In contrast to the cult following that Japanese animation (anime) has in the West, Chinese animation remains almost completely obscure. I can only think of two examples myself: Tsui Hark's animated version of A Chinese Ghost Story and the even less well known Chinese Gods, aka The Story Of Chinese Gods. I haven't had the chance to catch the former film (or even its live-action counterpart) so I can't testify to the quality of it but if Chinese Gods is any indication, it's no wonder why there aren't any rabid fans of Chinese animation here in the USA.
Made in 1976 (or 1980, depending on your source), this work of trippiness is one of the few films I've seen recently that I've watched awestruck and wondering what in the hell the filmmakers were thinking. Now I know that Chinese mythology is pretty outlandish but to take its wackiness and insert Bruce Lee into the middle of it all seems to be a strange way to memorialize him. I'm going to describe the entire plot because this is weird, wild stuff and actually a bit intricate. Also, this will save you 90 minutes of your life.
We start out with the tyrant King Chow. We know he's evil because he spends his time casually burning people at the stake for miniscule offenses like speaking out against his casual practice of burning people at the stake. One of the protesters cries out and gnashes his teeth with such force that they shatter like glass so I guess we can add osteoporosis to the list of horrors that the king has inflicted upon his people. Then we have his wife, the Queen, who is a demon in human form. We know she's evil because she has those long, v-shaped, pointy eyebrows. The gods see that the people of his kingdom are tormented because of the "signals of suffering" (which inexplicably look like black smoke) arising from the Earth. So the gods, after using a skinny guy with telescopic eyeballs to confirm what's up, send the wise old man Chang Chi Na down to help straighten things out.
Chang Chi Na hangs around in Chow's kingdom as a fortune teller and sees the sister of the Queen, who is also a demon, walking by. He figures out her true nature by smelling her (remember that even demons didn't have feminine hygiene products in those days), kills her with a single punch to the stomach and then tells the villagers to burn her to reveal her true form. A servant of King Chow tries to tell of these events but he simply has the guy tossed into the snake pit. So the Queen, trying to take revenge, asks the King to build an embankment to town and to force Chang Chi Na to do the labor-intensive task. Chi Na, who is supposed to be the hero, simply quits his position in the kingdom and leaves even though he knows about the cruelty of the king and that a subordinate will have to do the job instead. And then this same subordinate is called before the King and is forced to remove his own heart as proof of his loyalty. Does Chi Na do anything to help him? Nope, because he's a putz. The subordinate then simply walks away, limping and with a hole in his chest!
King Chow then orders a large group of villagers to build the embankment as slave laborers. This time, Chang Chi Na intervenes by calling upon a wind monster to spirit these people away to the nearby kingdom ruled by the much nicer Duke Of Si. The Duke tells them that they can each get a plot of land, farming tools, and free food until their crops grow. Woo, ancient Chinese welfare programs rock! In response, Chow's military leader, General Won, sends two grunts to hire Priest Shen to assassinate the Duke Of Si. The exact orders are hidden in a message inside a glass bead which is swallowed by one of the grunts. Somehow, I don't think Shen will want to read that by the time it gets to him.
In the meantime, Chang Chi Na is spending time fishing in the land of the Duke Of Si. Yes, I know he was supposed to be easing the suffering of King Chow's people but this Chi Na guy is a real slacker. So a woodcutter happens upon him and Chi Na sees a vision in the water. He tells the woodcutter that if he returns to town before sunset, he will murder 2 people. Understandably, the woodcutter tells Chi Na to bug off and heads out. Cut back to the two grunts who are looking for Priest Shen. They can't find Shen but they see the woodcutter and think he's overheard their plans so they decide to kill him. We know they're both gonna die in a badly-animated kung-fu battle but before that, the animators try to show the building angry, murderous intentions of the two grunts by making their faces contort as if you were seeing them in warped funhouse mirrors. Pure hilarity!
The Duke Of Si's men happen upon the woodcutter afterwards and tell him that he will be put to death for breaking the laws of the land. Wha? Have they no concept of self-defense? Death-by-kung-fu seems to be perfectly legal in most other Chinese films. So, being the obvious killing maniac he is, the woodcutter bawls until his mother tells him to ask Chang Chi Na to take him as his student. He does so and the crafty slacker Chi Na tells the woodcutter to hang the 2 dead bodies by their ankles from a tree. When he does, the Duke Of Si's men find the glass bead in the mouth of one of the bodies and takes it to the Duke himself. He smashes it and finds the assassination plot inside. The woodcutter is then freed and Chang Chi Na is appointed as the new Prime Minister. Hooray!
Finally, we are introduced to the would-be assassin Priest Shen, who turns out to be a demon himself. He rides around on a cloud with a funny face and a bandage on the side because clouds get injured and bleed sometimes just like we all do. He warns King Chow of the newly-appointed Chang Chi Na and says that he will get some more demons to help in the inevitable upcoming battle. Chi Na leads an army into battle but then retreats when the gargoyles in Shen's army prove to be too much for them. I thought Chi Na was supposed to be a god! The guy just turns tail and runs. Wimp! So now Chi Na grabs his cloud and flies off on it to get more reinforcements from the gods for the Duke Of Si's forces while Priest Shen decides to ask The Four Kings Of Evil to help King Chow's army.
They actually run into each other by coincidence and Shen tells Chi Na that he will let Chi Na & his friends pass. But the catch is that Chi Na must separate his own head from his neck and make it float around exactly as Priest Shen is doing at that moment. Of course, Chang Chi Na is a wimp so instead of meeting the challenge, he let's one of his god friends, Eagleman, grab Shen's head and fly off with it until Shen begs to have it returned to him. They give the head back and then ride off.
Chi Na then encounters General Won's army. Eagleman again springs into action and fights a gargoyle who spits machine-gun streams of knives from its mouth. Eagleman whups the gargoyle but then is defeated & captured by an imp with a spiral horn on his head who shoots ropes from his fingertips (I shall henceforth refer to this guy as Unicorn Midget). So surely Chi Na decides to help his comrade Eagleman, yes? Nope. Again, he runs and leaves Eagleman as prisoner of General Won's army. Let me get this straight: A gargoyle that spits knives isn't fearsome but a midget who can do rope tricks is downright terrifying? Priest Shen later has Eagleman killed by dropping him into a vat of hot oil, making this the 2nd time Chang Chi Na has had a friend bumped off because of his own gutlessness.
Unicorn Midget then tells everyone that he can get into Chi Na's camp by tunneling underground so that he can kill the cowardly bastard. When he gets there, he's spotted by one of the gods, a little girl who is naked except for a cloth covering her front torso and who inexplicably has burning feet (I'm going to call her Naked Flying Frying Girl). As soon as he sees her, he runs off screaming like a baby! This was the guy who turned Chang Chi Na's army away single-handedly? Anyhow, Unicorn Midget is captured and executed (even cute characters like him aren't safe in this cartoon).
This is when The Four Kings Of Evil decide to show up. They aren't at all what we expected. They all look like giant, buck-toothed cavemen with crowns on their heads. Each one has a different schtick by which I've decided to identify them: Sword King has a sword, Snake King has a giant snake, Guitar King has one of those Chinese stringed instruments, and Umbrella King has a razor sharp umbrella and uses it to fly through the air like Mary Poppins. They all show up on the doorstep of the gods with Priest Shen and General Won and challenge the gods to a fight. Immediately, Naked Flying Frying Girl jumps into the fray and beats the stuffing out of each one of these guys all by herself. Damn, now I know why Unicorn Midget was so scared of her.
If you actually bothered to read through to this point, I know you're all saying to yourselves, "Naked flying girls beating up midgets and Kings Of Evil with giant umbrellas are great and all, JavaDevil, but where in the hell is Bruce Lee?!?!" That's what I was asking and it turns out that he makes his appearance at last about an hour into a 90 minute long movie. It's as if halfway through making this film somebody figured that they should have a better marketing gimmick than buck-toothed giants to draw the crowds in. So after Naked Flying Frying Girl gets tired beating up on The Kings Of Evil, Bruce Lee (sporting a magical third eye on his forehead) suddenly shows up out of nowhere. Apparently, he was a god in those days long before he came to Earth and got a film career.
Bruce predictably lays the smackdown on The Four Kings Of Evil until Snake King has him swallowed by the giant snake. Never fear because Mr. Lee simply pounds on the uvula and insides of the snake and then severs its intestines and blows into them until the damn thing explodes. Then, get this, Bruce uses a heat ray from his 3rd eye to fry one of the Kings Of Evil. I thought this was Bruce Lee, not freakin' Superman! But just in case we forget who he is, he pulls out the nunchaku and proceeds to pummel the remaining Kings Of Evil to death.
Now, if all this nuttiness isn't enough to bug you, the filmmakers decided to spontaneously ripoff Disney's The Sword In The Stone. Bruce Lee and Priest Shen get into a fight which involves them changing into different animals to try and one up each other. One changes into a sparrow while another changes into an eagle (looks more like a buzzard but that's what Bruce tells us), one changes into a lion and the other into an elephant, one into a mouse and another into a cat, etc. Shen finally winds up as a three-headed dragon while Bruce turns into a giant, polka-dotted swordfish (or is it Dino The Dinosaur? Hard to say...). Shen is cut in half and he dies. General Won is all that's left of the army and one of Chang Chi Na's friends boils him alive in a pot. That's pretty much how you know you're not in Disney territory anymore.
After all this carnage, the Queen decides to sneak into Chang Chi Na's camp and kill him. Waitaminute, didn't Unicorn Midget already try to pull that stunt? She runs into Bruce Lee and the two face off. With her wacky demon powers, she changes into a 9-tailed fox and does neat tricks like attack Bruce with really, really generic-looking monsters and an army of severed fox heads that fly through the air. Bruce fights back by growing two extra heads and four extra arms! After beating up the Queen for awhile, he changes into a dragon and sits on her. Knowing that she can't possibly defeat a man who can sit on her so fiercely, she attempts to flee only to get speared in the chest and die.
Chang Chi Na's army at last reaches King Chow's castle and Chow sets up a circle of fire around the castle and challenges Chi Na to a duel. By now, you should be able to guess that Chi Na simply doesn't have the nads to fight Chow himself so he instead orders Bruce Lee to do it for him. Lee does and, in one of the most single-sided climactic fights in any film I've seen, completely destroys King Chow without breaking a sweat. Cut to a parade with happy, free villagers and the card that says THE END.
The animation in Chinese Gods is Saturday morning quality and, despite the ridiculously outlandish plot, manages to create a completely dull atmosphere. It even makes some of the harsher aspects of the story, the occasional nudity and gore, seem Smurf-ish. On the plus side, the animators were able to ape some of Bruce Lee's trademark mannerisms, such as his "Wooooooooo!" cries during his fights and his tendency to flick at his nose with his thumb.
I can see how the Chinese would go for something like this but whose bright idea was it to dub this and bring it to America? I don't think Bruce Lee freaks would even want to own this. And the dubbing is typically incompetent with the silly voices although, to be fair, they're much more at home in this animated Chinese film than in a live-action one. The dubbers also can't get the names straight, referring to King Chow alternately as King Of Chow and King Cho and the Duke Of Si as the Duke Of Chi in one scene.
I might've recommended the film for its trippy ideas alone but you could just as easily go rent Yellow Submarine and get a much better movie in the bargain. The script writer for Chinese Gods was Shen Kang and the director was Chang Chik Hui. I can't find anymore info on these two so I assume they've been languishing in obscurity somewhere in the Chinese animation industry. It's a good thing, too. You're likely to find Chinese Gods collecting dust in the martial arts or maybe even the family section of your locally-owned vid store. Avoid it. Please.
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