A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1977)

Director: Richard Slapczynski
Writer: John Palmer
Producer: Walter J Hucker
Cast: Ron Haddrick, Alastair Duncan, Bevan Wilson
Country: Australia
Year of release: 1977
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Pegasus)

This is the third animated version of Jules Verne’s subterranean classic that I’ve watched in the past two months. Like the 1996 Canadian version and the 2001 Franco-Belgian version, this runs about three quarters of an hour and consequently has to rather skim through the story.

In actual fact, this version takes a long time to actually get underground. Set in Hamburg in what seems to be the late 19th century (though no specific date is given), we are introduced to Professor Lindenbrock and his nephew Alex (described in the sleeve blurb as his “friend”) as the Prof conducts a dangerous experiment. In his coach-house he has constructed a large metal globe, marked out with the continents, into which he pours a quantity of molten metal. The idea is that, if the globe breaks, it will prove that theories about the centre of the Earth being extremely hot must be false and so there is a chance that life exists down there.

Hm, yes. Not sure about that, to be honest.

The globe explodes slightly more violently than expected but Lindenbrock manages to save an old book by Icelandic explorer Arne Saknussem which has has been studying. While the Prof goes to a meeting of the Scientific Society to explain his theory, which is roundly poohpoohed by snide Professor Kippner and his slimy compatriot Professor Benz, Alex is set the job of scouring Saknussem’s manuscript for clues. He eventually finds two pages stuck together with a loose leaf between the two which reveals in invisible ink, when held near a candle, the name of a place in Iceland where Saknussem was on the last day of June.

The two explorers bid farewell to Lindenbrock’s long-suffering housekeeper Martha (who gets a bigger role here than in other versions, or indeed in the book) and to Alex’s fiancee, and they set sail for Iceland. Kippner and Benz follow them in secret for some reason.

Landing in Iceland, Lindenbrock finds that no-one dares climb the extinct volcano which is his goal, believing it to be haunted because of a legend of an expedition centuries earlier which climbed the mountain and vanished. Fortunately, a strong young fellow named Hans agrees to guide the German. On the last day of June, a particular shadow point to a particular hole, down which the three men clamber. then a rock fall seals the hole, Kippner and Benz assume that the expedition is lost and return to Hamburg, where they break the bad news to the ladies.

But of course Lindenbrock, Alex and Hans are safe in an underground system of caves. However, with only about 20 minutes of this 46-minute cartoon left, they had better get a hurry on if they’re going to reach the centre of the Earth.

They soon start to run out of water, but discover an underground stream behind a rock wall and then follow the trickle of H2O into the depths. At one point they reach a chasm and spot skeletons on the other side, evidently the remains of the legendary expedition which disappeared. Fortunately Lindenbrock has a rocket-propelled grappling hook - which we earlier saw him testing up the stairs in his home - and this enables the party to get across.

They find a vast underground sea, which they resist naming, and Arne Saknussem’s raft, still intact, on which they set sail. From the raft they see all manner of dinosaurs on land, at sea and flying through the air, but they crash over a waterfall and the raft is wrecked. (This is a rather odd sequence as about a minute of footage of the trio watching dinosaurs and hurtling towards the waterfall precedes the opening title, acting as a teaser/prologue. Some, but not all, of the prologue footage is missing from this sequence in the film proper, making the action seem slightly truncated. How odd.)

Anyway, they find a pterodactyl nest and Alex helps himself to one of the large eggs. Then, avoiding the mother pterodactyl, they find themselves threatened by a number of giant arthropods (which have eight legs but look more like ants or beetles than spiders). Fortunately a wall breaks, the sea floods in and the explorers are carried aloft on a jet of water which ejects them through the Italian volcano Stromboli. Back in Hamburg, Kippner dismisses their adventure as nonsense and says the ‘egg’ is a fake, whereupon the thing hatches and a baby pterodactyl emerges, clamping its beak on the scientist’s nose, to general amusement.

So a very truncated version of the story which takes a long time to get going but is nevertheless reasonably faithful, albeit with some unnecessary additions. The simple but fluid animation, occasionally artistic use of silhouettes and sketchy design style instantly marks this out as coming from Air Programmes International (API) who also produced the 1969 animated version of A Christmas Carol. Walter J Hucker produced both films and Ron Haddrick once again supplies the lead voice.

Ex-pat Pole Richard Slapczynski is a prolific director of animated classics. His CV includes versions of: The Adventures of Sinbad, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The First Christmas, Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Hansel and Gretel, Anastasia, Camelot, Prince of the Nile: The Story of Moses, The Three Little Pigs and Ali Baba. In 2001 he directed a series of ‘Animated Classics’ for Burbank Animation Studios including Silent Night: The Story of the First Christmas, Joseph and the Coat of Many Colours, Easter in Bunnyland, The Canterville Ghost, Anna and the King and something called D4: The Trojan Dog. Slapczynski made one other Verne-ian adaptation, Off On a Comet, in 1979. (Burbank Animation Studios list a version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth on their website but that is a different cartoon, with animal characters, not Slapczynski’s API one.)

Writer John Palmer wrote some of Slapczynski’s cartoons as well as the very successful Australian series of semi-animated features (drawn characters on live-action backgrounds) about a little girl named Dot, beginning with Dot and the Kangaroo in 1977. He also scripted the 1992 Blinky Bill movie and episodes of API’s 1966 TV series King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table.

In addition to the ubiquitous Ron Haddrick, the cast includes Barbara Frawley (the voice of Dot in at least some of the above-mentioned movies), Alastair Duncan (also in the API versions of A Christmas Carol, Mysterious Island and Around the World in 80 Days, he is now the voice of Alfred the butler in The Batman and its feature-length spin-off The Batman vs Dracula), Bevan Wilson (Peter Bedford in Home and Away) and Lynette Curran (who starred with Kylie in The Delinquents).

This 2002 DVD from Pegasus, who have a lot of 45-minute animated classics in their catalogue, has an abominably amateurish picture on the front which bears no relation whatsoever to the designs in the actual film (and a sort of slimy mud-man-monster on the back which has no connection with anything).

MJS rating: B-

review originally posted 1st October 2005

Five Weeks in a Balloon

Director: Chris Cuddington
Writer: Kimmer Ringwald
Producer: Neil Balnaves
Cast: Booker Bradshaw, Johnny Hayner, Laurie Main
Country: Australia
Year of release: 1977
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Tring Video)

One of the reasons that I love reviewing these less-than-an-hour animated adaptations is that pretty much nobody else ever looks at them in depth. A lot of them are uncatalogued and those that are often fall prey to false information: someone makes an assumption somewhere and everybody else repeats it as fact because no-one has ever sat down and actually discussed the damn thing.

This is a case in point. Various lists of Jules Verne adaptations and animated movies will tell you that this is a Hanna-Barbera production. Some then assume that it is an American cartoon while others who realise that, like most of these 45-minute mini-movies, it’s Australian, ascribe it to the Aussie division of H-B. The fact is that neither William Hanna nor Joseph Barbera are credited on this film, either as producers or just through their company. They certainly did make at least one Verne animation (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) but Five Weeks in a Balloon was produced by a company called Southern Star (or Southern Star Operations Pty Limited to give it its full title), clearly identified both on-screen and on the sleeve. If Southern Star is/was related in any way to Hanna-Barbera, there is no indication of such anywhere here. (But... there may be a connection. Read on.)

The story opens in London in 1852 where Dr Samuel Ferguson (Laurie Main: Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera, Munster Go Home, Freaky Friday, Dr Watson in Basil the Great Mouse Detective and narrator of numerous Winnie the Pooh cartoons) is visited by his 14-year-old nephew Oliver (Loren Lester: Dick Grayson in Batman: The Animated Series and assorted spin-offs), who now lives in Texas, dresses as a cowboy, speaks with an American accent and idiom and calls himself Buck. Ferguson has been summoned to meet Queen Victoria (Cathleen Cordell: Return of the Living Dead!) at Windsor Castle and takes Oliver along with him.

A Bantu named Irumu (Booker Bradshaw, who was in two episodes of the original Star Trek) has come to tell the Queen that his king has made her a present of ‘the Eye of the Cat’, the largest diamond in Africa. However, the Eye resides on the side of a volcano named Devil’s Peak and legend tells that if it is removed by anyone except its rightful owner the volcano will erupt. Since it has been granted to the Queen, she is its rightful owner and only her emissary can remove it. She gives this task to Ferguson, despite the entreaties of the slimy Duke of Salisbury (also voiced by Main) that he would like to do it. Oh, and the diamond can also only be removed on a certain day, seven weeks hence,

Ferguson, Oliver, Irumu and Irumu’s pet monkey set off to cross Africa from North to South by hot air balloon, although their flight is delayed by a fortnight when their balloon is ‘accidentally’ shot down by soldiers acting on the Duke’s instructions. The Duke meanwhile is on a boat for Africa where he teams up with an evil chappie named Le Griffe (Johnny Haymer - numerous voices for Transformers and a recurring guest role in M*A*S*H - miscredited as ‘Johnny Hayner’). He plans to reach Bantuland first, claiming to be Ferguson, and take the diamond for himself. To this end he has spread word among African tribes to stop the real Ferguson.

One can’t help thinking that all this could have been avoided if the Bantu king had simply waited until he could pick up the diamond from Devil’s Peak himself, then given it to Irumu to take to England. Ah well...

A caption tells us when the balloon reaches Egypt, but there are no more captions after that and the shots of pyramids make even that one rather unnecessary. The narrative follows a typically linear Verne-ian path (although I haven’t read the book so I can’t swear to its fidelity to the source material) with the three men encountering various adventures on their journey. They stop at an oasis where Arabs set fire to their anchor rope; they fend off a flock of vultures; they meet a tribe who worship the Moon and believe that the balloon - named ‘The Victoria’ - is the Moon captured. At one point, when all the ballast has gone, Irumu leaps over the side to save his friends and is captured by Salisbury and Le Griffe. Later, the balloon is cut free but Oliver retrieves it with his lariat. Eventually, Salisbury helps himself to the diamond but, as the mountain rumbles, Oliver swipes it from him.

This is a nicely animated little film with realistic characters (only the pointy-chinned Salisbury comes close to caricature) and nice depictions of Africa, including the obligatory lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras etc. There is a message about how the most beautiful things are found in the most inaccessible places - because inaccessibility limits man’s ability to spoil stuff. Two other voice actors are credited: Gene Whittington, who had small roles in Psycho II and Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and John Stephenson whose enormous CV includes virtually every cartoon show you can name: Scooby-Doo Where are You?, The Jetsons, Secret Squirrel, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, Josie and the Pussycats, Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch, Speed Buggy, The Partridge Family in Outer Space(!), Spider-Man, The Smurfs yada yada yada. Arguably his most famous and memorable role is Mr Slate in not only the original Flintstones series but in an endless succession of specials and spin-offs right into the 21st century.

To return to Five Weeks in a Balloon, Kimmer Ringwald is credited with ‘story adaptation’ although it’s rather sad that nowhere in the film’s credits, or on the packaging of this 1997 video, is there a mention of Jules Verne. However, a more recent British DVD which double bills this with an animated version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Gentlemen of Titipu does give Verne a proprietary credit on the sleeve (but not Gilbert or Sullivan!). Ringwald’s other animation credits include The Mighty Orbots and The New Archies but he/she has also written for live-action shows including Baywatch and short-lived M*A*S*H spin-off Trapper John.

Animation director Chris Cuddington worked on King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table (as did, seemingly, every animation director in Australia) and various middle period Scooby-Doo shows as well as the Beatles and Addams Family cartoon series. His name crops up on other shows too including The Drac Pack, Captain Planet and the Planeteers and at least one Flintstones special. He also directed a 1978 animated version of Black Beauty. Two other directors are credited: recording director Alan Dinehart (Battle of the Planets) and production director Doug Paterson.

No producer is listed but the executive producer is Neil Balnaves - and here is where the mystery of the Hanna-Barbera credit is solved. By coincidence, Balnaves retired as managing director of Southern Star exactly one week before I purchased this eight-year-old video tape and his biography was handily included in a press release. Balnaves was appointed MD of Hanna-Barbera Australia in 1974 and led a management buy-out in 1988, when the company name was changed to Southern Star (which went on to become the largest film and video production company in Oz). Presumably this version of Five Weeks in a Balloon has been edited to remove any reference to Hanna-Barbera Australia, or possibly Southern Star already existed as a subdivision of HBA in 1977. The answer to the question ‘Is this a Hanna-Barbera production?’ is: yes and no. Probably.

MJS rating: B+

review originally posted 10th October 2005

Don't Ring the Doorbell

Director: Karen Arthur
Writer: Don Chastain
Producer: Diana Young
Cast: Lee Grant, Carol Kane, Will Geer
Country: USA
Year of release: 1977
Reviewed from: UK DVD

The first thing one notices about Don’t Ring the Doorbell is that it’s not called Don’t Ring the Doorbell. It’s called The Mafu Cage. I can see why this was changed - distributors don’t like meaningless words in titles and much prefer crappy generic phrases that have very little to do with the film. But normally when a title is changed, the old title isn’t shown. If, as here, the title and accompanying opening credits are overlaid on moving footage - in this case, a lengthy Steadicam pan around the main set - the standard procedure is to replace the few seconds when the title is on screen with a still shot, so as not to interrupt the music. But for this film, ‘Don’t Ring the Doorbell’ has simply been stuck underneath ‘The Mafu Cage’ in a different colour and font, like some sort of lonely subtitle for the hard of understanding.

Anyway...

Adapted from a French stage play, this is primarily a two-hander between sisters Ellen (Lee Grant) and Cissy (Carol Kane). They were raised in Africa, Ellen taking care of her younger sister after their mother died. Now they live outside LA, in a rambling old house which they shared, until recently, with their late father, to whom Cissy has built a small shrine.

Ellen is a respected solar astronomer, which has virtually no bearing on the plot although it does give us some nice shots of the Mount Palermo Observatory and a couple of trying-to-be-arty shots of solar flares which stick out like two sore thumbs. Ellen takes after their mother: she is sensible and serious.

Cissy on the other hand is strange, dressing in African garb or occasionally in childishly eccentric clothes like dungarees or frilly dresses. It doesn’t take us too long to realise that Cissy goes beyond being kooky and is actually mentally disturbed. While Ellen goes out to work, Cissy stays home and draws pictures of ‘Mafu’, ostensibly for a book. Ellen explains to their godfather, an ageing animal dealer named Zom (played by Grandpa Walton himself, Will Geer) that she promised their father that she would always take care of her sister and never put her in any sort of institution. Zom has an avuncular affection for both girls, humouring Cissy but, when he is alone with Ellen, showing real concern for her and the way that looking after her batty sister is ruining her own life.

But what is Mafu? When Ellen comes home she finds that Mafu has died and he/it is then buried in the garden. Like much of the film, these shots are so dark as to be impenetrable. We might reasonably assume that Mafu was a monkey or ape of some sort, simply because of the screaming primate head on the DVD cover and in fact that turns out to be the case. Cissy implores Ellen to get her “another Mafu”, ideally a colobus, but Zom comes up trumps with something even better - an orang utan (the ape even gets an 'and introducing Budar' credit!).

Ellen keeps Mafu in a specially built cage in a room packed with African artefacts plus a hammock where she sleeps. The cage is bare except for a white chair and a pair of manacles.

The only other character, apart from a bloke with two lines, is David (James Olson), a colleague of Ellen’s who professes his love for her. She has some feelings for him but knows she could never settle down with a man as long as her sister needs her. And her sister does need her, not just because she is obviously mentally unstable but because she has some sort of weird incestuous lesbian crush. (The picture is also known as My Sister, My Love and The Cage and allegedly is aka Deviation too although that could just be IMDB speculation.)

Running about 98 minutes, the film builds for the first hour or so until Ellen goes away for a few days. Before then we see Ellen wrestling with her conscience and her family loyalty, we see Cissy screaming that she hates her sister then trying to make up by giving her a full body massage (no nudity) and we see Cissy playing with Mafu. Unfortunately, something goes wrong and Cissy snaps, locking herself in the ape’s cage and thrashing it to death with a chain. This is very disturbing, although the production was monitored by the American Humane Association and most of the horror here comes from clever editing. Ellen, who has only ever before seen the aftermath of Cissy’s anger - evidently they have been through several Mafus - is shocked to finally witness her sister’s cruel rage and vows not to replace the ape, instructing Zom to claim that he is having difficulty finding a new one.

When Ellen leaves for Arizona on business, Cissy announces that she won’t answer the doorbell or phone, but is startled when David turns up and, receiving no answer at the front door, wanders round into the garden where she is resting. The big narrative problem here is that David is fully aware that Ellen is in Arizona so he has no reason to visit the house, especially as he has never been there before (or met Cissy). Recognising him as the man whom Ellen has talked about, she gets him drunk, seduces him and - in a not very surprising turn of events - tricks him into being manacled in the Mafu cage.

The film, which claims to be a “psychological thriller” steps up a level now as David realises what is happening and what sort of psycho he is dealing with. No-one can hear his cries for help, not even Zom who calls by to check on Cissy. There’s an odd sexual moment when Cissy, who cannot bear to be touched by anyone except her sister or Zom, says that the problem with all the previous Mafus was that their penises would sometimes get hard. When she finds out that the same thing has happened to David, he is doomed. She dollies herself up in full tribal gear, paints her face and hair red and goes loco to the throbbing beat of the African music and jungle sounds which she listens to constantly, only louder now.

The undoubted highlight is a scene of Cissy, still painted red, relaxing in a full bath of red water, only her hands and face above the surface. When the phone rings, her reaction is to have a one-way conversation as if she is answering her sister’s call, the phone constantly ringing in another room.

Ellen returns home late at night after a successful trip but the next morning is puzzled to see David’s car outside. When she finds a bloodstained dressing in among the washing, she realises what has happened. To be honest, after this everything gets a bit murky - literally - as some crucial scenes between the sisters are played out in almost complete darkness. I don’t think it’s just the video transfer, I think this genuinely is a drastically (and mistakenly) underlit film. Most of the last ten minutes is actually quite chilling as Cissy remains the only active character, carrying out her rituals to complete silence. It’s not often you get to type a phrase like “necrophiliac lesbian incest” but there is a definite hint of that here...

Don’t Ring the Doorbell just about qualifies as a horror film but it’s slow moving and looks very dated. Grant plays Ellen with overly serious sullenness in direct contrast to Kane who plays Cissy in full-on Ophelia mode, alternately screaming in childish fury and simpering with unsubtly coquette-ish babiness. David comes across as a drip and frankly any man who wouldn’t run a mile from a panda-eyed loon like Cissy deserves what he gets. Only Zom comes across as at all sympathetic.

Lee Grant, who was 49 when she made this, started acting in the early 1950s, appearing on numerous TV shows including Ironside, The Fugitive and Mission: Impossible. Her career leaned more towards the big screen from the mid-1960s on, including roles in Valley of the Dolls, Damien: Omen II (as Damien’s mother), Airport ‘77 and The Swarm. In recent years she has turned up in Mulholland Drive and Dr T and the Women.

Carol Kane, by contrast, was only 25 in 1977. Among her many credits over the years were Annie Hall, The Muppet Movie, Transylvania 6-5000, The Princess Bride, Ishtar, Theodore Rex and episodes of Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Dark Side. Whatever you may have seen her in, she’s recognisable with her frizzy hair, squeaky voice and tendency to play women who think they’re cute but are actually slightly psycho, though not usually as extreme as Cissy. She was Grandma in Addams Family Values although I recognised her primarily as the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooged.

Will Geer had an extraordinary career that lasted from the early 1930s until his death in 1978. He mostly worked in TV - The Fugitive, Hawaii Five-O, I Spy, Kung Fu, Night Gallery, Gunsmoke etc - but also made lots of lesser-known films. He was also a respected botanist, a folk singer who toured with Woody Guthrie, a political radical and an obsessive Shakespeare lover. James Olson’s CV includes Crescendo and Moon Zero Two for Hammer, The Andromeda Strain and Amityville II: The Possession, as well as memorable episodes of Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman and Battlestar Galactica.

The Mafu Cage was an early credit for director Karen Arthur who seems to have specialised in these rather intense, quasi-feminist stories although she also directed episodes of Cagney and Lacy and Remington Steele. The script, adapted from an English translation of Eric Wesphal’s play Toi et Tes Nuages, is a sole writing credit for TV actor Don Chastain; the French title translates as ‘You and Your Clouds’, which Ellen says to Cissy at one point for no apparent reason. The much-too-dark cinematography was early work for John Bailey who was much more successful in lighting the remake of Cat People, Silverado, Groundhog Day, the musical version of The Producers and many other big movies. Composer Roger Kellaway had been nominated for an Oscar the previous year for A Star is Born; his other credits include the end title song to All in the Family and the beautiful animated feature of The Mouse and His Child plus Evilspeak, Silent Scream, The Dark and something extraordinary-looking called Jaws of Satan.

It’s difficult to know what to make of Don’t Ring the Doorbell/The Mafu Cage. It’s not that bad but it’s not that good either. What it mostly is, is dated. Falling somewhere between a psycho horror movie and an intense character study of a sisterly relationship under stress, the movie ends up being neither one thing nor the other. A curio, really.

MJS rating: B-

review originally posted 20th March 2006

Deadly Snail vs Kung Fu Killers

Director: Hueng Ling
Cast: Wong Yuen San, Candy Yu, Unicorn Chan
Country: Hong Kong
Year of release: 1977
Reviewed from: UK DVD

I challenge you - I really do challenge you - to walk past a DVD called Deadly Snail vs Kung Fu Killers, priced at a full 97p, and not buy it. Can’t be done. There is no way anyone with any interest in cult cinema could pass up the chance, for less than a quid, to watch a film with a title like that.

Most sources seem to agree that this film dates from 1977, although I have also seen it listed as 1975. The only date on screen is a caption imposed by Ocean Shores Video, from whence this UK label obtained their transfer evidently. That says 1981 but of course that’s just the date of the US VHS release.

Deadly Snail vs Kung Fu Killers is one of the strangest kung fu films I have yet seen, displaying all the weirdness of a 1990s Tsui Hark film but with the production values of a bottom-of-the-barrel, sub-Shaw Brothers 1970s flick. It’s ridiculously over-ambitious but manages to struggle by somehow. It also has an insanely complex plot and a dubbing soundtrack where characters’ names change from scene to scene.

Our hero is Chang Fu (Wong Yuen San aka Tony Wong who was apparently also in Inner Senses and Jackie Chan’s Project A2 but must have done other stuff in the intervening 25 years), an orphan who lives with his mean old uncle and aunt (although ‘uncle’ is often used as a generic form of address in Asian countries, this is actually his late father’s brother, although other relationships are vaguer). There is a passing mention of Chang Fu not knowing that he is the real heir, implying that the uncle lives off his late brother’s wealth illegally, but this is never really explored. The uncle (Wu Jiaxiang) and aunt live in a large house with their cowardly, ne’er-do-well son, variously addressed as Wang Cha, Wang Chai and Wei Chai (Tien Ching: The Ghost’s Revenge, Executioners of Death). Chang Fu lives in a little hut and seems to function as a servant to the family and there is also a female servant, Cha Ma/Shao Ma, who is engaged to Wang Chai but is actually carrying a torch for Chang Fu.

With me so far? Because, you know, we haven’t even got to the deadly snail yet.

Walking on the beach, Chang Fu picks up a large sea snail and takes it home, where he has a dream of a young woman standing on the back of a giant snail, repeatedly saying, “Please help me.” As she is translucent and about 18 inches tall, I think it’s safe to say this was indeed made in 1977, some time after 25th May in fact. Chang Fu is persuaded to cut himself (actually he bites his finger) and allow a few drops of his blood to fall onto the sea snail. It’s tricky to work out what is going on here but this ‘frees’ the Fairy Princess inside. Or something.

The uncle banishes Chang Fu to his shed (I think) but Shao Ma takes him some food. For this, she is beaten and when Chang Fu sees the marks on her arms he runs onto the beach to vent his frustration at the world whereupon an old man’s face appears in the sky and says, “Luke, trust your feelings.” No, actually he says something even better. He says, “Chang Fu, happy days are here again.”

I kid you not.

The Fairy Princess (Candy Yu aka Yu On-On: Chivalrous Killer, Daughter of the Devilfish) lives under the sea with her two sisters but we don’t know the names of any of them as they only ever call each other ‘Sister’ (in fact, even Chang Fu later addresses the Princess as ‘Sister’ which suggests it’s actually her name - and presumably her sisters’ names too). We can tell they’re under the sea because there are large clam shells everywhere and a constant stream of bubbles falling from the ceiling. The Fairy Princess conjures up a vision of Chang Fu, declares her gratitude to him and her love for him, and flies off up towards the human world. Her sisters say they will help her if she calls.

She prepares some top-class Chinese food for Chang Fu which he finds in his hut and assumes is Shao Ma’s doing, but the next day he sneaks a peek into his own home and spots the Fairy Princess (this bit reminded me of a similar scene in Tah Tien). She tells him that she wants to serve him because he is a kind man and that they should get married - which they do. Somehow. She then magically transforms his hovel into a respectable (but still small) home, using some surprisingly good wire effects and stop-motion photography.

Later, when Wang Chai encounters the Fairy Princess washing clothes by the river, he is smitten with her and follows her home, but Chang Fu finds them and chases Wang Chai away. (So let’s get this right, the Fairy Princess can paint and decorate a room with a flick of her finger but she cleans clothes by whacking them with sticks at the riverside. Right.) What is confusing about this situation is that Chang Fu and Wang Chai refer to each other, in the Chinese manner, as ‘brothers’ even though they’re cousins. This threw me for a while. Also around this time, Shao Ma spots Chang Fu with his new bride and is understandably upset.

Wang Chai hires four local thugs to help him kidnap his beautiful ‘sister-in-law’ but the Fairy Princess’ magic defeats them; she creates a copy of herself in bed, which the thugs wrap up in a blanket. When Wang Chai unwraps the blanket, the person inside is the head thug. Convinced that the girl is a demon, Wang Chai and his cronies return to Chang Fu’s hut. “You know,” says the snivelling little shit, “if you put dog’s blood on a demon, it goes.” But the Fairy Princess send them packing again (with their bottle of dog’s blood), scaring them with visions of a hideous green face and (briefly) a fox. The five idiots retreat, pursued by cutaway shots of a glow-in-the-dark, joke-shop skeleton and glowing coloured balls of fire.

“Chang Fu is a real pain in the arse,” says the uncle, when he hears about this. “He’s gone too far this time.” He sets out with his son and the four thugs to confront the young couple but every time they think they have caught and bound Chang Fu, the Fairy Princess magically makes him swap places with Wang Chai or his father.

Suddenly we cut away to a dark, spooky forest where a fellow with long hair and a painted face trains in the martial arts under the tutelage of an old man with a head-dress designed like a snake. I think the younger chap’s painted face is intended to make him actually resemble a snake, but really it just looks like he’s been to the village fete and told the face-painter, “Can I be a snake please?”

I think these two are snake demons, and in the absence of any other possibilities, that’s what I’m sticking with. (At the start of the film we saw a snake on the beach near the sea snail, so there’s some sort of conflict there.) Anyway, Painted Face (as I might as well call him) sees a vision of Chang Fu and the Fairy Princess and flies off to the mortal realm (or whatever) to sort them out. Arriving at Wang Chai’s house, he transforms himself into an old monk (with yin-yang symbols on his robes) and offers to banish the demon: “I’ll call on the 49 frogs to attack the sea snail. They’ll use their power to destroy the demon.” Both versions of the character are played by an actor with the unlikely name of Unicorn Chan, a close friend and associate of Bruce Lee with credits that include Fist of Fury and Fury of the Dragon.

And indeed, in a room which seems to be some sort of shrine, he gets himself a bowl of live frogs and, after his eyes have glowed green and a snake-tongue has stuck out of his mouth, all the frogs jump down his throat. The Princess senses the new danger, confronts the monk and they are magically transported to a cave where, 57 minutes into this 90-minute kung fu-titled picture, we get our first actual kung fu fight.

The second fight follows almost immediately, when the Princess realises that Wang Chai and his thugs are beating up Chang Fu so she transfers her spirit into her husband who thereby becomes a kung fu master and kicks those rascals’ arses.

There is then some guff about the Princess’ powers being due to a silver ring but this seems to be a reference to the snail shell although it’s powers are not explained and its size seems to vary from scene to scene. Shao Ma, blinded by jealousy, volunteers to get the ring for the monk and borrows it on the pretext of needing to cure a sick relative. We then get another couple of fights: the Princess battles Painted Face Snake Guy in the clouds while Wang Chai and his thugs chase Chang Fu who falls over a cliff and lies still, although it is not confirmed that he is dead.

When Shao Ma sees the Fairy Princess in shackles, surrounded by flames and snakes - and don’t ask me where this is - she vows to find and return the McGuffin, which is a ‘silver ring’ at this point but still seems to actually be a snail shell. She visits the monk’s room but he catches and kills her and turns her into a skeleton which he then makes disappear. Which was all a bit uncalled for.

Chang Fu, who was evidently only stunned, comes to and hears the Princess’ voice telling him to throw the snail shell into the sea, which he does. I don’t know, maybe there are two snail shells. Maybe there’s even a silver ring. Who the hell knows what is going on by now?

The Princess’ sisters - Sister and Sister - sense that she is in danger and go looking for her. There is some sort of reference to their being punished if they visit the human world, which probably has some connection with red-robed guards who walk past their shell-decorated boudoir, but if there is some sort of Neptune father-figure whom they must obey, he is neither seen nor referred to. Arriving at Wang Chai’s house, the two women declare “Release my sister at once...” “...Or we will utterly destroy you.”

The monk promptly transports them to his magic cave where they face a succession of kung fu demons. The first starts out as a wooden box before transmogrifying into a bloke who has a skirt and ruff made from what looks like seaweed. He also has a thatch of orange hair and a proboscis atop his head which cruder critics than myself might think resembles a cock. After fighting the two princesses with a stick, he turns into a completely red version of himself who is fairly obviously a fire demon.

A third demon joins in who starts life as a log, is brown and makes creaking noises when he moves so he’s a wood demon. After a quick fight, he turns back into a log which then becomes several logs which float in the air threatening the two princesses in a sort of unspecified loggy way. The red demon then explodes and is replaced by a water demon (long white sleeves and sloshing sounds when he moves) and something that is probably a rock demon, just because it’s grey. So that’s fire, wood, water and rock - but what the hell was that first one?

Anyway, all five demons then gang up on the sisters but are defeated by some sort of fuzzy glow that surrounds them, like on the old Reddy Brek advert, and the final face-off is against the old guy with the snake head-dress (remember him?). He turns into a giant snake and then explodes. A final shot shows Chang Fu and the Fairy Princess happy together. But the real upshot of the above is that the film’s climax, exciting and kung-fu-packed as it may be, is a fight between two minor characters whom we have previously encountered in one short scene more than an hour ago and five unidentified, previously unseen bad guys.

Does all of that make some sort of sense? Of course it doesn’t! And while part of the blame must undoubtedly lie with the English translation, there’s no doubt in my mind that the original film was probably just as bizarre. The production values are naturally cut-price, including some impressively blatant ‘exterior’ studio shots. And the action, when it does finally arrive, is about as bland and forgettable as possible.

But the title alone is enough to justify this film’s existence. The title and the make-up on Face-Painted Snake Guy and the sequence when the monk swallows 49 frogs and the glow-in-the-dark joke-shop skeleton and the terrifying floating logs and the something-demon with a willy on his head. Ah, there’s a dozen reasons to watch this film. It’s insane but strangely compulsive.

Hueng Ling seems to be yet another of those Hong Kong directors (or rather, director’s names) who never made anything else. This film, originally called Tim Loh Daai Poh Ng Hang Chan, has also been released in the States as Deadly Snail vs Kung Fu Killer - in the singular - which makes just as little sense as the UK title.

This 2004 release by Dragon DVD/Soulblade says it is digitally remastered but I find that one of the more questionable claims I’ve read recently. The list of extras includes both ‘Soulblade trailers’ and ‘Dragon DVD trailers’ which is accurate but hardly worth listing as two separate features. For the record, the trailers are: Dance of the Drunk Mantis: Drunken Master 2 (“From the director of Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and the action director of the Matrix trilogy”), Tsui Hark’s Green Snake, Secret Rivals Part 1 (“This is a kick-ass movie”!), The Mystery of Chess Boxing, Martial Arts Master: Wong Fei Hung, Legend of the Drunken Tiger, Secret of Tai Chi: Tai Chi Master, Kung Fu Zombie and The Loot. Sadly none of these are original trailers, they’re all just clips cobbled together by the DVD company with fancy graphics over the top. There is also a ‘2005 Showreel’ (surprisingly unlisted among the ‘DVD special features’ on the sleeve) which consists of clips from (deep breath) Leg Fighters, Tai Chi Master, Bloody Fist, Prodigal Boxer 1 and 2, Bloody Fight, Of Cooks and Kung Fu, Mar’s Villa, Flash Legs, Yoga and the Kung Fu Girl, Heroes of Shaolin and My Kung Fu 12 Kicks.

MJS rating: C-

review originally 10th April 2007