subway cinema | mar's villa (1978)


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MAR'S VILLA (1978) Directed by: Ting Chung Starring: John Liu, Phillip Kao Fei, Stephen Tung Wai
Despite the title, this movie was not filmed on another planet, and thank goodness because MAR'S VILLA is unexpurgated, unfettered, undiscovered full-on glorious fisticuffs unbound! A spaghetti western (with the entire soundtrack lifted from HANG 'EM HIGH) it's a high-starch kung fu flick filmed in Taiwan, choreographed by Stephen Tung Wai (THE BLADE, A BETTER TOMORROW), starring John Liu (the high kicker with a face like lumpy dough) and, just like a lot of fancy movies, a villain (Phillip Kao Fei) who plays two roles. One of the few movies to really focus on lumber theft, MAR'S VILLA is about a guy named Mar who has the Magic Kick. Well, everyone wants to fight him, but his wife says fooey on fighting, you're not doing it anymore. Which is easy for her to say, but when Fang Kang steals his lumber and keeps provoking him, well what's a man with a Magic Kick to do but start kicking? Is there any other alternative? Thankfully, no. Because the action in this movie is down on the mat, no-holds-barred fury. Unfortunately for Mar, Fang has a brother, Yu Tang, who comes complete with a floppy-haired playboy named Fan (played by the flick's choreographer, Stephen Tung Wai). Tang doesn't like to hear about Fang getting pushed around and so he and Fan decide that Mar is going down, and go down he does, getting tortured and kicked in the head all the way. He even goes crazy after some gnarly sonic torture in a golden cage, and that's only the beginning. A movie of eye-popping extremes, this is A-grade filmmaking in the service of a B-movie budget. The cameraman is on a kamikaze mission to make each shot count with every possible camera set-up zipping at you all at once. An athletic guy, he also manages to use his zoom lens at least twenty times in every scene as gangs of henchmen wielding leg-breaking poles whirl like dervishes, spring over walls, and jump into the air in the middle of fights to land two counties away - while still fighting! John Liu does a lot of squinting and snarling, the villains do a lot of devious back-breaking and skull-splitting, and the plot rapidly mutates into perverse Taiwanese noir. Every interior is basically the same set, but all people do when indoors is sit around and simmer in their own evil stink. 95% of this flick is filmed outdoors, on long bridges, in giant courtyards, on the vertiginous edges of waterfalls, and in a humungous Buddha-torium filled with hundred of thousands of larger-than-life Buddha statues. Ignored and neglected, MAR'S VILLA has been relegated to the status of an unseen classic. That's too bad, because a movie this down n'dirty should be watched as often as possible. It's our civic duty! A minor classic, with major attitude.

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