Kung-Fu Wonder Child (1986)

Kung-Fu Wonder Child (1986)
Aka: Kung Fu Wonderchild
Original Title: 靈幻童子
Tranlation: Spirit Magical (Psychic) Boy

 

Starring: Lin Hsiao-Lu, Yukari Oshima, Chang Shan, Jack Long Shi-Chia, Lin Yu-Chieh, Lee Gwan-Sin, Li Hai-Hsing, Yang Hsiung, Ma Hok-Man, Sam Ching-Wai
Director: Lee Tso-Nam
Action Director: Alexander Lo Rei, Lucifer Li Hai-Hsing

 

Taiwanese actress Lin Hsiao-Lan is an interesting footnote in the history of the Jade Screen. The diminutive young lady started career at age 13 in the film The Orientation, in which the poster implies that she was playing a young boy, not too unlike Angie Tsang Sze-Man of Iron Monkey. That would become a theme for the first part of career: her short stature and boyish facial features placed her in roles as adolescent or young adult males, usually in comic martial arts-fantasy films. The first of these is the deliriously odd Kung-Fu Wonder Child, pairing her with genre veteran and cult favorite Jack Long, along with an up-and-coming Japanese actress named Yukari Oshima. Heard of her?

The movie begins with a magician (Sam Ching-Wai, of Magic of Spell and Retreat of the Godfather) and his daughter running afoul of an evil sorcerer known only as “The Priest” (Li Hai-Hsing, Shaolin Temple Against Lama and Ninja vs the Shaolin Guard). The two engage in a battle of skills that involve wire-assisted leaps, controlling objects via telekinesis, and shooting lasers from their hands. The Priest proves to be the stronger, and makes off with his victims’ souls and a magical artifact known as the Silver Skull.

Switch to the local Taoist temple, where the bumbling instructor (Wong Kwan-Hung, of Return of the Bastard Swordsman and Rape in Public Sea) is teaching Maoshan magic to the students. This includes singing and dancing while chanting cheerleader-esque spells and making objects appear out of nowhere. There are two upstarts among the students (played by William Yen and Tang Heng-Wu), whose antics get them constant beatings from the teacher and Senior Brother Chang Kong (Yang Hsiung).

Their only respite is their friendship with the Hsiu Chuen (Lin Hsiao-Lan, of Child of Peach and Magic of Spell), the grandson of the temple cook, Hua Won (Jack Long, of The 7 Grandmasters and The Mystery of Chess Boxing). Hsiu has learned by magic and kung fu from her grandfather, who is secretly a master of the Southern Maoshan, of which the ill-fated master from the beginning was also a master. She helps the two poor saps get their comeuppance on the teacher and his assistant, usually in comic fashion.

In a third subplot, we are introduced Hai Qiuxue, the daughter/sister of the victims from the first scene. She is played by Yukari Oshima, who was in the earliest stages of her film career at this point. Qiuxue is wandering the countryside looking for her father and sister, unaware of their recent tussle with The Priest. In a sequence that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Hai Chi-Hsue comes across a pair of jiangshi, or hopping vampire, children who are looking for their dad. She lets them accompany her until dad shows up and tries to kill Miss Hai. She does not take too kindly to that and unleashes her lethal legwork on him until he relents. Apparently, the jiangshi had received a message from “The Priest” to kill her, but nothing is made of that afterward.

The Priest’s two “wardens”—The Legend of Wisely’s Chung Shui-Fuk and Magic Warriors’s Chu Kwan-Yeung-- are sent to keep tabs on Hai Qiuxue, and Hsiu Chuen and his friends from the temple come to her rescue. Our heroes eventually discover the Priest’s hideout, where he keeps the souls of his victims in urns, guarded by a green-haired zombie, the Ghost King, who is also a kung fu dynamo. Their first encounter with the Priest—who is also the abbot of the Temple—almost costs them their lives, although it alerts the grandpa to the Priest’s evil plot: use the Silver Skull and his own Gold Skull as conduits for him to drain the lifeforce from the souls of the magicians whose souls he has captured. Acquiring their abilities, he will become the most powerful sorcerer in the world!

Of course, that synopsis glosses over most of the second act, which is mainly a series of comic interactions between Hsiu Chuen, his two friends, and Senior Brother, who always bullies them. In one scene that would not fly in the @MeToo era, Hsiu Chuen casts a love spell over the basket seller that Senior Brother Chang is smitten with—his own sister-in-law! Once she’s in his embrace, Hsiu retracts the spell. The basket seller, horrified that Chang Kong is so closer to her, has him arrested for sexual assault!

That would be the biggest problem with the film, is that it really doesn’t have an actual story. There’s a conflict that needs to be resolved in the final half hour, but most of the movie is made up of magical shenanigans and comic non-sequiturs. The lack of the story keeps the film from being as memorable as it should be, since it would be easy to the supernatural hijinks without the context of a story to place them.

Magic fans will surely get their fill with Kung Fu Wonder Child. The movie opens with an explosion of flying fabrics, animated qi blasts and pyrotechnics. Riding on the coattails of the popular Mr. Vampire, the three aforementioned Jiangshi show up in the first act, undoubtedly to attract fans of that film. Beyond that, the film gives us love spells, heat spells, cold spells, invisibility spells, magic that turns people into kung fu marionettes and more! At one point, Lin Hsiao-Lan is shrunk to the height of three inches and has to fight a Facehugger and a giant centipede!

And then you get to the finale, which is brimming with craziness: our heroes fight a zombie; a character grows a second head from his forehead; the protagonists attack the Priest with literal hand cannons and a multi-barrel gun made of bamboo; and finally, the villain turns into a dragon. Not a dragon puppet. Not a stop motion dragon. But a 2-D, cel-animated dragon that interacts with the characters like a low-budget Roger Rabbit. It’s just plain nuts.

There is a fair amount of fighting, courtesy of Taiwanese actor Alexander Lo Rei and Li Hai-Hsing. The best action belongs to Yukari Oshima and her awesome legwork. Jack Long gets to bust out a few moves, mainly in a later fight against the Priest’s Wardens. Lin Hsiao-Lu fights mainly using wire-assisted acrobatics, but the choreography around them is pretty decent. There are some decent moves on display during the climax, although the choreographers play down the protagonists’ abilities in order to demonstrate just how powerful the main villain is.

In the end, the film is solid trip into the realm of weirdness that is Chinese fantasy. Fans of Shaw Brothers classics like Battle Wizard and Boxer’s Omen, or Yuen Woo-Ping’s Miracle Fighters and Drunkard series, should easily find something to enjoy. Hong Kong neophytes may either be put off by the “anything goes” attitude, or get sucked into it all. And if you do get sucked into it, be comforted that Lin Hsiao-Lu made a few more of these films.