Child of Peach (1987)

Child of Peach (1987)
Chinese Title: 捉鬼雜牌軍
Translation: Ghostbusters

 

Starring: Lin Hsiao-Lan, Chin Tu, Pang San, Wong Chung-Yue, Yau Mei-Fong
Director: Chiu Chung-Hing, Chan Jung-Leung
Action Director: Chiu Chung-Hing, Chung Shui-Fuk, Sam Ching-Wai

 

Child of Peach is the first film in the Taiwanese "kiddie" fantasy trilogy about Peach Boy, or Momotaro in Japanese, which places the folk hero in a faux-Japanese/Chinese setting and fills it with wire-fu and the sort of strangeness that defines Chinese comedy. It's also rather violent, so if something sounds weird in my description, just repeat to yourself, "It's only a kid's film. It's only a kid's film."

In the Himalayas, there's  a magical peach garden inhabited by a magical swordsman and his wife, plus their newborn son. Joining them is a tiny little fairy and three magical animals--a pheasant, a dog and a gibbon--who can turn into acrobatic kung fu kids as the plot demands. I must point out here that the pheasant, whose alter-ego is played by a female actress, goes by the name of "Little Cock." It's only a kid's film. It's only a kid's film. Trouble brews when the evil Devil King shows up in the Garden and steals the powerful Sword of the Sun, which immediately renders the garden a desolate, snowy wasteland, and kills the swordsman and his wife. The fairy places the baby inside a giant peach and sends it to Japan...or China...or Asiaville. Something.

The peach is found by an old, childless couple and raised as their own son. Meanwhile, the Devil King goes to hell and frees his mother and her zombie followers. The zombie grandma (as she's referred to in the movie) begins a reign of terror in the land, slaughtering entire villages and burning them to the ground (It's only a kid's film). A local warlord, an overweight samurai named Melon Knight, gets his best men together to defeat the Devil King. He's joined by a Peach Boy, who has grown up rather quickly due to the fairy's magic. Can they defeat the villain and save the random princess who's been kidnapped because, well, of course there has to be a kidnapped princess!

This is a pretty loopy film, but much (not all) of the wire-fu action is reserved for the final half hour, much like Wolf Devil Woman. The fighting itself, brought to you by director and occasional Yuen Clan collaborator Chiu Chung-Hing is passable. It's not as undercranked as it would be in the next film, Magic of Spell, and there are some decent acrobatic moves. But until then, there's a lot of comedy that the filmmakers try to mine from the bickering old couple and an extended comic interlude involving a giant, flying and pissing peach. There's some comedy mined from Pang San, who plays the fat samurai, which is of the stereotypical "He's fat, and that's funny variety." But he does get to bust out a few choreographed moves and he does walk away with the hawt princess in the end, so that's ok.

Then you get to the final act, and seams keeping the weirdness begin to burst. You have a human-sized Peach Man that our hero and his (remembering that "he" is played by a "she") animal pals can enter into and control like a Power Rangers Megazord. Little Cock's (It's only a kid's film) method of attack is bend over forward and fire explosive rockets out of her back. You can bet that one major villain character will be blown to pieces before the film's over. And let's not forget a "blowing contest" between Peach Boy and a villain who controls the wind, where both of them blow on opposite sides of a hollow pole until the one of their heads explodes...It's only a kid's film.