Film Review: Three Headed Monster (1988)

Genre: Chinese Fantasy

Picture courtesy of Rarelust.com

  A group of mutant monks are hunting the elusive Thousand Year Ginseng King - basically a giant, walking, talking Ginseng root  - and in the process accidentally create a Nazi Zombie.  When the zombie bites a young boy's mother, he must travel far, far away to the land of the Three Headed Demon King and rescue the Ginseng King because otherwise his mother is going to become either dead or a zombie and neither of these are good. 

 When I woke up this morning I wasn't expecting to have any use for the phrase "Nazi Zombie" and truth be told  I didn't know a Magic Ginseng Man might even be a thing.  Yet here we are: both of them in the same film. 

 Three Headed Giant is creatively bonkers in a good way.   This was made long before the concept of deliberately bad movies took ironic hold so the writers genuinely thought that a Nazi Zombie was the perfect addition to an otherwise traditional Chinese fantasy movie. 

 I suspect this was a family movie - sort of a Neverending Story for good Confucian children. The juvenile protagonist, the frequent references to filial worthiness and the decidedly low-budget SFX all point in that direction.  The production team used a lot of paper-mache and foam rubber to create the sets and the monsters and then glued whatever was left over to the bad guys faces. Sophisticated it isn't.

Bu then you have the scene where a Nazi Zombie goes on the rampage and you also have the lovely Cynthia Khan showing off her kung-fu and her pins in a leopardskin minidress so I wonder if the kiddies were asking awkward questions after that. 

If you like your old-school low-budget Asian fantasy, or you just want to see if the 3-headed monster looks as cool as he does on the poster (spoiler: no he doesn't) then you might want to give this a go.

Personally I thought it was very daft but also very entertaining.  Not what I was expecting to do today but life is better when you have a few surprises. 

Screenshot time.

 This makes sense in context. Honest.

So does this. 

 Cynthia Khan is a proper martial arts star so I think she did this film as a favour. 

"Have yer spear back, you putty-faced wankers."

 Ooohh! Right in the ding-ding. 

No wonder the other guy is wincing too. 

That's all folks.