PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I think I've found my new favorite "crazy-fu" film in this one.
First things first: though there are several characters who utilize kung fu-- the hero, the villains, and all the villains' minions-- there's no mention of anything to do with the Shaolin Temple. There's also no great focus on animal-styles of fighting. "Tiger claw" techniques are verbally referenced once during a battle, and there's no mention of "mantis fist." The film does begin with an odd little lecture in which a narrator talks about the carnivorous nature of the real bugs while two cartoon mantises copulate, and then the female bites off the male's head. Even more oddly, this ends up being relevant to what initially looks like just another quarrel between a noble hero and some rapacious (emphasis on the "rape") villains.
Pai (John Cheung) stops in a tavern for a drink. He sees waitress Shuang (Sarina Sai) getting harassed by the son of a powerful local family, the Hungs, who has a small gang of minions. Pai's superior skills drive off the Hung faction, but as Pai leaves, he mentions to the grateful Shuang that his next destination is the local "orchid house." Later Shuang learns that Pai's motives there are noble as well. At some point in the past, Pai's sister Yu was abducted and sold to a whorehouse (possibly by the Hung family), and Pai has gathered enough money to buy her contract and liberate Yu.
However, things go from bad to worse for Shuang. Despite a local's warning that women often get abducted in these parts, she wanders into the forest, and the guys from the tavern assault her. They leave her behind afterward, but before they get home they're attacked by some unseen entity who hurls bamboo shoots at them, either impaling or killing them in other ways. In jig time, the Hung Patriarch (Dean Shek) learns of his son's death and decides that he must have been killed by this interloper Pai. Pai's efforts to free his sister are complicated when he's attacked by Hung and his other two sons at the whorehouse. One of the sons has a highly original weapon: a false hump on his back that can sprout metal spikes like a cartoon porcupine.
Pai suffers some damage from the massed attack and takes refuge at Shuang's tavern. Once Shuang learns of Pai's true purpose, she masquerades as a male customer and spirits Yu away from the house of ill repute. The three of them leave town, but another of the Hung boys, along with some henchmen, attack the good guys in the forest. Yu is killed, and though Pai escapes, Hung-son #2 has Shuang taken to his place of residence, where he does unto her just as his dead brother did. Then he apparently leaves Shuang confined to a room, ventures into the forest with the minions, and most of them get killed by nooses that whip out of the trees.
This misfortune does nothing to deter Hung-son #3-- the one with the spiky hunchback-- from raping Shuang too. (This includes a really weird scene where he rotates on his spike-hump while having intercourse with Shuang.) However, the last son meets his fate at home, killed by an assailant seen only as two huge mantis-arms.
None of these events keep the elder Hung from obsessively tracking down Pai. The two have a good long battle, which Hung loses. Pai recovers Shuang and marries her. However, a friend of Pai's belatedly learns of a skeleton in the Shuang family's closet. It seems that her mother was impregnated by a mantis (it's not even specified to be a mantis-god or anything), and as a result Shuang is half-mantis. When Pai attempts to celebrate his nuptials, Shuang turns into a mantis-monster, in this case a normal-sized woman with claws and an insect-head. Shuang is killed and spared from any further rampages, though Pai's not exactly a happy camper either.
Hong Kong kung fu films are not exactly anyone's first choice for examining sexual politics. Still, the writer-directors of MANTIS seem to be unusually preoccupied with the disposition of women due to the physical power differential. Women can be raped, abducted and sold to brothels, or even impregnated by mantises, and there's not a lot they can do about it. Pai brings about some retribution by fighting the Hungs. Still, his main concern is his sister, so he might not have ended up battling the Elder Hung had it not been for Shuang taking vengeance upon her rapists. She has to become a monster to accomplish this, though apparently her transformations are unconscious. There's no indication that she remembers her experiences as a mantis-creature, though the writers cheat a little, having her kill off some of her attackers with the use of unusual weapons.
Shuang and Yu perish, though Pai doesn't exactly end up in a good place either. But I can't claim that the two creators-- most of whose works I've not seen-- intended to make any statement beyond grabbing the public with an arresting story.
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