Little Dragon Maiden (1983)

If you are able to embrace the absurdness of a hero who is trained first by a girl and then a pot-bellied condor, you might just enjoy this movie. Leslie Cheung is beautiful and vulnerable in this role of a young man who is the son of a traitor and must overcome trials and tribulations to find his way in the world.

I might have enjoyed it more if I was familiar with the source material, Jing Yong's "Return of the Condor Heroes". As it was I could tell that there were characters I should know and story lines left dangling at the end. Even though it seemed there was way too much story to tell in 90 minutes it was an entertaining and intentionally or unintentionally hilarious movie at times. Not to say there wasn't darkness woven through the tale as well. Sexual assault, buckets of blood, people and animals cleaved in half, and someone made a meal out of a family pet.

Cheung as Yang Guo and Yung Jing Jing as the titular Dragon Maiden, had good chemistry together as she taught him to fight and as they fell in love. Lo Lieh shows up briefly as a seemingly crazy kung fu master completely immersed in the Toad style of fighting. Chen Kuan Tai plays the uncle who tries initially to set the young hero on the path of righteousness but ends up unknowingly putting Guo in a sect bent on revenge for the father's actions.

The story rarely slows down with either fighting or training scenes containing lots of wire action and creative weaponry in most scenes. The Big Bad and his minions create havoc as well as other rivals for the Dragon Maiden's affection and Guo gets plenty of practice taking a beating and learning his way through the martial world.

For a 1980's kung fu movie it lived up to expectations and the production values were much higher than most of the 1970's kung fu movies I've seen. Even if the condor looked like a reject from H.R. Pufnstuf.

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