Wicked City (1992)

Wicked City. Directed by Peter Mak Tai-Kit (1992). 

This is the live action version of the anime from the 87. It starts off at warp speed and just gets more into Yokai Monster territory as it blurrrrs along in a frenetic pace. A boxer’s BBQ’d corpse shows up. The death is attributed to happiness a new street drug. No, it’s not original “Stummys” the drug from KITH: Brain Candy that makes you happy because like Bruce’s character yells on stage “Fuck Happy”! 

The main character gets a hunch there may be monsters (or REPTOIDS) and we’re off into “Monster land”. It’s a mix of The Hidden (1987) and a heavy dose of film noir severed up psychedelic style. 

The two monster hunting agents are played by Jackie Cheung Hok-Yau (Ken) and Leon Lai Ming (Taki). Cheung was also in two insanely great HK flicks worth seeking out, Bullet in the Head and Haunted Cop Shop 2 (which we reviewed here).

Shock the Macaque monkey

The bros battle giant tentacles that claw their way through flesh. One monster looked like vagina face from Breeders (1984, T. Kincaid). Some of the style and lighting reminds me of The Hunger (1983), very MTV influenced. There’s an unhinged kitchen fight with one of the shapeshifters. A character busts out with neon blue lightning squiggling everywhere even on his eyebrows. It ramps up even further a half hour in as spouts of blue blood pours out of neck stumps. One handsome fellow whom I thought was gonna be the breakout star ends up losing his arms, head and then vomits. Ok so a few mins later he’s back! And just before he was rolling around a power plant in the gentle rain with Gaye, a sexy monster lady who’s involved with one of the Special Monster Squad dudes (the HK one not the Fred Dekker one)! 

you have a date with death

Reptoids are a snobby upscaled Alien race Nakadai Tatsuya plays their leader. One female character who wears the same metal bikini as Princess Lea gets into an epic battle that extends to the parking garage. The power plant is where they get their real jollies off at. Two naked characters party hard and shed limbs like Reptoids totally should and do in their natural habitat! I dunno either, just go with it, this movie assumes you’ve already read the comics and can figure out what’s going on. It somehow doesn’t hinder your enjoyment, which is rad! 

There’s so much action, pretty much non-stop. Oh Yeah, there’s a bizarre scene where a guy fucks a pinball machine. The VHS tape of this one came through the record store that I currently work at and it remains unsold. 

the pinball machine FUCKS!

If you love frenetically paced HK hi-jinx with mucho butt kicking and an all-around monster mash, seek this shit out. The anime is easily available to find on blu/dvd but this live action one is not. I watched it on one of the free Tubi style streamers and it's on archive.org in Eng. dubbed form.

Tiger Cage

Tiger Cage Directed By Yuen Wo-Ping, Starring Donny Yen (1988).

I’ve been sitting on this review for awhile, like Horton that dedicated pachyderm you may have read about in a Dr. Seuss book. At first I saw this action packed HK classic in the infancy of Netflix streaming and its sequel was there to boot. From the neon production logo to the starting gate, it doesn’t let up or take a breath. The film has constant blasting of hardware and pummeling. Chunks of heads are blown out by Asian dudes with comical mustaches. One of the main actors Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau starred in Demoness of 1000 years and John Woo's Bullet in the Head (which I need to get a copy of). Donnie Yen has gotten just too over exposed I mean he was in one of the lamest Star Wars, Rogue One, but that's definitely a step up in paycheck. Good for him I say!

Lucas was totally ripping off Hidden Fortress anyway.

 The stunts in this film look pretty painful, I'm sure a lot of stunt men were stuck in the hospital with broken bones. One dude jumps off a bridge and dives onto a moving car. What do you expect from Dickson Poon presentation, other than quality! One of my most favorite titles of the DP cannon is Porky's Meatballs (aka Devil Horse School Yard) Thank you HKDB for all the great info! 

actual image from Porky's Meatballs!

 Simon Yam aka Dr. Lamb hisself is one of the CID officers trying to bust up a heroin ring.

There’s an egg blowing prank that wouldn't look that weird on a Japanese game show.

After awhile it slows down to the pace of a ROM Com but not for too long. Then it settles into gun battle territory and another prank that causes fatalities this time.

yeah just like the incredible Mr. Limply

One cop gets covered in tear gas then shredded with a shotgun. His wife starts training for revenge. This dude with a fro and a mustache played by Johnny Wang Lung-Wei is super bad ass. Johnny Wang was in a lot of amazing Chinese flicks like Boxer's Omen, Dirty Ho and even Crippled Avengers. 

I remember watching the sequel to TG first with chop socky dubbing and enjoying it more. 

UGHHH I hate when my crepe explodes!

There’s this one gangster played by Micheal Woods who looks like Lionel Richie with gigantism, he wears a white blazer. It’s all very Miami Vice-ish. The fight scene between him and Donnie yen is highly entertaining and the fight choreography is excellent. Woods was only in a few HK films but he has an unhinged presence and even appeared in one other film featured in the Deep Red catalog, In the line of duty 4.

I just shit my pannntttsss!

Ng Man-Tat gets pelted with a bag of cocaine that erupts and clings to his face. He's one of the main cops and his character is pretty like able, I'm surprised he hasn't appeared in more films that I've seen.

I don’t want to spoil anything but Simon Yam brutally kills a major character and it’s pretty fucked up!

Dr. Lamb just got recruited as the Trump surgeon general.

During the second half, Yam gets more insidious and acts like a thug. Good cops get framed and it’s basically turns into a more gore soaked CSI.

One girl gets hurled out a window and dives onto a car like in the first half! There’s even a montage that gets you amped for the final showdown. I'd say watch part 2 first then revisit in the first one because most of the cast return even though a lot of them are killed. Go figure.

I'm not making copies of the Mad Ron's Prevues tape don't melt my eyeballs!

Steve Fenton Reviews: We're Going to Eat You.

WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU 

(地獄無門 / Di yu wu men, a.k.a. HELL HAS NO GATES or NO DOOR TO HELL) 

Hong Kong, 1980. D: Tsui Hark 

Reviewed by Steve Fenton 

(Crank here with a short intro: I reviewed this film 5 years ago when I started this blog (link). Back then I would rattle off capsule reviews and hardly took notes. I'm always excited to read a different perspective on the same film, so I've convinced Steve Fenton to chip in a few reviews. Hopefully you know him from Weng's Chop and Monster besides other DR films he's tackled on this site respectively. And now on with the goods). 

As boss-cannibal The Chief says to his flunkies in regards to their—er—dog-eat-dog existence, “In our line of work, if you don’t eat people, they’ll eat you! If you don’t beat them, they’ll beat you!” Words to the wise… 

This movie’s title is probably most familiar to splatterheads as the US ad slogan for Lucio Fulci’s gutcruncher ZOMBIE (Zombi II, 1979), and it is quite feasible that Tsui Hark was influenced for this early feature (his second following THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS [蝶變 / Die bian, 1979]) by the then-still-ongoing Italian zombie/cannibal genres. According to an unsubstantiated rumor I once heard c/o Colin “Asian Eye/TIFF Midnight Madness/Shudder” Geddes, a Chinese story by Qing Dynasty scribe Pu Songling (a.k.a. 蒲松齡 [1640-1715])—possibly one from his collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio?—was likely also a source of inspiration here. Whichever way you slice it, however, WGTEY is indeed one bizarre pot of (to quote Alice Cooper from his classic horror track “The Black Widow” [1975]) “humanary stew”; and, since one man’s (or woman’s) meat is another’s poison, only those strong-stomached flesh-eaters with a liking for theirs not just rare but damn near raw need apply! 

A very erotic episode of Archie Bunker.

Firstly, before we plunge into the—ahem—meat of the matter, allow me to whet your appetite with this tasty tidbit of backstory: In 1992, a Communist dissident named Zheng Yi fled Mainland (i.e., Red) China for Hong Kong (which was then still some five years away from becoming re-assimilated back into the mother country’s jurisdiction [as happened in the fateful year of 1997]), risking his life to defect and reveal to the world at large the horrifying contents of a 600-page manuscript which he had in his possession and was eager to bring to light. This damning document exposed cases of mass public cannibalism organized by the Communist régime during the tumultuous social upheaval of the ’60s Chinese Cultural Revolution. At that time, subversives were reportedly systematically/summarily executed, butchered and then devoured by slavering throngs of loyal Reds. Chairman Mao Zedong believed it was a fine symbol of his people’s “class struggle”; his followers evidently believed it was a good excuse for a BBQ. Due to the sensitive, classified nature of the information contained in the smuggled manuscript for many years before it finally came to light in the early ’90s, it is doubtful that WGTEY’s main maker/mover’n’shaker Tsui drew from actual historical facts (other than perhaps whispered rumors), but—if the film is viewed in broader symbolic/satiric terms—the parallels with certain aspects of China’s then-recent past are noteworthy. 

who else feels like chicken tonight?

And so to the film itself… On an isolated jungle island somewhere in Republican China dwells a whole community of mad butchers—led by him respectfully known as The Chief—with a penchant for the taste of human meat; indeed, central to the community is an ominous brick-and-mortar building known (with good reason!) as the slaughterhouse. Any unwary outsider foolish enough to stray into the voracious villagers’ neck of the woods soon winds up slaughtered, deboned and dressed upon their chopping blocks, ready to be divvied-up for consumption by the locals at the communal dining hall (quaintly described as the “cafeteria” [!] in the English subs to my Mei Ah Entertainment disc edition of the film, which I scored back in the mid-2000s down in Toronto’s Chinatown on a bootleg DVD-R c/o the Triads for a mere two bucks Canuck). 

2 Buck Canuck, I wonder if that wine pairs well with human meat? 

Right in the prologue, a bunch of ersatz downsize Leatherfaces in butchers’ aprons wielding meat-axes, carving knives and bone-saws turn a couple of foolhardy trespassers into instant coldcuts. Close-ups of knives piercing flesh and choppers severing limbs are followed by a man being sawn in half at the waist. This all amounts to quite the garishly gruesome opener, for sure. Although there’s much stronger meat to be had these days, and HK cinema went to even greater lengths to unsettle stomachs in later decades (especially during the spate of ultra-violent “Category III” shockers made in the ’90s), back in the day this was mighty potent stuff, without doubt; even if, shades of its occidental kindred spirit/more-than-just-partial inspiration source THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974, USA, D: Tobe Hooper), many of the bloody bodily atrocities committed in WGTEY are much more implied rather than actually graphically shown. That said, more-so than in Hooper’s comparatively restrained film, there’s still plenty of gory gruesomeness to be seen onscreen in the present one, so it’s hardly an exercise in subtle horror, by any means. 

you were expecting Anthony Wong?

Shortly into the narrative proper, a pair of omnivorous river travelers—a dope-smoking, shaggy-wigged “hippy” hobo/thief (Hon Kwok-choi) and a skilled young martial artist/Central Surveillance operative named Jian Men, alias Agent 999 (played by the rather Danny Lee-like Norman Chu Siu-keung, from WING CHUN [詠春, 1994, D: Yuen Wo-Ping])—stop off at the inhospitable isle of ravenous cannibals, who much prefer home-cooked vittles of the human kind rather than lowly chicken. At their village, the longhair is soon ‘molested’ by an oversexed (or possibly just seriously undersexed) Chinese giantess, who forcibly attempts to have her way with him. (“I’ve got syphilis”, he says in hopes of dissuading his seven-foot-plus seductress. Her good-natured reply is, “Hey, so do I!” Gee, it’s a small world, huh?) The XL female is played strictly for distasteful laughs by ‘her’ drag (?) actor, so it does come as rather a mean-spirited surprise for us when s/he too winds up chopped into extra-large cubes of stewing beef (or rather, “long pig”)—not by the cannibals, but by the heroes. Thankfully, this development isn’t dwelled upon in nauseating detail, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth anyway, being as the late oversized nymphomaniac amounted to one of the strange village’s more normal, likeable inhabitants. 

At least this flick is more tolerant than PantyHose Hero!

As befits his official title, The Chief (Eddy Ko Hung, sporting an obviously spurious stick-on ’stache and beardlet) is a militaristic, order-barking authoritarian in partial (if decidedly worse-for-wear-and-tear) uniform, who wields a combo swagger stick/cudgel as his scepter of office and in a later amusing scene bemoans the loneliness of his position as top dog in the pecking order. His #1 aide is a man called Rolex (Melvin Wong Gam-San), a fugitive—now-reformed—bandit who is Agent 999’s primary reason for being in the vicinity in the first place. Having sickened of the local yokels’ cannibalistic ways, the ex-criminal endeavors to put an end to them with the G-man’s help, while clearing his name in the process. 

Over the course of this outré scenario, veritable rivers of watered-down raspberry syrup-like blood are shown flowing in loving close-up, although much of the actual damage done to people’s bodies by all the various cold steel carving implements used is kept firmly out of frame, even if the editor’s juxtaposition of the various visual elements does succeed in making such scenes painful to witness nonetheless. Humor periodically segues to horror (and vice versa) without warning, but this queasy admixture of goofball slapstick comedy and extreme gore largely works, thanks to the staccato cutting—pun very much intended!—and Tsui’s morbid sense of humor, even if the gags do sometimes descend to lowbrow scatology (e.g., “I’ll feed you my farts!”), which was certainly nothing new for HK’s commercial cinema, even then.  

Cannibalistic citizens bicker over larger portions of “pie”, while the shunned/scorned town outcast is a vegetarian (or, worse still, possibly even an all-out Vegan?!) suffering from advanced malnutrition. An amorous wife asks her spouse for a bit of “heart”… literally! While eating noodles, a man finds a whole fingernail in his bowl, which is a whole lot grosser by far than finding a fly in your soup. When a strip of quivering flesh is slashed from his comrade, a flesheater smacks his lips appreciatively and promptly has a nibble of said mouth-wateringly tantalizing morsel. Even when bloodily dismembering victims, the masked meatmen are portrayed as comical lunkheads. Blades cleave skulls set to kooky Three Stooges-like sound effects, while frenetically clashing cymbals bring a disjointed, unsettling quality to the soundtrack, which also incorporates sundry “Halloween haunted house”-style spooky audio FX too; hell, even that familiar canned “wolf-howl” heard in innumerable horror flicks from both the Orient and the Occident is also reheard herein. The cannibals’ voracious appetite for manmeat is played for much broad farce, and human flesh is bartered like steak. The whole “humans-as-cattle” angle/subtext is emphasized further in a scene where two combatants buffet at each other with long-horned yak skulls like rutting male moose trying to outdo one another for a mate. Roller-skates, firecrackers and some impeccably-choreographed kung fu figure prominently at the climax of WGTEY, as does a grisly final twist. Even periodic (if only brief) lapses into philosophical pontification on the universal human condition fail to cause viewers’ attention to wander, and seem fitting to the overall surreal proceedings. 

Oh I'm sorry am I boring you?

All of this might well be interpreted as political allegory regarding Communist China (way back when in Tsui’s Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show segment, droll host Jonathan Ross aptly called it “biting satire”). But there’s no need to bother with underlying ‘social commentary’ anyway if you don’t feel so inclined; by all means just sit back and enjoy the outrageous visuals! WGTEY is great fun entertainment, but if it happens to be your first-ever experience with HK cinema of the more out-there kind, you’re probably in for a bit of culture shock on top of all the other more visceral shocks you get from it. Cannibalism—even when stir-fried with absurdist Rabelaisian touches and (jet-black) humor—is understandably not exactly a popular topic in Hong Kong, even if so many local filmmakers have dabbled in such themes over the years (case in point some of those grislier “Cat III” serial killer shockers). Upon its initial release, WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU proved to be a resounding commercial flop, as was Tsui’s other satirical/political piece from the same year, DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS OF THE FIRST KIND (第一類型危險 / Di yi lei xing wei xian, see review here). Distributors treated both of these at-the-time unpopular films with great apathy and allowed them to gather dust in their vaults for many years, before the home video boom, which started catching-on in the ’80s and shows no signs of slowing down to this day (even if the technology has changed so drastically for the better in the meantime!), began gradually building-up their international fanbases; both films have long-since developed sizeable cult followings by now, and for hardcore HK-horror buffs, the present title—the most notorious of the two by far, for obvious reasons—amounts to absolutely mandatory viewing. 

Kung Fu Cult Master (1993)

KUNG FU CULT MASTER (1993)

(aka “Lord of the Wu Tang”, aka “Kung Fu Master”, aka “Evil Cult USA”, aka “The Evil Cult”)

Dir. Wong Jing

No title translation? That's racist.

Review by Goat Scrote

     “Kung Fu Cult Master”  has all of the essential ingredients I look for in a kung fu movie, which is actually just three things. I want lots of exciting fights, cool stunts, and badly translated subtitles. This movie totally delivers. Bonus points for wire-fu superpowers. Double bonus points for the fact that this particular film mixes vulgar dick jokes with the quest for martial arts enlightenment. 

     The movie was directed and written by Hong Kong legend Wong Jing, from the novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber by Louis Cha Leung-yung (pen name Jin Yong). This novel has spawned several film versions and a TV mini-series. The fabulous Sammo Hung directs the action sequences, handles the fight choreography, and also has a part in the movie. Jet Li leads the cast.

Swords are crossed but balls aren't touching.
Verdict: not gay.

     Wong Jing’s public statements seem to mirror my feeling that no matter what other virtues or faults a film possesses, it absolutely must not be boring. The only way that a film (or any artwork) can truly fail is by failing to engage the viewer. By that standard, Mr. Wong rarely fails. In this case he has made a fast-paced, funny, weird movie packed with spectacle. “Kung Fu Cult Master” is a flawed but highly entertaining fantasy wuxia action epic. It runs too long and it’s very confusing, but it’s also a lot of fun and definitely worth a look.

     If you can accept that super-awesome kung-fu magic fights are happening, and you don’t need to know too much about exactly why they are happening, this is a movie for you. Some of the flicks we review are a real chore to watch over and over again, but I didn’t mind so much with this one. The plot is one of the most convoluted I’ve ever tried to review, and I couldn’t understand it until I found three different versions - an excellent English dub and two different subtitled versions - and watched them with a lot of comparison, rewinding, and note-taking. Figuring out who was who in the sprawling cast was a minor nightmare. It is really difficult to make sense of the complex political conflict behind the action, which involves at least ten different clans plus the Yuan government, all intriguing against one another.

I will now explain why I'm divorcing you
through interpretive dance.

     The thing to focus on is the personal journey of the hapless protagonist from bullied orphan weakling to ultimate master of kung fu. The epic scale of the movie remains grounded in the human story of a kid who’s had a hard life finally growing up by collecting kung fu “Ievel ups". I'm not sure that's very practical as a life lesson, but fortunately, I also don't care.

     The film begins with a lot of exposition. There are two main groups vying against each other. The “orthodox” faction is composed of six different martial arts clans allied under the leadership of Shaolin. The other five members are Wudang, Emei, Kun Lun, Hung Tung, and Wah San.

     The second faction is the Ming Sect, aka Evil Cult, aka Fire Clan, headquartered on Bright Peak. They are outsiders from Persia who want to bring down the Yuan government. The Ming Sect is led by four elders: Queen of Purple Dragon; King of White Eagle; King of Gold Lion; And King of Green Bat.

"My beard will eat your mustache."

     The minions of the different sects are conveniently color-coded, which is good because otherwise there would be absolutely no way to tell who is fighting whom. The Shaolin have saffron robes with shaved heads. The Wudang have blue robes and hair in topknots. The Emei are nuns who wear white or light brown. The Kun-lun dress all in brown. The Hung Tung wear red hooded robes. The Wah San wear black. The Ming Sect robe colors tend to match their elders’ colors, purple, silver, gold, and green, but one of the Ming armies also wears red so I don’t know what that’s about.

"Fame! I'm gonna live fore-e-ver..."

     The factions are seeking the knowledge contained in an artifact called the Lunar Scroll, which will make its possessor the greatest martial artist in the world. Two magic swords, Dragonslayer and Starcatcher, each contain half of the scroll. Dragonslayer is in the hands of the Golden Lion clan elder Tse Shun (Yan Huaili) of the Ming Sect, who slew its rightful owner. A wicked Emei sect nun called No-Mercy (Sun Meng-Quan) has the sword Starcatcher.

     One of the students of the orthodox Wudang, Chang Tsui San (Frances Ng) defies the rules and befriends Tse Chun of the Ming Sect. He also falls in love with the daughter of the King of White Eagle, Yan So So (Sharla Cheung). When Tse Chun obtains the Dragonslayer sword by killing its rightful owner, all three go into hiding on an island. There Chang Tsui San and Yan So So have a child named Mo-Kei who is the god-son of Tse Shun.

Portrait of the martial artist as a young man.

     The couple has come out of hiding to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Grandmaster of Wudang. A pair of kung-fu fighters known as the Two Jinxes show up (Leung Kar-Yan and Zhang Chun-Zhong). They ambush the family and take ten-year-old Mo-Kei hostage. The Grandmaster of Wudang, a fellow named Chang San Fung (Sammo Hung), flies onto the scene like Superman and tries to settle the situation down. When the Two Jinxes have the audacity to threaten the Master, he opens up a can of Sammo-sized whup-ass on them. The bad guys really ought to know better than to fuck with a 100-year-old guy who has white eyebrows down to his nipples. Haven’t these dumb fuckers watched Kill Bill? A serious butt-kicking ensues and I can already tell I am going to like this movie, because it is  full of wire-fu stunts and magic.

Want to see me crunch off the front of his skull
and slap his brain out through his face?

     The bad guys manage to hit Mo-Kei with a poisonous move called the Jinx’s Palm. The Grandmaster is away getting an antidote for Mo-Kei when the other five clans show up in force, each trying to leverage the situation to get their hands on Tse Shun’s magic sword.  The elders of the kung fu world and their armies of minions clearly have the advantage over Mo-Kei’s family. Mo-Kei’s father laughs at all of them and uses the power of pure spite to blow his own heart open all over his enemies rather than betray his friend.

     Mo-Kei’s mother tricks the elders into arguing amongst themselves, and lies about where to find the King of Golden Lion. She commits suicide while hugging her young son. She drenches him in her blood just moments after she tells him to avenge his father and warns him to never trust a woman. That is some fucked up parenting right there and psychiatry won’t be invented for a few centuries… so I guess you just walk off, little traumatized Mo-Kei.

This image haunts my nightmares.

     Whew. That brings us to the 15 minute mark, only 1 hour and 25 minutes to go.

     With backstory out of the way, the movie fast-forwards seven years. The grown up Mo-Kei (Jet Li) still suffers ill effects from being poisoned as a child. He lives at Wudang Mountain with Grandmaster Chang San Fung, the incredible 107 year old virgin. Sifu claims that retaining all of his sexual energy is part of his power, and he likes to talk about the outrageous throbbing potency of his morning wood.

     The students at Wudang like to bully Mo-Kei because his health prevents him from fighting back. His rotten cousin Sung Ching Su (Collin Chou) orchestrates the abuse. A visiting girl from the Emei sect, Chow Chi-Yu (Gigi Lai) joins in, playing a prank on Mo-Kei which leads to his being seriously beaten by the students. Sung Ching Su threatens to chop off Mo-Kei’s hand and murder him.

Mellow yellow.

     Without warning a mysterious woman in red shows up on the rooftops and helps Mo-Kei. She uses long chains binding her wrists together as weapons to fight with. He and his mystery ally are flung into a vine-filled ravine by Chow Chi-Yu with the power of the sword Starcatcher. Scummy cousin Sung Ching Su and sadistic nun Chow Chi-Yu cover their tracks by telling the Wudang elders that Mo-Kei was attacked and murdered by the woman in red, and they exacted justice by killing her.

     It turns out the woman in red, Siu Chu (Chingmy Yau), is sworn to serve the family of the King of White Eagle, Mo-Kei’s grandfather. Her hands are chained together because she offended White Eagle. Sleeping next to Siu Chu in the ravine, Mo-Kei wakes up with his very first boner and worries that he might have made her pregnant simply by getting morning wood in her vicinity.

You have successfully transmitted a baby into my body!

     A cannibalistic paraplegic with telekinetic kung-fu powers has lived in the ravine for decades. I couldn’t verify who played this part, but he is awesome. He flies around strapped to a giant boulder and makes all kinds of creepy threats. This section is surreal, funny, and just a little scary too. After Mo-Kei says he will never pollute his mind with the hermit’s kung fu, the magic hermit mind-rapes his own knowledge into Mo-Kei by clubbing him with vines and contorting his "student's" body. I don’t know how that works, but whatever. It turns out that this was the young man’s plan all along, since he knew about the hermit and what his powers could do. They fight and Mo-Kei is victorious.

Somebody hose off the 30 years of accumulated stink.

     Mo-Kei gets super glowy kung fu powers from the Great Solar School, the secret knowledge of the cannibal hermit. He becomes hard to hurt or kill, and he can shoot energy blasts out of his hands. This is also the key to completely curing him of the effects of the Jinx’s Palm. Now he can avenge his parents at last.

     At an inn, the pair encounters yet another mysterious woman, this one wearing a gold crown and leading elite Yuan government troops. Among her minions are the Two Jinxes, but there are far too many troops for Mo-Kei to start trouble even with his Solar Stance.

Harry Potter is so fucking jealous right now.

     Elsewhere, the elders of the six clans make plans to attack the Ming Sect at their headquarters on Bright Peak. The elders of the Wah Sah Clan (one played by Tenky Tin Kai-Man) are hilariously sleazy, letting slip their desire to steal both of the swords and molest the Emei nuns. The meeting is interrupted by one of the Ming Sect elders, the King of Green Bat, Wai Yat Siu (Richard Ng). He is some kind of living vampire. He can fly, drinks blood, and can turn into an actual bat. He is probably my favorite character in this movie, even though has a secondary part. He escapes and warns the Ming Sect of the coming attack by the six clans.

     There is a massive battle between the followers of the two factions. They use crazy cool battle tactics, nifty martial arts superpowers, magic, weird mechanical weapons, and more. The nun No-Mercy shows just how powerful a mistress of kung fu can be when armed with a magical sword.

BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!

     The Ming Sect has been warned to expect an assassin pretending to be the “dead” Mo-Kei, so when he shows up for real he ends up having to fight them with his brand new kung fu. Then No-Mercy recognizes him, and both sides of the battle are after him!

     Mo-Kei and Siu Chu are forced to flee to the tomb of the two masters who originally created the magic swords, a taboo place where the clans dare not follow. They find a monk there who reveals that he infiltrated the Shaolin 20 years ago, he’s working for the government, and he is using the Six Clans to destroy the Ming Clan. They fight and Mo-Kei punches the false monk so hard it snaps his fingers off. The injured villain uses trickery to make his escape.

"By the power of Grayskull!"

     Siu Chu helps Mo-Kei discover the secret of “Magic Stance” which is hidden in the tomb, written in Persian so that only Sui Chu is able to read it. The magic stance makes Mo-Kei even more powerful, since he is immediately able to absorb kung fu knowledge thanks to his Solar School upgrade. According to Siu Chu, the instructions direct the reader to deliver the secrets of the stance to Tse Shun. This raises the question of her motives. Is she also trying to find the sword Dragonslayer?

Meh, I've been on worse blind dates.

     Meanwhile the tide of battle turns agains the Ming Clan. Green Bat is injured, and White Eagle is impaled by at least half a dozen swords. He handles it like a boss, though, snapping the blades with his body and then pulling them out.

     Mo-Kei bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid Man and explains the conspiracy by the Yuan to make the clans fight each other. The Shaolin refuse to believe one of their masters was a traitor, and they send a champion to fights Mo-Kei. The good-hearted hero shows mercy after he beats the monk… so of course No Mercy steps up to the plate, because she fuckin’ hates mercy. Mo-Kei reveals his new Magic Stance by casually taking her sword, slapping her repeatedly, and cutting the chains the bind his friend Shiu Chu. The Emei continue to fight, and Mo-Kei is run through with a sword. This annoys him, and he blasts the offender away with chi power. The Wudang, out of respect for the honor and skill of their opponents, unite with the Ming to defend the injured hero. Mo-Kei entrusts the Wudang clan with Starchaser.

My eyebrows are invincible against your kung fu.

     The Ming Sect has a law that they must obey the master of Magic Stance, and they unite behind Mo-Kei as the new Clan Master. One oily advisor immediately appears from under a rock and tempts Mo-Kei with power... he could replace the Emperor! 

     The Wudang, while traveling home, are ambushed with a poison which steals their kung fu. All of the antidote in the town has been bought by one person, so Mo-Kei goes to Green Willow Villa where his true enemy is revealed. The leader of the Yuan government conspiracy is Princess Chao Min (Sharla Cheung, who also plays Mo-Kei’s mother!). She is  the woman he briefly saw at the inn earlier, commanding the Two Jinxes. She has been manipulating the clan infighting from the start. It appears that Chao Min has stolen the Starcatcher from the Wudang, but when the Ming elders try to recover the blade, it turns out to be a trick. The elders are exposed to poison which renders them helpless after they have traveled a short distance from the Villa.

Don't squeeze the Chao Min!

     Mo-Kei returns to confront the villainess. Chao Min gloats about the poison and performs a sneak attack with darts. Next she shoots spear-tipped strings from the musical instrument she is playing. The two go hand to hand and she proves to be a very formidable opponent. Mo-Kei throws people around Jedi-style, causes an earthquake, and strips off half of Chao Min’s clothes. She remains calm and composed the whole time, and demands that in return for the antidote he perform three favors for her, as long as they don’t violate his code of honor. Chao Min’s first spiteful demand is that Mo-Kei can never marry Siu Chu.

     The Emei nuns come across the helpless Ming elders. Siu Chu makes an agreement with No-Mercy. If Siu Chu can survive three strikes from the cruel nun, the Emei will spare the elders. Just as the lethal third blow lands, Mo-Kei leaps in to the rescue. Shortly afterward, the injured No-Mercy and the other nuns are captured by government troops.

No-Mercy and her Total-Lack-of-Humanity Dancers.

     The Shaolin turn out to have been slaughtered, and whoever did it left behind graffiti blaming the Ming. A fake Shaolin monk shows up at Wudang and attempts to assassinate Grandmaster Chang San-Fung. In the confusion, the scumbag cousin Sung Ching Su stabs his Grandmaster. Ching Su reveals he is working for the government. Government agents attempt to bribe the Wudang, but the injured Grandmaster fights them.

     Mo-Kei arrives and uses Magic Stance to go all Keanu Reeves on the government bad guys. He grabs their swords out of their hands with his mind and crushes them into a ball. Princess Chao Min shows up again and for her second favor, she demands that Mo-Kei refrain from using the Solar Stance or the Magic Stance while fighting the Two Jinxes. The Grandmaster gives him an instant Tai Chi lesson so he has a fighting chance. Eventually he prevails over the Jinxes in suitably melodramatic fashion.

Chime for me to send you to bell!

     Mo-Kei owes the princess one more favor. She wants him to come see her in the capital where she will allow him to fulfill his debt to her. It ends with this cliffhanger, and a whole lot of loose story threads dangling. Who is Siu Chu really working for? What happened to No-Mercy, Chow Chi-Yu, and the other Emei, Shaolin, and Wudang hostages? Will the swords be reunited and the secret of the Lunar Scroll revealed? Did they ever go back to help the crazy hermit like they promised? This movie was supposed to be the start of a trilogy but it wasn’t financially successful enough to earn a sequel and so we will never know what was in store for Mo-Kei.

Bonus nightmare fuel. Come sit on Santa's face!

Noooo-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Jet Li casts Cone of Cold on the Demogorgon.

Retroactive abortion is an actual thing, right?