Thrilling Sword (Review)
Thrilling Sword
aka Shen jian dong shan he
1981
Directed by Cheung San-Yee
Written by Shing-Ming Huang
This film rules!
It is a Taiwanese take on Snow White, which needed giant monsters, guys turned into bears, demon worship, and crystal swords. Take that, Disney! The film is filled with fantastic elements, just when you think the film has exhausted its supply of weird wonderness, it shows that Thrilling Sword has barely scratched the surface. Parts of the film remind me of He-Man, to the point where I suddenly became interested in He-Man again after years of not being interested and now know all sorts of new stuff about He-Man.
Thrilling Sword is one of many awesome fantasy films that came out of the Taiwanese film industry. At the time, they were competing with the Shaw Brothers and their elaborate and expensive productions. No Taiwanese company could compete in making their films look just as good, but that didn’t stop them from trying or from going over the top with the fantasy aspects. And that makes the films that came out of Taiwan from the 1970s and 80s some of the weirdest and most fun films. It is a shame that so many of the films are hard to find or even lost. Many of the surviving films are only found on fullscreen VHS tapes that are running on thirty years old (luckily, most have been archived digitally, so even if the film never is released again it won’t disappear.) This particular rip is taken from a TV broadcast, which is supposed to be more widescreen than the fullscreen VHS releases of Thrilling Sword, but then I saw a VCD case while looking up cast info on the film, so there is at least VCD copies around, which means there might be a DVD somewhere, but who knows how good that copy is. But this is one film I would put extra time into hunting down an upgrade for.
Thrilling Sword has also been released under the titles Heaven Sword and Thrilling Bloody Sword. So now you know. Director Cheung San Yee also directed a few classics such as Lady Constables and Snaky Knight Fights Against Mantis. He also wrote Island Warriors and came up with the story for Challenge of the Lady Ninja.
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The Dwarves!
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Raising the roof!
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Monkey War (Review)
Monkey War
1982
Starring
Lau Seung-Him as Monkey King (Sun Wukong)
??? as Pig (Zhu Bajie)
??? as Tangseng
??? as Sand Monk (Sha Wujing)
Monkey King and his friends encounter two con job fake priests, Spider Women with a Giant Fire-breathing Spider, and flying birdmen lead by shapeshifting bats. This is a collection of what looks like three episodes of a Journey to the West (or Monkey) Series combined into a movie. Problem is, the movie is is Chinese, with zero subtitles! I completely missed the giant “No Subtitles” sticker on the video box, totally enthralled by the painting of a giant flame-breathing spider on the video cover. Not knowing what’s going on in a movie isn’t a new phenomenon here at TarsTarkas.NET, even when the film is in English! Unlike the trickle of Turkish cinema that pops around without any subtitles at all, this time we got the movie’s number. Armed with a Chinese-speaking girlfriend (HI, Honey!) we trudged bravely forward. There is also a second advantage, with a film involving a story with such history as this, it’s easy to find some further information online, so that will be stop number one!
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