Fantastic Magic Baby
from Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema of Chang Cheh
directed by Chang Cheh
starring Ting Wa Chung, Lau Chung-Chun
Eureka Entertainment
Furious Swords And Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema of Chang Cheh collects ten of the action master’s kung fu and wuxia films from across his storied career. One of the biggest joys in a large box set of movies is discovering gems that you likely would never have taken a chance on if they were single title releases. This is the case with The Fantastic Magic Baby, which is in fact not only the strangest film in this set, but one of the odder films to come out of Hong Kong, which is no small feat.
Hong Kong kung martial arts movies have had a long intertwined history with Peking Opera, from performers graduating from stage to screen (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung) to filmmakers borrowing plots and techniques from the acrobatic theater style. Few films have been as heartfelt in their love and debt to Peking Opera as Chang Cheh’s The Fantastic Magic Baby (1975).
The film adapts one of the great novels of Chinese literature, Journey to the West, which tells the familiar story of how the Monkey King and the Goddess of Mercy teach an errant young god the error of his ways and set him upon the righteous path of Buddhism. The film is a bizarre assault on the senses with a brilliant color palette and loads of fantasy artifice. The painted backdrops and papier-mâché rocks are on par with lower level episodes of Star Trek or Doctor Who, but the unreality absolutely fits the tenor of the film and quickly becomes one of its biggest charms. There are a number of battles and a bit of slapstick, as Monkey King and Pigsey valiantly try to steer Red Boy clear of temptation. In the end, the Goddess of Mercy arrives to put Red Boy to the test, and he finally accepts and understands his place in the cosmos.
The entire film is plotted, acted, and choreographed like a Peking Opera, but without the constraints of the proscenium arch. Chang Cheh manages to bring the story to life in an odd hybrid of a standard wuxia film and a filmed stage performance. This odd mix of styles may not to be to all tastes, but is certainly entertaining once you realize what is happening and are able to accept the film on its own terms. Then just as you are rolling along with this bit of fantasy, the film comes to a somewhat abrupt end around the one-hour mark, and the remainder of the film’s running time is devoted to a somewhat abridged performance of the opera (Journey to the West_, actually filmed on a stage. It may seem a curious choice, but the inclusion of the stage performance really helped to understand and appreciate the experimental choices Chang Cheh made in the creation of this delicious bit of fantasy filmmaking. Free from the constraints of realism, he was able to get to the heart of the story while paying loving tribute to the opera.
