Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Shu shan, 1983)

Tsui Hark

Hong Kong

95 mins, color, Cantonese (English subtitles)

Being the brave soul that I am, I begin this review with a synopsis of the plot just to see whether the impossible is attainable.

Ti Ming Chi (Yuen Biao) is a young Zu warrior, who becomes disaffected with the futile fighting of the different Zu factions. After a farcical phony fight with another Zu character (Sammo Hung), he falls off a cliff and stumbles into the proverbial Battle of Good and Evil. (Actually, he stumbles into a cave, where the proverbial Evil lurks a whole lot like the little Jawas from STAR WARS' Tatooine.) His journey nearly gets cut short but Ting Yin (Adam Cheng) saves him and becomes his unwilling teacher. At roughly the same time, Abbott Hsiao Yu (Damian Lau) and his very own disciple Yi Chen (Man Hoi) glide by, using their magic frequent flyer miles, and become embroiled in the aforementioned proverbial Battle of Good and Evil. Naturally, all said characters are on the right side.

On the Dark side in the far corner is the Bloodsucking Beast, or something of that sort, equally nasty. The old fat man with whiskers (Sammo Hung) traps it with some magic mirror but can only hold it for about a month before ... drum roll ... The Egress (tm). Put it simply, if in thirty days our valiant heroes don't come back with the two magic swords, all hell will break loose, everyone will perish, the Earth will stop rotating, and Nixon will go to China. In a somewhat confusing turn of events, the Beast has poisoned the Abbott --- and possibly others --- and also has a penchant for impersonating various characters, mainly in an effort to steal freshly cooked fish.

Before they could save the world, our heroes have to save the Abbott, who has started to develop a bad case of the silver facial paint. The group travels to the Ice Fort to ask the Ice Countess (Brigitte Lin) to put the guy on ice. After some uproarious healing rituals, she does so but (conveniently) exhausts herself from riding stone elephants and some mythical winged creature, also made of stone. She and Ting vow eternal love (in code language) and Ting departs with Ti and Yi to retrieve the swords. The Abbott stays behind with the bevy of fair maiden in pursuit of wholly scholastic endeavors.

The Blood Monster, however, possesses Ting and the intrepid warriors return to the Countess for another healing session. She, as mentioned before, is thoroughly exhausted, so Ting stays possessed, which turns out to be a very nimble state for he flies off to some unspecified place, presumably to thwart the ways of Good. Undaunted, Ti and Yi recruit one of the beautiful guards (Moon Lee) and magically find themselves at their destination. A bearded fat guy chained to a ball shows up and utters a whole lot of nonsense, from which the trio gathers that he is on their side. Unfortunately, during the time that he keeps them occupied with his rather long tirade, the evil Ting shows up and messes everything up. Ti and Yi eventually get the two swords and "master" them (that is, they speak simultaneously with a female voice). With the help of Li I-chi (Judy Ongg), they defeat the Blood Beast when the Ice Countess flies off with the main adversary, the possessed Ting.

Whew! Didn't make a lot of sense? Never mind. Imagine now my confusion after sitting through a unique screening of this film at the Dryden. The second projection machine broke and they had to show the film using the only remaining one, the vintage projector, circa 1950, which is one noisy mother. The noise, however, was not the problem. With a single machine, the projectionist had to spool new reels every 15 mins or so, resulting in five minute pauses in the most inauspicious places in the film. It was all in good clean fun and no one in the audience asked for their money back. The intermezzi, if anything, prompted me to recap and digest the goings on. It still did not help.

Made in 1983, ZU is the brainchild, or I should say, the unbridled frenzied freak of a child of Tsui Hark's demented cinematic vision. The film bursts with ideas that overflow every frame and overwhelm. Although a box office bomb at the time, ZU gradually acquired a following, establishing itself as a double phenomenon: an almost mainstream US Hong Kong film, and the inspiration for an entire genre: the wuxia flick of the supernatural. The wire fu has never been the same since. Action directing by Corey Yuen is pretty competent and the wires almost never show. On the other hand, the special effects look incredibly dated, which does not help matters with the supernatural beings who, in the good Hong Kong tradition, look more goofy than scary. Truth be told, ZU is not impressive today, and probably wasn't too impressive when it came out. The 1977 STAR WARS, from which it liberally "borrows" had much better special effects.

What makes this film a winner is not the plot, which is convoluted, to say the least; or the acting, which is passable, to say the most; or the action sequences, which are average. It is the zaniness of the whole bizarre proceedings. There's plenty of humor, most of it on purpose, some in translation only, and yet other completely unintentional. It is thus easy to forgive the faults that abound elsewhere. The dizzying editing style would not ingratiate the director to modern audiences, who seem to prefer a less disorienting approach. The music, which appears borrowed from great Hollywood epics, also contributes to the carnival atmosphere. There's much grandiose speeching, a lot of posturing, and even some romantic gazing into the distance, all set against an appropriately bombastic, if trivial, score. Superior fun.

For fans of Brigitte Lin, ZU is a must-see, for it is one of the rare instances, where the great actress appears wholly female. Adam Cheng, who some may recall from THE SWORD, also makes for a suitable hero. The rest of the cast is mostly fodder for cheap jokes and somewhat expensive thrills.

August 16, 2001.