Eternal Combat

Vampire Buster great Lam Ching Ying stars as the Master who, along with apprentices Tortoise (Gabriel Wong) and Ma Sheung Fung (Fui-On Shing), attempt to defeat an evil Japanese warrior demon (Rico Chu) in ancient times. During the battle, the four fighters' magical spells somehow backfired, sending them through another dimension and into present day Hong Kong.

There's some nice action in this movie, including some sword-wielding movies from Lam Ching Ying and Rico Chu. Unfortunately, the overall ghost element is somewhat limited in this movie as much of the plot involves the Master and his apprentices trying to find their way about the modern world, and dealing with modern day humans. And, Fui-On Shing's over-the-top bullying and aggressive portrayal of Ma Sheung Fung was a major turn off and proved to be very annoying to the plot.

The beautiful Joey Wang plays the female lead in the film, portraying two roles, and is a very welcome part of the cast. Overall, it's not a terribly bad movie - could have used more scary ghost action, though.

Grade C

An Eternal Combat was a very unusual but effective Hong Kong fantasy action film..Throwing everything in the blender from action, fantasy drama and comedy. This could only be made in Hong Kong during this period of time. Putting together The Icemen Cometh and A Chinese Ghost Story on crack. This manages to be pretty cohesive. The action scenes are fantastic, the film looks great and I found the comedic elements to be hilarious. The comedy here is a acquired taste to those that get and/or are used to the Hong Kong sense of humor. It's got a good cast with Joey Wang, Lam Ching Ying, Shin Fu On, and HK psycho actor Anthony Wong. Overall it a wild ride, but a nice watch.

Some Taoist priest and his underlings must stop a Japanese demon from doing something. As with a lot of HK movies of this nature, An Eternal Combat starts off promising with its mysticism, wire fu action and weirdness to only delve into unnecessary stupidity. That stupidity being HK comedy. The comedy took up 60% of the film and that is where hope for a crack headed extravaganza started to diminish. I wasn't too fond of the time travel aspect either but it was forgivable for the most part. But when Anthony Wong made his presence known, I was happy as hell. He did save this movie with his psychotic performance. The church scene was epic and it shows Anthony's brilliant acting performance to a tee. So hence, it is, at times, a chore to watch but in the end it turned out good.

I had not heard much about this film when I bought this film on the spur of the moment on DVD. I found it when I was doing a search for Lam Ching YIng movies. If you liked the Mr. Vampire series or Chinese Ghost Story series, you are sure to enjoy this one. Its pure entertainment. The film takes elements of the Mr Vampire series and Chinese Ghost Story and combines them with time traveling aspects of Iceman Cometh. It has comedy, good action scenes with lots of wire work (which I know some people hate, but I love) and it has a good plot that is not confusing. Lam Ching Ying plays the role that he was most familiar, the straight man with mystical powers, while the other cast members provide comic relief. Lam Ching Ying, along with his two assistants (one his bumbling apprentice, the other a reincarnated spirit of a Chinese royal guard who died after placing a magic potion on his penis, don't ask) attempt to dispel an evil Japanese spirit who haunts the woods. The film also has Joey Wang (A Chinese Ghost STory 1,2&3, Painted Skin) as CiCi, a woman who is kidnapped by the evil spirit and forced to marry. As a result she turns evil. The three good guys try to vanquish the evil spirits and end up in modern day Hong Kong. From there, its the proverbial fish out of water as Lam Ching Ying seeks his assistants so he can defeat the evil spirit. Definitley a must for any collector of HK cinema.

Based upon the DVD's cover design, perhaps, I expected this to be some kind of routine horror film. Instead, this is a very entertaining film with a lot of humor and, of course, Lam Ching Ying.