| Don’t tell anyone, but apparently you can get superpowers by poking your finger into a dead snake.
If the motion picture Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983) is anything to go by, injudicious handling of snake meat can lead to unexpected side effects, such as the ability to fire explosive laser beams from your index finger. A handy ability, surely, but for heaven’s sake, watch where you point that thing. And don’t playfully flick your friends on the nose, or they’ll be sent flying through a wall! The destructive potential of snake-related fingertip powers must surely be the reason so many bio teachers and taxidermists have kept quiet about their hidden superpowers all these years.
Whether or not you’ve got deadly laser fingers, you’ve got to see Holy Flame of the Martial World – it’s a blast! This flick is filled with utterly ridiculous action scenes that sound insane when described, yet seem to make perfect sense at the time. One guy has to fight the entire Chinese alphabet, as giant symbols peel themselves off the floor and fly at him. His kung fu teacher can summon up hurricanes by laughing. Another guy survives an attack by cheaply animated ghosts and saves himself from their poison (?) by placing a robin’s egg in his mouth and sitting in the lotus position (??). Incidentally, the lotus position seems to be very important in this film, even though most of the people who assume it are either rotating at 78 rpm or flying through the air, pursued by various pointy objects that move of their own accord.
Yes folks, what we’ve got here is a particularly delightful example of wuxia pien, meaning it’s an action-packed Chinese tall tale in which all of the characters have outrageous magical martial arts abilities. Nobody just opens a door and walks through it in this movie – they must point at the door, causing it to fly open by itself. Then they’ll magically disappear and reappear five times, inching their way towards their goal, while bad guys throw snakes at them and bring paintings to life.
Everybody in the movie is after a magic thingamabob called the Holy Flame, which is a clumsy plasticky weapon with a huge fake jewel embedded in the blade. It looks like a red plastic cricket bat and can only be wielded by an 18-year-old boy. It is later revealed that a second Holy Flame exists, light blue in colour, which can only be used by an 18-year-old girl. When a young couple dies while trying to keep the locations of the blades safe, a kindly martial arts master adopts their orphaned baby son as his own, and raises him to be a formidable fighter. Unfortunately, the bad guys adopted the kid’s twin sister, and raised her to fight on their side. The stage is set for the kids to battle it out on their 18th birthday. What will the outcome be? I ain’t tellin’.
I really like how friendly and courteous the teenaged protagonists are. Whenever they set out on an adventure, they invariably make friends with someone who turns out to be working for the enemy. When the time comes for the big climactic showdown, none of the young people want to fight, because they’re all buddies. Don’t worry – the virtually invincible villains make sure we get a proper climax, filled with hilariously overdone special effects.
Viewers who love non-stop action, crazy wirework stunts and improbably superhuman abilities are going to want to track this puppy down. Sure, there are lots of terrific wuxia pien flicks out there, but Holy Flame of the Martial World beats out such other goodies as Buddha’s Palm (1982), Kung Fu Cult Master (1993) and Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) simply because it never runs out of steam.
I love this movie. It’s taken me ages to track down a DVD copy, but it’s definitely been worth the wait. Celestial Pictures has given this long-unavailable gem a proper widescreen release with decent subtitles, and it looks terrific. |
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