A Tale from the East (1990)

That was an excellent one.

hyped garbage

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The Little Princess and her loyal bodyguard Jiang (handsome David Ng) travel 200 years from the past to the present day. They are relentlessly pursued by the evil General Shea Hai, a vicious and virtually indestructible puffy-faced Blood Devil demon who wants to get his nasty hands on a magical pearl that the Little Princess possesses. Sweet Kot-Yee (the lovely and charming Joey Wang), her fat, greedy brother Chu Tai-Lit (a very amusing performance by Billy Lau), and two goofy electricians (winningly played by Eric Kot and Jan Lamb) come to the aid of the Little Princess and Jiang. Director Manfred Wang relates this gloriously wild, surreal and off-the-wall campy tongue-in-cheek fantasy/horror/action comedy hybrid at a nonstop zippy pace and stages the crazy, go-for-broke exciting action scenes with rip-roaring brio. The engaging lead characters, a rousing rock score which includes snippets from the music to both "Ghostbusters" and "The Untouchables," a nifty cameo by the luscious Amy Yip as herself, the rather crude, but funky special effects, a brief appearance by a cool flying guillotine, several frenzied sword fights, the slick, hyperactive cinematography, a ferocious supernatural villain who tears people's heads off and drinks their blood, and a stirring climax at an amusement park all make this singularly screwy hoot a total nutty treat from start to finish.

In 1723 there is a royal guard in charge of protecting a Little Princess (this is what she's called and looks about 6 years old). When the stars align in a certain pattern, the Little Princess, the guard and the Blood Demon (big ugly guy with a big forehead) all end up in 1990. One of the modern girls looks like (the same actress) the queen that the guard is in love with. The Blood Demon beheads a guy with a refrigerator door and the head ends up inside the fridge. A couple of repair men sent to fix the fridge save the Little Princess and take care of her. The guard is found by the queen lookalike and her friends a fat greedy guy who is after the guard's gold and her professor friend who does the research and explains most of this to the cast and the audience. Those of you wanting this for Amy Yip will be greatly disappointed. She appears for about 10 secs signing autographs. For me the value is in the appearance of the Flying Guillotine (also for only secs) because I have all those movies but this one. There is also an all powerful magic pearl and a really cheesy plastic looking sword that the guard uses in an amusement park after a trip down the water slide (?!) and the repairmen use power lines into the water which charges the sword that then sends a bolt of lightning to cause the Blood Demon to explode. All in all a fairly fast paced horror fantasy comedy on the cheap Brentwood DVD label under Eastern Horror but with very poor white subtitles that often extend off the screen.