Alas, this is one of the worst movies I've ever endured watching, and the acting wasn't helped by atrociously poor dubbing.

The fight sequences were frequently slapstick in nature, and yet often failed to induce me to laugh, mainly because the gags weren't particularly original and would work better in a pure cartoon.

The premise of the thin plot is that a gang of Amazon warriors terrorizes a peaceful valley, coming into conflict with a masked warrior named Darma. Centuries ago, someone discovered a nearby cave's natural oil deposits, and exploiting the effects of fire from the burning fuel, passed himself off as an immortal overlord on the local villages, receiving "taxes" in return for his protection. Generation after generation of disciples were selected and trained to keep up the con game and thus Darma's "immortality," until the ambitious Amazons, greedy to learn the truth of the "secret flame," kill the latest Darma and force his young protege to seek help from 2 allies. They are Moog, a huge black guy, and Chang (played by Shaw Brother's Yue Hwa), who also want to learn the secret of immortality, albeit in a more honorable fashion.

This movie was supposed to showcase an early collaboration between Western and Eastern film studios in the aftermath of Bruce Lee's popularity, but Yue has little chance to show off the Chinese style swordplay in his best Shaw Brothers movies, and the overall budget of the film could not have been very high. Plenty of "fighting" involves Moog shoving people down with brute strength, or the new Darma ridiculously bouncing up and down (presumably using an off-camera trampoline) off walls and cliffs to evade the evil Amazons.

The Amazons themselves are mostly blonde and scantily clad women with a totally cheesy battle cry that was one of the few things that made me laugh. Alas, for the most part they are poor shots with bows and not very effective fighters. The climactic showdown takes place mostly in the dark, and with lame firebomb effects and wooden "flame-tanks" that unfortunately fail to impress me, because I've seen so much better elsewhere already.

I'm not sure what would have improved the movie...perhaps better choreographed fight scenes, or perhaps a lot more skin revealed amongst the nubile Amazons. If you like to collect vintage trash and amuse your friends on how ridiculous and dumb a flick can be, this might be for you, otherwise avoid like the plague.

However, upon finishing this film I had rather mixed feelings. The pacing and the acting were adequate, but the "martial arts" action largely consistently of outrageously exaggerated flying, spinning, and plentiful explosions (generated presumably by the character's mastery of inner "chi" power). I've seen too many of that sort and had hoped for more conventional hand to hand, sword to sword fighting than all this zapping around and wirework, particularly since the marketing on the DVD cover went to such lengths as praising the combat choreography.

Also, I personally thought the love sub-plot was awkward and clichéd. In a nutshell, Princess Ling (Michelle Reis) is on the run from a religious cult that overthrew her father's kingdom, and she stumbles into a hideout of a tribe whose prince similarly lost his kingdom years earlier to Ling's father. Despite this complication, it was easy to figure out the young royals were going to fall in love anyway and ride off into the sunset after defeating the bad guys.

Lastly, since the story kept on preaching about the dangers of ambition and revenge as it unfolded, half-way into the movie I sensed the princess was never going to restore her dynasty, and that took away a little suspense there was about the princess's ultimate fate.

None the less, Seiji's business is in trouble as another company seeks a hostile takeover, led by a man named Tsuyama. Seiji's right-hand man Yoshina convinces the naive Sonoe to meet this Tsuyama, and she believes somehow she can help plead for her husband's financial interests with his chief rival.

She finds herself taken to a remote inn, and invited to watch a "show," which turns out to be a live S&M display. She's horrified, but Tsuyama has her trapped and he lecherously takes advantage of her. Sonoe returns home wanting to forget the incident as if it was nothing but a passing nightmare. However in a letter she finds in her living room, there's a candid photo of her, stark naked while engaged in a sex act.

Thus she is entrapped to continue participating in the perverse S&M theater. He husband finds out and casts her aside, so she continues to docilely offer up her body night after night in the S&M theater, as she feels her repressed sexuality being unleashed, and because she fantasizes her husband somehow, some day will find and rescue her, and that he is with her...holding her, whatever she is intricately tied up.

Tsuyama later finds the now homeless Seiji and brings him to the S&M theater, presumably to further humiliate him, only to witness Seiji and Sonoe happily reunite to start over again.

Thus the story abruptly ends. The screenshots offered on this website suggested a good deal of erotic love-making, but the sex scenes were often brief, and mostly involve shots of Sonoe in various stages of being tied up.

The actress who plays Sonoe is fairly attractive with her long hair and glossy skin, although she does have a rather large nose, which does make her face memorable, and not appear overly glamorous.

Overall, it has a handful of intense erotic moments, but they weren't enough of them, and that made the viewing experience a bit of a letdown.

In my opinion, I can say it is full of bizarre imagery, stark juxtapositions of colors, shadow and light, it moves along to a jarring, dissonant music score, and the director frequently uses odd angles to film what's going on, or inverts the image to have characters speak to each other "upside down." It's a very stylish and interesting approach to film-making.

As for the story, it takes place in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. The movie opens with a dinner feast. By the sumptuous quantity and quality of the food, the guests are clearly members of the affluent elite, but they do not bother with good table manners, rather they ravenously gorge on the food with their hands. Bare-breasted young women docilely serve the diners.

However, the decadence doesn't stop there. The host is a middle-aged aristocrat, bespectacled and slight of build. A marquis himself, he is fascinated by the infamous writings of the notorious Frenchman de Sade, and wishes to live a life of fantasy and vice.

He therefore gathers an entourage of like minded friends and hires miscellaneous petty criminals to be actors in his private theater. Night after night, scenes from de Sade's novels are acted out. Crime and sin are celebrated.

Historically at this time, Japan was as hard hit by the Great Depression as the Western nations, and a young generation of army officers were also plotting to bring a more militarist regime to power, which will culminate in Japan's war with China and eventually the United States.

Therefore, it can be interpreted that for the marquis and his clique, acting out de Sade's lurid fiction serves as an escape from reality. The marquis and his wife Tamae themselves participate in the theater, not content to be merely spectators.

A complication however arises when the marquis brings a young thief into his household and asks him to rape Tamae. The thief is shocked by such an unheard of request and balks, but the marquis threatens him with death and imprisonment if he refuses.

The young man thus barges into Tamae's bedroom one night and throws himself upon her. She resists at first, but gives in rather quickly, knowing that her husband is discreetly watching from a hole in the wall, eagerly enjoying the role of voyeur to satisfy his perverse desires.

The thief and Tamae gradually form a closer bond, arousing the jealousy of the marquis. He had always envisioned her as his play-thing, molding her to be, and do as he wishes, particularly to act as Justine, a character from de Sade's novel of the same name.

There are several scenes where the marquis and his wife's interactions alternate between the stage, rehearsals before the stage, or the aftermath of the performance, a dizzying use of the "play-within-a-play" story-telling technique. Reality and fantasy blur and jealousies and obsessions torment the various characters. Several murders are committed and the movie ends enigmatically with the marquis alone on his ruined stage.

As I mentioned earlier, what it all means is quite elusive, and will probably vary from viewer to viewer. I have never actually read de Sade although I have heard of him, and I have seen available on this very hkflix.com website several European adaptations that presumably offer much stronger, more explicit sex.

I bought this title mainly out of curiosity, because present day Hollywood producers favor, in my view, dumbed down "family friendly" PG-13 blockbusters that safely make lots of money, but I want to take a peek at more provocative, more controversial, and more unusual fare than what one normally gets in a suburban USA megaplex.

However, I can't say I've yet figured out what to make of this movie. Maybe I'll have to brave reading through the novels, or watch the film several more times.

Never the less, I will say that the sex presented here is infrequent and not all that explicit, less so than even some mainstream R-rated movies. Nudity is mainly limited to shots of bare female breasts or buttocks, but there's no genitalia or full frontal nudity. There is also limited S&M. If you're looking for lots of intense sex, you'll probably be disappointed. I found the miscellaneous trailers on the disk offered much better soft-core sex scenes.

I give the film high marks for artistic style and visual creativeness, but the movie rambles on and seemed much longer than its 96 minute run time. I never felt any clear sense of where it was supposed to be heading, and the ending was rather anti-climactic.

If I could have previewed this movie online for a fraction of the price, I would never have bought it. However, if you like cerebral, enigmatic movies that obliquely explore sexual obsession, this might still be for you.

Now I don't watch kung fu movies for their plots, but I do like to see a logical thread that ties together the beginning, middle, and end. Either this movie was flawed in its editing, or I happened to watch a badly chopped up version.

The movie starts out promisingly, as a squad of loyal Imperial guards race to take an infant prince to safety from the forces of a usurper. The bodyguards are all killed, but the infant is found by a passing monk. The baby grows up to the hero of the movie, played by Casanova Wong. Meanwhile, the lead villain gives his allegiance to the Manchus and becomes a general in their army.

From this point on, the movie is a jumbled mess of training sequences and fights. Characters are suddenly introduced, then disappear, and Wong's character spends a lot of his time running back and forth, arriving late on the scene as his friends, fellow monks, and his masters are killed by the Manchus.

Many martial arts films have a much better transition from the training part of the film to the final showdown.

Overall, it's not a terrible film per se, but there are other films featuring Casanova Wong that are superior and better worth your money, like Warriors Two.

Marie, the lead character, is obsessed with a synchronized swimmer named Floriane, who is quite pretty but has the reputation of being of easy virtue. This obsession makes her vulnerable to Floriane's manipulations. Marie's childhood friend Anne is also a synchronized swimmer, but decidedly portly in physique. Anne is attracted to a handsome water polo player named Francois, a hunky blond. Floriane also has her eyes on Francois, but she only plays the flirt because she likes the attention.

Sorting out this web of relationships makes the story start slowly, but it does get more interesting as the viewer wonders what's going to happen next, especially as a rift develops between Anne and Marie, and the few love scenes in the movie are far more awkward than erotic.

In the end, I'm a little ambivalent about this movie. While it's not badly told, I didn't find the main characters sympathetic enough to really care if wound up intimately together. There was something lacking in the emotional intensity, or it wasn't projected convincingly enough. For a comparison to what I mean, consider the Swedish film "F***ing Amal" from the late 1990s and watch how the two girls in that movie gradually defy the odds to become a couple.

Anyway, this film centers on Cecilia, played by the stunning red-head Muriel Montosset. After a whirlwind romance that led to her marriage to the aristocratic Andre, she feels that she's lost the passionate spark that made her fall in love with him. So she provokes her servants with strip-teases and wandering about in the nude, until one day they decide to ravish her.

She cries out in shock at first, but it turns out she's not entirely an unwilling victim. The carnal excitement from the experience seems to have re-awakened her passionate nature, and she convinces her husband that perhaps genuine love can be sustained alonside sexual adventuring, and taking lovers on the side could strengthen their own bond.

It sounds too good to be true, and Andre relents. What follows are a series of affairs and sexual escapades, but Cecilia remains frustrated and unhappy.

There is also a bizarre orgy in the middle of the movie, which in the interview included on the disk the director explains was a parody of the "LSD scene." He mentioned that drug parties were all the rage back in the 1970s, but he felt bored by them and horrified how hard drugs ruined people, and that psychedelic drugs seemed to him a cop-out to true imagination.

In sum, all these attempts to indulge the senses do not satisfy the emptiness within one's mind.

Cecilia apparently realizes this futility after the one lover she feels close to vows to leave her forever to end his torment, and her increasingly provocative behavior leads to a truly violent rape such that her husband temporarily leaves her in disgust.

Threatened to lose it all, by the end of the movie she runs back into the arms of her forgiving husband, presumably for good.

Overall the movie has some genuinely erotic moments, but feels very long that it drags in various places, especially the orgy scene. The director also mentioned it was shot on the former estate of Captain Cook outside of Sintra, Portugal a gift to him by that country's royal family in honor of his discoveries. He turned it into a botantical garden filled by exotic overseas plants, and Franco makes effective use of his sceneary. The scenery is indeed stunning, and this lush foliage suggests a state of primal savagery, of nature unbound, so it emphasizes Cecilia's sexual desire quite well.

If you are not offended by a somewhat artsy, soft-core flick of the likes that aren't going to be made by mainstream Hollywood any time soon, this may be worth getting for you. For me, it was not bad, but I would have been content to have found it for rental somewhere and watched it once, rather than committing to purchase it unseen.

As it turns out, she's indeed topless or fully nude in a number of scenes, but they're usually brief and the sex often can hardly be called erotic, and that's due to the nature of the character "Anita" she plays.

Anita is a troubled teenage girl who frequently seeks promiscuous sex because she feels unloved and unwanted by her parents, and until she meets her true love and fully trusts him, her sex acts are methodical and devoid of feeling rather than passionate and torrid.

None the less, even if the story's premise does not seem entirely convincing to me, it is interestingly told in a series of flashbacks and her relationship with Erik, the young university student who becoems her guardian, takes appropriate time to develop, such that toward the end of the movie the viewer does eagerly want to know when are they finally going to hop in bed and "do it."

Nonetheless, the plot was fairly interesting, as it was very loosely inspired by a historical event, the imperial succession controversy that clouded the ascension of the Ching emperor Yongzheng in the early 18th century.

In the movie version of the story, the 4th Prince (Yongzheng) seeks refuge in the Yun Fortress of a martial arts clan, after being pursued by the henchmen of his rival the 14th Prince. The leader of the fortress has been encouraged by a young swordsman, the fiancé of his daughter, to support the 4th Prince, but the old man is ambivalent. The young swordsman had a letter from his master explaining why they, as Han Chinese, should support a Manchu, but he loses ineptly loses the letter twice during sword fights.

All sorts of additional plot twists and machinations happen along the way until the master of Yun Fortress finally makes up his mind.

Ultimately, I would've liked the movie more if the fights were faster, better choreographed, and more varied. A number of fights seemed rather clumsy affairs where the opponents wildly swing and hack at each other.

After this experience and several others, I've become very wary now of any martial arts movie made in the late 1960s, as the action standard then really paled compared to the 1970s and early 1980s.

The story take place almost entirely within the confines of a Japanese run camp for Chinese POWs sometime during WW2. The suspense revolves around uncovering the identity of the "God of Fortune," who possesses the secret code to a Swiss bank account holding an enormous amount of money donated by overseas Chinese for the benefit of the Chinese resistance.

I would have liked to see more kung fu action, although the final climactic fight is not bad. Also, the elements of gay humor peppered throughout the film probably would be tasteless to most people.

Nonetheless, it was still enjoyable to watch, if nothing else to spot out all the various cameo appearances by Hong Kong's leading comedians, character actors, and kung fu stars.

The synopsis on the back of the DVD relates that a king who recently subdued a minor state hopes to win over a powerful noble (played by Jimmy Wang Yu) to his side, and this noble has no greater earthly desire than to possess the finest and rarest swords. Thus the king organizes a dueling contest to lure this noble into his service by offering a generalship and a rare sword as the winning prizes.

I thus expected that the end result of the movie would be that Wang joins the king, only to re-discover his patriotism, and slay the conquerors of his city to liberate his people.

The movie turned out totally differently, and was more of a morality tale than anything else. As the plot unfolded, Wang does get the much coveted sword from the king, but he then hears of another, even more unique sword and goes to seek it out. His obsession totally corrupts him and he turns into a villain, murdering a retired swordmaster to get this 2nd sword.

In his triumph, he tries to pull the sword from its scabbard and fails, and when old Taoist sage passes by, he angrily demands to know why this sword is stuck. The old sage merely smiles and says that sword is truly unique because it had not been used in 20 years (and so it has rusted in the scabbard).

Wang Yu's character then has an epiphany and the movie ends with him bowing in remorse to the corpse of the old master. It is an unsettling, tragic ending. In a strange bit of make-up, his eyebrows merged into one while he was being evil, but in the end, they recede away and he has two normal eyebrows again.

Over all, the actors do a fine job, but I would've liked better action. The slow sword fights pale in comparison to the dazzling acrobatics seen in Shaw Brothers films from mid to late 1970s and early 1980s.

If you want lots of energetic fights where you can cheer the hero beating off hordes of baddies, as I had hoped for, this is NOT the movie for you. It is really a character development drama, and while it is poignant and fairly well done, that's not the reason I buy and watch kung fu movies.

Anyone expecting lots of intense sex scenes may be a little disappointed that most of them are filmed at an angle, or the lovers are behind a curtain, although images of nudity, both male and female, are not infrequent.

As mentioned in the special features biography of the director, the vignettes have a common theme of women who have been exploited or wronged ultimately taking revenge in some fashion.

The first vignette features a young woman who becomes the muse of Renaissance artist, only to betray him in order to return to her true love.

The middle vignette is in my opinion the most shocking of all, where a young girl has a rather unnatural attachment to her pet bunny named Pinky. Her parents eventually kill and cook the rabbit in a stew, as they're upset she spends too much time with it. Her response leads to a particularly grisly climax.

The last vignette features a kidnapped young wife who is rescued by her faithful dog, who possess an above and beyond normal ability to track her scent throughout the streets of modern Paris. Don't be fooled however by the suggestive synopsis on the back of the DVD. She does not wind up having sex with her dog, but after being raped by her captor, she is naked when her dog comes to her rescue, and unclothed, she joyfully hugs her pet and lets it lick her face.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this film. It isn't nearly as erotic as I had anticipated, but it still offers plenty of eye candy in the attractive actresses.

Therefore, I got this one stictly out of curiousity, as it is based on a campaign during the Civil War between Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek in the late 1940s.

There was indeed a large scale battle scene, as well as long distance shots of seemingly endless columns of troops and tanks marching across smoky landscapes, but I found the film rather dull. Much of it involved talk, talk, and more talk about politics or military strategy. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the movie was that the actors onscreen bore nearly flawless resemblences to historial figures such as Mao, Chiang, and Deng Xiaoping.

I watched the film with an open mind, but unless you like sitting through 3 hours of talking punctuated with a couple of battles, this is probably not for you.

First of all, this plot and setting of this movie have absolutely nothing to do with the original movie.

The bizarre costumes (somewhat of a blend of medieval European and ancient Chinese), the gorgeous scenery, and the cute lead girls (particularly Gillian) provide lots of eye candy, and there are a few decent fight scenes (including one between Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan, I belive the 1st time these two have squared off on-screen), but there just wasn't enough action. Also, if it was some sort of a joke to have Donnie Yen's character called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it fell completely flat on me.

This movie is also touted as the debut of Jackie Chan's son, but he doesn't perform much of any martial arts, and if he's to follow in Dad's footsteps doing movies, I hope his acting ability gets better.

The movie wasn't a total stinker, but with so many major Hong Kong stars in major roles or cameos, I expected a lot more.

A powerful nobleman named Lord Katsuragawa has a beautiful but barren wife. Therefore he tolerates her having an affair with an actor. He has his own fun with a prostitute named Shino, and impregnates her so that he may have offspring.

Shino ultimately gives birth to twins, and the birth sequence is a clever piece of film-making that seamlessly cuts between Shino's stressful delivery and the nobleman's wife having rough sex with the actor. However, the babies are a boy and a girl, and only a male heir is needed.

Lord Katsuragawa's butler thus instructs Shino's lover, an ambitious young man named Todo, to murder her and her daughter. He cannot perform the deed and lets them escape. The story picks up 19 years later.

It is the Showa reign of Emperor Hirohito, and only a few years before World War 2. Todo has become a respectable figure in society, but he filled with regret that he never had the chance to properly live a life with Shino.

He manages to track her down before she dies, and also meets her daughter, now a young woman named Kyoko. He tries to atone for his past by offering to take care of her, but she refuses his help and rebelliously becomes a prostitute.

We later learn this is because of the deep rage inside her. She knows her mother once loved someone who abandoned her, and she is determined not to fall in love with any man and share her mother's fate. None the less, a young student becomes besotted with Kyoko.

She also falls in love with him, but like a classic Greek tragedy, she becomes devastated when she learns the identity of the young man. Meanwhile, Todo tries to assassinate Lord Katsuragawa and fails, and thus the stage is set for one final bloody act of vengeance by Kyoko.

All in all, it's a well made film, very tightly edited and the director is brilliant with the use of light and dark to create moods and tensions. There are some genuinely erotic scenes where close-ups of Shino or Kyoko's sweaty, naked skin are filmed as they have sex. On the other hand, the sex scenes are heavily censored. It's obvious what the characters are doing, but the parts of their bodies directly engaged in coupling are either blacked out, deliberately blurred, obscured, or somehow hidden from view.

It's rather annoying, as R-rated films out of Hollywood today show much more sexual explicitness and full frontal nudity, but then again this film was made in 1972 Japan, when adult themes, content, and sexual frankness were still a novelty, and film-makers had to be wary of the country's obscenity laws.

None the less, the movie immediately opens with a tense battle. Bandits are attacking a convoy, and suddenly a knight in black comes to the rescue, although he becomes wounded. The knight in black is Count Sigfrid, a rival to the Duke of Brabant, whose convoy he just saved.

Feeling gratitude despite their past enmity, the Duke takes the wounded Count back to his castle, and his daughter Genoveffa (Jennifer) tends to the Count's wounds. The latter ultimately fall in love and marry, thus ensuring peace between the rival noble houses.

However, all is not well as the story has just begun. Count Sigfrid's right hand man Golo is a devious fellow with ambitions to supplant his liege lord, and the arrival of the beautiful Countess further inflames Golo's lusts.

The Count later is summoned to go on a crusade by the king, and left alone in the castle, the Countess finds herself a target of Golo's increasingly overbearing and lecherous attention. When she rebuffs his advances, he punishes her by falsely accusing her of adultery, and then condemns her to death.

A servant rescues her to repay her past kindness to him, but everyone else is afraid to speak or stand up to the tyrannical Golo, and even this loyal servant has to pretend he ruthlessly killed Genoveffa and her newborn son in the forest.

Meanwhile, Count Sigfrid is oblivious to what's happening, as Golo intercepts all letters between him and his wife. However, after escaping from his Saracen captors, Sigfrid finally makes it back to his homeland nearly a half a decade after he left, kills Golo, and reunites with his wife and son, a conveniently neat ending where everything falls perfectly into place.

I would have liked to have seen at least one big battle in the "Holy Land," but when the scene goes there, it's just the Count pining for his wife. At one point he is prisoner of war along with dozens of others, but escapes with a clever ruse and has two very quick fights.

The special effects could've been a lot better. For example, Sigfrid hurls a javelin at a Saracen horseman, who falls off his horse with no weapon impales on his body. Lastly, the final duel between Golo and Sigfrid could've been better. The quality of the sword fighting in an Errol Flynn movie, for example, is head and shoulders vastly superior, and more entertaining than watching Golo and Sigfrid wildly swing and hack at each other.

Nevertheless, movies like this aren't made anymore, and harken back to a romantic past.

I therefore was curious about this title to see how modern Russian filmmakers would treat the subject matter. I can say that the quality of the production was quite high, with the cinematography and costumes being top notch. It was especially impressive to see all those Polish hussar cavalry with their "wings," basically father ornamentation on the backs of their armor.

However, as I expected a historical movie, I was rather annoyed by the constant supernatural elements seen in the movie. Perhaps, it was plot device to imply intervention by a higher power helped inspire ordinary folks to do extraordinary things and save Russia in her greatest hour of need. None the less, seeing a unicorn prancing about in the forest seemed rather silly.

The main character is a young man named Andrei. He is a serf, but a skilled one, as the movie later demonstrates he has blacksmithing knowledge. He is also highly resourceful and intelligent.

As a child, he and his mother lived with the exiled royal family alongside many other servants and retainers. It was then he was first captivated by Princess Kseniya, a daughter of the late Tsar Boris Godunov. One day, Poles and Russians allied to them capture the princess and wipe out the rest of the royal family, and little Andrei witnessed it all.

Years later he is a slave, part of a work gang hauling a river boat that is carrying the princess and the evil Polish general who has taken her as his personal prize. Andrei apparently has been waiting for years for an opportunity to rescue the princess, but when attempting to sneak into her chamber, he is caught and brutally punished. However, his endurance brings admiration from Alvar, a Spanish mercenary in the employ of the Polish general. Alvar buys Andrei's freedom, but the Spaniard and many others are killed by Russian partisans in an ambush.

Andrei then takes the man's clothes, and with the help of a Tatar friend, learns the Spaniard's mannerisms, transforming himself from self into a cavalier. The duo then have a series of adventures, first under the employ of the Polish general, and later face him as an enemy when the two spirit away the princess to join forces with the nationalist resistance.

More supernatural mysticism occur along the way as the ghost of Alvar teaches Andrei the art of fencing.

Fortunately, the big siege battle is impressive to watch. This is one of the few movies that attempt to show how musketeers in that period fired in ranks. On the other hand, Andrei's genius in battle tactics and inventing devastating weapons seemed a little too good to be plausible.

Princess Kseniya is also not initially a very sympathetic character, so even as a symbol of Russian resistance, you wonder why people are willing to die for her. She is often passive and lacking in will, but the reasons eventually become clear later in the movie.

All in all, regardless of the flaws, I still enjoyed the movie, mainly because it covers a subject matter I don't expect mainstream Hollywood would cover anytime soon, and the themes of sacrifice for a higher cause resonates throughout cultures.

Although the film was low-budget, even with anachronistic sets that seem a little out of place for the 1930s, it was a straight-forward story with lots of action from start to finish.

The bare bones plot has a patriotic minister named Kao discovering evidence by the government to sell out China's interests to the Japanese, and therefore he must safely get out of the country to expose this treachery. A group of underworld fighters called the "Shanghai 13" are called upon to protect him until he can get on a ship to Hong Kong. One by one they die, and several of the Shanghai 13 are even turncoats working for the bad guys.

It should be no surprise that Kao survives all sorts of assassination attempts to the end credits. However, it's still fun to watch who turns up from scene to scene, and whose side they're on.

In this movie, the female lead is called Marina Pinares, and she's first introducted as a cold, elegant blonde with perfectly upswept hair, at the height of her power, but also dying from an initially unspecified ailment.

The film goes from there in a series of flashbacks between past and present, and can be a bit difficult to follow, but the actress who plays Marina does a very effective job. She deftly portrays both a miniskirt-wearing party girl seeking to sleep her way to the top and out of a dreary existence; and a ruthless, determined First Lady, clad in glamorous furs, seeking to cement her immortality as "Little Mother," the icon of her country.

As First Lady, Marina smoothly manipulates the media and mass crowds, has her posters plastered everywhere, and lets the public openly witness little acts of charity, and it's clear she actually runs the country and the President, a colonel she opportunistically married, is but a figurehead. However, while her husband is about to run for re-election, she creates tension in the military hierarchy backing the Pinares regime with her ambition to formally run as Vice-President, as the conservative junta does not approve of this. Moreover, men from her past threaten the saintly image she has carefully crafted.

The film was shot in Croatia in the early 1970s, then part of Yugoslavia, and the actual backgrounds lend perfectly to the atmosphere. We see an elegant European style capital with grand boulevards and ancient buildings, as well as dreary modernistic apartments and squalid slums.

As for sex, there is a very interesting scene where Marina is showering and her lover approaches the glass door of the shower stall. She presses herself against the glass and he makes love to the outline of her naked body. Watch it more than once, it's far more erotic than a lot of "love" scenes in other movies.

Overall, it's quite a fascinating political drama inspired by a controversial historical figure.

Michael Hui starred and directed in this romantic comedy where he's a hapless musician who just happened to witness a gang killing, and in order to save his skin, disguises himself as a woman named Dong Dong in an all-girl band. He thus meets and becomes smitten with the lead singer Ding Ding (played by Cherie Cheung), and the film plays out as a series of gags and deft escapes as he tries to woo Ding Ding, avoid the attentions of a suitor who lusts after Dong Dong, as well as evade the gangsters who are out to get him.

Alas, upon first viewing, the gags really hit home. Upon a second viewing they just didn't seem all that hilarious. I suppose when I was a kid the absurdity of a guy pretending to be a girl seemed a funny gimmick, but it sort of falls flat now that I'm older. Nonetheless, back in the mid 1980s, Cherie Cheung was very pretty and cute, and especially sultry when she appears in a low cut white dress with one strap falling off her right shoulder.

It's still a charming little flick, and might be worth your dollars if you don't mind a slightly silly type of romantic comedy.

Gao, however, is aghast at Ying's tyrannical ways and resists cooperation. The king's daughter, Yueyang, takes a fancy to Gao and seduces him. The two become genuine lovers, even though the princess has been pledged to marry the son of the king's top general, and the king has to defuse the scandal from undermining his court.

All this unfolds in scene after scene of palace intrigue, and lots of lots of emoting that gets wearying after awhile. We see the king alternate between being angry and sentimental. He wants Gao's loyalty and musical skills to serve his grand purpose, and Gao grudingly gives in enough to save his head, but is never completely won over, and so the two are constantly bickering at each other.

In the end, Gao apparently composes the anthem but commits suicide after attacking Ying during the latter's ceremony, proclaiming himself Emperor.

So what to make of the movie?

The sets and costumes are not as lavish as other films to come more recently from China, but scenes of thousands of soldiers cheering their overlord, with fluttering banners and massive drums, does make for good spectacle. The story can be interpreted as one man's struggle to maintain his freedom of conscience, but it sounds more interesting to read in a novel, than to see it acted out as two guys going back and forth whining about each other's ways.

While it's a Chilean film, the plot and the circumstances could be anywhere in the contemporary world. Basically, two strangers meet at a party, hook up for a one-night stand, eventually get around to post-sex chit chat, and end up revealing more of themselves than they had ever anticipated.

It can be intepreted as a study of how people can crave casual physical intimacy, achieve it, and yet yearn for a much more profound connection. As the director says in the interview, it is easy for one to shed his or her clothes, than to actually bare one's soul.

As you watch Bruno and Daniela interact, you get the sense that despite each of their past relationships with other people, they have never really tried getting to know their previous partners as much as they are learning about each other.

My main critique is the sometimes jerky wandering of the camera. As full nudity and explicit close-ups are already well displayed here and there, I don't see the necessity of panning back and forth from the "action."

Anyway, if you like stuff such as "Full Body Massage" or "The Night and the Moment," you'll probably enjoy "En La Cama" as well.

If you care about matters of plot, it's worthwhile to watch each film twice as some things may be unclear after the first viewing, as double-crosses and plot twists come one after another, particularly in "The Dream Sword."

If you care mainly about the action and don't worry too much who's doing what or why, then at least the many sword fights at are generally quite good. However in both films there are times when various combat sequences were poorly edited and spliced together, leading to choppy transition in some of the action scenes. Fortunately, these do not detract too much from the overall experience.

I thought the fate of Chen Sing's character was a loose end that the movie should have addressed, but the plot mainly focuses on the consequences of an accidental discovery of a list of prominent names supporting the overthrow of the new government.

The heroic police commander who must stop this conspiracy is played by Wong Tao. He faces treachery within his own ranks and a defamation campaign designed to blackmail him into surrendering the document to the Imperialist conspirators, and of course it all ultimately leads to a bloody showdown.

Although the movie meanders quite a bit and includes a distracting side story of two young thieves and their annoyingly bossy sister who secretly loves the commander, there are enough good fights to keep one from being too bored.

However, it is released now as "The Elimination Pursuit." The opening credits open with a ballad sung in Mandarin, and one thing I didn't particularly like was that the opening credits consisted of all the fight scenes from the movie itself. Even movie previews don't reveal this much. This sequence ruined any sense or possibility of suspense that you get from watching scenes unfold before your eyes for the very first time.

I was tempted not to watch any further and skip the opening credits, but having paid for this disc, I ultimately sat through it so that I felt like I got my money's worth by watching every second of it. Fortunately, the movie turned out to be reasonably entertaining.

Anyway, the story involves gang of assassins called the "devil clan" wrecking havoc across the land.

A silent swordsman clad all in black called the Lone Wolf appears to be working for them. He carries a very cool looking curved sword. None the less, even without the opening credits giving away the plot, or even without the Rarescope guys changing the title of movie from "3 Famous Constables," it was easy to figure out the Lone Wolf is probably some sort of an undercover policeman or bounty hunter. After all, if he's the lead male character, he can't possibly be a bad guy, right?

The fight scenes are not bad, but they are more like Japanese samurai film sword fights than the typical Hong Kong kung fu movie battles that go on and on. The Lone Wolf cuts down his opposition very efficiently and quickly, and the one real climax in the film is waiting to hear what he actually says when he finally speaks.

The film opens a bit slowly, about 4-5 minutes is spent just showing three characters hiking their way to the temple. Once they get there, the action picks up a little. Their leader, Esquire Wen, is ostensibly there to advise and witness the succession of the Abbott at the Three Treasures Temple, but his real motive is to steal an ancient scroll.

This isn't some kung-fu manual teaching some lost secret style, as is often the case in most movies, but rather a Buddhist sutra.

The tension rises as more people arrive at the temple, including the local governor who harbors a greedy desire for the scroll himself. Moreover, two of the lead candidates to succeed the old abbot have ambitious or corrupt desires that reveal their hypocrisy when it comes to Buddhist teaching.

The story is very well told, the suspense building masterfully, and there are several surprise twists in the story, which are satisfyingly appropriate, which I won't reveal here.

None the less, I reluctantly didn't give the film a higher rating because I thought the action was a little weak. There are relatively few fight scenes, and in almost all of these cases the characters are merely trying their hardest to evade or jump away from a pursuer or pursuers. Therefore, almost no one attempts to stand his ground to seriously duel with his opponent. I thought there were some lost opportunities to throw in a couple of great fight scenes, but perhaps that was never the director's intent.

If you like a taut drama full of intrigue, this film can be quite entertaining, but don't expect an array of intense combat sequences.