Directors: Kuang Hui and Yi-Hsiu Lin
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org
A man raised by his mother and a tiger returns to his village to live with people only to end up in the midst of a generations-long battle between two families.
An inherently confusing film that may be rendered more incomprehensible by the dubbing. I’m going to do my best. This movie has basically three plots that don’t exactly relate to one another, but don’t weave together either.
The movie opens with a couple being chased by a small gang. She’s betrothed to her cousin but loves the man she’s with. They all end up at the edge of a cliff, the beloved is attacked, presumed dead, and the woman jumps over the edge. Instead of dying, though, she lands in a tree where a tiger finds her. She’s so scared that she wets herself, the urine spilling onto the tiger’s face. When she wakes up again, she’s in the tiger’s den and remembers a legend that if a girl kisses a tiger, the tiger will be her servant for life.
While that rhymes with kiss… Never mind.
She raises her son with the tiger and the boy learns kung fu by mimicking the big cat. For simplicity, let’s start calling the kid Tiger Boy. When he turns twenty, she sends him to the village to live with people. He stumbles across his father, the man from the cliff, who takes him in as his son. End part one.
A young woman splits off from her hunting party and is captured by Tiger Boy. They fall in love but apparently are each members of feuding families. Now we’re in a martial arts Romeo & Juliet. Tiger Boy kills her cousin which causes her family to wipe out his entire family and then Tiger Boy confronts her father. A fight ensues, Tiger Boy is hurt, but escapes.
His mother finds out, though, and goes to the girl’s father demanding to see her son. It turns out the mother is the girl's cousin. They tell the mother Tiger Boy’s not there and attack her. She leaves, finds Tiger Boy back at the hut they grew up in, and tells him to pledge not to seek revenge since he’s part of both families. Then she dies. End part two.
The tiger who lived with the woman for twenty years kills a member of the family that killed the woman. Since the tiger had killed 99 people before meeting the woman, this makes 100 which turns the tiger into a demon who pledges to avenge the woman’s death. He’ll do this by turning into an old woman and murdering each member of the family.
The tiger works his way through everyone until only the daughter that Tiger Boy is in love with is left. Tiger Boy tries to stop the tiger, but revenge must be completed, and the girl ends up killing the demon by pouring hot oil down its throat. She and Tiger Boy are reunited. THE END.
So… yeah. It’s a weird one—doubly so because it’s so boring. This description makes it seem like the movie is just bonkers when it’s just poorly composed. It feels like there were three ideas for movies but the producers didn’t follow through on any single one of them. Instead we get this mishmash of content that never manages to compel. I had to watch the first thirty minutes over and over because I kept falling asleep.
On top of that, the cinematography and choreography are bad. Granted, the movie is cropped so you’re losing a lot of the frame, but even with that in mind, the shots are flat, the fighting is uninspired, and none of it looks good. You can see the kicks and punches failing to land as the stuntmen stand waiting for their cue to act like they got hit.
This movie should be more fun than it is, especially considering how silly it gets at the end. Even that turn, though, isn’t done with enough gusto to carry the movie along. That turn merely becomes another moment where I check how long is left in the movie. It’s not a recommend, even for riffing. The whole thing is just too dull to sink your teeth into. However, it does seem to be in the public domain so I’ve added a copy to archive.org here. Maybe you could re-cut and re-dub it into something more entertaining.
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