Review of Kung Fu Wonder Child

Introduction

Some films are just so bad, they`re good. `Kung Fu Wonderchild` almost makes it on all counts, though in the final analysis is probably just so bad it`s bad. Which is a shame because I wanted to like this knowingly kitsch and cheesy old school kung fu movie.

In truth, it`s fairly remarkable that cringingly bad movies like this get made at all. That they find an audience (and in this case, a sizable cult one by all accounts) is the stuff of Social Science dissertations!

`Kung Fu Wonderchild` is a crazed cartoon-like tale with charmingly inept special effects, wooden dialogue, a confusing narrative, all delivered up on one of the worst DVD transfers I`ve ever seen (more later).

It has the horribly disjointed feel of a movie spliced together out of old TV clips, and I think that`s a genuine possibility here, though no mention of that on the IMDB.

It claims to have been released in 1989, though has the look and feel of a movie made at least a decade earlier.

The movie stars Taiwanese kung-fu star Lin Hsiao, an androgynous looking girl who is known really for playing humorous male leads, and she is similarly cast here. She plays the part of Hsui Chen, the Grandson of a cook at a School of Magic and Martial Arts, where, despite being too young to be a student, `he` has picked up quite a number of tricks of his own. His Grandfather, despite his advancing years, is also a master of martial arts and has magical powers too, which he must conceal to retain the status quo.

With a strong moral conscience, and an attractive `Our Gang` style naiveté and charm, Hsui Chen constantly lures her two friends (both students) into her madcap adventures. Both students are equally dumb and this provides the perfect excuse for some Three-Stooges style comedy.

A lost maiden appears amidst the surreal goings on, looking for her lost parents. A corrupt priest with dark powers seems to be harbouring some dark secret involving resurrecting the dead in a graveyard, and summoning up vampires, smoke, lightning and anything else the special effects unit had handy. It seems likely that he has abducted the parents and the maiden is determined to find them, using her own kung-fu fighting skills in the process.

But despite the diabolical goings-on, the movie is full of childish humour (including farts so powerful they can knock a man clean across a room) and even the horror and violence is in no way horrible or violent. It`s more Looney-Tunes than `Enter the Dragon`. Think `Monkey` on acid.

Perhaps its finest moment (a completely surreal sequence) is when Hsui Chen takes a `test` to see if he`s ready to become a student. If he fails he dies. Suddenly he`s in a large studio with little furnishing, battling a giant `dragon` which looks exactly like a caterpillar shaped draft excluder only bigger.

Video

Diabolical picture quality with a poor transfer. Horribly cropped, this is a low-grade scratchy print with low-contrast and a complete lack of colour saturation. I`m guessing that this came off a VHS on its way to DVD. Yuck!

Audio

This has got to be the most comical English dub since `The Flashing Blade` in the early seventies. It`s truly awful. Unfortunately, it`s made worse with the help of a cheesy early eighties electro-pop soundtrack. If you sat with a `cheesy film soundtrack calculator` you couldn`t come up with anything quite as bad as this.

Features

There`s a pointless trailer with no original score or dialogue, but set against a fully orchestral soundtrack that sounds like it was meant for something else.

There are also a few brief trailers for other 55th Chamber releases which serve as useful reminder as to what to avoid over the next few months if at all possible.

Finally, there is an image gallery with action stills and movie posters set to a relatively funky bit of music.

Conclusion

What do you make of a film like this? As a Kung-Fu movie it sucks. Absolutely and completely, with its pantomime fight sequences and wacky humour. But it`s not that funny either.

I`m unsure who`s going to buy this. It`s all far too confusing to hold the attention of children or teens for long.

But it`s full of that quirky, off-kilter strangeness that helps make children`s TV like `The Singing Ringing Tree` so darkly compulsive and which has `cult` written all over it.

It`s all a bit like a strange dream. Messy, incoherent, yet full of fleeting oddities and queasy happenings, as well us misplaced toilet humour. A real hodgepodge that should be the reserve of only the most committed trash lovers.

Previously only available as a cheap VHS grey import, it`s now gone mainstream with this less-than-classy DVD release. `m guessing that some of its cultish attraction and exclusivity will wear thin.

Buy it if you`re an old school kung-fu trash lover. Avoid at all costs of you`re not.