“Battle Wizard” Poster
Director: Pao Hsueh Lieh
Cast: Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Tien Ni, Lin Chen-Chi, Shih Chung-Tien, Chiang Tao, Keung Hon, Wai Wang, Si Wai, San Shu-Wa, Gam Lau, Teresa Ha Ping
Running Time: 77 min.
By Z Ravas
In which the bad guy’s master plan is to feed the hero to a captive gorilla…because the hero had already drank the blood of the mythical snake creature known as the Red Python, granting him superhuman powers…so if the gorilla drinks his blood, it’ll turn the animal into an unstoppable force capable of smiting the bad guy’s enemies once and for all. Because that grand scheme isn’t convoluted at all, right?
Welcome to 1977’s The Battle Wizard! Released in theaters by the Shaw Brothers just a few months after the original Star Wars, this special FX-fueled wuxia arrived from Pao Hsueh-Li, a frequent co-director on Chang Cheh films like The Boxer from Shantung and The Water Margin. While Cheh’s work is frequently noted for its grit and realism, Pao Hsueh-Li threw all that out the window for this hallucinatory ride. On the surface, the plot is simple enough—and, speaking of Star Wars, it concerns a half-brother (The Super Inframan’s Danny Lee) and sister (Tanny Tien-Ni of Human Lanterns) who don’t know they’re related. The duo are manipulated into conflict by Shih Chung-Tien’s Yellow Robe Man, who wants revenge against their father for stealing his wife. (We find out this guy stole a lot of wives).
A simple enough scenario, as I said, but it’s the little twists that add up to make this such an insane ride: like the way we see the Yellow Robe Man’s legs cut off in the opening scene, so now he walks on mechanical chicken legs like some kind of Mecha-Baba Yaga. Did I mention he can breathe fire? And his henchman (Chiang Tao) possesses a metal claw in place of one hand and the top of his head appears to be completely made out of metal. The movie doesn’t bother to explain the reasoning behind any of this, by the way, and instead ushers us from one fantastical setpiece to the next, logic be damned. And I haven’t even mentioned the nice young woman (Lin Chen Chi) who can make snakes erupt from your body. The Battle Wizard is, if nothing else, a very memorable eighty minutes.
When someone in a Shaw Brothers movie can shoot magic powers from their hands (or fingertips), I tend to separate those films into their own separate category, apart from the pure martial arts offerings like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin or Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. At their worst, they can give you the impression you’re watching a so-so kung fu movie combined with a laser light show. (I remember bouncing off Holy Flame of the Martial World, although I know a lot of fans like that one). At their best, like 1983’s Buddha’s Palm, they can make you feel like you’re ‘trippin in a hole in a paper heart,’ to quote the Stone Temple Pilots—in other words, they take the ordinary pleasures of a good martial arts flick and accentuate them with phantasmagoric imagery. The Battle Wizard ascends close to the top of this niche for me, thanks in part to its fast-paced plotting and Yellow Robe Man’s memorable villain, who has one of the most brutal finishers I’ve seen in a movie, when he uses his metal legs to kick a palace guard straight through a stone pillar and then immediately lights him on fire with his flame breathe.
Yeah, I don’t think that guy’s coming back from that.
By Z Ravas’ Rating: 8/10
