18 Bronze Girls of Shaolin (1978) Incredible Weird-Ass Junk
4191DVD
Incredibly
Strange, Weird-Ass Chop Sockey!
Original Taiwanese/Chinese Title: SHAO LIN SHI BA PA TUNG NU [Unexpected Trouble in Shaolin]
director: Chian Lai-Ya
starring: Lung Chun-Erh · Chin Hai Chen · Kang Chin · Chun Chou · Ying
Lee · Yueh Hua
Here's
a weird-ass chop-sockey actioner where nothing is as it seems. A woman
pretends to be blind while other people pretend to be mute and at least
two women pretend to be retarded. Much of the male cast dresses like women.
One guy fights himself while others fight giant roses. Nobody seems to
keep the same name throughout the length of the film and - often - there
are characters with the same name. In a climatic battle, the Bronze Girls
climb on each others shoulders - five or six high [see right picture below]
- while attacking a group of normal-height challengers. To what advantage?
How can this possibly help?
The
film opens with the Bronze Girls prancing around a giant bell (sometimes
taking a moment to body slam into the bell) as they entertain their Shaolin
master, an evil monk who has taken over the temple. Seemingly, this monk
has broken with Shaolin tradition, allowing females to learn martial arts...
Not because he's a feminist, but rather because he believes females can
be more easily manipulated into doing his bidding. At any rate, his temple
is now at risk from a series of monk murders. He then realizes that one
of his Bronze Girls has disappeared with the sacred documents describing
the secrets of Shaolin kung fu. He dispatches the Bronze army to get to
the bottom of things.
A Taiwanese
Chinese film in English language; fullscreen format,
uncut 89 minutes; DVD encoded for ALL REGION NTSC WORLD FORMAT.
Extras include selected trailers