Another film from the director of the legendary Super Infra Man, Hua Shan gives us this odd mish-mash of several HK genres of the early 80's.
An expert swordsman is suspected of being the thief of a treasure sent to Emperor. The swordsman who has nothing to do with the theft investigates and is led on the trail of the supernatural "Bloody Parrot". This leads to the "Parrot Brothel" and the star prostitute who walks around half naked. Strange things happen including a demonic possession, witches casting poison spells, disgusting autopsies and numerous sword fights. Then a dead constable turns into a vampire! This is all in the first 30 minutes!
Directed at a breakneck pace, Hua Shan predicts the hyper-kinetic films from HK in the 1990''s. The film shows a good bit of style and production values. If the story wasn't completely confusing at times it would be quite enjoyable for fans of wacky HK films. At least something unexpectedly odd happens every few minutes. For fans of Shaw wuxia action, there is quite a bit of it and the fight choreography of Hsu Hsia is very good. Ching- Ching Yeung, a very talented Wu Shu performer, appears in the last third of the film for a great fight scene and she carries one of the oddest weapons I've seen. Jenny Liang plays the star prostitute and spends her lengthy first scene half naked or mostly naked. She's quite comfortable unclothed unlike many Shaw nudie actresses of the time who seem like they are thinking of the robe just off the set. And she goes straight into a near naked demonic possession scene. After that she remains clothed. But when the film is in the last third and your mind starts to wander back to her first scene, the film has her take all her clothes off in a cavern of mirrors! Now that's service.
Not a great film but quite entertaining as long as a coherent plot isn't your first need. Every time the subtitles say "Bloody Parrot" I start to laugh and that's worth something. The autopsy scenes are brief but quite disgusting, I made the mistake of eating dinner while watching the film.
