“Holy Flame of the Martial World” (1983). A fantastical, mythological Kung Fu movie abou
“Holy Flame of the Martial World” (1983). A fantastical, mythological Kung Fu movie about a pair of twins seeking matching spears. It’s notable for both the special effects and for the phantasmagorical, surreal imagery, and for the fact it’s one of the rare Kung Fu films to have a female master villain. In the early 1980s, the trend in Hong Kong martial arts films for a couple of years was toward fantastical, special effects driven pieces (for instance, take Buddha’s Palm, or the very last of Cheng Cheh’s movies with the Five Venoms, The Weird Man, both of which came out in 1982).It’s hard to see Holy Flame of the Martial World as anything other than a Shaw Brothers’ answer to Golden Harvest’s movie made that same year (1983), the first of Hong Kong’s very big special effects films, Zu: Warriors of the Magical Mountain, the film that announced the entrance of Tsui Hark to the world of Hong Kong cinema (he’d done a few movies before, but that was his first as the Tsui Hark we know, “Hong Kong’s Spielberg”). This movie was Antz to Zu’s Bug’s Life. If you want to see it, it’s on Amazon Prime now. Celestial, who own the rights to the Shaw Brothers catalog, have been pretty good about getting it all out there and available. -- source link
#kung fu#hong kong#shaw brothers