o hand in hand

hundreds of virgin skulls gather together and make a kind of virgin-skull-snowball-thing. pointy horns start peeking out of it. the inside is glowing red and smoke is pouring out. sammo hung, in an attempt to contain the forces of evil through some sort of magical power he exerts through his eyebrows (which are about a hundred billion miles long) proceeds to wrap his grey eyebrows, along with his long grey hair and beard, around the skull thing like a spider trapping a fly in a web. the skull thing takes flight.

there are a lot of movies in the world, but there is only one where you get to see a giant skully thing drag sammo hung across the sky by his eyebrows. that movie is zu: warriors from the magic mountain, and-- having recently seen it for the second time-- it remains by leaps and bounds the weirdest martial arts/kung fu movie i've ever seen.

zu is one of the earliest efforts of chinese/vietnamese director tsui hark (read this link, it's very good), who can be credited for oodles and oodles of the magical effects us folks in the states know from crouching tiger and the matrix series (and just about every action movie on the planet these days). zu itself was apparently the direct inspiration for john carpenter's big trouble in little china. its usuage of hollywood style special effects made it a landmark in hong kong, where hark is often referred to as "the steven speilberg of hong kong" (here's another link).

i guess there's the temptation to chalk the "weirdness" of zu up to cultural ignorance-- of which i'm 100% guilty-- but i fear that does a dis-service to the vitality of the film. zu is so excessive in its innovations that it sets aside all concern for coherence, logic and budget. every action is garnished with a ribbon or an electrical shock or a sex change or an explosion. people bang around sherbert-colored studio sets like pinballs. and, uh, good eventually conquers evil. the rest is rather confusing.

but it's that good, drunken, don't-give-a-fuck confusion that makes finds like this so exciting. it's also a reminder of how boring sticking-to-the-plot can get in the action genre. zu is a giant, 80's-psychedelic banquet of a movie. put a few beers in the fridge, and strap on your wire harness (hehehe).

(sorry. that's an awful line to end this post with, but i can't think of anything else, and it's getting late...)