Produced in Hong Kong, "The Stormriders" is a nineties entrant in the venerable Bad Martial-Arts Movie genre. All the cliches of the genre are here -- the hero and his sparring partner/sidekick (who, during the course of the picture, becomes his worst enemy and then finally his best friend), the beautiful girl who is little more than an inducement for our heroes to rebel against the enemy, and lots of hyperactive fighting scenes. As this is a nineties movie, though, the fights are spruced up with some cheesily obvious computer graphics, consisting mostly of flowing water or energy beams. The graphics tend to be the stars of the scenes in which they appear, as the rest of the actors just kind of stand around and pretend to watch things happen.

The plot, which completely changes directions something like a dozen times during the picture, is mostly about the evil martial artist "Conquer," head of a ninja clan that wants to conquer (as it were) every other ninja clan in the world. Conquer is played by Sonny Chiba, an HK badguy regular, who does quite a convincing Evil Overlord act. The seer Mud Buddha (yes, that's his name) prophesies that the Wind and the Cloud will eventually combine to defeat Conquer, should he allow them to do so. Conquer, assisted by the script, realizes that the sage means two other martial artists and decides to capture every kid in the land and put them in his ninja army (or something -- I was never quite clear on this point). Conquer's forces spread throughout the land, massacring everyone they can get their hands on, and kidnap the two eventual protagonists of the film, the "Wind" and "Cloud" mentioned in the title. (One notable feature of this movie is that all the major characters have regular words for names, usually describing either their chief specialty or their role in the movie.)

After everyone's been kidnapped, we fast-forward a few years. Wind and Cloud, together with their buddy Frost, are now bigwigs in Conquer's ninja army. Conquer is about to fight a duel with someone named the Sword Saint and decides he needs a better sword (the hundred or so he's got in his palace apparently not being enough). A rival martial arts clan has the sword he wants, but they refuse to give it up, so Conquer sends his proteges out to get it for him. Wind and Frost detain the rival clan leader's son (with a pretty cool fight scene), while Cloud and two of Conquer's thugs kill everyone else in the clan. (Somewhere in here we see the requisite "sociopathic antihero" scene, as Cloud intones "there can be no witnesses" while ominously striding towards a little girl.)

When the trio triumphantly returns to Conquer, he decides to have Wind marry his daughter, Chastity. Cloud, as it happens, doesn't like the marriage idea and interrupts the ceremony to try and elope with Chastity. He and Wind fight, and Conquer attempts to intervene but accidentally fries Chastity. The sorrowing Cloud trounces Wind and makes off with Chastity's corpse.

A number of incomprehensible scenes follow, including several scenes of Cloud beating people up with a stone pillar, but eventually Conquer corners Cloud in a desert. He abuses Cloud for a while with little fear of retribution, as Cloud's martial arts powers require water to function. Cloud, desperate to survive, finally tears his own arm off and uses the spewing blood to fight off Conquer long enough to escape. He ends up being taken in by an old fisherman and his daughter.

Finally, it's about time for Sword Saint to show up. Conquer, still not happy with his sword collection, sends Wind along with Cloud's former flunkies to get yet another sword. However, there's a twist -- this sword was the one used by Wind's father, before he was killed by Conquer early in the movie. Wind finds the sword in a cave, feeds the two treacherous flunkies to the cave's resident fire lizard, and lures the fire lizard into a pit of icy liquid. (As is par for this sort of movie, the monster lives right on top of its only weakness.) Wind, realizing (after most of the movie) that Conquer was the man who killed his parents and tried to kill *him*, vows to take the sword and destroy his former tutor.

Meanwhile, Cloud's protector apparently lost his *own* arm in a fight earlier in his life and took his foe's arm instead. However, the enemy's arm has a will of its own (as enemy body parts are wont to do), and the old fisherman can't quite control it. Noting that Cloud happens to be missing an arm, the fisherman happily donates his own, and Cloud and the fisherman's daughter set out to get revenge on Conquer.

After the whole movie (one of the early scenes was Sword Saint telling a dejected Conquer to come back in ten years and try again), it's time for the duel. Sword Saint, a wizened geezer clad in flowing white robes and long grey hair, appears on the steps of Conquer's ninja headquarters; he mutters to himself that he's having "trouble controlling it." We don't know what the significance of this remark is, especially as the next scene is an inexplicably rejuvenated Sword Saint throwing open the doors of Conquer's temple. After some blustering remarks by Conquer, Sword Saint decides to fight. He wastes almost everyone in the temple (in a scene that is used to showcase the filmaker's computer graphics prowess and is therefore not nearly as cool as you'd expect such a scene to be) and stabs Conquer in the chest. (Conquer makes such a poor showing of himself here that you wonder why he bothered.)

Things look bad for the villain, when suddenly we cut to Cloud and the fisherman's daughter outside the temple, where they are confronted by...Sword Saint?! Apparently the guy inside the temple doing all the fighting is some sort of out-of-body projection, and this is the real one. Nobody ever quite figures out what's going on, and nobody gets a chance to, because after about a minute of puzzled banter, the fisherman's daughter pokes Sword Saint's body, and both he and the version inside the temple disappear. Everyone in the temple collapses, and Cloud and the fisherman's daughter proceed inside.

Conquer, though winded after having a sword stuck through his lungs, is not yet defeated. Cloud and Wind both enter the temple to see Frost confront Conquer. Frost, too, has decided to rebel; though, as he has no Dreadful Sorrow or Burning Purpose as a motivator, even a weakened Conquer makes short work of him. Then Wind and Cloud attack. After a lengthy fight scene with some pretty nifty special effects, Conquer is defeated and his temple destroyed, and he ends up sitting in his trophy room surrounded by visions of his slain foes. Everyone who isn't dead goes home happy, and the movie ends.

Packed with badly-subtitled dialogue and chop-socky action, this is a good movie for a martial-arts fan group to waste a slow Sunday afternoon on.

Rating: I'll give this one 3.5 turkeys; not more, because there are movies that are better at being "bad" than this one. However, the comical seriousness of the characters as they react to the plot (which seems to change from scene to scene with no explanation) and the fact that it's a poorly-subtitled Hong Kong martial-arts flick give it decent staying power in the Bad Movie World.

Scene to watch for: Conquer sticks his finger into Cloud's arm and gives him electric shocks.

Best line: "I need the fire monkey to suck out the poison and ease the pain."

Things that make you go "Huh?": Whatever happened to Conquer's ninja army?