KUNG FU KORNER: Bat Without Wings (1980)

Are there ANY Hallowe'en themed Kung Fu movies out there? Well, here's one...

Submitted by Rajorajorajo, 10/27/09 11:33 AM

If you happen at this special, spooky time of year to be looking for high-flying martial arts action with a touch of spine-tingling terror, seek ye out the altogether ooky, kind-of a little bit spooky 1980 Shaw Bros. flick Bat Without Wings. Do not seek it out if you don’t like misleading titles because the guy clearly has a cape, and flies. Kinda like a bat with wings, thank you very much… .

The Bat Without Wings is basically a super-evil, super-scary, ghost-type Kung Fu killing machine, who stalks the countryside looking for ladies to rape and murder (!!) while wearing Gene Simmons’ exact KISS makeup. He also has a moustache.

The story, I think, is this (it’s confusing): five years ago, the notorious criminal Bat Without Wings (Tang Ching) got ambushed by a bunch of good guys who set out to put an end to his “lustful” ways, but forget that man… he killed all but a handful of them. Now he’s back, and it’s up to some guy, that guy’s dead fiancée’s dad and the famous hero Xiao Qi of the broken-heart sword (??) to find the survivors of the aforementioned fight so they can uncover the mystery of the villainous Bat Without Wings. That’s pretty much it, but I gotta say. This is a weird one. Body doubles, betrayal, a very eerie headless lady-ghost, poisoned wine, a sulphuric-acid river, an enchanted bamboo maze... plus, secret identities! Plenty of cool Kung Fu action, and some decidedly gore-tastic fun, for sure, but will you pee your pants? Is it super-scary? No. At least, not as much as it should be, especially considering this crazy set-up!

So, I really think that back in the day director Chu Yuan missed an opportunity to make a seriously scary film here, and instead used the freaky imagery and mystery elements of the plot to rather make an impression of one. The scary, super-natural killer/rapist elements of this Bat Without Wings dude seems to be what drives the mysteriously weird story along to its conclusion, but it’s as if we’re supposed to take it as a given that this guy might show up in our nightmares. The film doesn’t do much (beyond some well-handled opening scenes) to really sell the soul-shattering terror that such a character might inspire; he doesn’t really do anything but laugh like an insane person and beat everybody up. He never pops up from behind a gravestone, never sneaks up behind someone. There’s almost zero suspense in the film. About 10 minutes in, you’ll see a harmless old man seating people at his restaurant, only to suddenly and inexplicably announce that he is, in fact, the notorious BWW. Surprise! He then flies around ripping their throats out, and snapping the blades off their swords with his bare hands only to stab them in turn (which is actually pretty badass). Ok, so, he’s got blood coming out of his mouth the whole time, which is creepy. It’s not really scary… but it coulda been!!! Too bad.

I would LOVE to take a tour of the Shaw Bros. studios someday, because the facility must be absolutely, positively HUGE. The sets in this film, including some impressively rendered large-scale exteriors are all totally fake, and totally amazing! All built and shot indoors! The art department on this flick has really done some impressive work, especially by Shaw Bros. standards. What’s great about Bat Without Wings is that the sets not only feature just the right blend of cheesy fakeness and massive scale, but also the sheer number of sets constructed is pretty crazy – there are at least 20 to 30 different “locations” seen in the film. That’s a lot of construction! Now I know, the Shaw Bros. crew must have (they HAD to have) re-used sets all the time, considering their output of films, mostly shot inside a studio (and the same studio each time). But I dunno, watching this film, seeing how elaborate some of the sets actually are, and how little screen time some of them get, you’re mostly left with the impression that a dedicated, talented crew (that loves their work), really wanted to push the whole “shooting in a studio all the time” thing to the limit. Any future production designers might want to check this one out, as it’s pretty great.

It’s strange that there aren’t way more of these kinds of horror-Kung Fu flicks. Punching, kicking, ghosts, goblins... for a genre that often features characters living in a world of magic, betrayal, bloody revenge and superpowers (that are obtained just by studying Kung Fu hard enough), you’d think there’d be more ghost stories to be told, more dabbles in the supernatural realm. It just seems like a nice fit. Maybe they’re out there. But for now, for this Hallowe’en, you could do way worse that Bat Without Wings. 3 clenched fists out of five.

-Rajo

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