Wu lin sheng huo jin

Having watched many a Shaw Brothers, there are some I love for the action, some for the choreography, some for the story-telling and some for the humor; but this this I love for being their version of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'.

Wild fantasy wuxia flick from the eighties. It checked all the boxes for a good kung fu flick: Revenge, training sequence, soap opera twist, vivid florescent 80's colors (I think I saw some headbands & leg warmers on a few female fighters). What a great walk down memories from my childhood.

Eighteen years ago, the leaders of a number of martial arts clans captured and killed a young couple who refused to give them "the manual"; the couple had a son and a daughter, each of whom were taken by a rival clan to be raised and trained in the martial arts. Now, the youngsters are 18 and ready to find the weapon that will allow them to avenge their parents' deaths - but first they must fight, among other things, a black-clad English-speaking mummy, flying Chinese ideograms, treachery both within and outside of their clans, and maybe even each other…. This is one of the hilarious martial arts movies made by the famed Shaw Brothers in the 1980s, who attempted to revive interest in the form by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the mix. By this time in their careers, they were also playing with special effects (as a result of the success of the original "Star Wars" film) and the results were sometimes spectacular and sometimes spectacularly awful! A great deal of fun, but don't try to find any logic or rationale in the story or your head will surely explode!

What initially introduces itself as a classic Shaw Brothers revenge style film quickly deviates from that to become something altogether different in a way that's unexpectedly good.

I'll start by saying that this movie is wuxia through and through and though, so if you don't know the genre, it's extremely confusing. However, that's not to say most people who do know the genre would be able to call it all the way through, as even though the broad strokes are familiar, the execution is unique; and while it initially feels like a film made after they had everyone together for another film to reuse actors and sets and costumes, there's enough to keep it interesting all the way through.

The overall tone of the film is pulpy and comedic in a way that's just short of being actually funny without being so committed that it offends you when it fails and so it's instead charming, like someone giving you a badly made gift that obviously somehow shows more obvious skill and effort than if it were "well made."

Great things about it: -Predictable but in a comforting way -Most powerful martial artist in the film's world is a woman (very forward!) -Passes the Bechdel test (kinda) -Bright colors and weird, characters -Doesn't take itself seriously -Despite being filmed in shots that are obviously constrained to specific sets and lighting, this ends up adding excellent variety with distinct feel in each spot.

Bad things about it: -Story dead ends some characters yet they still stick around -Some of the characters don't have clear motivations as to why they do anything -Features a wide variety of martial arts sects but they all act and fight the same way -Special effects budget is essentially the whole budget -Abuse of wires

Weird things about it that are so bad it's good: -They spent way too much money on exactly 2 skeletons and so they reuse them again and again, even to the point where one of the bad guys goes, "HAHAHA, GRAB THE BONES!" as an obvious inside joke.

-The director and writer knew their tropes well enough that they openly and hilariously subvert tropes regarding "magic" and "vampires" and "dual cultivation," etc.

-The tone of the film shifts wildly from the open all the way to the close.

-Certain characters show up and are introduced as if they'd fill certain roles only for those roles to be completely changed in hilarious ways.

Overall, the film feels almost like you suddenly landed half way in a series with no formal prequel or sequel but is rich enough that it's still enjoyable, like being handed a slice of cake with something written on it and being unsure if it's for a birthday, holiday, retirement, or professional event but still enjoying it because it's surprisingly good cake. Just like that cake, I'd recommend this as a fun watch, especially if you have friends to riff on the film with at home.

Because of some of the plot beats present in Holy Flame of the Martial World, you might expect it to be a straightforward martial arts movie. This is because it contains main characters who are out for revenge, a magical object/MacGuffin that many of the characters are after, and people needing to participate in training montages around the halfway point in order to be stronger for the final action scenes.

However, the way Holy Flame of the Martial World plays out makes it very much unlike your average martial arts movie. It has some wild fantasy elements, it doesn't take itself very seriously at all, and it's all edited and paced together in a way that's so quick I sometimes felt overwhelmed. It feels like the horror-comedy Hausu/House if it also had action sequences, with frantic and very goofy scenes that make for great entertainment.

If anything, it might have been too much of a sensory overload for me, but I wasn't expecting it to be so crazy. If I'd had known, I probably wouldn't have watched it right before bed. Being a little more alert might not have made it make perfect sense (maybe it's not supposed to), but it might've helped a little.

Oh well. It was still a very fun watch, and certainly one of the crazier martial arts movies I've seen during my latest binge (might even be more flat-out ridiculous than Super Inframan, but I also don't find it quite as charming as that sci-fi spectacle).