Set during a feudal period with many warring clans, Yuen Biao stars as a young warrior who deserts his army and , after falling off of a cliff, finds himself in a magical land in the middle of its own war. The forces of Good, lead by the ancient sorcerer White Brows (Sammo Hung),are at odds with the forces of Evil, lead by the Blood Demon (Corey Yuen). Biao teams up with a group of heroic warriors, including Adam Cheng and Brigitte Lin, to help defeat the evil menace.

Filled with bizarre characters (White Brows fights with his extendable eyebrows!) and dazzling, if primitive, special effects, this film is a non-stop feast for the eyes. It maintains a light tone for the most part, and the choreography, which utilizes a lot of "wire-fu", is spectacular. It has a low budget (for American audiences, anyway) can-do feel, and a lot of the effects are done with in-camera trickery that is quite clever.

The script is convoluted, the way a lot of kung-fu epics are, and there are times when you aren't quite sure who is who and what is what. Some of this I blame on the DVD I watched, a poor quality edition from a Chinese distributor, with a shoddy English-dubbed audio track. If someone were to put this out on a re-mastered Blu Ray, I would buy it in a second. Highly recommended for martial arts fans, and fans of weird world cinema.

Highly impressive and visually stunning, this epic movie may well be Tsui Hark's finest hour. The effects-laden adventure takes the old 'quest to destroy evil'-style storyline and imbues it with all manner of then-top of the range special effects, the result being one heck of an experience which never lets up from the very beginning. Whist keeping the distinctive Chinese comedy at the forefront of the movie, so that it never becomes too dark, Hark mixes in a storyline involving monsters, demons, and mysterious angel-like heroes, all of which are highlighted by some imaginative designs in both the sets and the costumes. Although some of the special effects have dated - at one point the Blood Monster looks just like what it is, a red sheet, and some of the back projection is highly cheesy - on the whole this is great entertainment where everything works as one.

What else do we have? Not least a strong cast of seasoned performers, top lined by Yuen Biao giving yet another of his mannered, highly athletic and likable heroes, plus Mang Hoi as his faithful friend and fellow fighter. Sammo Hung is in here too, playing dual roles as both an army buddy of Biao's and the hilarious "Long Brows" wizard, who spends the film holding the evil monster at bay just by using his beard and eyebrows! Female characters are also strong with fierce fighting from Moon Lee and Brigitte Lin and plenty of powerful countesses and mysterious goddesses in the thick of the action.

The film is highly atmospheric, with some extremely creepy sets at the beginning of the movie, utilising the good old dry-ice machine and plenty of cobwebby caves and desolate moor land. The horror fan will no doubt enjoy the countless attacks from flying glowing-eyed demons, killer roots, evil wizards, and the impressive Blood Monster itself, whilst the screen is often awash with beautiful colours as fighters hurtle by on spinning discs and throw multi-coloured balls of fire and beams at each other. Not only is this good and pacy entertainment, it's grand entertainment on an epic scale, the kind of old-fashioned movie you didn't think they could make anymore in the '80s, that needs to be seen.

Tsui Hark's wire-fu fantasy Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain is hailed by many as an unmissable classic of '80s Hong Kong fantasy cinema. I don't understand the acclaim: the story is a mess, but the film is made even more impenetrable thanks to an avalanche of horribly dated special effects that make following the action nigh on impossible. Hark has the gamut of Golden Harvest's early-'80s movie magic techniques at his fingertips and by golly he's going to use them all, narrative cohesion be damned.

The film starts off promisingly enough, with 5th century soldier Ti Ming Chi (Yuen Baio) facing death from his own army after confusion about which general to obey; narrowly escaping on horseback, he meets a red army soldier (Sammo Hung) and they become friends. When the pair are suddenly caught in a battle between several factions, they try to do a runner, but Ti Ming Chi is accidentally knocked over the edge of a cliff by his friend, winding up in a strange land inhabited by evil demons.

Yuen Baio and Sammo Hung are two of my favourite HK martial arts stars, so I was really looking forward to seeing them fighting together; unfortunately, there is very little in the way of kung fu in this film, and Sammo's soldier disappears after knocking Ti Ming Chi over the precipice (Hung returns later as a different character, an old man called Chang Mei, but the only fighting he does is with his eyebrows!). Ti Ming Chi joins forces with swordsman Ting Yin (Adam Cheng) and two monks to battle the evil.

What follows is an over-indulgent mess of whizz-bang non-stop action, with lots of flying about, leaping, somersaults, and explosions, utilising utterly ridiculous wire-work and really bad visual effects (the animation is particularly awful). The incomprehensible nonsense includes big scary Jawas, a laughing fish, animated blood crows, a female demon whose head comes off, flying stone elephants, a character puffing up like a bag of microwave popcorn before exploding, and an old man chained to a massive metal ball. Sounds like crazy fun, but without any semblance of a fathomable plot, it soon becomes tiresome.

Having no idea of what was going on, and not particularly impressed by the laughable effects-laden action, I fell asleep before the end (I did finish the film when I woke up, but forcing myself to do so wasn't easy).

1.5/10, rounded up to 2 for Brigitte Lin and Moon Lee: their presence -- as members of a clan of female warriors -- made the movie just a little more bearable.