Here’s a classic from the 80’s! It’s a wire fu Hong Kong action movie mixed with mysticism and in your face special effects to create one hell of an experience!
It all starts out with guy named Ti (Yuen Biao). Ti heads to his two leaders with information during war. The two leaders argue and ask Ti whose orders he will obey. When Ti utters “I obey both of your orders”, both leaders take this as an insult and give an order to kill him in a kindergarten style form of discussion.
Ti escapes and meets a man from one of the other armies played by Sammo Hung. The two become friends but eventually get caught up in a battle. After pretending to fight each other and playing dead, Ti manages to flee the battle and ends up in a cave inside the Zu Mountains.
Once there he meets some very magical characters including a swordsman with tremendous abilities. Ti learns very quickly about a ‘Blood Demon’ who isn’t far away from escaping and taking over the world, so he teams up with a band of these magical characters and heads off to do what is necessary to stop the blood demon!
This movie hits you right in the face! It can get a little confusing, but everything takes off so quickly in this film! The overall style and energetic visuals of this film make it really stand out like nothing else – and it was made in 1983!
The characters move about in a highly energetic fashion and each character has a very unique and colorful personality. Like the characters, the plot moves forward incredibly quickly and manages to squeeze in so much in a short amount of time.
As we see Ti meet all of the these ‘out there’ characters, he heads back out into the world and meets even more, all while trying to convince the epic and powerful swordsman to teach him his kung fu.
We get shown this vast and sometimes confusing world through the eyes of Yuen Biao’s character Ting, who acts as a bridge between a rational world and the crazy magical one in this movie.
While the energy is high and the pace fast and fun, things do get serious as we see some of our favorite and most powerful characters die making Ti and a few others responsible for stopping the demon, giving us a more David vs Goliath theme to watch. Overall it’s just intense, I can’t say much more than that!
What you can expect to see in this film (in terms of action) is a combination of wire work, sped up choreography and a shitload of old skool 80’s special effects. The characters shoot waves of energy into the air, use magic and the editing and camera movement give everything a fast and intense pace.
When it coems to ‘martial arts’ however the choreography is more reliant on effects instead of fighting, so what we do see is pretty standard and ‘wire-fuish’. Overall it’s a fun movie, but you really need to see it for yourself to get and understanding of ‘the experience’ it offers.
On Blu Ray –
Region A (US & Canada)
Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain Blu-Ray
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
Zu – Warriors From the Magic Mountain
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain [DVD] (1983)
