The Battle Wizard (1977)

full-on, balls-to-the-walls wuxia fantasy

Some titles evoke worlds of wonder, others are dull and inspire confusion, but The Battle Wizard brings about very specific expectations of a magically adept sorcerer casting furious spells. What you ultimately end up with is giant snakes and fighting monkeys mixed with a claw-hand firing neanderthal and laser beams. A full-on, balls-to-the-walls wuxia fantasy, thanks largely to its lightning pace, crazy costumes and vicious bloodshed. Directed by Pao Hsueh-Li, the film delivers an avalanche of bizarre imagery and a candy-coloured explosion of artificiality. The pacing is chaotic, characters appear and vanish abruptly, while emotional stakes often get buried beneath the aesthetics of a psychedelic fairy tale that barely pauses long enough to make any form of sense. The rather inventive choreography mixes martial arts with supernatural gimmicks that constantly escalate the insanity. One duel might involve acrobatics and elegant staff fighting; the next involves a villain firing invisible force waves, while another summons venomous creatures. It never settles into repetition because the film keeps trying to outdo itself. Undoubtedly uneven and featuring some extremely questionable choices in its execution, nearly everything about The Battle Wizard feels like a nightmarish fever dream, where imagination is the name of the game and lunatic energy rules the day, embracing its own excess with contagious enthusiasm.

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