Bastard Swordsman

Holy shit, these wu xia pian films really got crazy in the 80's. Story is confusing and very melodramatic - sometimes it gets hard to understand who is whose illegitimate son, who is in whose side and so on. But who watches these movies for plot anyway - it's all about action, and this film offers plenty of crazy swordplay and magic techniques of various levels. People and shit are flying, exploding left and right. It's like live action Dragon Ball.

A fun hodgepodge of martial arts, wire-fu and magic are mixed with a convoluted yet basic story that for the most part kept me entertained. The film is fast paced and over the top and has a fun and interesting martial arts world that is more outlandish than the 5 deadly venoms but not as out there as Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain. The main downfall for me is the fact that they only resolve one of the two plots and that left me feeling a bit disappointed and let down.

I can say I’ve seen very few movies like it, but this balancing act of action versus absurdity tips too far into absurdity for me. And yet…it’s not quite far enough into the absurd to win me back again, for those of you who’ve read my review of Deadball and are wondering how I didn’t love Bastard Swordsman. Perhaps it’s because all these animated, ridiculous hijinks are played fatally straight

Silly and melodramatic during the lulls in-between fights, but hoo boy, the action is just so much fun in this one! The protagonist ascends to a higher martial arts level by getting a backrub from his mom after which he becomes a Super Saiyan Spiderman and then has a fistfight inside a silk cocoon. At that point in the movie this makes total sense. Good times.