by MALCOLM FRASER, RAF KATIGBAK, and MARK SLUTSKY

Fantasia starts in bloody style this week with more films than you can shake a sword at. Besides offerings from China, Korea and other points east, this week showcases the fest’s Bloody Blighty program, focusing on new British horror cinema. Here’s a sample of what’s on offer:

Seven Swords

The latest from star Hong Kong director Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China, Time and Tide) is a lavish, epic adventure story based on Liang Yusheng’s novel Seven Swordsmen From Mount Tian. An imperial edict banning martial arts under the pain of death has led to the wholesale slaughter of villages so that mercenaries can collect the rich rewards (they’re paid by the decapitated head), inciting our band of seven swordsmen to come down from the mountain and slice some ass. Seven Swords is at times quite visually beautiful and there’s some very neat fight scenes (notably light on the wire-work), plus it’s totally cool that each warrior has his or her own unique crazy sword. But at two-and-a-half hours it really drags, and the story is muddled and tedious. Definitely some eye candy here, but you have to slog through quite a lot of exposition to get to it. (MS)

The Lost

Never mind the spate of recent remakes; this film truly brings back the glory days of ’70s American horror with its ultra-low-budget aesthetic and atmosphere of white-trash despair. First-time director Chris Siverston sets up the story of Ray (Marc Senter), an alpha-male hoodlum who shoots two teenage girls on a lark. Four years later, the small-town cops are still trying to close in on him while he juggles the attentions of several local girls. It’s nice to see a DIY production these days that’s not only shot on film, but full of old-school, Scorsese-esque camerawork. And while the acting and script are uneven in the no-budget tradition, Senter’s intense perfomance sustains the film all the way to its gore-soaked conclusion. (MF)

Dirty Ho

Hold on to your braided ponytails, it’s another Shaw Brothers masterpiece! Ho (Yue Wong) is a blustering jewel thief who unwillingly becomes the apprentice to Mr. Wang (the fantastic Gordon Liu), a seemingly harmless businessman who is actually the ass-kicking 11th Prince of the royal family travelling incognito. Dirty Ho, from 1979, not only delivers the prerequisite kung fu training sequences, a wonderful variety of specialty bosses/assassins to overcome, and some of the most amazingly choreographed fight sequences ever (the veneer of court civility force Wang and his would-be assassins to fight while pretending to engage in highbrow topics like wine tasting or art appreciation), but also some solid acting, great dialogue and the most unintentionally hilarious title in the entire festival. What more could you ask for? How about a scene where an enemy uses tea as a weapon to turn the protagonist temporarily gay? ’Nuff said. (RK)

A Bittersweet Life

The latest from Korean director Ji-woon Kim (A Tale of Two Sisters, The Quiet Family) is a super-stylish gangster flick about a high-ranking mob henchman (Byung-hun Lee) assigned to look after his boss’s hot, young girlfriend. This is one slick-looking picture—the images are beautifully composed, with a great eye for composition and colour. There’s a few really terrific and well-choreographed fight scenes, but about halfway through the film, when the protagonist picks up a gun, things quickly get a lot less interesting and A Bittersweet Life turns into a very basic revenge story with a lot of repetitive shootouts. Some great stuff here, but you only really need to see the first half. (MS)

A Chinese Tall Story

This mythological action-comedy tells the tale of Tripitaka (Nicholas Tse), a monk on a quest to rescue his disciples, aided by Meiyan (Charlene Choi), a hideously ugly lizard imp who falls in love with him. If this sounds over the top, it’s not even scratching the surface. Imagine a Lord of the Rings with cheaper effects and way more goofy gags, and you’re getting there. Tse and Choi are likeable, and the rapid-fire procession of mythical creatures and gods is intriguing; not to give too much away, but when it comes to deus ex machina, director Jeff Lau pulls out all the stops. Ultimately, unless you’re a Chinese mythology buff, the film’s appeal depends wholly on your interest in (or patience for) unrelenting sub-Matrix CGI gimmickery. (MF)

Wilderness

After hounding one of their borstal roommates into committing suicide, a handful of wayward British youth are dropped on an island for rehabilitation; unfortunately for them (and their hapless supervisor), it’s going to involve flesh-eating dogs and crossbows. Hunted by an unseen enemy, the kids are variously stabbed, bitten, and burned to death in this gory flick reminiscent at times of both Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale. The movie has a rough aesthetic—it looks a bit like an ’80s British TV production—but it’s undeniably engaging and very fun to watch. The deaths are violent and often laugh-out-loud gruesome—this should be a fun movie to watch with a crowd. (MS)

Lost in Wu Song

30-year old asthmatic virgin Men Desong is a wannabe director with a dream: to make the ultimate film about his boyhood idol Wu Song, the 11th-century dynastic hero and idol to many Chinese boys. But who could possibly play this legendary brute, this epitome of masculinity? After nixing Mike Tyson from the list, Men Desong searches to find his perfect Wu Song. Through misadventures and clashes with his producers, violent thugs and uncooperative actors, Desong finally finds his living Wu Song in a burly, drunken, knuckleheaded bouncer. Bridging the gap between mainstream and art house Asian cinema, this low-budget feature ends up a charming and wryly funny critique on obsession, masculinity and Chinese traditionalism, while also serving as a subtle jab at the filmmaking process itself. (RK)

Princess Aurora

This Korean horror film is a mish-mash of revenge/slasher flick, cop thriller and family drama. As such it’s a bit schizophrenic, but worth the effort overall. Soon-jung (Jeong-hwa Eom) is a mild-mannered car saleslady who also dabbles in viciously murdering people, seemingly because of their various social transgressions (from public child abuse to merely being rude). Policeman Oh (Jong-won Choi) is on the case, and starts to suspect a link to his own past in the killings. When all’s said and done, Princess Aurora isn’t blazing any brave new ground in the serial-killer genre. But it throws in enough twists to keep things interesting, and the top-notch cinematography and music make it aesthetically pleasing along the way. (MF)

See www.fantasiafest.com for schedule and ticket information

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