Taoism Drunkard (1984)
Reviewed by: kiliansabre on 2007-12-11
Summary: More weird fun from the Yuen Clan!
The Yuen Clan's third crazy fantasy film following Miracle Fighters and Shaolin Drunkard is a treat. Full of bizarre characters and visuals with some decent fantasy fight scenes mixed in. Here we have 'King of Hell' (Yuen Shun-Yi) receiving a sentence of having the skin burnt off his hands and being expelled from the Taoist community for trying to steal a writ. Surviving this, he sets his sights on Chiu (Yuen Yat-Choh), a young Taoist who lives with his grandmother (Yuen Cheung-Yan) who is the inheritor of the writ. Meanwhile, a drunken Taoist (Yuen Cheung-Yan again in a dual role) is sent out to find a virgin to relieve his position at the temple when he gets in a fight with a group of bandits lead by a Starry Devil (Hilda Liu Hao-Yi) who attacks with a deadly extending cloth. Chiu intervenes to help the old drunkard who thinks Chiu is perhaps the virgin he is looking for. Chiu however takes a disliking to the drunkard from the start and spends much of his time trying to avoid him while trying to court his love interest (Jue Hoi-Ling). When the King of Hell finds a way to use Starry Devil to help him in his quest, Chiu and his family and friends find their intertwined paths will have their lives on the line to protect the writ.

If you have seen either of the aforementioned films you should know that you are in for a strange journey with this one. Some of the challenges on the way to the writ are great including a path of fire with moving walls and a 'banana monster' which is a giant black metal ball with chomping teeth. The fight scenes in this are very fantasy oriented where characters fight with strange weapons while punching each other across the room or walking backwards up a wall while fighting. Obviously wires are used frequently though in this setting they aren't distracting but rather add to the interesting visuals. However some of the effects do look outdated such as a scene where a character is aging rapidly by way of time lapse makeup application. There is a lot of attempts at humor here and though earlier on they are mostly silly, towards the end they strangely make a couple jokes about the fact that they are in a movie that seemed a bit out of place, but were hilarious none the less. If you are a fan of the other two films you will enjoy this one, perhaps more so if you are looking for some decent and vicious looking fantasy based action.
Reviewer Score: 8







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