| A Hong Kong/Japanese co-production (loosely based on the Manga cartoon Kujaka-Oh) helmed by Nam Nai Choi (Story Of Ricky, also a Manga adaptation). Peacock King doesn't come out on top but provides enough sporadic bursts of cheesy entertainment to please fans of the director. There's again very visible signs here of a filmmaker not really able to provide polished traits to a production but Nam rarely had to be anything more than that. He did his acclaimed Cat III revenge tale Her Vengeance just prior to Peacock King but I guess different genres got a different kind of attention from him. This movie had a lot more funds for the makers to play around with and that mostly shows up in the visual effects department. Most of the time we get the regular painted on animated visuals but there's a fair amount of decent stop-animation work here that no doubt is the result of the higher budget. Uneven, drags at times but when the director does decide to hit, it's generally pleasing. I would say he saved his most insane filmmaking to last though, with 1992's The Cat . Besides main star Yuen Biao we see Gordon Liu, Eddy Ko, Gloria Yip and Mikami Hiroshi. |
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