Three-Head Monster (1988)

There’s something about things with two heads that fascinates us.  When we see genuine Siamese twins, our heads fill with thoughts about how they live their lives.  How do they get around if one side wants to go a different way than the other?  What is that total lack of privacy like, to be forever physically linked with another person?  What do their arguments go like?  Sure, we’re also entranced by the biology of it, the uniqueness (call it freakishness, if you like).  But more than that is the fantasy of a life so alien to our own.  In cinema, things with two heads are almost universally maleficent.  There’s The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, The Thing with Two Heads, Dioskilos/Orthrus from Clash of the Titans (the good version), The Manster, that purple, beardy Muppet from Sesame Street, and so on (yes, that last one is actually fairly good-natured).  They are typically portrayed as two sides of the same coin, at conflict with one another, each struggling to be the dominant personality and maintain control.  They are, in effect, the dual nature of man.  Now, bring one additional head into the equation, and the dynamic changes.  King Ghidorah is likely the first creature most people think of when they think of three-headed monsters.  All of his noggins work in concert toward a common goal, because Ghidorah, the body, is the one who needs to be sated.  By contrast, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the three-headed knight is indecisive and bitchy, immobile and ineffectual.  It’s no longer about grappling with the twin sides of a man’s soul but about the ability or inability to act at all.  It’s an answer to the old saw about “too many cooks spoiling the broth.”  So, the Three-Head Demon King in Wang Chu-Chin’s Three-Head Monster (aka San Tou Mo Wang aka Ginseng King) knows exactly what he wants, and his heads act in concert toward that goal.  With this in mind, when somebody says that two heads are better than one, feel free to disagree.  But three heads?  Hoo, boy!

Hsiaoming is off collecting herbs for his ailing mother when he is bitten by a cobra but is saved by the affable (if creepy-looking) 1000 Year Ginseng King.  Turns out, the Ginseng King is also in need of some saving when Princess Hsiaoli (Cynthia Khan) captures him for the titular beastie to devour and become immortal.  Hsiaoming quests it out, both for his new, Man-Thing-ian pal as well as for the sake of his mother.

Three-Head Monster is a fantasy for children, but, like many filmic fantasies for the pre-adolescent/adolescent set produced in the Seventies and Eighties (and especially when hailing from places like Taiwan), there is enough gruesomeness to make the Brothers Grimm quite happy indeed.  For example, a Nazi zombie (possibly a Jiangshi) terrorizes the young boy and his mother, destroying their hut in the process.  He pauses at multiple times to Sieg Heil, and he is stopped in his tracks by the swastika on a young monk’s satchel (never mind that it’s facing the wrong way).  Every supernatural character, with the exception of Hsiaoli and Grampa Earthgod, is hideous, their skin mottled and peeling off.  There are more bloody squibs and explosive body impacts than one might expect in such a movie.  But this is also part of the appeal to kids (and, let’s be clear, to many adults).  It has the simultaneous sense of wonder and imagination that captivates a young person’s mind and the violence which not only ups the ante but also satisfies as something which is partially taboo to stare at and partially exactly how the scenario might play out in a kid’s head (death, not imprisonment or banishment, is the ultimate fate of bad guys).  

Like fairy tales and parables, the film also contains a valuable lesson, and it is that greed is bad, and self-sacrifice is good.  The Demon King is concerned only for himself and the prospect of his own immortality.  He imprisoned his own wife (who looks like a grade school play’s version of the Wicked Witch of the West) because she stood in his way.  The Ginseng King is kindly and helpful to people in need.  He heals Hsiaoming’s snake bite.  He gives the lad a “whisker” to heal his mother (this backfires in a big way when the Nazi zombie drinks the broth with the root in it; the Nazi zombie also being a symbol of greediness in both his worldly and otherworldly natures).  He helps Hsiaoli escape from the Demon King’s minions, unaware that he’s actually falling into a trap.  He will even sacrifice himself to save them all, if that’s what it takes.  Grampa Earthgod starts off greedy, thinking only of his own safety, reluctant to admit what he is or to help Hsiaoming on his journey until he’s shown that this is his purpose.  Hsiaoli also skirts this line, at first seeking the Ginseng King with all her resources.  Later, she sides with Hsiaoming and the forces of good, because her genuine motivation lies in helping her mother, not in the betterment of her father.  Therefore, the more we can do for others while ignoring our own needs, the better we are as people.

Like an after school special, Three-Head Monster is simplistic and obvious, almost to the point of pandering.  It is also repetitive, not in the sense of the overcoming of similar obstacles and circumstances but in the facility with which the protagonists’ problems are dispatched.  “We need to convince Magic Eyes and Magic Ears to help us.”  “Okay, let’s ask them, but they probably won’t do it.”  “Hey, guys, would you help us out?”  “Sure.”  When the characters need to find something or escape from somewhere, the solution is always right at hand and/or achieved with a minimum of fuss.  It takes any tension out of the story.  Yes, we know from the outset that the heroes will prevail, but without any real resistance or effort, it deprives their victories of resonance.  The action scenes are edited with jump cuts and shot with enough shakycam to make modern action filmmakers drool.  I can at least rationalize in my own mind the jump cuts as playing to the supernatural nature of the characters and as some vain attempt to display the speed at which these characters move.  The rest of it is simply messy filmmaking.  The film also ends abruptly, engendering shrugs of disinterest rather than reinforcing the sense of wonder the filmmakers likely set out to capture.  Ultimately, the audience is left with the question, “Why?” and the offhanded reply, “Eh, why not?”

MVT:  The ambition of the filmmakers.  

Make or Break:  The Nazi zombie scene comes out of the blue and threatens to derail the whole affair with its conspicuousness.

Score:  6.25/10          

Wolf Devil Woman (1982)

In 1984, DC Comics introduced the world to the character of Dan Cassidy.  Cassidy is a movie stuntman, and he’s hired to play a monster in a very state-of-the-art costume that would likely make the late Stan Winston weep.  While shooting on location, Nebiros, an insectoid/dinosaurian demon is unleashed from his temple/tomb.  Believing that Cassidy is another demon, Nebiros attempts to drain the magical power from the man, but instead the creature winds up fusing the tech suit permanently to Cassidy.  Created by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Paris Cullins, the newly christened Blue Devil had his own series which ran for thirty-two issues.  One of the more interesting things about it was that Cassidy became what was dubbed a “weirdness magnet,” because of the fusion of technology and magic he embodied.  This communion was appealing to me as a kid for a couple of reasons.  One, I loved monster movies, so anything that touched on that subject, even briefly, was attractive.  Two, the character’s meshing of science fiction and fantasy was appealing in much the same way that things like Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories were.  Of course, eventually DC decided to just make Cassidy a plain, old demon, robbing him of his more intriguing aspects but leaving his Average Joe outlook on most things.  I bring this up because Pearl Chang’s Wolf Devil Woman (aka Lang Nu Bai Mo aka Wolfen Queen) has a villain whom the subtitles refer to alternately as Red Devil and Blue Devil.  While I guess you can say inspiration struck me at that moment, you can equally make the case that I just threw any old thing together to fill up space.  Much like Chang’s film.  

Red/Blue Devil tortures some guy on a crucifix in front of his gathered gang of grim ghouls.  Horrified, Warrior of Steel Sparrow and his wife Jade flee with their infant, but the parents die, and the infant is carried off by a white wolf.  Raised in an ice cave by said wolf (as essayed by a German Shepherd), the baby grows into a woman.  Meanwhile, gormless Lee and Wong search for the mystical ginseng root that can defeat the Devil.  They encounter the eponymous Woman, teach her to read and write, name her Snowflower, and get her tangled up in all this nonsense.

Wolf Devil Woman posits itself as a standard Kung Fu revenge film.  Like many of the martial arts films released around this same time (or just Taiwanese genre cinema in general), it ramps up its odd elements to add some flavor to the proceedings.  So, Red/Blue Devil wears a mesh KKK hood with a jolly roger on it.  The majority of his lackies are red-garbed ninja.  A couple of his henchmen are outright demons (or maybe they just dress the part; Their faces are actual, immobile, store-bought Halloween masks; Yes, really).  Snowflower lives in a stylized ice cave with weird, bubbling, green springs.  She also dresses, at first, in wolf skins (this would be like a caveman dressing in caveman skins, but waste not, want not, I guess), and she sports an honest-to-God stuffed dog doll on her head (the first time I saw it waltzing across the crest of a snow drift, I thought it was supposed to be a wolf as played by a puppet, and this brought forth pleasant memories of Danger Five).  Master Chu is the wise and wizened wizard who knows all and whose machinations the other characters serve. 

The setup ostensibly tells the story of Snowflower's thirst for vengeance from the cradle to the grave.  Yet, Chang (who also wrote the script and plays Snowflower) gives us a narrative that flounders in three parts, none of which fully satisfy.  The first third is the story of Snowflower's discovery and her introduction to semi-civilized society.  This section drags on endlessly, with only the Wuxian straightening of her spine as any sort of gratification.  The second section moves the central plot along a bit with the Devil carrying out his plan for world mastery in the most tangential ways possible.  The third section, then, is Snowflower's ineluctable blooming into a superhero, signified by her learning to dress in actual cloth, gaining her own specialty weapon (a couple of oversized claws strung together with a tether of fur), and defeating the villains.  For as dull as the first third is, the last two are equally bewildering in their staccato pacing and confused editing (no real surprise for movies of this era and area, so a part of me accepts this while a part of me still finds it a task to sit through).  Chang loves her smash zooms, and she also loves to repeat the same shot multiple times in rapid succession for effect (the only one is achieves is ridiculousness).  The possibilities for greatness are here.  They just have no controlling hand to guide them. 

The overriding concept of the Sunflower character herself is the division between the animal and the civilized worlds.  Her origin lies in the world of Men and the evil that resides in it.  Her parents are aghast at the lengths to which the Devil goes (possibly because of the presence of their daughter and their desire to maintain her innocence, but we also have no inkling why they were there in the first place).  The wolf that adopts her is pure, natural, and true to herself (in the same way that the wolves who adopted Mowgli were).  Snowflower grows up and gains powers through the naturally growing ginseng root.  Nevertheless, because she behaves in a way antithetical to the mores of civilized men, she has to be changed, tamed against the social ignorance she has known (biting people is a no-no, for example).  As a result, she finds love, but she also has to face the fact that this maturation (for want of a better term) could lead to her death.  In the same way that the blood of her parents shielded her as a baby, so too does her blood protect the world.  It's actually all quite biblical in a few ways.

I admire Chang for getting Wolf Devil Woman made and with the seeming degree of control she maintained on it.  Unfortunately, it's just not that good.  While it has the garish look and ludicrous premise which make films like these fun, it also muddles the action beyond the verge of disappointment.  The characters are colorful to look at, but none of them have any sort of compelling personalities or really do much of interest.  Bizarrely, Wong, the painful comic relief gets more focus than anyone else, and man, that's just a pitfall that no wolf woman can dig her way out of.

MVT:  Chang gets all of the credit and the blame for this one.

Make or Break:  The lengthy sequence of Lee and Wong hanging out with Sunflower in her ice cave stops any momentum dead in its tracks.

Score:  5/10

Bruce Kung Fu Girls (1975)

One may be the loneliest number, but five (and three, and seven, and thirteen; all odd prime numbers, funny enough) has a nice ring to it, too, and good things tend to come in that number.  For example, we have five fingers (and toes) and senses.  There was The Jackson Five and The Dave Clark Five.  Five Alive was a fruit juice/punch concoction I craved in my youth and very rarely got.  In the world of cinema, you have Devil Times Five, Fast Five, Slaughterhouse-Five, Five Easy Pieces, and Five Deadly Venoms, to name but five.  It’s that last one that relates to this week’s film, Shut Dik’s (what a great name!) Bruce Kung Fu Girls (aka Five Pretty Young Ladies aka Wu Jiao Wa).  Now, this film has about as much to do with Chang Cheh’s classic martial arts masterpiece as it does with Bruce Lee (whom do you think the Bruce in the title refers to?), but it does actually have five young women who can handle themselves in a fight, and we all know that things that come in fives have to be good, right (especially when they’re doing Kung Fu dressed in garish costumes)?

The Invisible Thief terrorizes Taiwan, robbing from the rich and giving to himself.  The Police Superintendent (Lui Ming) is flummoxed.  Luckily, his five nieces, who operate a Kung Fu gym/spa, volunteer their services in catching the bandit.  But will Ku Lin’s (Polly Shang Kwan) feelings for the hapless scientist Lu conflict with her devotion to justice?

Bruce Kung Fu Girls is as much of a Bruceploitation film as Schindler’s List is a buddy cop film.  It’s deliberately mistitled to lure fans of Lee into the theater.  Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t expect this movie to have anything whatsoever to do with the man, a la something like The Dragon Lives Again, but you have to admit, it’s fairly brazen to slap even an allusion to his name on a film like this.  I admire that spunk.  What this film does, like The Dragon, is creates a science fiction influenced superhero world.  Key to this is the idea of “technology.”  The Invisible Thief uses super science to fuel his super powers.  He has a cheap little laboratory and a shiny, silver suit, and it’s all very kitschy while also being just enough for the audience to buy it.  The police, who normally have enough on their hands with the likes of thugs under the command of Mistress Pei Pei Chow (Chang Chi-Ping), now have to contend with robbers whom they cannot see.  Despite the fact that this guy calls his shots, the cops just can’t seem to get their shit together (why does no one think to throw a bucket of paint in the proximity of the floating gun?), the Superintendent and his boss lament their own Stone Age techniques (“Technology is all around us.  We’re getting left behind”).  The Girls must be used because they are “modern,” though not necessarily tech savvy.  What they are, however, is clever, and they wear black leather uniforms, complete with hot pants, thus making them a superhero team of sorts.

The Girls have a seemingly fierce feminist streak in them.  They use a girls-only swimming pool.  They run a girls-only gym.  They have no compunction about throwing down with bad guys, and the bad guys (I suppose being equally feminist) have no compunction about striking back.  For all their independence, however, the Girls all behave like school children.  This is spurred on by the appearance of Lu, in a quasi-interesting reversal of the cliched “damsel in distress” syndrome.  They save his sad ass, and each woman suddenly thinks he’s the cat’s meow.  This is illustrated in a rather drawn out sequence.  Lu visits the gym and gives each of his rescuers a gift (I fantasize it was Pet Rocks for all).  That night, each of them makes an excuse to call Lu and go out to meet him (let’s just never mind that he doesn’t accept any of their invitations that we are aware of).  While waiting, each of them hallucinates that they see Lu with another woman, and they react violently.  They are, in effect, Boy Crazy.  But Lu only truly has eyes for Ku Lin, of course.  For all of the individual freedoms for which the Girls fight, they are, in the end, just young girls who get swept away by the wave of puppy love that Lu instigates in them.

Bruce Kung Fu Girls has a certain easy charm to it.  It is purely lite, dumb fun, and it knows this.  Yet, it missteps in two very distinct ways.  First, it is overly concerned with the act of frolicking.  The Girls jaunt off to the park and toss a large ball around.  They throw a birthday party for Chao Ping, the youngest of the quintet (we know she’s the youngest because she always wears her hair in pigtails and acts even more childish than the other four).  They go camping with some pals, but not before they waltz all through the forest, chuckling and acting up (or acting up as much as they ever will).  The camping trip also includes a full song sung by Ku Lin (you can almost smell the record tie-in, can’t you?).  Dik wisely spices up these long sequences by having the bad guys randomly appear and cause a ruckus, just not much of one.  The birthday party winds up turning into a cake-smashing party, and the villains appear to be having as much fun as the attendees (and far, far more than the viewers).  Second, the plot, such as it is, meanders and forgets that it exists at all for long stretches.  Further, the crime aspect of the film doesn’t do much original and repeats itself once or twice too often.  The finale is sufficiently ridiculous (Mistress Pei Pei Chow seriously did not think this thing through), and it all ends up as harmlessly as a television cop show.  The thing is that the film doesn’t give itself over to its more unique aspects enough to make it fully satisfying.  It’s like the frozen pizza of Taiwanese pulp cinema which, every now and then, is innocuous enough to get you by.

MVT:  The leather outfits.  Well, I liked them, anyway.

Make or Break:  The scene at the museum is the most distinctive one in the film, and displays what the movie should have trafficked in more.  Plus, it has lots of the Girls in their leather costumes.

Score:  5.5/10