Flash! Future Kung Fu (1983)

Fascism litters the landscape of dystopian cinema.  Everything from 1984 to 1990: The Bronx Warriors deals with government agencies seeking to control every aspect of a country’s economy and populace.  Fascist governments tell us what to do, where to work, how much we get paid, with whom we can associate, what we can do for leisure, etcetera.  This is a fear most people have deep down in their guts, because we recognize that, ultimately, no matter what form of government we say we have, there is always the faint possibility that the leaders of same will suddenly decide that they know what’s good for us better than we do (I mean, obviously, this never happens in real life).  This plays with the concept that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, something with which I do agree.  Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were a future-set story where the government is actually peopled with civil servants who genuinely care about the citizens under them, but the common people still live in a dystopian society (there probably is one somewhere; WALL-E comes close, I guess)?  Of course, we don’t see this because it goes against the simple, black and white, cause and effect we anticipate in a post-apocalyptic/future world.  A beneficent, well-meaning government would only produce a beneficent, prosperous society and vice versa, right?  The old saw of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions rarely rears its unwanted head in these scenarios, and maybe casual audiences (and filmmakers) just don’t want to try to deal with the complexities involved in such a narrative.  Thankfully, Kirk Wong’s Flash! Future Kung Fu (aka Health Warning aka Digital Master aka Da Lui Toi) sticks to the accepted script and gives us a future which is not only dystopian but also one in which the Nazi party has actually made a successful comeback (flags and all).

Yes, the Nazis are in power again, and Kung Fu students like Killer (Lung Wei Wang) constantly train, either at their Kung Fu schools or in “Black Boxing” matches (think: underground fight tournaments), to fight them.  After meeting Monique and Fever, two femmes fatale who extol the virtues of doing drugs and living life like today was your last, Killer must choose between his Master Lau’s (Eddy Ko) naturalistic teachings and getting some.  And maybe beating up some Nazis.

Homoeroticism is alive and well in Flash! Future Kung Fu.  Lau’s students love to hang out together and shower together.  Men are constantly rubbing each other to relieve sore muscles and/or to bring them back to health after getting beaten or overdosing on drugs.  The Nazis seem to have a true fascination with navy blue briefs, because just about every male in their group prances around in them.  Master Lau commands Killer to burn his collection of Playboys (which may not seem that farfetched, but considering the context of the rest of the film…).  The arcade where Monique and Fever hang out features muscle boys posing all over the place.  When Monique offers to give Killer a rubdown, he demurs, then he yells at his buddy for letting her almost see him naked.  When a male character actually has sex with a woman (involuntarily, might I add) it leads directly to his death.  What’s interesting about all this is that it isn’t presented as the Nazis being against homosexuality and the Kung Fu students being for it.  They all seem to embrace it equally.  It’s accepted as just a way of life (it reminds me just a bit of Matt Wagner’s short-lived comic The Aerialist, which posits a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is deviant), and it leads directly into one of the other major aspects of the movie.

The main ideological conflict of the film is between the world of science versus the world of traditions.  Seemingly, Monique and Fever were grown in a Nazi lab (there’s no true explanation, as in so very, very much of this film).  The Nazis do drugs constantly, relying on scientific breakthroughs to bring them to new highs (and when that doesn’t work, they’re perfectly fine with pumping carbon monoxide directly into their own cars).  When Killer is shot up with rabies, Master Lau is offered the antidote, but he turns it away, saying it’s “a blasphemy against nature.”  Lau then takes Killer to some herbal medicine guy to get healed.  This healing process, however, is almost as barbaric as the disease and its delivery system.  Killer is rubbed with a fresh, open chicken carcass.  He beheads a snake and drinks its still-pumping blood.  He is bludgeoned with all manner of implements to harden his body.  Lau and company hold that “all-natural” is how everything should be done.  In fact, Lau sends Killer out to knock trees down with an ax as part of his training.  Theoretically, this breaks the opposing sides down further to being body versus mind.  The Nazis believe in strengthening (and enjoying) the body through science/drugs, whereas the students believe in strength through the power of the mind, their force of will.  Unfortunately, this is a distinction which is nebulous in the film, except when the head Nazi declares, “The power of the body is superior to the power of the mind.”  So there.

If my analysis of Flash! Future Kung Fu’s facets appears muddled, that’s because the film itself portrays them in muddled fashion.  Now, from what I understand, the original version of this movie was something much more elaborate and cogent.  It’s also, to the best of my knowledge, considered something of a lost film (which is not all that shocking considering China’s track record on film preservation).  More’s the pity, because this could have been something special.  As it stands, and in the only format I was able to see it (a crappy, pan and scan VHS copy), the film is a mess.  There’s no plot, no characterization, no reasons for why things happen.  In its current form, the movie simply sets you adrift in a succession of scenes, none of which matter, because we have no frame of reference for any of it.  Scenarios and interactions we expect to have some significance go nowhere and mean nothing.  The final twenty-two or so minutes are okay, because it busts out some nice imagery and moments (in a race to prevent something nonsensical which we couldn’t possibly give a shit about because it hasn’t been built up in any way, shape, or form), but it can’t save this puddle from itself.  Here’s a flash: this film is mostly junk.

MVT:  There is some decent production value on screen.  But it’s wasted on this thing.

Make or Break:  The finale.

Score:  4/10         

The Butterfly Murders (1979)

Fong (Siu-Ming Lau) narrates the backstory of where the martial world stands (all we need to know is that there was some ruckus, we’re currently in the “Quiet Period,” and there are now seventy-two forces who control the martial world, the only one with which we need to concern ourselves being the Ten Flags Clan led by Tien [Shu Tong Wong]).  After the murder of a paper mill owner prompted by a counterfeit copy of Fong’s memoirs, The Ten Flags are summoned to Shum Castle, where Lord Shum (Kuo-Chu Chang) is hiding in fear for his life.  It seems some flagitious ne’er-do-well is using poison butterflies to off people, and it all ties in to a secret deep beneath the castle’s surface.

The Butterfly Murders (aka Dip Bin) is Tsui Hark’s first feature length film following his graduation from The University of Texas and his return to Hong Kong (I always remember his anecdote [I believe from an issue of Fangoria] where he was filming a dance or ballet class as a student, and his teacher pointed out to him that the shadows the dancers cast were more visually interesting than the dancers themselves; that is, a different way of looking at cinema).  The film itself is chock full of jump cuts and a storyline that assumes we’ll catch up to whatever is happening onscreen (and, yet again, we have to look at this as being, one, partially a cultural thing with how the Chinese construct and engage with film, and two, possibly something caused, at least in part, by the editing that happened oh-so-often after a foreign [but especially Chinese] film left its director’s hands and traveled abroad).  

And yet, this disjunctive quality aids in bolstering the mystery element of the film.  The Butterfly Murders, in many ways, is very much an “old dark house” movie.  Disparate guests with nothing in common are invited to an unexpected place.  Said place is hauntingly barren and forbidding.  Said guests are embroiled in a mystery which could cost them their lives.  There are secrets and twists that appear to come out of nowhere but do, in fact, have explanations.  There are hidden chambers which house aspects of the truth.  There’s an odd butler-y character in the form of Chee (Hsiao-Ling Hsu), who is deaf and muter but also far better looking than most cranky, old cinematic butlers I’ve seen.  The only thing really missing is the raging tempest outside (though the sky in the film always looks overcast, and you could look at the swarms of butterflies as being the storm which keeps everyone cooped up).  The three main characters, Fong, Tien, and Green Shadow (Michelle Yim) play detective, piecing the puzzle together.  

Since Fong is our audience perspective character, he plays the primary investigative role.  He questions people but generally keeps out of things, observing and processing the goings-on as a scholar/scrutineer does.  It’s he who will actually learn a lesson from the story, and, as he would pass it on to his eventual readers, Hark passes it on to the viewer.  Fong chronicles tales of the martial world from what he has experienced in it and is highly regarded for this.  This story is yet one more of these yarns, and it unfolds partly as a folk tale and partly as an accounting of what actually happened.  Fong’s memoirs are valued because he is known as one of the great storytellers of his time, and the falseness of the writings being foisted off at the film’s opening is important because it’s telling us that the reality crafted in the writing of guys like Fong is valuable as historical documentation and as fashioning of the world in which everyone who isn’t a scholar/author lives.  Flashbacks take us from the main story to spice up the proceedings, give us backstory, and show us that there are common legends in this world.  Therefore, we get the two clowns robbing a grave who are attacked by the butterflies as well as several shots of the aftermath of Magic Fire’s (Eddy Ko) wrath.  

This world is supported by myths and legends as surely as ours is by science and nature.  This is why the heroes of this world have supposedly magic powers.  And yet, the filmmakers very clearly show us that these abilities are a combination of skill and gadgetry.  For example, Magic Fire can’t actually control and create fire.  He is a master of pyrotechnics and explosives.  Similarly, Thousand Hands has all manner of sharp, pointy objects he can hurl en masse with pinpoint accuracy.  His moniker has nothing to do with him having a thousand hands (though that would have been kind of neat to have seen).  It’s a simultaneous aggrandizement and de-mythologizing of these special people.  Fong’s writing creates larger than life characters, while Hark shows us that there are real world explanations for their gifts.  But in the end, the martial world of the film will continue to be colored by and filled with Fong’s point of view, not Hark’s. 

Oddly enough, for a film set in the martial arts world, there isn’t a ton of fighting in it.  Actually, I should append that.  There is a decent amount, but it takes a while to get to any of it, and, to be perfectly honest, you can tell that Hark was still very much an enthusiastic novice (as an analogy, you almost need to ask yourself whether you’re interested in seeing Salvador Dali’s artwork from when he was four years old; personally, I would leap at the chance).  For as many interesting shots/visuals we get there are just as many, if not more, that are so undisciplined in angle and movement, you almost can’t tell what’s going on, and the editing is as choppy as a prep cook.  Nevertheless, it’s this sense of experimentation that turned Hark into the filmmaker he would become in a very short span of time.  Additionally, the director seems to rein it in a sizable amount as the film rounds third base while ramping up the more fantastical components, and this is when the movie became most satisfying for me.  Yes, you have to work with the film (arguably against it) to make heads or tails of it at the outset, but both the journey and its destination are worth it.

MVT:  The mystery facet keeps the film together and even gels with the rest as it moves along.

Make or Break:  If you can’t make it through the film’s first ten minutes, it won’t be for you.  I loved the challenge of it (as a Western viewer) and where it led.

Score:  7/10