trouble to see it? Yes and no. DOA is pretty much exactly what you would expect it to be from the elements listed above. It is dumb. Extremely dumb. It is full of cheap titillation and gratuitous bikini ass shots, which always gets the Teleport City seal of approval. The script is paper thin, and what little story there is makes no sense anyway. Most of the cast doesn't even seem to realize they are supposed to be acting in a movie. The fight choreography, involving almost no trained martial artists, is heavy on editing, camera trickery, and computer manipulation.

And yeah, it's all a whole lot of gloriously stupid fun.

The plot revolves around a group of women invited to compete in a semi-secret martial arts tournament where, of course, shady shenanigans are being engaged in behind the scenes. Enter the Dragon's plot has proved useful so many times, the writers of this film decided there was no reason not to dust it off one more time. We first meet Katsumi, head of a ninja clan with a massive temple complex you would think someone in modern-day Japan would notice. Katsumi's brother disappeared during the last tournament, presumed dead, and she is determined to uncover the truth behind his disappearance, even if it means violating the laws of her clan. She leaves for the tournament with two more ninjas in hot pursuit: the noble Hayabusa, who has a thing for Katsumi, and the vengeful Ayane, herself the former lover of Katsumi's brother.

Katsumi is played by the indescribable Devon Aoki, whose continued presence in the world of cinema is one of the great mysteries of the entertainment world. She's a horrible, horrible actress, completely incapable of anything beyond a single blank expression and a single, monotone style of dialog delivery. On top of that, she's pretty weird looking. How she ever got a part in a movie is beyond me, but how she continues to get parts, however small they may be and however bad the movies they are in may be, I simply can't explain. And despite all that, I kind of like her. Not in a way where I'd go, "Oh, hey! Devon Aoki is in DEBS. I guess I'll watch that!" But more in the way of, "This movie has Devon Aoki in it. I won't not watch it just because of that."

Accompanying her, Hayabusa is played by none other than Kane Kosugi, son of the legendary (to me, anyway) Sho Kosugi, who starred in many of the best ninja exploitation films of the 1980s and then went on to host Ninja Theater and release a ninja exercise video in which he was accompanied by the scantily clad Ninjettes. One gets the feeling that Sho probably appreciates DOA. Kane started his acting career alongside his dad, always playing the son of whatever ninja guy Sho was playing at the time. Kane never developed much in the way of an American acting career, but he clicked in Japan and managed to forge a pretty consistent string of jobs, including a role in a Japanese sentai television series (those superhero shows that get turned into the Power Rangers in the United states), a role in one of those crappy new Ultraman shows, and most recently one of the leads in Godzilla: Final Wars (even though the lead role should have gone to Godzilla). He isn't really that great of an actor, but he's no worse than his dad (although his dad also wasn't a native English speaker), and he does handle action scenes well, which is generally all he's expected to do. As he gets older, he is looking a lot like his father, so much so that I'm beginning to wonder if Kane isn't Sho Kosugi, his revitalized youth the result of some esoteric ninja ritual or something. Oh sure, you say, but what about all those times Sho and Kane appeared alongside one another? Well, yeah. Maybe -- or maybe they just told us that was Kane Kosugi. Honestly, they could have hired any kid.

Anyway, Hayabusa is along for the ride, trying to convince Katsumi that she should return home while also helping her out with her investigation. Ayane is a little more hostile. Despite her love for Katsumi's missing brother, Ayane holds clan law more important, and clan law dictates that when Katsumi abandoned her post as leader, she was marked for death. Ayane is played by Natassia Malthe, who has a string of cult film credits to her name but is probably most recognizable, to people who might recognize such an actress, for her role as Typhoid in Elektra or for her upcoming title role in the sequel to video game based movie Bloodrayne. I may be one of the few people in the world who would think, "Elektra and Bloodrayne II? Sounds good to me!"

Second on the list of DOA combatants is Tina Armstrong, played by Jamie Pressly of My Name is Earl fame. Pressly is pretty much the only person who showed up to this film with the intention of acting, and she steals the movie as a pro wrestler looking for the opportunity to prove she's a genuine fighter. The film introduces us to her as she reclines aboard her yacht while wearing an American flag motif bikini, stirred out of her sunbathing just long enough to beat the snot out of a bunch of pirates (lead by none other than Robin Shou, former star of such movies as Mortal Kombat, and, umm, well, just that and Mortal Kombat II, really). When our founding fathers first set forth the basic premise of this great land of ours, I'm sure that they could conjure up no greater symbol of American awesomeness than a hot chick in an American flag motif bikini beating up pirates. OK, maybe Thomas Jefferson would disagree. But whatever. Fuckin' Jefferson. Ask Ben Franklin. He'd be on board.

Tina's pro-wrestling dad is also in the tournament, play by real-life pro wrestler (there's something...ironic? about the phrase "real-life pro wrestler") Kevin "Big Daddy Cool Diesel" Nash, who is dressed up more or less like Hulk Hogan in a somewhat lame gag I'm sure Nash found amusing. Since Kevin Nash's job in this movie is to drink beer and go, "That's my little girl!" he turns in the second best acting job after Pressly.

Finally there's Holly Valance as Christie Allen, a posh thief who shows up to the tournament while on the run from the Hong Kong police. Or someone like that. Valance is definitely no actress. I think she was some sort of mid-level Aussie pop star before this movie, and it's unlikely much will change after this movie. She's hot, though, and just bad enough an actress to still be somewhat acceptable in a movie of this nature. And she does the thing where she throws a gun and a bra up into the air, then sticks her arm up so that her bra goes magically on just as she catches the gun and whups the butt of the world's most incompetent bunch of cops. I mean, really, when a kungfu chick, however hot she may be, asks you to hand her a bra, do you really offer it to her as it dangles from the barrel of your gun? And I don't mean that figurative gun. I mean the actual gun, the one she can now kick out of your hands.

Along with a bunch of other fighters you will never care about (and most of whom just disappear at random throughout the movie with no explanation presented anywhere other than deleted scenes), the three ladies head to the island fortress lorded over by brilliant mastermind and DOA tournament manager Eric Roberts. Yes, folks, Eric Roberts, looking like a dude who would hang around the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame a lot, telling young kids about what a genius Jimmy Page was. In a feat of casting not rivaled since the days when Black Belt Jones cast Scatman Crothers as a karate master, crummy movie mainstay Eric Roberts is the lord of DOA, and with the help of his nerdy assistant Weatherby, Roberts aims to use the DOA tournament as a way to inject the world's best fighters with nanotech robots that will harvest their genetic information and make it downloadable to a pair of sunglasses which will then instill the wearer with nigh invincible kungfu prowess.

Seriously, man, that's the plot. All Eric Roberts needs to do for his nefarious scheme to work is, 1) capture each of the best fighters in the DOA tournament, 2) strap them into his gigantic info downloading machine, and 3) manage to keep a clunky pair of sunglasses on his face while fighting. And the end result is that you will be a slightly better fighter than most other people. On the grand scale of nefarious schemes, this one ranks pretty close to the "moronic" end of the bell curve. I mean, how is being a marginally better kungfu guy than most other kungfu guys going prove profitable to anyone other than, say, a guy in the Ultimate Fighting Championship? And then, you have to get the ref to allow you to wear sunglasses while you're fighting. And it's not like Eric Roberts put a sports band or anything on those glasses, so they will eventually just fall off. But it doesn't matter, because were centuries away from the era when being good at kungfu guaranteed global supremacy.

Complicating Roberts' already goofy plan is the fact that the original DOA founder's daughter, Helena, is an aspiring DOA combatant herself and is beginning to suspect Roberts is up to something her father wouldn't have approved of. Oh, and there's Katsumi's missing brother. In between that nonsense and all the awful dialog are a whole bunch of choppy fights of varying quality, a game of volleyball, and well, that's pretty much it. DOA has absolutely no surprises to offer even the most easily surprised viewer. But does that mean this movie is as awful as it sounds? Of course. And does that mean that it's as great as it is awful? You betcha.

The script, such as it is, comes to us courtesy of a trio of writers who actually have, if not a respectable track record writing good action films, then at least a modest record writing halfways decent action films. J.F. Lawton scripted two of the better Steven Seagal films (as odd as that statement may seem to some), Under Seige and Under Seige II, as well as the cult film spoof Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. His big gig, however (besides writing Pretty Woman, but what does that have to do with us?), was as a regular writer for the goofy television series VIP, in which a group of hot chicks run a private investigation service. And when you realize that was one of Lawton's former jobs, the entire look and feel of DOA makes perfect, predictable sense. with a few tweaks here and there, this really could pass as a VIP movie, right down to the three-letter title. Lawton worked on more serious action films like The Hunted starring Joan Chen and Christopher Lambert fighting ninjas, and he worked on goofier action movies, like the Damon Wayans superhero spoof misfire Blankman. So you can pretty much see where the script for DOA came from.

Script contributors Seth and Adam Gross were writers for Bill Nye, the Science Guy. I guess they came up with Eric Roberts' crazy science scheme, although i think the sheer goofiness of it all makes it more of a Beakman thing, really.

Cory Yuen's direction is a little uninspired compared to other efforts, though he puts his craft to good use in filming the ladies (Yuen has previous experience with cheesecake kungfu thanks to his turn in the director's seat of Women on the Run, which features some rather interesting, um, kung-nude). DOA lacks the slick polish of So Close, though Yuen is still adept at making cheap films look flashy. But even though the cinematography may be lacking, he misses no opportunity to randomly cut to a shot of someone's ass or cleavage, so he's not totally off his game here. And while Yuen is used to making non martial artists look like martial artists, he really has his work cut out for him in this movie. Aoki and Valance seem to possess almost no athletic ability whatsoever, and so to pass them off as fighters, Yuen relies on gravity-defying wirework and jumpy editing, as well as a dollop of CGI. He does the most he can with what little he has, but no one is going to be mistaking these gals for legitimate fighters. Even Hsu Chi was more believable. Jamie Pressly fares better largely because she has a pretty awesomely athletic build and looks like she really could deliver some punches and kicks and make you feel them. There's a reason why she's the one out of all these women who went on to have the biggest career. She's adept at both the job of acting and the job of looking good in the fight scenes. Sho Kosugi, errr, Kane Kosugi gets to have one fight scene all to himself, which ends up being the only fight scene that looks anything like vintage Cory Yuen, since this is a guy who knows martial arts fighting a bunch of stuntmen. But even though this fight is pretty good, the award for best fight scene has to go to the one between Valance and Sarah Carter, who plays Helena. And that's because that fight is between two sexy chicks in bikinis. On the beach. In the rain. In slow motion.

Yuen manages to wring a few other choice action sequences from a game but largely incapable cast. His skill alone is what elevates this film above the level of, say, an Andy Sidaris action film. Aoki and purple-wig wearing Malthe have a decent wirefu match-up in a bamboo forest, which many people have pegged as a cheap knock-off of the bamboo forest fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, even though it has more in common with the same type of scene as presented in Andrew Lau's Stormriders. The finale against a super-powered Eric Roberts (who's acting suggests that if you asked him today, he might not even be aware of the fact that he ever even appeared in this film) isn't exactly solid fight choreography, but it's still funny and exciting because, well hell, it's Eric Roberts. What the hell is even going on? And by this point, Yuen has resorted to his trademark jettisoning of any and all semblances of logic or reality, and believe me when I say that semblances of logic and reality are the last thing a movie like this needs.

Leave it to Liu Chia-liang to make such a sweeping film and draw such meaning from a fighting form. Few directors would be able to do that, despite the fact that kungfu is obviously a fighting philosophy. Sure, you can throw out some quotes, the old "Be like water" saying and all that, but really plumbing the depths of all that is good and bad about the philosophy of kungfu is something few directors have attempted, and as far as I know, only Liu Chia-liang has succeeded at.

The movie begins with a cult of pugilists, men who believe that by practicing a sacred form of kungfu, their bodies will become impervious to the guns of the foreign countries threatening China. The historical link to this is the Boxer Rebellion in China, in which martial artists believed exactly what the characters in this film believe. The results were, predictably enough, tragic, though not as tragic s the results of benevolent Mao Tse-tung's "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution." China just never has an easy time, does it?

One of the elders of the society denounces the ridiculous and deadly belief in pugilism. Rather than order his students to their deaths under the pretense that they have become invincible, he openly criticizes and leaves the society. This draws their ire, and they spend their days setting him up as a traitor who wants to see China controlled by foreign powers. The elder, who is played by the film's director, Liu Chia-liang, goes into hiding.

But a kungfu man can only hide for so long, especially when so many people are looking for him. A Shaolin monk played by Liu Chia-hui wants to fight him because he believes Chia-liang to be a traitor. Hsiao Ho plays a young up-and-coming fighter looking to make a name for himself with the Boxers. And Liu chia-yung plays another elder member of the society who wants to kill Chia-liang in order to cover up his own shame.

Chia-liang's only friend is Kara Hui Ying-hung, but she's a pretty good friend to have. In case y'all haven't picked up, along with Angela Mao, Lina Romay, and Jeanine Garafolo, Hui Ying-hung completes the quartet of World's Greatest Female Stars. But Hui Ying-hung will always be my favorite out of them all, because, well, she's just that cool.

She hangs out with Chia-liang, who is living a humble life as a wood cutter. At least for a little while. Eventually, he must face off with each of the men searching for him. The result is a series of incredible kungfu fights that culminate in the superb showdown with his brother, both in the film and in real life, Liu Chia-yung. These two face off using the legendary 18 weapons of kungfu, thus the title.

Liu Chia-liang fights are the best Shaw Brothers films have to offer, but for all their intricacies, they are rarely "to the death." More often, his characters fight "to the understanding," and the violence ends when one character has understood something important. Such is the case with the spectacular fights in Legendary Weapons of China. It's just one more example of Liu putting the philosophy of Buddhism and kungfu before the sensationalistic violence.

The pugilist theme is not an uncommon one in martial arts films, though it's also not as common as some people might think, probably because making any honest comment about it is criticizing the Chinese culture of the past. Once Upon a Time in China II dealt with a similar society but was hardly successful at conveying any real meaning. Legendary Weapons of China on the other hand, is very powerful in the message it conveys. Liu holds up to the light the Chinese stubbornness and unwillingness to acknowledge modern times, their unwillingness to let go of notions of the past in order to move forward. Similar themes ran through other Liu Chia-liang films, such as My Young Auntie and Lady is the Boss.

Liu also takes a quick jab at martial arts fakery via the cameo appearance by Alexander Fu Sheng. Alexander, who was recovering from a devastating accident that left him with two broken legs, plays a charlatan who fakes all his martial arts abilities in order to impress those around him and garner prestige. His scene is the only real comic relief this otherwise serious film possesses.

The film's only weakness is in the characterization. So much time is spent on philosophy and fighting that the characterization suffers a little. While I understood the commentary and the situations, it was difficult to really empathize with any of the characters, as they were all a bit on the bland side. It may simply be because previous experiences with Liu Chia-liang films showed just how well he could create a character, and in here, that human touch is lost amid the messages.

Not that the characterization is non-existent. These people still have a lot more depth to them than the characters in most kungfu films. Liu's curse is that the standards are always so high for his films; even a small glitch seems more obvious in his work since it's usually so perfectly executed.

Legendary Weapons of China is a classic, not just of the genre, but of film in general. It peels away layer after layer, examining Chinese attitudes, martial philosophy, and the martial arts movie genre itself. Liu always has a lot going on in his films, but this one exceeds them all. I don't think it's his most entertaining film. It's not his most action-packed film. But it's certainly one that will provoke thought, and on a more superficial level, it's still grade-A kungfu action.

Bruce Li doesn't look like Bruce Lee. He doesn't have the muscles Bruce had, and sure as hell doesn't have the talent. They could have cast former Monkee Mickey Dolenz as Bruce and had a more believable imitator on their hands.

The basic plot of this film revolves around Bruce's desire to leave Hollywood and his white woman behind, return to Hong Kong, get a nice Chinese girl, and settle down to a traditional Chinese life. Somehow, I don't think so. Betty Ting Pei is portrayed as a sweet and loving woman whom only wanted what was best for Bruce. And all this time we thought she was a sluttish gangster-groupie drug addict who only had a career because of her harpyish addiction to famous men. Oh well, to her credit, in many of the films she would later make, she got naked.

This film is filled with nail-biting boredom, horrible fights scenes, and factual inaccuracies so utterly absurd that the whole thing crosses over from purely tasteless, boring drivel and becomes an insult.

This film relishes everything that was sordid and seedy about Lee's life, making it the mirror opposite of the similarly named Hollywood version of Bruce's life. Someday, someone will tell his story accurately, and you'll have a moving, powerful portrait of a flawed but ultimately heroic human being.

Until then, we have utter garbage like this three-day old trash. Bruce Li is at his worst here. We know he can be a decent actor and martial artist when he tried, but this movie is just plain awful. If this was how Bruce Li paid tribute to "his master," then Lee's ghost must be out gunning for revenge.

That in itself would be an interesting movie. Bruce Lee's ghost comes back to beat the shit out of Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Brute Lee, and all the other lame-ass wannabes who cashed in on his name, life, and death. And maybe, if we're lucky, he'll beat the shit out of David Carradine as well ... just for good measure, of course.

So it was only fitting that Hong Kong's greatest sword hero be among the first stars to make the transition to kungfu hero. Jimmy's first foray into unarmed martial arts was Chinese Boxer, a decent enough film, especially by early standards, but it was clear that Jimmy would not rule the kungfu world the way he had rules the sword hero world.

But that doesn't mean he didn't turn in some great films. Of all his unarmed fighting films, it is in One-Armed Boxer II that he is most unarmed, as he only has one of them. Jimmy first got into the armless guy swing of things in One-Armed Swordsman and a sequel. Then he lost his arm for One-Armed Boxer and this film, and then lost his hand in Iron Man. This one, which is also known as Master of the Flying Guillotine is the second best of all the armless guy martial arts films--of which there are shockingly many. The best is still One-Armed Swordsman.

This is also a weird one. Not exactly a sequel to the first one but working in the same territory, the film opens with a creepy Throbbing Gristle like soundtrack. A blind kungfu master learns that a one-armed Ming revolutionary has killed the two pupils he sent to apprehend the rebel. so he does what any good blind kungfu master would do; he flies through the roof and vows revenge.

The blind man fights using the dreaded flying guillotine, a decapitating weapon that even has it's own movie. It's a metal box with retractable blades connected to a long chain. All you have to do is throw it on your enemy's head, and pop! Off comes the noggin!

Meanwhile, our one-armed hero, played by Jimmy Wang Yu, is busy showing off for his students by walking up walls and doing other stuff that kungfu masters do. They decide to attend a kungfu tournament where the combatants do all sorts of crazy stuff.

A fighter from India has arms that extend out like 20 feet--a trick that would later be used in the Street Fighter video game. There's also a Thai Boxer, some regular kungfu guys, a kungfu woman, and a mysterious Japanese guy in a big hat. The blind master shows up and recruits many of the fighters in his quest to kill every one-armed man in the area until he gets the right one. Luckily, there seem to be a lot of one-armed guys in this town.

The movie is great. Wang Yu looks good against all the weird martial artists, and there is a supernatural feel to much of the film. It's brutal and bleak, with the spooky soundtrack and some intense fighting. I think it's great. One of the best kungfu films out there, just for the sheer weirdness of it all. And the fightin' ain't bad, either.

The Hong Kong New Wave sort of kicked itself off in the beginning of the 1980s with two big events. The first was the teaming up of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao in the film Project A, which pretty much forever changed the way martial arts in particular and action in general would be staged. The second event was the release of Tsui Hark's special effects blow-out Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Zu was the first film to make use of "Star Wars like" special effects, and with its completion, Tsui Hark had forever changed the fantasy film in the same way Jackie, Sammo, and Biao changed more conventional action films.

In 1986, marginal director John Woo, who was best known for a series of rather unfunny comedy films during the 1970s, completed the revolution when he tried his hand at gangster films in the form of A Better Tomorrow. Although Woo's highly stylized, melodramatic gangster epics were the last innovation of the New Wave, the tsunami carried Hong Kong through most of the 1980s and well into the 1990s. It finally sputtered and died around 1996 or so, when with the exception of Wong Kar-wai and Christopher Doyle films, everything seemed to become as awful as they had previously been great. The Golden Era was over, and fans were forced to settle for a nauseating stream of erotic thrillers and copycat "young triad guy" movies. Fans of martial arts films were basically left watching Donnie Yen speed himself up to about 1000 miles an hour in some of the worst films of all time.

Things seem to be turning around, albeit very slowly, with the release of entertaining and inventive films like Storm Riders and Chine Ghost Story: The Animation. But for the most part, fans of Hong Kong cinema who aren't interested in the latest Wong Jing film with a title like Rape Squad or Rapist Union, or Rape Rape Rape Rape Rape and Tits have to look to the past to find quality work.

One of the overlooked films of the good ol' days is this live-action adaptation of the violent Japanese comic book, Crying Freeman. Director Clarence Ford opts to remove most, but not all, of the sex and nudity that populated the comic book, and replace it with more action and kungfu. Ford also worked closely with Film Workshop masters Dean Shek and Tsui Hark, and Hark's stylistic touch is all over the film like incriminating fingerprints. But hey, that's okay with me, because I generally like Hark's work.

Sam Hui, best known as a member of the successful comedy troupe that included his two brothers, Michael and Ricky, became a big-time film star via the action-packed slapstick spy caper series, Aces Go Places. Hui is a likable guy who some people mistake for Jackie Chan, probably because they have the same nose. Not literally the same nose of course, but similar looking noses. Hui was also popular as a pop star during the 1970s, and from what I've heard of his stuff, he specialized in sappy ballads and acoustic songs. For some reason, his star seemed to falter after this movie, which is too bad because he really shines.

Hui plays a man visiting Russia with his girlfriend, former action/comedy star turned respectable arthouse name, Maggie Cheung. Aside from witnessing a brutal fight between two guys in a subway, the trip seems to go quite well until Hui becomes the target of a mysterious man with a fucked-up croaky voice. The man is the trainer for the 800 Dragons, a secret society of assassins. Hmm, I guess all assassin societies have to be secret. You wouldn't get very far in the field if you were a very open and obvious society of assassins. It would be like being a ninja, but wearing a headband that says "Ninja" on it in big red letters.

Hui is captured and has his memory erased. During his training, be is befriended by the master's assistant, a cute and wily young woman named Pearl who has the ability to fly, more or less, or at least jump in really cool ways. And she is really good with her feet, to say the least. Hui doesn't really take any of it seriously, opting instead to be the archetypal "naughty kungfu student" despite his obvious potential. It's only when his pal, Pearl, is killed during a fight with rival assassins that Hui starts to take things more seriously. He gets the back tattoo, the mask, and the attitude that makes him the Crying Freeman, so named because he sheds a tear after each assassination.

His career as a secret super assassin is filled with cool fight sequences. Purists will be put off by some of the wire work, but it's integrated well and doesn't look goofy, at least not to me. The fights are fast paced, full of acrobatics, and just plain slick. During a mission in Hong Kong, however, his old flame Maggie catches a glimpse of him, and although he is wearing the mask, she thinks she recognizes him. He pays her a visit and recreates one of the most famous scenes from the comic book, in which he assumes the framed pose of a painting his girlfriend was making. The reunion is quickly broken up when vengeful thugs crash in on them. Maggie is shot by Freeman's own assistant, who wants to protect the secret of his identity and eliminate any chance of him regaining his memory. Either that, or he had to sit through Irma Vep.

One of the movies best scenes, and it has several, is when Freeman and his associates seek revenge on the renegade assassins who killed Pearl. The fight takes place in a church, and as if the sight of Nina Li Chih, who plays Freeman's partner, dressed as a gun-toting nun isn't enough reason to justify the movie, then I don't know what is. Anyway, you have to see the thing for full effect, but the shots of masked assassins perched atop cathedral steeples and crosses are a fantastic visual.

The movie follows it up with another short but cool scene in which Freeman battles Nina Li Chih in a shower. She is not happy with Maggie still being alive and posing a threat to Freeman's identity. Thus, Freeman himself becomes a rogue. For Maggie Cheung, I'm sure any man, and probably most women, would gladly suffer the ire of an ancient secret society of assassins and be happy about it - as long as she promised to never make a movie like Irma Vep again.

While Nina and the assistant decide to help Freeman out, the rest of the society, including the old master, are not as forgiving. The finale sees Freeman face off with his teacher in a truly spectacular fight sequence that still wows me nearly nine years after I first saw it.

I absolutely love this movie. It has a good story, and perhaps best of all, is jam-packed with creativity and wild action. I know some Crying Freeman fans were put off by the amount of comedy in the film's first half, but I think it helps make everyone more human and believable, even when they are flying over churches and engaging in insane kungfu fights. It also helps the film's finale pack more of an impact.

The best thing about this movie is the visual style. The masks and set-pieces are very nice, and the action sequences are stylish and unique. It's too bad they don't make them like this one anymore. But at least they made it once.

Clouse, who incidentally hated Bruce Lee, chose to work with Jim Kelly. John Saxon went on to appear in Cannibal Apocalypse. Kelly and Clouse made Black Belt Jones, a film that straddles two worlds, being both a martial arts film and a black action film. Not a bad move considering that the biggest audience in America was (and probably still is) black.

Kelly, a fellow Kentuckian who, unlike me, sported a perfectly spherical afro I consider one of the very best of the 1970s, plays Jones, a secret agent who has gone into semi-retirement, concentrating instead on teaching the martial arts to inner city youths. The karate school is run by a kindly old coot named Pops (Scatman Crothers). I don't know exactly how Scatman Crothers got involved in the martial arts, but there he is. His gambling debts, however, bring the local thug, Pinky, down on him. I don't know. Scatman Crothers, master of kungfu -- something about it just doesn't seem to click.

To make matters worse, Pinky is then hired by some white thugs who want to get a hold of the property Pops' school occupies so they can build a shopping mall. When things get heavy, Black Belt Jones leaps into action. Only he's not alone. Pops daughter, Sidney, shows up to lend a hand, proving herself every bit as agile and powerful a martial artist as Jones.

Sidney is played by Gloria Hendry, whose biggest role was in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, which also starred Yaphet Kotto. And some other guy. Some British guy. Who cares? Anyway, in that film, Gloria wasn't given much of a chance to show what a bad-ass she was. She just got killed by one of those novelty coconut head things you can buy along the road in Florida and other states with palm trees. Yaphet and Mr. Saturday were pretty much the owners of cool in that film. But here, Hendry gets to kick ass in a major way, even in her panties (to be fair, Jim Kelly is in his little boxer shorts as well). She kicks ass, and looks good doing it. Not as good as Jada Pinkett-Smith, though, but few people look that good.

Okay, enough youthful lusting. Black Belt Jones is a pretty good movie. It's not great, but it's a lot of fun. With the exception of Enter the Dragon, it's better than any of the other crap the Fred Weintraub/Robert Clouse duo cranked out.

Not that being a better movie than China O'Brien is a major feather in the cap. Plenty of action, Gloria Hendry and Jim Kelly fighting in their skivvies, and a healthy dose of comedy make for a fun ride. And hell, the movie has a scene where Gloria's panties blow out the window of the car and land on Pinky's windshield, to which Pinky angrily exclaims, "Is that fool throwing panties at me?!?!"

Jones himself is an interesting character, very much like John Shaft in the film Shaft ("Shaft's his name, Shaft's his game"). He more or less works for The Man, the Establishment. But at the same time, is hip enough to toy with them and remain with one foot outside of their system. A more recent version of the same character is Eddie Murphey in the original Beverly Hills Cop. All three characters are part of mainstream society while at the same time being outsiders who frequently show up and confound their white counterparts.

Unlike most American martial arts stars, Jim Kelly looks good in action. His build is not unlike Bruce Lee, only topped with a big round afro, and although he's not as quick as Lee, his action scenes are still crisp, exciting and better than anything anyone else from America has pulled off. I like watching Jim Kelly films, not just because he is from Kentucky, and Black Belt Jones is my favorite.

Jim gets to do plenty of ass-kicking, including a wild final fight in an auto body shop. Black Belt Jones and Sydney get to frolick around in panties and boxers while kicking ass on the thugs amid a seemingly endless flood of frothy soap bubbles. It's pretty silly stuff, but plenty of fun. The only bad part of the confrontation is the obvious Jim Kelley stunt double, whose skin is much darker than Kelley's, sort of like the "nude scene" Tia Careere had in Showdown in Little Tokyo, where when she took her clothes off, her face was magically obscured by her hair and her breasts seem to grow three sizes. Not that I'm sitting around by myself in my apartment staring at Tia's boobs. No. It was all in the name of research, you see. I did it for you.

Have you ever noticed that during the late '70s, it seemed like the Mafia was spending a lot of time trying to shut down martial arts schools or community centers that had martial artists involved with them in some way. What was up with that? You'd think the Mafia would have more to do than hassle karate guys. I must admit however, it would have been cool if, in Godfather II, Michael Corlionne said something like, "We have to take care of our Vegas operation. Now what's this I hear about Pops and his kungfu school?"

For the record, the Mafia guys in this movie, which was made in a time before racial or personal sensitivty prohibited such lines as, "Well, you want me, don't you? Or are you some kind of faggot?" spend most of their time sitting around, eating spaghetti, and talking in wildly exaggerated Italian accents, yelling things like, "Mama mia! This is a-good-a spaghetti!"

This film is so good that it actually hurts to think about it. I am pretty sure this is another Mainland Chinese film, though I could be wrong. If not, these guys simply rule the martial world, and I wish we got to see more of their films. Zhang Yi-who?

The film follows the exploits of a acrobat and acting troupe called the Red Dragons. En route to a gig, they are cornered by a vile lackey who insists they come perform for his even more vile master. The Dragons politely refuse, as they already have a commitment, but offer to catch him next time around.

Well obviously, this causes the evil-doers to do what the do best, which is evil. They attack and pursue the troupe mercilessly, until the actors hook up with some testy Shaolin monks who teach them to fight better. Then they all go out into a field to delight us.

And delight they do. This is some of the best pure martial arts choreography you'll find outside of a late 1970s Sammo Hung film. It's absolutely breath-taking. The entire film is packed with nonstop action and martial arts, all of it good. This another of the great martial arts films that people seem to ignore. Their loss, because it is one of the best ever.