The Fantastic Magic Baby

Easily the weirdest film in Venom Mob director Cheh Chang's filmography. Not that I'm an expert on Chinese culture or folklore, but this film seemed to be a Peking opera style of retelling of an adventure by the legendary Chinese trickster character the Monkey King, who in this tale does battle with what I think is the titular Magical Baby, who is really more of an impetuous young god who caused assorted trouble. The film features trees our hero fighting sentient trees, a very odd centaur-like creature fighting a hoard of warriors, and all sorts of other strange fantasy elements. I do enjoy Hong Kong martial arts fantasy films, but this film was disappointing. Generally speaking, it really wasn't until the 1980s when Tsui Hark brought western style special effects and film techniques that those types of films really became something special (which interestingly came back to the west in the form of cult favorite "Big Trouble in Little China"). I usually love most all of Cheh Chang's films, but this one was lacking his characteristically tough and brutal fight sequences and instead had fight scenes more resembling dances. The film sets also appeared purposefully stage-like, as did the costumes and make-up, which also made me think this film was intended as something of a film version of a Peking opera performance. I really don't know if this type filmed-Peking-opera-stage-performance is a sub-genre of martial arts films, but if it is, it's one that's not really to my taste, so this is not a film that I would recommend.