Qing shan ke

You gotta love this movie. Whether poison gas is spewing from the evil Queen's navel or a donkey is disputing Communist doctrine, it's a load of laughs. The special effects are strictly on the cheap (at one point, I thought I was going through the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody), but they are completely in keeping with the overall style and message. It's kind of hard to read the subtitles, as they are very small and go by quickly. I'm still not sure how things turned out for Mr. Wang or how he ended up serving the demon, but I think that it's unimportant. Be sure to sing along with the Immortals when they break into song. Much more fun than "Aleksander Nevsky".

My copy is a computer file and the video is square shape typical of a VHS transfer. The dialog is Chinese, there are Chinese subtitles only and I do not speak Chinese.

It starts with eavesdroppers listening in on two guys talking to an old bedbound woman. They all seem concerned about something. Cut to a guy walking in the woods carrying a sword. Two men stop him, they argue, and he ends up thrown off a cliff. Cut to the apothecary. Cut again to the apothecary. Some rich guy and woman come in and talk about something. Cut again to a guy gathering herbs and making medicine. He seems to be healing the guy thrown off the cliff. A girl comes to visit. Two kids are collecting herbs and two guys have a problem with that. The first excuse for a fight is at about 16 minutes and it is just two kids running away from two men. At the rich guy's house people are practicing martial arts. The two guys beaten up by the kids report to him. There is another fight at about 26 minutes where our guy is attacked by men with swords.

Because of the language barrier I could never figure the underlying story of this movie. For certain, I think it is a stretch to call this a martial arts movie. The fights were few, brief, and barely demonstrated any martial art techniques. At HKMDB it is labeled martial arts and here it is labeled action. Action is stretching it too.

Therefore I cannot recommend this movie for fans of the martial arts genre. I hesitate to even rate it but am obliged so I'll rate it average.

Also regarding the other review posted here. I suspect that person watched a different movie because his descriptions do not match anything I saw happening in this movie. Many of these movies have more than one title so that would be understandable. I always start my reviews with a description of the opening scenes so fans can compare/contrast to verify.