The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This refers to films made in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s fame on the international stage came with a series of swordplay films and then the Martial Arts film of the 1960s and 70s, produced primarily by Shaw Brothers. These gained international superstardom for Bruce Lee who brought much world focus on the genre. There was infrequent genre material among these, some flying swordplay, occasional SF elements, while films of the later 1970s started to introduce a number of horror elements.
The key defining genre film was Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), which popularised the Wu Xia film, blending martial arts with a madcap array of acrobatics and flying moves, elements of Buddhism, the supernatural and reincarnation. Other hits like Mr Vampire (1985) and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) followed. There were a great many imitators of these.
Around the same time as these, Hong Kong produced its own unique hard-boiled gangster films, which made a cult figure out of John Woo, as well as a series of high-energy slapstick action films, which made a star out of Jackie Chan. Some of these balanced over into genre material.
The traditional Hong Kong film came to an end when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Some talents moved to the West to work there, others stayed on and continued to work. Unless specified otherwise, films from Hong Kong since then are now listed as part of Chinese Cinema. Certainly under Chinese rule, genres like the Wu Xia that began in Hong Kong were reinvented and gained lush new life during the 2000s.
Noted genre directors to emerge from Hong Kong include Ching Siu-Tung, Stephen Chow, Ringo Lam, Andrew Lau, Jeffrey Lau, Ngai Kai Lam, Tsui Hark, Johnny To, Wai Ka Fai, John Woo and Corey Yuen.
A wannabe entry aboard the HK supernatural fantasy fad of the late 80s/early 90s sparked by the likes of the Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story films … This, which involves a time travel plot, is crippled by a pandering to a slapstick inanity that makes it a painful watching experience
The first live-action spinoff of the comic-book and animated series still holds up well two decades later. Little of the manic barrage of pop culture has dated, there are some excellent animatronics that allow the Turtles to engage in a series of high-energy fights and more importantly emerge as distinctive characters
The second live-action Turtles film is a disappointment. The Turtles are infectiously enjoyable characters but the script has an indifferent laziness, while parental concerns over violence have mandated that the fight scenes be watered down to an absurd level
The third of the original live-action Turtles films is a lazily conceived affair that transplants the Turtles back in time to feudal Japan in a plot that rips off The Seven Samurai
Standout horror anthology designed to highlight episodes from three Asian directors – Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook and Japan’s Takashi Miike – all of whom are on top form
A horror anthology featuring episodes from three Asian directors originally titled Three. The better known Three … Extremes was a sequel whereupon this was retitled and re-released as Three Extremes II
Predating Sliding Doors, this hard-boiled Hong Kong gangster film from Wong Kar-wai did the whole alternate timelines theme first
Rather silly and plotless Hong Kong comedy with Chow Yun Fat as a CIA agent encountering a magical girl at a monastery in China
Tsui Hark scripted/produced Wu Xia effort that shuffles the familiar tropes about without seeming too enervated
One of the most intensive and exciting action films of recent with humanity engaged in a furious battle with plants and killer robots
Fantasy film set in a magical otherworld defended by martial arts wielding kangaroos
Entry from they heyday of Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle. By this point, the moves had become so over-the-top the film verges on the cartoonish, all with rather entertaining results
Live-action version of a manga that was previously made as an anime. This Hong Kong-made version is the lesser, lacking the perverse sexual imagery of the anime. It does feature the wildly fantastical action scenes typical to HK fantasy of this era but this has been conducted on a low-budget and looks rubbery (*)
Unique venture into meta-fiction by Wai Ka Fai that creates fascinatingly wound layers of fiction and reality that eventually become so complex that one gets lost
Frenetic Hong Kong comedy about fairy enchantments involving all the cast undergoing gender reversals
Tsui Hark’s follow-up to Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain the film that popularised Wu Xia cinema. The point where Tsui discovered CGI and latches onto it to do more than just show flying swordsmen but create an exquisitely dreamy world of pure fantastique imagination
The modern beginnings of Wu Xia and the flying swordsman film. Tsui Hark creates a totally nutso film filled with wild martial arts battles with demonic forces. The results are out of this world