House of Traps (1982)

As film fans, we all discovered our favorite directors as we’ve navigated through a sea of movies and each one’s specific filmography.  It usually starts with one amazing film and afterwards we must seek out the rest of this person’s output.  This is followed by a domino-effect of knocking off one great film after another until you reach the more obscure and less than perfect films released.  Selfishly, we want to turn our friends and family onto these filmmakers so that we have someone to discuss their work with, but also to take some credit for turning them onto great cinema.  Additionally, we want them to have the same thrilling experience we had when we saw these films for the first time and have them thank us for the recommendation.  That’s why when attempting to convert our friends to liking what we like, we always give them the best of the best.  It’s too risky to give them one of our favorite filmmaker’s lesser efforts if we intend on them continuing on with the rest of their works.  For instance, if you were trying to convince someone that they should check out the work of Brian De Palma you probably wouldn’t have them start with Raising Cain.  Not a bad film, but it likely won’t knock their socks off.  The masterworks should take priority over all others.  The flawed films should be explored once they’re hooked.  In the case of master martial arts filmmaker, Chang Cheh, his 1982 film, House of Traps, falls into the latter camp.  By no means a bad film, but rather one that should be seen once all of the classics have been viewed first.

Potential viewers of House of Traps should know one thing going in; the plot to this film is convoluted as hell!  We are quickly given the back story to a family feud that has raged on for generations.  The information dump is so quick that we as viewers are a bit confused if the current state of the feud is over greed and the desire for power or simply revenge.  A prince is planning a revolt against his uncle, the emperor, and anyone who wants to join the revolution must break into the emperor’s palace and steal one of the empire’s priceless valuables as a way of showing devotion to the cause.  Anyone who joins the rebellion signs a contract which is kept, along with the valuables, in the titular House of Traps.  This is when things begin to get complicated.  Numerous characters come in and out of the story, there are several double-crosses, and we’re not sure if we’re supposed to side with the prince who’s leading the rebellion or the emperor who has dispersed spies to infiltrate the enemy and learn the mystery of the House of Traps.  Because the plot is so confusing and Cheh is giving us perspectives from both sides of the feud, we’re given a lot of exposition and scenes of dialogue that I can only assume is an attempt to keep the viewer up to speed on everything that’s going on.  It makes for a frustrating watch, especially if you’re just looking for a kung-fu film that’s light on plot and heavy on fight sequences.  It’s best to just let the movie wash over you and not get too caught up with the overly-complicated plot.

There’s still plenty to like with this Shaw Brothers’ production, despite the confusing storyline.  House of Traps has the usual production value that makes these films so charming and what one comes to expect from the Shaw Brothers if you’re already a fan, especially of their kung-fu films.  You get the colorful costumes, stagey set design, awesomely fake facial hair, bright-red blood, excellent fight choreography, supernatural abilities, cool weapons, and cool characters with cool names like the Black Fox.  Most importantly, the movie has the House of Traps and it sure delivers on its promise.  The multistory house has three levels of potential death within it for all those who attempt to take back the emperor’s valuables and the rebellion’s list of supporters.  The ground level has guards hidden behind a sliding wall (How do they occupy their time waiting behind that wall the whole time?) and spikes that rise from the floor.  The second level has trapdoors and the third and final level has a spiked cage and one more surprise that I won’t disclose, as it’s not revealed until the finale of the film.  It’s a very cool set that’s utilized three or four times throughout the runtime and each time it is we learn more about the secrets that the House of Traps has in store.

House of Traps finishes on a high note with amazing fight sequences and plenty of bloodletting.   The very end is comedically ironic, immediately following all of the carnage that has just taken place.  It left a smile on my face and made it easier to forgive the convoluted plot.  It should be noted that this film features the Venom Mob in one of the group’s last films together.  If I were trying to turn a friend onto Chang Cheh’s films, or just classic kung-fu films, this isn’t where I would have them start.  The Five Deadly Venoms or The One-Armed Swordsman would definitely be a better option to begin your education on Chang Cheh, the filmmaker.  For those of us who’ve seen our share of martial-arts films, this is solid and definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the Shaw Brothers’ aesthetic.

MVT: The actual house of traps, of course!

Make or Break Scene: The first introduction to the house of traps.

Score: 7/10

Wolf Devil Woman (1982)

In 1984, DC Comics introduced the world to the character of Dan Cassidy.  Cassidy is a movie stuntman, and he’s hired to play a monster in a very state-of-the-art costume that would likely make the late Stan Winston weep.  While shooting on location, Nebiros, an insectoid/dinosaurian demon is unleashed from his temple/tomb.  Believing that Cassidy is another demon, Nebiros attempts to drain the magical power from the man, but instead the creature winds up fusing the tech suit permanently to Cassidy.  Created by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Paris Cullins, the newly christened Blue Devil had his own series which ran for thirty-two issues.  One of the more interesting things about it was that Cassidy became what was dubbed a “weirdness magnet,” because of the fusion of technology and magic he embodied.  This communion was appealing to me as a kid for a couple of reasons.  One, I loved monster movies, so anything that touched on that subject, even briefly, was attractive.  Two, the character’s meshing of science fiction and fantasy was appealing in much the same way that things like Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories were.  Of course, eventually DC decided to just make Cassidy a plain, old demon, robbing him of his more intriguing aspects but leaving his Average Joe outlook on most things.  I bring this up because Pearl Chang’s Wolf Devil Woman (aka Lang Nu Bai Mo aka Wolfen Queen) has a villain whom the subtitles refer to alternately as Red Devil and Blue Devil.  While I guess you can say inspiration struck me at that moment, you can equally make the case that I just threw any old thing together to fill up space.  Much like Chang’s film.  

Red/Blue Devil tortures some guy on a crucifix in front of his gathered gang of grim ghouls.  Horrified, Warrior of Steel Sparrow and his wife Jade flee with their infant, but the parents die, and the infant is carried off by a white wolf.  Raised in an ice cave by said wolf (as essayed by a German Shepherd), the baby grows into a woman.  Meanwhile, gormless Lee and Wong search for the mystical ginseng root that can defeat the Devil.  They encounter the eponymous Woman, teach her to read and write, name her Snowflower, and get her tangled up in all this nonsense.

Wolf Devil Woman posits itself as a standard Kung Fu revenge film.  Like many of the martial arts films released around this same time (or just Taiwanese genre cinema in general), it ramps up its odd elements to add some flavor to the proceedings.  So, Red/Blue Devil wears a mesh KKK hood with a jolly roger on it.  The majority of his lackies are red-garbed ninja.  A couple of his henchmen are outright demons (or maybe they just dress the part; Their faces are actual, immobile, store-bought Halloween masks; Yes, really).  Snowflower lives in a stylized ice cave with weird, bubbling, green springs.  She also dresses, at first, in wolf skins (this would be like a caveman dressing in caveman skins, but waste not, want not, I guess), and she sports an honest-to-God stuffed dog doll on her head (the first time I saw it waltzing across the crest of a snow drift, I thought it was supposed to be a wolf as played by a puppet, and this brought forth pleasant memories of Danger Five).  Master Chu is the wise and wizened wizard who knows all and whose machinations the other characters serve. 

The setup ostensibly tells the story of Snowflower's thirst for vengeance from the cradle to the grave.  Yet, Chang (who also wrote the script and plays Snowflower) gives us a narrative that flounders in three parts, none of which fully satisfy.  The first third is the story of Snowflower's discovery and her introduction to semi-civilized society.  This section drags on endlessly, with only the Wuxian straightening of her spine as any sort of gratification.  The second section moves the central plot along a bit with the Devil carrying out his plan for world mastery in the most tangential ways possible.  The third section, then, is Snowflower's ineluctable blooming into a superhero, signified by her learning to dress in actual cloth, gaining her own specialty weapon (a couple of oversized claws strung together with a tether of fur), and defeating the villains.  For as dull as the first third is, the last two are equally bewildering in their staccato pacing and confused editing (no real surprise for movies of this era and area, so a part of me accepts this while a part of me still finds it a task to sit through).  Chang loves her smash zooms, and she also loves to repeat the same shot multiple times in rapid succession for effect (the only one is achieves is ridiculousness).  The possibilities for greatness are here.  They just have no controlling hand to guide them. 

The overriding concept of the Sunflower character herself is the division between the animal and the civilized worlds.  Her origin lies in the world of Men and the evil that resides in it.  Her parents are aghast at the lengths to which the Devil goes (possibly because of the presence of their daughter and their desire to maintain her innocence, but we also have no inkling why they were there in the first place).  The wolf that adopts her is pure, natural, and true to herself (in the same way that the wolves who adopted Mowgli were).  Snowflower grows up and gains powers through the naturally growing ginseng root.  Nevertheless, because she behaves in a way antithetical to the mores of civilized men, she has to be changed, tamed against the social ignorance she has known (biting people is a no-no, for example).  As a result, she finds love, but she also has to face the fact that this maturation (for want of a better term) could lead to her death.  In the same way that the blood of her parents shielded her as a baby, so too does her blood protect the world.  It's actually all quite biblical in a few ways.

I admire Chang for getting Wolf Devil Woman made and with the seeming degree of control she maintained on it.  Unfortunately, it's just not that good.  While it has the garish look and ludicrous premise which make films like these fun, it also muddles the action beyond the verge of disappointment.  The characters are colorful to look at, but none of them have any sort of compelling personalities or really do much of interest.  Bizarrely, Wong, the painful comic relief gets more focus than anyone else, and man, that's just a pitfall that no wolf woman can dig her way out of.

MVT:  Chang gets all of the credit and the blame for this one.

Make or Break:  The lengthy sequence of Lee and Wong hanging out with Sunflower in her ice cave stops any momentum dead in its tracks.

Score:  5/10

Ninja Wars (1982)

**SPOILERS**

The 1985 video game The Legend of Kage is one of my favorites of all time.  It’s an extremely simple game: You run around forests and castles, killing monks and ninja with your double blades and shuriken until you’re done.  About as basic a video game premise as you’ll ever get.  I don’t think that I would love it as much as I do had I not seen Kosei Saito’s Ninja Wars (aka Iga Ninpocho aka Death of a Ninja aka Black Magic Wars) a few years prior, because the game bears a lot of the touches that make the film interesting.  The Legend of Kage has firebreathing monks with those face-covering, conical straw hats we’ve seen so very many times.  Its main character isn’t dressed like what Americans back then had become used to as the visual idea of a ninja from such magazines as…well…Ninja.  Kage wears a short tunic, and he has long hair and no mask of which to speak.  All the characters can leap almost the entire length and breadth of the screen.  There’s a princess to be rescued from the evil bosses.  There’s a temple that has to be assailed in order to do this.  The game stands out for its uniquely Japanese fantasy elements, in my opinion.  Sure, there were games that had similar components (if there were a video game trope more profligate than musclebound badasses rescuing someone/taking revenge, it was ninja/martial artists rescuing someone/taking revenge), but none harkened back so specifically to Ninja Wars (and bear in mind, up to that moment in time, I was only familiar with the works of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Shaw Bros) in my adolescent brain to the point that I used to believe/fantasize that the game was adapted from the film (which is itself adapted from a 1964 novel by Futaro Yamada).  And still, the film is one I find extremely difficult to both discuss and to love outside of certain facets.    

Try to follow along.  Evil sorcerer/blank-faced cackler/creepy uncle Kashin Koji (Mikio Narita) prophecies to gormless pawn/power-hungry lord/architect(?) Donjo (Akira Nakao) that whosoever wins the heart of the beautiful Ukyodayu (Noriko Watanabe), who is currently married to the even more gormless Lord Miyoshi (Noboru Matsuhashi), will hold the world in his hands.  Easy enough, right?  Kashin gives Donjo five “Devil Monks” (a blind one, a skinny one, a giant one, a woman one, and an acid-spitting (?) one who looks like the Asian Avery Schreiber) to help him achieve this goal by creating a love potion.  Meanwhile, young ninja in love Jotaro (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Kagaribi (Watanabe in a dual role) profess their love for each other and perfect their ninja clan’s Crescent Dagger Technique.  It turns out, Kagaribi is Ukyodayu’s twin sister (separated because she’s Christian[?]), and she’s kidnapped by the monks so they can extract her tears for the potion.  Killing herself by cutting off her own head, the monks take the head from Donjo’s courtesan/wife (?) Isaribi (Jun Miho), plant it on Kagaribi’s body, and rename her Onibi (also Lady Hellfire).  Things escalate from there.

The primary driving force behind Ninja Wars is the conflict between lust and love.  Donjo lusts for power, and thus, he lusts for Ukyodayu (even though she’s gorgeous, we never quite get the feeling that Donjo is interested in her as anything other than a means to an end).  He built Miyoshi’s castle, and that symbol of power and achievement is the chief characteristic of Donjo’s character.  Donjo is allowed to have sex with Onibi like a blowup doll (thankfully, we never see this to my recollection).  The monks are also filled with lust.  One of them rapes Onibi in order to extract her tears for the love potion.  They test out the potion on one of Donjo’s servants who immediately desires the blind monk, exposes her breasts to him, and leads him upstairs for a quick one (he gladly follows along, toying with her boobs the whole way).  The female monk (I think) disguises herself as Ukyodayu (I think) and seduces Miyoshi in order to ensorcell him.  

Conversely, Jotaro and Kagaribi have a very pure, even chaste, love for each other.  After Kagaribi is killed, this love transfers to Ukyodayu in a damsel in distress kind of way.  It’s their love that generates the tension of the story, and their ultimate decision at the film’s finale is the off-center (but still somehow fitting) punctuation to this expression.  Ukyodayu is the center point between Jotaro’s love and Donjo’s lust (let’s never mind that both men more or less use her as a tool to fulfill their own needs, and even though she chooses Jotaro, there’s no real reason for it other than that he’s the good guy).  Between these two extremes is Shinzaemon (Sonny Chiba), master of the Yagyu Clan.  Shinzaemon knows that Kashin is evil, and anything he orchestrates is “wrong.”  He doesn’t lust for anything other than justice, and he is on the side of the young lovers, because they’re virtuous and because their love is “correct.”  The few times Shinzaemon shows up onscreen, it is to save Jotaro and Ukyodayu’s bacon and encourage them to continue along their righteous path.  Thus, anytime the villains are onscreen, we know we’re likely to get something skanky, and anytime the good guys are onscreen, we know we’re going to get something puppy-love-esque.

There is a religious theme running through the film, focusing on the worthiness of Christianity in much the same way as just about every film dealing with Satanism/the occult does.  The monks, and by association Donjo, are either atheists, Satanists, or pagans (maybe all three from the way they act).  They serve the flagitious Kashin, who is portrayed as a quasi-omnipotent demigod, though it’s never stated that he’s anything more than a very powerful human.  The centerpiece of the film takes place at a Buddhist temple, which the monks attack during some ceremony, burning it to the ground (this culminates, in slow motion, with the head of the giant statue of Buddha crashing to the ground).  So, even Buddhism isn’t sufficient to defeat this evil.  Kagaribi (and, consequently, Jotaro) is a Christian, and she wears a crystal crucifix around her neck.  This crucifix inexplicably transfers to Ukyodayu (There may be two crystal crucifixes; Regardless, I thought Ukyodayu wasn’t raised Christian, but all things considered, this could just as easily be a further statement on the power of Christianity in the film).  The crucifix burns Onibi as she attempts to beguile Jotaro.  Ukyodayu winds up on an actual cross set atop a pyre in Kashin’s netherworld/otherworld, ready to sacrifice herself in fire.  Jotaro’s decision to join her is simultaneously an expression of their love and an expression of the messianic dimension of Christianity.  That this act touches Kashin is a testament to the film’s perspective on the subject, in my opinion.

For as much as there is in this film to admire (and the action sequences are sufficiently large scale, well-photographed, and well-choreographed), it really is a hot mess at the end of the day.  This is the sort of film where characters will decide to do something, ostensibly in order to achieve their goals, but really it’s just to have another weird sequence happen.  None of the characters are interesting other than the monks, and even they are only interesting for their peculiarities.  The plot is a massive game of “Hot Potato” that never pays off.  It only exists to bring the characters in proximity to one another.  Ninja Wars is a labyrinth of a film, its convolutions leading to either dead ends or cliff drops.  And like a rat in a lab maze, the viewer is prompted through the movie with the promise of a piece of cheese at the end.  The only problem is that the egress of the maze just leads to another maze, and any cheese there is to be had is picked up, perfectly by happenstance, at random intervals throughout.  So, you still get some rewards, but you’re never fully satisfied when it’s all done.

MVT:  For all its myriad issues, the inventiveness and insanity of Ninja Wars really needs to be seen to be believed.

Make or Break:  The assault on the Buddhist temple, while admittedly a tad overlong, really is wildly impressive on a variety of levels.

Score:  6.75/10