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十八玉羅漢 (1978)
The Eighteen Jade Arhats


Reviewed by: calros
Date: 08/19/2006
Summary: Martian martial mystery movie.

Polly Kuan and Le Lung-Hua play two mysterious swordmen who must investigate the murder of Chang I. Polly follows Le because she hides another investigation about stolen Jade statues with Le as main suspicious. In their strange research the couple must face the suspicious of the murder and also several killers hired in order to stop them. These killers are very strange, they are buddhist monks, nuns, and a swordman who only kills when is raining or hates his victim or something like that. At first Chang's killer seems to be the butler (no surprise here), but later we found that it can be anybody, including his daughter, who asked Le to find the murderer anyway. And things worsen when the corpse mysteriously disappear. Finally we found that the murder and the robbery are related cases.

This Taiwanese movie is full of strange things, there are fights over balls, a funny machine with 16 arms to learn secret kung fu and a hitman who would not kill a fly. A very martian script, not in vain the writer of this movie is also the author of the "Hello Dracula!" hopping vampire film series for children. Anyway thanks to these funny ideas and to the dozens of combats in the movie nobody can say this is a bored movie.

Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: STSH
Date: 12/24/1999
Summary: Wild & Action-packed

Wild combination of flying sword assassins and strange murder mystery. It's pretty much action all the way. There's always someone who is challenging someone to a deadly duel, though very unclear as to why. Some of the fight scenes suffer from cheap "stop-motion" choreography, but the climax is pretty well done. And the plot is one of the few that gives the later Kung Fu Cult Master as run for its ultra-complexity. Worth watching.

Reviewer Score: 7