MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*
I don't exactly why I liked KILLER METEORS even in a minor way. It's certainly not because the movie is anyone's favorite Jackie Chan film, for although it received an early American video release thanks to the Chan fandom, the Chan-man occupies a supporting role in METEORS. This is primarily a Jimmy Wang Yu chopsocky, and I can't describe it better than a reviewer who said it was a movie made when Wang Yu was on the downside of his popularity and Chan was about to hit his stride. To be sure, at this point Chan had not yet found his metier, and METEORS is one of the few movies where Jolly Jackie plays a complete villain.
In many previous reviews I've assailed various HK movies for doing a bad job of melding the chopsocky genre with that of the murder-mystery. My most frequent criticism is that the mystery-choppers, at least as they appear in their English versions, are frequently sloppy, tossing in new characters at random and not providing strong motives for the principals. METEORS, though, was comparatively restrained in terms of introducing the main characters and sticking with them, so even if not every motive completely tracked, at least I could keep track of who was who.
Both Wang Yu and Chan plan renowned martial arts masters. Mei, the former's character, seems to be a roaming crusader, and he's nicknamed "Killer Meteors" because he possesses some strange weapon of that same name, though no one knows what the weapon is because its victims are always destroyed. Hua, Chan's character, seems to be a nobleman in exile, living with a small entourage. When Mei answers Hua's summons to his home, Hua explains that his wife Lady Tempest (Lee Si-Si) fed him a slow-acting poison for some offense. Hua can't penetrate his wife's formidable defenses, consisting largely of four adepts with special powers, like hurling darts or wielding magical magnetism, so Hua hires Mei to steal the antidote from Lady Tempest. Hua accepts the task, and one of the first things he does to enter the Tempest court is to persuade one of her court-women, Lady Phoenix (Lily Lu-yi), to pretend that he's one of her slaves. At the same time, Mei also has another girl in his life, one Fung (Yu Ling-lung), and though there's no explicit sex here. Fung does visit Mei in jail once and apparently gives up her womanhood to him.
In addition to various sockings and choppings, there are also assorted crosses and double crosses, which I won't try to recapitulate. One IMDB review asserts that the screenplay by one Gu Long was adapted from the writer's own wuxia novel, and if so, I'd venture this is why the plot seemed to hang together reasonably well, even if I didn't buy every motive. The ending seems to set up a confrontation between Fung and Phoenix, the two rivals for Mei's love, but they just disappear for a time and then Phoenix shows up to unite with Mei, perhaps suggesting that Fung met some unpleasant fate. Chan and Wang Yu fight twice, but neither battle is exceptional given their stature in the world of martial movies. The revelation of the "killer meteors'" nature leads me to call this movie a magical-era fantasy, though it's much less evocative than one of Lo Wei's previous works in that vein, 1971's VENGEANCE OF A SNOW GIRL-- which I also esteem far above the two mundane Bruce Lee films Wei made around the same time. I don't know how many times Lo Wei might have crossed paths with Gu Long, except that after they made this shot-in-Korea Taiwanese cheapie, they again collaborated on a second kung-film in Korea as well, TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE, which had Chan as the sole star and Yu Ling-lung, again in a support-role.
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