Kelly WandXu Warriors of the Magic Mountain
September 13th 2006 07:23
Its insane internal logic is best approached through surrender. Nothing you can do will make it make any sense. But with this much energy, it doesn’t need to. It is a big open hearted dream of a movie as surreal as anything cinema can offer. The blood demon is awakened by the blood cult. The old guy catches it with his eyebrows. He tells the young guy to go off and get the purple and green swords. The young guy’s master and his friend’s master get possessed by the blood demon. The woman in the fort tries to heal them but freezes the cave instead. Does any of this make sense?
See. I told you. It really doesn’t matter.
The first time I saw this was in a dubious back alley cinema in London. The print was in Cantonese with English subtitles across the bottom and Mandarin subtitles down the side. Before the show, they played bizarre Chinese cover versions of Madonna songs. I am forced to confess that I had consumed industrial quantities of illegal stimulants. I am also forced to admit that it was some of the best fun I’d ever had in a cinema (with the possible exception of that time in the George Street Hoyt’s complex when… no that’s another story!)
Clearly, around the world, there were plenty of others who ventured into the unknown and were changed by the experience. John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” owes an enormous debt to “Zu Warriors”. Many complained that Carpenter’s film was too fast-paced and nonsensical. My initial reaction to it was to complain it was too slow compared to the original. (Even though the plot of the two films bore no similarities, I considered Carpenter’s film some kind of a remake.)
Before “Zu Warriors”, I think the west only saw Hong Kong cinema in terms of badly dubbed action films suitable only for the low lives who visited grind house flea pits. I can say that because I was one of those low lives. Our taste in cinema was regarded by respectable critics as being three notches below hard core Swedish pornography. The recent re-issue of some of these Shaw Brothers classics puts paid to that particular slander but that, too, is a different story.
If you haven’t worked it out yet, I’m recommending this film in the strongest terms possible. It is cinema at its most experimental. All the rules of story telling, mythology and effects are being made up on the spot. It’s fairly obvious that director Tsui Hark had been watching the original Star Wars film when he conceived this film. He had neither the budget nor the effects technology to attempt something of that scale but he went for it anyway. What he pulls off is a rich spectacle that will never be duplicated or repeated.
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Comment by JohnDoe
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Comment by christianhilton
I must have watched either the first network airing on British television or around that time - it was yonks ago, but I taped it & I've watched it a few more times since..., Jobi's borrowed it now though so I may be wrong about where that soup came from and who it was delivered to, but Xu Warriors stays way up in my estimation - I was bamboozled then enchanted by it and the kung fu soup scene could have been in any film sincematography, but all the better for it's place in easily my favourite Kung Fu & fx flick.
Comment by christianhilton
I must have watched either the first network airing on British television or around that time - it was yonks ago, but I taped it & I've watched it a few more times since..., Jobi's borrowed it now though so I may be wrong about where that soup came from and who it was delivered to, but Xu Warriors stays way up in my estimation - I was bamboozled then enchanted by it and the kung fu soup scene could have been in any film sincematography, but all the better for it's place in easily my favourite Kung Fu & fx flick.