It's an old story: a pair of star-crossed lovers with two children knows where the secret creed of the Holy Flame of the martial world is hidden. The chiefs of every martial arts clan of mythic ancient China want that secret, so they hunt the two down and kill them in a fit of overenthusiasm. The children miraculously survive some of baby fu (which is the technical term for fighting with a baby on your back) - the male one is rescued by The Phantom (Philip Kwok) who comes too late to be of help to the babies' parents, while the female one has the dubious luck of becoming the adoptive daughter of Tsin Yin (Leanne Lau), head of the Er Mei Clan and one of the killers.
Eighteen years later, the Phantom sends the boy who has (somewhat) grown into the not exactly spectacular form of Max Mok to retrieve the Holy Flame and take vengeance on the killers of his parents.
Nobody knows that there are actually two Holy Flames, a yin and a yang version, one only useable by an eighteen year old male virgin, the other by a female one. Soon each twin has one of the weapons. Will they kill each other with the the things, or will they slaughter the bad guys?
Holy Flame of the Martial World is a late period Shaw Brothers film and as such one thing first and foremost: a bizarre construction out of the maddest elements possible.
Sure, the underlying vengeance tale is an old hat in the martial arts and wuxia genres, but moments of earnest melodrama have to take a backseat when scores of bizarre characters attack each other with everything the Weird Fu sub-genre loves (except - inexplicably - midgets). Good old Philip Kwok uses what could very well be my all-time favorite fighting technique, the "Ghostly Laughter". Just imagine him with one of those bad white wigs that are supposed to signify age on his head, sitting in front of his enemies and laughing heartily. So heartily in fact, that his laughter causes an enormous storm which blows his enemies away (unless they "seal their energy flow"). It's enormously silly to look at, and I highly approve.
Most of the film is like that. It throws as much weirdness at its viewer as possible, most of it without anything amounting to an explanation. But really, what explanation could there be for Golden Snake Boy being played by a girl (and who is he/she anyway?) or for the Blood-Sucking Clan whose members are always on the lookout for female virgins to feed them to an English-speaking green corpse?
Or for the fact that the Holy Flames look very much like cheap plastic toys, until they grow and our heroes fly on them, that is? And, now that I think of it, did you know that coming into contact with a special snake bladder will give you the power of the Magic Finger?
With so much bizarre awesomeness thrown at me as fast as possible, I was even able to ignore the obvious flaws of the film - like Max Mok's complete lack of charisma and the ram-shackle state some of the sets were in. I just hadn't time for small change like this while watching a film with flying mirror balls.
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2 comments:
OMG. I. Love. This. Film.
Are there drugs in the internets today? What with you reviewing this and Memsaab reviewing Mard, it seems like there's some kind of insane movie hive mind forming.
Sadly, today obviously would have been a great day for me to post my review of the Polly Shang Kwan film Fight For Survival -- in which she gains kung fu skills that allow her to stretch her arms like Plasticman -- but I haven't quite finished watching it yet.
There are of course drugs in the internet. How else could you explain things like LOLtheorists.
Ah, like that Yoga practitioner who runs afoul of Jimmy Wang Yu.
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