Did I just watch the inspiration for Super Mario Brothers?

Utter nonsense if you're not Chinese *and* familiar with the thousands of pages of source material, yet they still did *a lot* for 1983. The effects make creative use of limited resources and make up for it with abundant imagination. I mean come on, magic *eyebrows*? Riding giant elephant statues? Check out the sequel for even more transcendent, entertaining confusion.

Completely insane.

Completely apeshit action-adventure whips out all the old 80ies effects by the buckets. Too kidshow-silly to be truly effective and often it just seems like an excuse to throw flashing shit at the viewer, but it's quite a romp, nonetheless.

I've often seen this called the Chinese X-Men and considering every other character is some magic-weilding weirdo with a cool name, it's a pretty apt analogy. Kind of old though, so don't expect a lot in the SFX department.

"Huge fun."

Zu is ridiculously weird and great for all the same reasons (Long Brows' power is... eyebrows that can grow and restrain the Blood Demon... I love that guy). Kinda hard to imagine ILM helped with the SFX, because they suck and definitely ruin the experience of some scenes; and narratively, there are so many red-herrings and macguffins you hardly know what's going on at any one moment. Ultimately, though, this is a film experience unlike even kung fu flicks, and one you'll remember for a while