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TAOISM DRUNKARD (1983)  Directed by: Yuen Cheung-yan Starring: the Yuen Clan | |
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Set your freak machine to 1983, let that baby spin, when you open your
eyes you'll see Lord Ruthless with no palms throwing his multiplying cluster
bomb in your face; the weird, spherical Watermelon Monster chasing you
on its stumpy legs and trying to wrap its electronic tentacles around
your breasts; old Granny smoking her bong and spinning on her throw cushion;
flying sleeves, antenna hair, the Mannequin Man, catapulting bombs, traps,
rats, drunkards...freak out! Boiling up your brain like a western omelet, TAOISM DRUNKARD is the freakiest movie you'll ever see. Characters scurry up walls and leap from ceiling to floor, supported on invisible wires courtesy of the filmmakers, the Yuen Clan. These five brothers moved to Hong Kong with their father, Simon Yuen, as kids. Dad was a homeschooling Peking Opera teacher who taught his kids wild acrobatics and kung fu, while employing them as stunt men on the numerous films he fight directed, including the legendary, long-running Wong Fei-hung series. The Yuen Clan has gone on to individual fame. Yuen Wo-ping is the number one name in action right now, thanks to his work on CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and THE MATRIX. He also directed IRON MONKEY, now mopping up at the box office. Yeun Cheung-yan, who directed TAOISM DRUNKARD, was the fight director on CHARLIE'S ANGELS. But their weirdest work was done when, like a giant Japanese robot, the five Yuen brothers would join together to form one lean, mean, freaky machine: the Yuen Clan. TAOISM DRUNKARD is, dare we suggest it, their weirdest movie ever. 
There's a long tradition of immigrants coming to a new country and through hard work bettering themselves and realizing their dreams. Just as Schuster and Siegel came to America and invented Superman, the Yuens came to Hong Kong, opened their skulls, and pulled out wildness. Raised, most likely, in extreme poverty, paid little for their bone-breaking work as stuntmen, they took the opportunities provided by directing jobs to assemble demonic displays of hair-raising bric-a-brac into motion pictures powered by the surreal. Like primitivist art, these movies (DREADNAUGHT, THE MIRACLE FIGHTERS, TAOISM DRUNKARD) are pungent pulp creations whose frames are stuffed with cheap novelties and dime-store wonders that overwhelm and astound the viewer who, as if brained with a rubber chicken, eventually stumbles out of the theatre, eyes whirling wildly in their skull. The sheer number of wigged-out happenings, and their straight-forward presentation, is intoxicating. There isn't much subtlety, none of the nuanced modulation of tone and atmosphere that makes great art, but there is a shotgun blast of egos and ids running unchecked across the screen. The power of directing is intoxicating to the Yuen Clan, raised by a strict father and working in a demanding field, and they take every opportunity it provides to do strange, drunken things onscreen. 
A weird, wiggy explosion of talent and surreal brio, TAOISM DRUNKARD is a rare, almost lost film that is unavailable on video, and is rarely screened. It's an absurdist ambush that springs itself at the audience, claws at their skulls, and pulls out their brains. It takes their brains out on the town and gets them soused at a cheap gin mill while watching three-armed strippers do a fan dance with seals. Then it buys the brains tickets to a Mexican wrestling match, maybe feeds them a lot of sauerkraut, drives them out to Three Mile Island and finally, ninety minutes later, returns them - groggy, dyspeptic and burping - to their owners. It's a ten cent celluloid marvel the likes of which you'll never see again. |
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