Magnificent Warriors (1987)

aka Yes, Madam 3 (though there are other movies going by that title as well, because what Zombis are to Italy, the Yes, Madam films are to Hongkong)

Original title: 中華戰士

During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Chinese secret agent/whip-wielding adventurer and pilot Ming (Michelle Yeoh) is sent to a town in Bhutan to make contact with one Secret Agent 001 (Derek Yee Tung-Sing) who has been stationed there running the local “town lord” (that’s what the subtitles call him) named Youda (Lowell Lo Koon-Ting). Youda is trying to stem the tide of Japanese activity there by the power of cringing and delays, also cringing delays. Up until a couple of days ago, this has worked out well enough but now the Japanese commander General Toga (Matsui Tetsuya) is putting on a bit of a reign of terror to soften up the population for the building of a poison gas factory. Ming’s job is it to evacuate 001 and Youda. Obviously, various complications ensue, just starting with the fact that our heroine’s aircraft lost all its fuel during an unlucky hit in an air battle just before she landed.

It takes a bit of time for Ming to actually make contact with Secret Agent 001, for a pigeon related incident means she believes a Wandering Conman (Richard Ng Yiu-Hon) to be him, at least for two or three scenes. The Conman, if he starts following the better nature he repeatedly seems to have, might come in handy as an additional partner, at least. 001 for his part doesn’t actually want to be evacuated but plans sabotaging the Japanese factory for good; the more pliable Youda only wants to bring his girlfriend, the particularly dubiously named Chin Chin (Lau Chin-Dai).

Of course, this is not going to be a movie about a group of people running away, but one about a group of very different people coming together (One China-style, because, well…) kicking the invaders’ ass. And getting a lot of people killed in the process, but that’s par for the patriotic course, whatever patria it is you’re sending people to their deaths for.

In its final third, David Chung Chi-Man’s Magnificent Warriors does lay its patriotism on a bit thick for my taste, though it has to be said that Imperial Japan’s as good an enemy as you get when you want to get patriotic without turning unpleasantly nationalistic, particularly from a Chinese perspective. Thematically, the patriotism is also well connected with some unexpected character growth, where cowardly as well as courageous Youda grows thanks to his patriotism, and the Conman connects it to his unexpected to himself growing wish of making the lives of people in general better. Which is more complex character work than you usually get or expect from these films. I certainly appreciated it.

At the very least, Chung doesn’t really let that patriotism get in the way of the typical maximalist joys of this phase of Hong Kong action cinema. There are quotes and little nods towards Hong Kong and Western cinema aplenty here, but every borrowed bit is twisted and turned in ways you only get from this particular part of cinema, at this specific time. So there’s some joyful hinting and nodding towards Indiana Jones in Michelle Yeoh’s character, but she’s wielding her whip a lot more artistically, keeping off a whole horde of men; while also kicking them in the face, of course. And as anyone going into a Michelle Yeoh movie from this phase of her career knows, there’s little more joyful than watching her kick guys in their faces.

Joyfulness is the watch word for Yeoh’s work this early in her movie career as a whole. While she’s sometimes still a little rough around the edges when she’s emoting melodramatically, she is such a joyful presence throughout, always looking as if she were born to kick faces, shoot machineguns (grinning gleefully), save orphans and fly planes. Like a woman doing exactly what she wants to do in a way nobody else could, and loving every second of it.

And even though Chung isn’t one of the great stylists of his era and place, his straightforward filmmaking style never gets in the way of letting his actors and stunt people do what they do best. He seems to interpret his job as a responsibility to not let a moment of insane stunt work – just look at the prologue, the dogfight, the climax or every damn minute of the film – or joyful abandon they deliver go to waste, and he fulfils this responsibility perfectly.

Hell Has No Boundary (1982)

Original title: 魔界

On a camping trip with her brother Cheung (Derek Yee Tung-Sing), Hongkong cop May Wong (Leanne Lau Suet-Wah) has a curious nightly encounter with a mysterious voice, a wind so strong it literally blows her away and green lights. After that incident, the formerly mild-mannered woman changes her behaviour rather quickly: she not only begins to act a lot more confidently than before the encounter but also displays a reckless, cruel and somewhat murderous streak. To wit, she nearly drowns a little boy she believes has stolen a can of coke from her and her brother (a reaction that’ll actually make sense as something apart from its obvious wrongness once we’ve learned the backstory), and is only held back from it by Cheung. Why, you might think May’s possessed by an evil spirit of some sort.

Curious deaths and accidents begin happening around May too. For example, the two female colleagues (going by the most excellent monikers of “Lady Killer” and “Bad Sis”, suggesting how much trust the loving public will have towards them in the wilds) who are competing against her for a sergeant position and are right mobbing bullies about it have a bit of a fall with an elevator; a blind soothsayer specializing in the interpretation of his clients’ bone structures first regains his sight and then grows mad and falls down a flight of stairs while trying to kill his wife.

Her new self and the concurrent reckless behaviour do displease May’s direct superior, Inspector Wong (Yueh Hua), before the change her greatest non-sleazoid fan on the force, so much he’s now trying to block her promotion. Alas, an imaginary Doberman and a just as imaginary snake get in the way of that, as does May’s ability to magically change a written recommendation. On the plus side, Wong doesn’t die from the attack but only has a bit of a minor breakdown that hardly sets him back for more than a day.

Wong also has an aunt, one Madame Chi (Teresa Ha Ping), well-versed in the ways of exorcism and the lore of spirit possession. Madame Chi’s certainly trying to get rid of the troublesome ghost, though it might eventually fall on Cheung and the photographer Koo (Kent Tong Chun-Yip) – who photographed something very strange concerning May and gets a bit obsessed by the whole plot – to solve the spirit trouble.

And at this point, we’re barely halfway through Richard Yueng Kuen’s pretty fantastic Shaw Brothers horror film Hell Has No Boundaries, with a flashback that discloses a pretty horrible back story to the possessing spirit as well as the reason for its killing spree, and many scenes of increasingly heated weirdness still to come.

As you’ll probably know when you’re reading this, at this late point in the history of the Shaw Brothers, sinking commercial success had found the company replacing its typical visual house style of the previous decades with whatever seemed to have potential commercially. Films like Hell do certainly still stand visually in the tradition of the ripped from the headlines exploitation fare that was part of the Shaw Brothers’ output in the 70s, but there’s a very early 80s kind of modernism to Kuen’s approach to the form, as seen in much quicker editing and a direction style that usually seems to go for mix of the documentary and semi-naturalist intensity. Which stands in marked and highly effective contrast to all the wonderfully artificial green lighting, dry ice fog and general peculiarity of the supernatural sequences, and provides Hell with a wonderfully strange mood all of its own, contrasting the strange and the quotidian very well indeed.

Though – and this is certainly not atypical for the way horror throughout various countries in Asia does this in general – most characters here do have at least one foot in a very matter-of-fact approach to the supernatural that treats it as very real indeed. So it is not at all strange for the world of the film that a down to Earth cop like Cheung takes his sister to a bone-reading soothsayer when she’s acting weirdly, or that an Inspector’s aunt just happens to be in the exorcism business. Which sort of grounds the strangeness here in practical reality.

I say “sort of” because the supernatural parts of the film become increasingly insane, the possessed May apparently having a particular fondness of building very complicated murder illusions, including Wong’s ultra-sleazy boss (not surprisingly played by Lo Yuen) getting castrated by a crustacean and then telekinetically wrapped up in blue toilet paper like a very sad mummy, or a fake visit to the very green land of the dead (a place of the ickiest culinary habits) for Koo. Also in the film are an incredible sequence in which a character has MacGyver-ed his car into an exorcism trap, an awesome remote duel between Madame Chi and May, and a pretty incredible doppelganger sequence. The film’s set-pieces certainly never become boring.

There are obviously some rather exploitative elements involved in the film, as well, but Kuen, particularly when you keep in mind that this is the director who also brought us the somewhat infamous Seeding of a Ghost, mostly films the truly nasty (unlike the fun nasty) stuff with a certain distance. So he’s not wallowing in the exploitative possibilities of a backstory that involves the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, a sold little girl, murder, a horrific smuggling operation and cannibalism, but looking at it with a colder eye I wouldn’t exactly call “classy” but certainly more dignified than you’d expect.

The grimness of the backstory – as well as an ending as 70s downer as any film from the 80s had – does stand in marked contrast to the general sense of fun Hell Has No Boundary’s set pieces display, but they’re not overwhelming the film, nor does the fun horror most of the movie is involved in ever seem to be making light of the exploitation version of seriousness of the backstory, leaving this a very fun example of Hong Kong horror indeed. Unless you’re the actor having to eat maggots, of course.