War of the Wizards

 War of the Wizards, renamed as The Phoenix when released in the outside of Asia a few years later to cash in on Clash of the Titans' success, is a budget 1978 Taiwanese fantasy epic that's hobbled by a deeply unlikable little shit of a main character and some really turgid plotting. Stick with it, though, for a bunch of extremely charming old-school practical and visual effects, and a scene that might be the single funniest bit of intentional comedy I've run across in any of these films.

 Two things happen when hapless fisherman Tai (Hsiu-Shen-Liang) finds a magical bowl that allows him to create anything he wishes. The first is that he uses it to become rich (and in so doing, an absolute asshole). The second is that a large number of threats, supernatural and not, come after him to get the relic.

 One of these threats - an interstellar (yes, literally) wizard called Flower Fox (Betty Pei Ti) eventually steals both the bowl and Tai's two brides (long story), prompting a more traditional, heroic second half where our complete waste of a protagonist skills up and overcomes a few obstacles to get what he thinks he deserves. It really is a movie of two halves, so let's have a look at them separately.

 The first half of the movie is, by far, the worst; There is absolutely no reason to root for Tai, who's venal, shallow, a complete idiot, and deeply unfunny - but for far too long the script insists on presenting him as a hero, and we get a lot of his inane antics here. He does eventually get a very mild comeuppance (the film is not that dumb, I guess), but it's absolutely a case of too little, too late. In the meanwhile we're forced to watch him behaving like an entitled little nouveau riche dick and have to suffer through his daft, uncomfortable attempts to woo not one but two beautiful ladies (Terry Hu and Chow Chi-Ming). They are, of course, in cahoots with the main villain to rob the relic, but they do develop feelings for our idiot of a protagonist. Sigh.

 As bad as this first act is, it does contain an unimpeachable bit of comedy: A long scene where Tai is accosted by a number of colourful, powerful assassins at a restaurant. I'm not about to spoil what's easily the best scene in the movie, but do know that it's perfectly executed and, on a conceptual level, ridiculously ahead of its time - a cheeky, slightly post-modern piss take of a scene that only gets funnier as it goes along. Gags in these films rarely get this elaborate.

 Tai remains insufferable for the film's more enjoyable back half, and the fact that he keeps failing upwards and getting more and more powerful with seemingly very little effort no sacrifice won't endear him to anyone. Bonus shitty points: he's very focused on recovering his magic bowl, but rarely devotes a thought to his two hijacked paramours.

 So it's not like the plot gets any better, but at least there's a lot of cool stuff going on. The idiot in charge learns to absorb sunlight and shoot lasers with his sword, and gets the freaking Phoenix as a mount (a very endearing, janky puppet that looks like a peacock but has the rough shape of a turkey). Meanwhile, Flower Fox flies, can breathe fire, summons a giant stone creature and has a huge henchman at her beck and call (Richard Kiel - Jaws off the Bond movies) and causes tidal waves, letting co-director Sadamasa Arikawa show off his chops with miniature cities and boats.

 While there's a lot of Kung Fu wizardry, the fights remain resolutely mediocre. This is not a martial arts film by any stretch of the word - the choreographies are closer to... oh, say a Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movie.

 The Kung Fu wizardry is pretty good though. It's all very low budget, of course, and I'm sure the soulless fucks at the internet would have a field day complaining about how shitty it all looks. And... yeah, some of it, especially the optical effects, do look pretty bad. But if you can allow yourself to enjoy this sort of thing at all (and you should, don't be like those other losers!) there's definitely a lot to like; Cheap it may be, but there's a lot of effort behind this, and the special effect techniques cover the full gamut except maybe stop-motion.

 I don't want to oversell it - this is definitely not a good movie, and the dipshit protagonist makes it an even tougher sale. But there's enough good stuff here to make it a pretty enjoyable watch.

Avenging Eagle (Leng xue shi san ying)

  Two men meet in the desert. Chi Ming-sing (Ti Lung) is rescued from death by dehydration by Chao Yi-fan (Alexander Fu Sheng); In form of payment, like the proverbial scorpion Chi screws Chao over for his kindness, and steals his horse, food and drink.

 Chao manages to catch up to Chi - understandably miffed, butt he's happy just chastising the other man for behaving like a bandit.

 One man wears white, the other black. One broods all the time, the other one is outgoing and keeps making dumb jokes. They sit at opposite sides of the law. The symbolism is pretty clear.

 Oh, and as if to drive the point home, one likes light and the other one doesn't. That leads to a huge, elaborate, ridiculously fun fight the first night they camp together, as one of them wants to light a fire and the other one doesn't; I like to believe that whenever two people want to watch two different TV shows over in Hong Kong, it always results in a delightful kung fu tussle.

 Where were we? Oh, yeah. The man in black's past soon catches up to him, in the form of three assassins from the Iron Boat Clan. The leader of the cult-like organization, Yu Xi-hong, takes orphans and cruelly raises them to become heartless martial artists (any display of emotion is grounds for a brutal beating), and... yes, you guessed it, our man Chi has defected - he used to be the ninth eagle, one of the most feared of the clan's thirteen assassins, each one a master of a different kung fu weapon and decked in a different bright colour. Got to love multicolour villains.
 All this is explained to Chao after he steps in and aids Chi in the fight against the other, still loyal eagles, in the form of a couple of pretty long flashbacks that go into what drove him away from the organization. It's a pretty damn good story.

 Chao obviously has some stake in all of this, although he keeps his cards close to his chest - the 'twist' is easy to see coming and, to be fair, the film knows this and reveals it to us before it does to Chi. The growing respect and developing friendship between the two men, despite Chi's mistrust, is a pleasure to watch unfold.

 The kung fu mayhem is copious, and thanks to the variety of weapon masters, extremely varied. We get many types of swords and knives, spears (pointed and bladed), one chain with knives and another with a flail head, Chi's three-part staff, something that's between a sai and a trident, hatchets, claw gauntlets, a pony tail and more. Seriously, it's a ridiculous lineup and all of them get at least a little time in the spotlight.
 While they're not as intricate or exciting as other films (even in the older, more stylized kung fu movie tradition), they're all a huge amount of fun and have plenty of cool stunts. Director Chung Sun's style is stately and, to be honest, not very interesting or energetic, but he does get right in the middle of the action a little more than usual. He also adds a lot of slow motion shots and still frames to give the action a little more impact. Most of it looks a little jarring to me, but I respect what it's going for. He also uses a lot of natural scenery, which helps distinguish the movie a little from the more usually stagebound Shaw Brothers look.

 The script, by Ni Kuang elegantly lays out the parallels between the two protagonists and their history before sending them out on a joint quest for revenge (I'll overlook that a major development relies on a pretty huge coincidence). A lot of these movies share themes and tropes with the Western genre, but this one seemed to me to lean a little more heavily on them... or maybe it's just the scenery, which includes mostly barren landscapes and a (nearly) abandoned ghost town.
 As usual, some things don't translate all that well - Chao's mugging and humour, for example - but Ti Lung's Chi more than makes up for it in both intensity and presence, and that their journey together ends up being affecting. The rest of the cast includes a killer's row of talent from the Shaw stable, including the great Ku Feng, Wang Lung and Eddy Ko, all of them very effective.

 It's another good one. I'd personally start with something a bit more impressive in the martial arts department, but this one's compelling story would make great entry point if you can avoid getting distracted by the hilariously weak eagle squawk in the title sequence or by all the luscious sideburns on display.

The Five Venoms

  Cheh Chang built up, over the course of his years directing martial arts movies, a killer roster of Kung-Fu talent - Chiang Shen, Sun Chien, Phillip Kwok, Lo Meng, Wei Pai, Feng Lu and others. They'd eventually coalesce into a stable group which eventually became known as the Venom mob, mostly due to this movie. Wikipedia informs me that they were only active for less than five years, which surprised me - they put out a lot of movies in that short time.

 I loved The Five Venoms (or The Five Deadly Venoms, as it was known back then) as a kid and watched it quite a few times -  there was a TV station that aired a lot of old martial arts movies on Sundays, and this one was in regular rotation. Unfortunately I did not enjoy it as much this time around.

 The premise is great: An old master (Dick Wei/Tu Lung) charges his last apprentice Yang Tieh (Chiang Sheng) with hunting down his previous ones. Each one was taught a deadly animal-based martial arts style (Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Lizard... and, uh, the other one). The old master is dying, so he doesn't have time to train him fully in any of the styles - Yang just gets the basics and gets sent away; because of that, he's told that he'll need to ally with one of the venoms to even stand a chance. There's also some deal with a treasure Yang needs to recover, because these movies seem to be allergic to simplicity.

 Another complication: The Venom clan apprentices go incognito, and the master can't (or won't) help Yang identify them. The apprentices don't even necessarily know each other.

 This simple, videogame boss-rush premise is completely wasted as the script almost immediately tangles itself into knots. Yang, who'd been set up as the protagonist, is unceremoniously ignored for most of the movie to instead focus on the rest of the venom's misadventures; Snake and Centipede think they know where the treasure is, so they kill a whole family to get to it. A constable and his friend, who may or may not be venoms as well (spoiler: they are) investigate, there's a whole lot of betrayals, double-guessing and plotting against each other... but sadly not too many fights. There sure is a lot of torture, though.
 Things get pretty bleak - innocents get tortured to death, and there's some nasty business with hooks going through nasal passages to cause untraceable deaths (with some really vivid bone-crunching sounds!) I clearly misremembered Crippled Avengers being uncharacteristically brutal, since this one's also got plenty of nasty business going on. And because it's all incidental, the nastiness doesn't line up with the plot as it does on Avengers and when the assholes do get theirs it's nowhere near as satisfying.

It's not terrible, necessarily, but both the script and the acting would need to be quite a bit better to make it work. As it is, it's a relief when brawls do break out: The Kung-Fu action is clean, full of amazing physical stunts, great wirework, and fun gimmicks. The whole animal style thing is goofy as hell, though - poor Snake especially made me crack up whenever he showed off his special moves.
 As with most of the Shaw Brothers movies, the action doesn't concern itself much with making the fights look realistic. Awesome moves and athletics are the order of the day, with the choreographies being heavily stylized... if the hits clearly don't connect, eh, it's no big deal.

 It really doesn't matter, all the fights are good fun. It's a shame the rest of the movie kind of drags.

Crippled Avengers

  Picture this: Three swordsmen enter a Chinese manor home, and heroically face off against dozens of guards to get to the master of the house, accompanied by some epic Chinese martial arts movie music. Once they reach it, they find that their quarry is not home... but his wife and son are. So they decide to chop some of their limbs as a calling card. As you do.

Not sure I agree with that decision, but loving the enthusiasm there!

 And this being a Shaw Brothers movie, you can bet that they not only go through with it, but it's also shown (it doesn't linger in the carnage, thankfully, but it is genuinely upsetting). Guess those guys weren't the heroes.

 Just as they finish chopping the kid's arms off, the master of the house Du TianDao (Chen Kuan-Tai) finally makes an appearance, and quickly and brutally dispatches them with his legendary Black Tiger style. Of course he calls out each specific technique as he uses it; I love this sort of thing!
 Once they're all dead, dad attends to his son and promises him he will build iron arms for him, with which he will become a great martial artist.

 Smash cut to ten, fifteen years later and dad's now explaining how he's finally found the perfect metal arms for his now grown-up son (Lu Feng). That's some comically economic storytelling right there, but hey, it works. Good setup for a heroic protagonist, right?
 Well... no. It turns out dad rounded up all the descendants of the three assholes who killed his wife and maimed his son. He let them live and train in martial arts... only so that his son, now an unstoppable juggernaut with metal fists could brutally demolish them. Dad does an evil laugh and everything! A little later the son seems to think Tiandao is taking things too far and looks a little bit apprehensive, but nah, he'll quickly show he's just as much of an embittered asshole as dear old pa.

 Things get out of hand as TianDao and son terrorize the townspeople and start crippling people for pretty minor infractions; The perennially shirtless town smith (Meng Lo) calls them out on it, and he's forced to drink a poison that takes his voice - and when he's still defiant in writing, he gets deafened for his trouble. A wandering salesman (Philip Kwok) is blinded for complaining how bad things are; and a poor bystander (Sun Chien) gets his legs chopped off just for bumping into the young master!

 The trio of victims (crippled, but not yet avengers) get together in the smith's shop, and the way they communicate and help each other is genuinely cool and well thought out. But there's some cruelty left to be dispensed before the movie finally shifts gears. First, after Wei Datie offers to support his newfound friends with his blacksmith work, Tiandao proves yet again to be a master of the dickish arts when he threatens anyone who would patronize the shop, leaving them with no means of income. Then a wandering martial artist (Sheng Chiang) learns of Tiandao's reign of terror and solemnly vows to put an end to it. He heads straight to the manor but is defeated after a pretty cool fight (sword vs. weighted chain); Tiandao 'cripples' him by crushing his head in a vise and causing irreparable brain damage.
 In yet another subversion of expectations, the most straightforwardly heroic figure in the film becomes the comic relief character, a petulant, childish bugs-bunny style trickster figure. This movie kind of rules.

 Tiandao's other victims take in their now-idiot would-be saviour and, discovering a letter to his master on his person, decide to take him home. Once there the old teacher, understandably shocked at his fellow martial arts master's behaviour, offers to train the three cripples so they can get their revenge.
 It's a very enjoyable training segment. I especially love that the blind man is basically just told "you just need to listen really good" and he immediately starts shooting falling leaves off the sky with a marksman's precision. All of them are moulded over three years into martial arts masters, each with their own style, of course, and with metal prosthetics included where needed. This is also where the scene I best remembered from the movie comes in, a fight with oversized metal rings that features some incredible acrobatics.
 From there we finally get to the third act, where they return to town to finally deliver Tiandao and his clan some sorely deserved comeuppance with a series of back-to-back fights that culminate in a spectacular frontal assault against the manor. It mirrors that first scene, and more importantly, the iron rings make a crowd-pleasing return.

 The story structure is superb - all the grim business in the first act really pays off once the crippled avengers assemble (sorry, had to put that in somewhere) and kick ass. It's the most satisfying revenge yarn the Shaw Brothers, who put out a revenge story or two over the years, produced. Especially because Tiandao starts out being such a sympathetic figure before he quickly proves to be a capital-A asshole.
 It's enough of a tragedy to have appropriately epic weight, and for the bonds the characters establish to matter. I won't pretend that it can't come off as cheesy to our sensibilities (time and cultural distance rarely help - nor does some truly over-the-top acting) but if you are willing to engage with it, it more than earns the label of 'heroic bloodshed' that's frequently applied to Wuxia films.

As an actor, Lu Feng is one hell of a martial artist.

 Director Cheh Chang does a great job with this one. The guy was a legend; Name any number of classical martial arts movies and his name is bound to come up, and probably more than once. He does wonders here with your typical SB movie budget, and keeps things moving, varied and exciting. This one has a heavy Sergio Leone influence and is full of those classic dramatic zooms to people's faces and exaggerated sound effects that people associate with old martial arts movies (Chang was hugely influential, and reportedly introduced Leone-isms to Hong Kong cinema.)
Also of note is some playing around with fish-eye lenses on panoramic views and the very '70s wardrobe, especially designed to show off people's (very buff) chests; beefcake lovers rejoice. Special mention goes to an oversized disco medallion that gets an in-universe justification!

 It's also worth noticing that in a movie that features a pretty sprawling cast of extras, I think the only woman to be shown is Tiandao's ill-fated wife. 

 The action is top-notch, as you'd expect from Team Venom. It sports at least some Wuxia influence; there is a little wire work and hidden trampolines, but things tend to be pretty grounded - more of a standard martial arts flick, though one with a fairly epic scope. There's no overt magic or mystical elements, but a lot of it is pretty far-fetched, as usual with this sort of thing.
 The 'gimmick' of the movie, the heroes' various disabilities, are well represented even if the movie cheats by basically treating them as fully able once they power up. But there's still some good stuff  when the bad guys try to use their weaknesses against them, and the way they keep communicating with the deaf/mute smith gives the movie a pretty unique feel. The film also goes completely silent when it adopts the smith's point of view early on, which is pretty effective.

 A lot of the fights feel very staged and are more acrobatic/dance-like than modern action tends to be, but that's part of the charm; Gratuitous cartwheels and pirouettes are the order of the day. There's a huge amount of imagination and humor to the permutations in the fighting and the moves pulled - the word exuberant comes to mind. It might not convince anyone who's not already on board with this sort of thing, but for converts it'll be a constant delight.

Halloween

 The original 1978 Halloween has launched exactly a dozen sequels and remakes since it was released more than forty years ago. Its success arguably spawned the whole slasher genre, even if it didn't invent it.
 It remains the best.

 Because it was made before the slasher genre it helped popularize solidified its rules, Halloween seems like a more normal, more respectable movie than your Friday the 13ths and whatnot (and yes, I know the first F13 movie is much more of a respectable thriller than its reputation would lead you to think, but it's a bit of an outlier).

 Halloween begins in Haddonfield, Illinois, 1963, with a wonderful scene where a voyeuristic camera is nosing around the Myers family home, Black Christmas-style. The unseen assailant picks up a knife and kills a big-breasted 'teen'. When the parents arrive and the camera pulls back, we find out that the murderer is a cute six-year-old boy in a clown costume.

 It's a genuinely upsetting scene with carefully built tension that highlights just how much thought and craft director John Carpenter, already in the middle of an unimpeachable run of genre movies, put into the horror elements; Next year's underrated The Fog would illustrate this beautifully as well.

 Fifteen years and an iconic title scene later, we cut to a couple of medical professionals making their way to a remote sanitarium. One of them is Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) who will sort of act like Michael Myers's hype man throughout the movie, talking about just how Michael is 100% pure concentrated evil to anyone within earshot.

I should just start using this for all Halloween posts.

 When they get to the facilities, they find all the inmates wandering around free. Michael Myers steals their car and drives off into the night.
 The good doctor has Myers's number (666-6666, presumably) and knows his hard-on for evil will lead him back home where he can kill more people. Dr. Loomis will be in the periphery of the movie, doing some slight Giallo-style investigation into EVIL's movements and trying to whip Haddonfield's law enforcement into some sort of response.

 But here the movie starts focusing on its true protagonists - high-schooler Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis when she was nineteen) and her friends. She does look a bit old for the role, but consider her (also supposedly high-schooler) friends Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Linda (P.J. Soles) were both pushing thirty at the time. Anyhow; Laurie is the virginal, straight-laced final girl, Annie is the assertive mean girl, and Linda is the party girl, but they're all more rounded, funny characters than you'd get later on with the bigger ensembles future slasher movies would require to ensure a higher body count.
 Their dialog is a bit stilted but relatable, and there's a lot of focus on their adventures and misadventures before Michael finally comes home.

 As Halloween night (and EVIL) arrives Laurie and Annie are babysitting kids in houses across the street from each other, and Linda has plans with her boyfriend to come in for a visit later. When the carnage finally starts it's good, with lots of fakeouts and some good scares. Very good use of the background, always leaving space for Michael to pop up at any moment.
 It's extremely tame compared to what will come later; the bodycount is pretty low, and the movie isn't really built around the murders as much as the other films that will follow in its footsteps. The concept of 'kills' as a cool gore-drenched setpieces is nowhere to be seen here, but there's plenty of gruesome kicks (Mike can get pretty playful with his victims) and a whole lot of stalking.

 It's got its problems, sure. My main issue is that as menacing as Myers is (played by Nick Castle - future director of The Last Starfighter!), he's got a bit of a glass jaw and goes down very quickly when attacked. He does get back up eventually, though. Guess this had a lot more impact before we knew The Shape as an unkillable, relentless hulk.
 There's also the common issue with older movies where the genre has evolved beyond them; as mentioned before, this movie can seem downright quaint and a little slow in comparison to most modern horror. And a little stilted in general to modern eyes.

 Still, there's so much to like here!
Jamie Lee Curtis's very believable dread and terror. The little touches that serve to humanize the characters peppered throughout the script (my favorite being the hilarious bit where stuffy Dr. Loomis loosens up and decides to give a few kids a scare). Dean Cundey's crisp cinematography, which looks great to this day. Carpenter's immortal score and patient screw-turning.
 It's an exceedingly well crafted movie that has every right to be considered a classic