I don't know what the original title of this horrible, horrible Chinese movie was. It is a pure joy from start to finish, and if you can find it on video, don't pass up the chance.

I saw it years ago at a bad films festival, where it was one of the most popular they'd ever screened. It scored big time for three reasons:

(1) The subtitles, apparently translated from Chinese into English by a Korean schoolboy armed only with a bilingual VCR manual and a Dutch dictionary; (2) the plot; (3) the villain, who sets new standards for insane maniacal laughter, regardless of whether it is actually necessary or appropriate at the time.

The basic plot is familiar to bad movie watchers everywhere. Medieval hero and villain, by a startling series of events, wind up in the 20th century where they slug it out for various incomprehensible reasons until the hero gets the girl and the villain dies in a shower of special effects.

From what I can remember, the hero and the villain were having some sort of monumental battle on the icy slopes of a mountain. They fall down a slope and are suddenly TRAPPED in a glacier, whence they emerge a zillion years later to terrorize the present day.

This was when I knew I was watching one of the greatest movies of all time. There they are, thumping each other pointlessly. Then they seize each other, trip, and fall...and a GLACIER gets them?!?!?! Let's be specific here: they do not fall down a crevasse or get cornered in any way. They fall over. On a snowy slope. At this time, no glacier is obvious in the surroundings. Exactly how long did they lie there waiting for it to inch up and engulf them? "Shall we get up and keep fighting?" "Nah, let's lie here motionless for a few more years and see what happens."

Next, in the best tradition of such movies, our protagonists are seen (still locked together in a sort of WWF chest-slam) being brought in a gigantic ice-cube to a Top Secret Research Facility full of expendable guys in white coats. Now here are a couple of lines of actual subtitle dialogue:

First Scientist: "This is major important discovery." Second Scientist: "It prove there was Homosexual in ancient times."

I just can't say anything about this line. I can't. The number of things I could say about this line just choke me. I saw this movie only once, YEARS ago, and I still almost die thinking of this line. I doubt very much that you could find ANYONE who knows what happens in the next twenty minutes of the film, because it took that long for order to be restored in the theater.

Anyway, the hero finds himself a modern girlfriend who thinks he's weird and hates him, and we all know what THAT means. The villain does incomprehensible villain-ish things, most of which involve standing on top of cars and going "BWA HA HA HAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!" I'm pretty sure he found some mystical way to take over the world, too. Didn't he have a magic sword or something? Who knows? Who cares? BWA HA HA HAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, there are lots of purple sparkly things when he dies or gets sent back to his own dimension or something.

Throughout the movie, the subtitles are completely hysterical. There are some awesomely good misspellings which completely change the meaning. One of the other twenty-minuters was:

VILLAIN: "I threat you! I challenge you meet me on the roof tonight for a [DRAMATIC PAUSE] duet! Bwa ha ha haaaa!!!"

When I saw it, about half the audience was Chinese, and they were in hysterics too, so the actual dialogue must have been just as dreadful.

Many bad foreign films are only funny because of the bad subtitles. But this one is different. Acting, production values, continuity flaws, the lot. It would be funny if you saw it with no subtitles and the sound turned off. It would be funny if you just read the subtitles and never looked at the movie. I don't care what your criteria are for badness, this has them ALL.

The REALLY great thing about this film is that I understand there are a couple of different versions, so it could be that the subtitles I saw were actually copied and pasted from some other film and a different version would reveal a completely different plot. It would certainly explain the "homosexual" line.

Rating: five turkeys. Easily.

Best line: I can't even begin to decide.

Things that make you go "Huh?": The hero likes to eat cockroaches.

Response From RinkWorks:

Wow.