Thrilling Bloody Sword (1981)
Director: Chang Hsin-Yi Run Time: 89 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1981
Starring: Chang Yi, Hsia Ling-Ling, Hsu Pu-Liao, Wong Sai-Tin, Yang Hui-shan
Country: Taiwan
Language: Mandarin
Presented as part of Mammoth Mondays, a new extension of Cult 101. Preservation courtesy of Gold Ninja Video and the American Genre Film Archive.
About the film:
If He-Man and the Masters of the Universe dropped acid with the Shaw Brothers while knocking out a martial arts horror-fantasy movie, that movie would be Thrilling Bloody Sword.
This head-spinning slice of Taiwanese psychotronic cinema builds a movie out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, impossible fight scenes, and wild monsters that include a cyclops, a pterodactyl, and Satan himself! A comet impregnates a queen. She gives birth to a fleshy egg. In disgust, the king tosses the egg in the river. Seven little people stumble onto the egg. They stab it with a knife and find a cute baby inside—one who grows up to be a beautiful princess. One day, she runs into a prince, who is fighting a multi-headed dragon. Of course, the two royals fall in love. Unfortunately, a group of dastardly wizards want to keep them apart, and they’ll use every creature at their disposal to do it!
“I can only imagine how this would have played in a theater and truly envy those that experience this first that way.”
–Dan Tabor for Cinapse
About the filmmaker:
Chang Hsin-Yi was a pulp screenwriter of martial arts films in the Taiwan movie industry of the 1970s. He is known for Fei yan shuang jiao (1978), Kung-Fu Commandos (1979), and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow II (1978).
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