Flying Dagger (1993)

Director: Kevin Chu

Producer: Hui Pooi Yung

Writer: Wong Jing

Action Director: Ching Siu Tung

Cast: Tony Leung Ka Fai, Jimmy Lin, Sharla Chang, Gloria Yip, Ng Man Tat, Jacky Cheung, Maggie Cheung

Running Time: 86 min.

Plot: The well-known "Flying Dagger" Chung and his nephew Lam lived on rewards from apprehending bandits. Chung refused the love of "Great Coquette" Lady Fung. Therefore, Fung always messed Chung's business for revenge. Flying Fox, the country's number one bandit, had stolen the millionaire Tsao's evidence of being a traitor. Hence, Tsao employed Chung to catch the bandit. Flying Fox's wife, Flying Cat seduced Chung in order to save her husband, which caused jealousy and a severe fight with Fung. Meanwhile, Lam was kidnapped by Tsao. Chung and Fung finally realized that Tsao was the head of East Wing. They united together to beat against Tsao... (Note: this summary is straight off the back of the DVD package. Read Numskull's review below for something a little more comprehensible.)

NUMSKULL'S REVIEW: There's an old saying: "You learn something new every day." Well, I don't know about "every day", but I did pick up an interesting tidbit the night I watched this movie. It seems that Fanciful Censer, an aphrodisiac so powerful it turns strong-willed people into mindless, drooling hump-machines in the blink of an eye, can be nullified by orally ingesting the urine of a virgin man. Remember that, folks. It may save your life someday. And to think...some people say movies have no educational value. Feh!

Urination isn't the only excretory function with extraordinary properties in Flying Dagger. There's also a Japanese man whose saliva, which he can expel in huge quantities, can eat through wood like industrial-strength acid. Plus, Nine-Tails Fox, clever rascal that he is, can produce the most dangerous flatulence the world has ever seen.

It's not all about body functions, though.  Monty Pythonesque gags pop up every now and again. The immortal bad guy Never Dies just can't stand to hear people talking about love (or at least sex), in much the same way that the menacing Knights Who Say Nee writhe in agony at the mention of the word "it" (even though the tall one says "It is a good shrubbery" to Graham Chapman just a few moments earlier. Hello, Continuity Department? I'd like to report a fuck-up, please). Also, the perpetually disgruntled wife of Nine-Tails Fox has a wondrous device that spits out black-and-white illustrations of what happened while she was out of the room. The "Hey, that's nifty" factor of this machine goes way down, though, when we find out that it works not through magic or science, but because of an old guy behind the scenes whose sole purpose in life is to produce the drawings and feed them through the slot.

The severed hand with a life of its own might make a few malcontents stand up and yell "Hey, those larcenous bastards ripped off The Addams Family!" But the first thing I thought of was the hell-raising, bird-flipping hand in Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn. The one in this movie has an unhealthy obsession with groping Big Flying Dagger's ass, so I'll take Bruce Campbell's possessed appendage any day.

Flying Dagger's package calls it a "Great Kung Fu Comedy". "Kung Fu" is a bit of a stretch. People fly all over the place, screech like cats, and cause all sorts of crazy shit to happen seemingly just by thinking about it. At no point in any action sequence is the viewer intended to take any of it seriously. If you're gonna have fight scenes that require air traffic controllers, this is the to do them.

One negative point I wish to address is the subtitling. Whoever translated this puppy into English needs to get hooked on some serious phonics. A Hong Kong movie with English text completely devoid of errors is a rare thing indeed and that's fine with me because, hey, nobody's perfect. But Flying Dagger must hold some sort of unofficial record for words what ain't spelled right and grammatikul mistaks. About the only piece of dialogue they managed to get exactly right is "Shit!", which appears every two minutes or so throughout the film, less than an hour and a half in length.

Of all the movies I've seen which feature people with furry, retractable tails, penis protectors, flatulence used as a deadly weapon, and gay men who happily allow themselves to be smacked around by old folks while saying "I buy sausage only", this one is definitely the best. In fact, I would venture to say that Flying Dagger is quite possibly the greatest film of its kind ever made.  My favorite character was the innkeeper (Ng Man Tat) who excitedly drags his wife out of bed so they can watch their place get wrecked in a bar fight.  The fast pacing and visual humor make Flying Dagger an enjoyable experience, as long as you don't expect too much from it.

NUMSKULL'S RATING: 7/10