Miracle Fighters
Review
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Yuen Yat Chor, Yuen Shun I, Leung Kar Yan, other Yuens, Eddie Ko

A weird movie much like Drunken Wu Tang where Yuen Yat Chor has to enter into the sorceror's competition against Yuen Shun I, who plays the same odd-fellow bad guy.

The movie starts off with Eddie Ko killing some soldiers after they killed his daughter. Nothing special, a few seconds long. But then Shun I drops in and disappears, leaving behind this little jar with a scroll attached to it. A guy pops out of it, looks at the scroll (which has Ko's face on it), eats the scroll, and spits out a paper sword, which gets cut up. Ko rolls the jarman up in the carpet and gets attacked by more guards while the prince, who is just a kid, is playing on a swing in the same room. Huh? A bit silly.



All kinds of Yuen Bros.isms abound in this. Stuff like Leung Kar Yan and the wife fighting over who gets to make offerings to Simon Yuen first, and the wife doing a very good trick with the incense, and Kar Yan spinning a top made of feathers off into the sky to check the weather, and a man praying for rain with Kar Yan peeing on his head, then asking for a light and touching his nose and having a flame on his finger. There's also some Taoism going on here where Kar Yan is trying to break the draught and uses all kinds of gadgets to bring on the rain.



Eddie Ko and Yat Chor are attacked by assassins. More swordplay with Ko taking on 4 others, and Ko does a really cool looking move where he's laying on the ground, pushes up and does a full 360 horizontally before landing again. Yat Chor helps out and does his thing with the sword. Again nothing fascinating overall, though the 1 second long exchange has some of the same sound effects from The Red Wolf which sent me into a relapse, but it was really short.



Leung Kar Yan uses some Taoism to make soup. First, he has a scroll of a chicken, which he cuts up into strips, with his hand. And then he cooks them. Simple right?



Eddie Ko has a small encounter with Shun I, who plays an assassin like always and this time has the abilities of a bat like, uh flying, and making high pitch sounds. Oh and he also can throw his sword around on a wire. Nothing special, again.



And Yat Chor fights two guys who are held together by the granny, who is walking on her hands and has a head between her legs that laughs and everything. Then she comes out. Just a short thing.



Shortly after, a man dressed as a woman comes and asks if granny wants her wrinkles taken out with some string, and they start doing stuff with this string that I never thought possible. Like at one point, it looks like the string goes through the man's neck. And it's funny too, the guy makes some good faces. Then he brings out some powder and gets it blown onto himself and he dances around before dying. It's funny.



Leung Kar Yan takes on Shun I at home, and is able to use 4 arms and 3 legs to defend himself with the help of Yat Chor. Some weird stuff that is obviously impossible to do but somehow they pull it off. Fun. But they can't win that way, so they put Yat Chor through a curtain and Kar Yan uses his hands as Yat Chor's legs so Yat Chor looks like a midget on a table. Shun I obviously has to fight him, and it's hilarious. He even uses a bench later on. Great choreography too, it's as though the Yuen brothers knew how to make a fight in any situation.



Yat Chor enters into the sorcerer's competition, and some odd stuff goes on. The first obstacle is to retrieve a key from out of the water, so one guy grabs his shoe and turns it into a fish, telling it to go after the key, but the water is boiling so oh well. Yat Chor uses a fake arm to grab the key out, but it falls back in, so he calls on the Super Dragon, which is a glass tube capped on one end that he puts a flaming piece of paper into and it causes a suction that brings the key up.



The second obstacle is the paper bridge with snakes below, which are biting eachother madly and we get a view of it. Yat Chor calls on the paper butterflies which carry him for a little while until some madman attacks him and they both end up on some stilts. Some choreography on wires which isn't bad, but it's short.



Yat Chor gets to the final obstacle, which is the ceremony. He can't seem to get a fire going correctly so he just continues on, and a stickman is formed, which beats on him for a minute, and the madman comes back and it's Shun I! He blows up the stickman, and then he starts making mirror images of himself to confuse Yat Chor. Some bursts of good choreography here and there, but overall it's all about sorcery.



After seeing Drunken Wu Tang, I expected more from this in the way of choreography and silliness. Well, it's not all that silly, and it doesn't have much fighting except for at the end. Then again, it was made some four years before DWT. There are some good parts, like granny doing that string thing, and the sorceror's competition was cool, and the fight as Yat Chor being a midget, but there wasn't a whole lot happening otherwise. I liked it though. Taoist sorcery is always fun. I wish they would do more of this stuff, but MORE FIGHTING WOULD BE NICE!

By the way the Mega Star VCD of this is cropped and you actually miss some action off the screen, much like Encounter of the Spooky Kind.

3/5

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