Flying Dagger (1993)

Flying Dagger (1993)
Chinese Title: 神經刀與飛天貓
Translation: Nervous Knife and the Flying Cat

Starring: Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Jimmy Lin Zhi-Ying, Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Sharla Cheung Man, Gloria Yip Wan-Yee, Ng Man-Tat, Chen Hung-Lieh, Kingdom Yuen King-Tan, Yuen Cheung-Yan, Lo Lieh, Lee Ka-Ting, Pauline Chan Bo-Lin, David Wu Dai-Wai
Director: Kevin Chu Yen-Ping
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Ma Yuk-Sing, Dion Lam

Ah, yes. Chu Yen-Ping. If Wong Jing is the king of cinematic nonsense and crap in Hong Kong, Chu Yen-Ping is his second-in-command. Chu will forever be known by Hong Kong fans as "the father of Chinese Nazi movies" with Fantasy Mission Force, which strangely enough featured Jackie Chan in a supporting role. He proceeded to make two more movies with evil Chinese Nazis before continuing on to other films. He also was a pioneer in the "Kung Fu Kid" sub-genre, with series like Young Dragons: Kung Fu Kids and the Shaolin Popeye movies. I must note here that Shaolin Popeye 2: Messy Temple, has a scene where a 10-year old kung fu kid drinks milk from a woman's breast and starts performing the drunken style(!).

This one of the movies he made during the Hong Kong "New Wave" of wire-fu films in the early 1990s. I thought this was going to be parody of the genre, although it's not quite that. I think The Eagle Shooting Heroes comes closer to a parody than this one. However, this one really isn't that bad; it's actually better than I was expecting.

The movie is about two groups of bounty hunters hunting a thief and his consort. The first group is Big Dagger (Tony Leung Ka-Fei, of Dragon Inn and Bodyguards and Assassins) and Little Dagger (Butterfly and Sword's Jimmy Lin), the second group consists of Big Bewitchment (Cheung Man, of Cheetah on Fire and Kung Fu Cult Master) and Little Bewitchment (Gloria Yip, of Riki-Oh and The Peacock King). They're rivals, but they secretly like each other. The thief they're after is Nine-Tailed Fox (High Risk's Jackie Cheung) and his consort, played by Hero's Maggie Cheung. That's the general idea of the plot, although there are enough supporting characters, including rival bounty hunters and evil Ming officials, to keep things moving at a good clip.

This movie once was available at Blockbuster Video, strangely enough. The film's distributor also got copies of The Undaunted Wudang; Golden Dart Hero; and Slave of the Sword (a soft-core swordplay movie directed by Mr. Chu himself) into Blockbuster. Two obscure Mainland China martial arts films and two "different" entries in the New Wave subgenre, that's pretty impressive for Blockbuster. Too bad they started sucking after they switched over to DVD.

So the movie is pretty screwy. There's gay swordsman who sings in English (bear in mind this film takes place in the Ming Dynasty), a disembodied hand who's basically Thing from "The Addams Family" transplanted to ancient China, a villain named Die Quickly (who dies after one hit), a villain named Die Hard, another villain named Never Die, a poison that kills you unless you have sex, and a crazy lecherous eunuch. How does that last one work? Well, the fellow's mannerisms suggest that what you can't do with Big Willie, you make up for with some crazy tongue action.

All of this stuff might make this film a tough sell, but thankfully there's a crazy over-the-top wire-fu action set-piece every 10 minutes. The sword fights are choreographed by Ching Siu-Tung (A Chinese Ghost Story and The Blacksheep Affair), Ma Yuk-Sing (Ching's protégé, who did solo work in Fist Power and The Storm Warriors), and Dion Lam (Spider-Man 2 and A Man Called Hero). If you've seen any of Ching's films from the 1990s, you'll know what to expect: qi attacks, lots of people flying on wires, fabrics being used as weapons, objects flying on wires, swords, spinning and twirling, and very little actual martial arts. I enjoyed the action sequences, although they don't quite match up with those that Ching did in Butterfly and Sword (which Chu Yen-Ping incidentally produced).

Yeah, if you can stomach the strange humor, this is a pretty entertaining little film. I enjoyed watching these popular actors overact and make fools of themselves while flying around on wires. It's great time for everyone!