Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)

This is the groundbreaking film that established Tsui Hark as Hong Kong’s best New Wave filmmaker who successfully imported Hollywood production values. While it has aged some, Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain remains a unique and entertaining fantasy experience.

Loosely based on Chinese mythology, the film stars Yuen Biao as Ti Ming Chi, a soldier caught between warring armies on Zu Mountain. He escapes into the mountain’s mystical regions which are home to ghoulish evil disciples and noble heroes, all possessing magical abilities. By joining Ting Yin (Adam Cheng), a master swordsman, Ming Chi is thrust onto a perilous quest to find the powerful Twin Swords. They are the only weapons capable of destroying an evil demon, contained temporarily by the wise Long Brows (Sammo Hung). When the demon possesses the swordsman’s body in the palace of a healer Countess (Brigitte Lin), Ming Chi must complete the quest by finding the swords’ keeper and uniting the weapons with the aid of an insecure monk (Mang Hoi).

Although having been made long before CGI effects were in use, this film boosts many memorable and fantastic visual effects. They may have aged some, but the level of effort and creativity put forth is impressive. Tsui Hark’s trademark manic pacing and inventiveness is clearly evident with scenes employing a wide variety of Western and local filmmaking techniques. Many of the special light effects and wirework had been in use in Hong Kong at least forty or fifty years prior when fantasy films were common. Like most things, they went out of fashion as more realistic martial arts films came into play. For this film, Tsui Hark added the modern technical expertise of Hollywood effects specialists to create an updated fantasy film. Simply for the fact that these films were practically non-existent in Hong Kong at the time, this was a tremendous achievement. In 2001, Tsui Hark essentially remade this film into Legend of Zu, employing the latest digital effects although it failed to improve on the original.

As an effects-heavy film, having non-martial artists Adam Cheng and a young Brigitte Lin star was not an issue. In fact, the film’s more capable action stars didn’t have to sweat too hard either which is cause for some disappointment. Yuen Biao relies more on his boyish, comedic talents than on his acrobatic expertise while Sammo Hung’s actions amount to his immense eyebrows doing battle with a hunk of rock.

It is this “rock” and other inhuman adversaries that do the most harm to the film. The draw of really good kung fu movies is the richly devious villains that milk our loathing and admiration for their skills. But in the case of Zu, the antagonist is evil incarnate which fuels the wars of man, a concept that works well in literature but rarely translates well on screen. It takes the form of man for a short while, but eventually it’s just manifested as an increasingly vile-looking tower of rock. Another aspect of the film which has only been partially remedied in the remake is the poorly executed narrative. The film takes place over the course of approximately a month, but there is no sense of time. The sets and outdoor scenery look great, but almost never feel like they inhabit the same world. Likewise, the story moves very quickly and rarely takes time to build up the significance of various plot devices.

Watching the film is mostly a visual experience. Tsui Hark would go on to mesh action, visuals and story more successfully in films like Peking Opera Blues (1986) and Once Upon a Time in China (1991). The daunting mythological premise is partly to blame and viewers not having a sound knowledge of Chinese culture can make the experience even more confusing. Thankfully, the direction incorporates enough energy and splendor to leave you less concerned with why Norman Chu would chain himself to a boulder and more interested in knowing how they did some of these old school effects.