A rosy-cheeked young boy with a pet caterpillar, who dances to the catchy music from the kid's harmonica, is discovered on the city sidewalk by a kindly entrepreneur, who is taking a stroll. Amazed by the charming performance of this unlikely duo, the businessman immediately convinces the boy to sign an exclusive contract. Almost immediately, the dancing caterpillar becomes a global success, and his popular likeness is mass-marketed to an eager public.
The showbiz trio go on a worldwide concert tour, and even pay a visit to the moon. All goes well, and the boy prepares to shower his larval friend with a plethora of miniature gifts on Christmas Eve, only to find that his little pal has suddenly disappeared. As they frantically search for the caterpillar, it begins to dawn on the boy (and his partner/manager), that perhaps this train of fame, fortune and (assumed) lifelong friendship between boy and bug is about to come to a sad end...
Sametka, released in 1967, is based on an original story by Lucille Fletcher* (see update at the bottom of this article), adapted by eminent author, poet, screenwriter and radio storyteller, Norman Corwin, previously filmed as the Cary Grant feature, Once Upon a Time (1944). In that version, the caterpillar is never shown (it is always either in its box, or is reacted to, off-camera), its act left to the viewer's imagination. Cary Grant plays the entrepreneur/manager as a slick, fast-talking character; almost a scam artist.
In Sametka, the man is a more gentle, kindly sort. While he does basically bribe the kid into signing the contract, and enjoys the fruits of the caterpillar's fame, other than setting the duo up to approve a mass of merchandising licenses, he doesn't come across as particularly greedy or controlling. In fact, he acts more like a caring friend and substitute parental figure, as we are left to assume that the boy is an orphan and otherwise lives on the streets.
Double the length of a traditional Hollywood cartoon short, it fleshes out its simple story nicely, without padding it. It's also an example of "pure cinema", in that no intelligible dialogue is used, nor is necessary, so can be easily understood, regardless of age or nationality. The film aims to be a mild, genial satire of consumerism and the trappings of fame, but doesn't show the world suffering or learning a lesson from the onslaught of caterpillar-mania. Instead, it's about the boy learning a bit about how life can sometimes be about loss, and inevitable change.
It's not quite as serious and downbeat as that might sound, however. While not fall-down hilarious, it has some gentle, visual wit. A typical gag is when our enterprising trio, on their world tour, disembark from their airliner, to a throng of screaming fans waiting for them on the tarmac. Front and center in the crowd is a quintet of long-haired rock n' rollers (apparently stand-ins for The Beatles or The Rolling Stones... though they actually resemble The Ramones, in retrospect), all wearing caterpillar t-shirts. Put into the position of being just like their own typical screaming teenage fans, the group is barely able to contain its enthusiasm, and they make a rush toward our trio, who flee the area in a helicopter, the rockers hanging off the landing gear, in a scene that vaguely prefigures the abortive USO show in Apocalypse Now.
Sametka's director, Zdenek Miler (1921-2011), was born near Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, and had a background in painting and illustration. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was nearly sent off to a concentration camp, for taking part in anti-Nazi student demonstrations, but instead managed to continue to study and pursue a career in graphic design, and eventually, animation. By the mid-1940s, he was working for the Bat'a animation studio, under the famed Czech animator (and co-founder of the studio), Jiri Trnka, who himself was a skilled illustrator and cartoon animator, and who was beginning to branch off into the dimensional puppet animation he would become famous for.
Miler worked his way up to directing his own animated films by 1948, eventually became the head of the studio. He was best-known for his character Krtek, The Little Mole, who debuted in a theatrical short Miler directed in 1957, How the Mole Got His Pants, and continued on in 48 more short films, made over the course of 45 years. Though not very well-known in America, Krtek was otherwise seen worldwide, primarily on television. The series did well for the Bat'a Studio while under the communist regime, and eventually made Miler a wealthy man, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Miler also directed some individual cartoon films, as well as a brief 1960s series featuring a puppy character, and late-1970s series involving a cricket, before ultimately retiring from animation in 2001.
Some further images from Sametka:
"Why yes, my young friend would be only too happy to work full-time in all of your sneaker factories! Let's try to hammer out a coordinated schedule and make this happen!"
"Patience, gentlemen, patience... Kate Upton will be out here momentarily."
"Ahhhhh... nothing beats a Saturday night marathon of Faces of Death, eh, boy?"
"Good thinking there, using the super glue, kid... now my nose will never get cold!"
"Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce... No, I'm sorry, but Mr. Draper is indisposed... can I take a message?"
Oh no! The twins were right! Seek cover immediately!!!
"Cool! Check it out-- Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve are having a cat-fight! I love Paris!"
"Mmmmm.... tantalizing treats galore... if I only had a can opener..."
"Gee, this symbiont trend is really taking hold!"
The Six Flags production of "Stop the Worm - I Want to Get Off"...
"It was a grand time for fishing on the Yangtze... live bait was cheap, plentiful and abnormally large..."
"That's right... lose yourself to the lilting music, my fuzzy little friend... a bit closer... closer... you're nearly in the Moon-beast's lair... you'll never know what hit you... damn, my exposed hands are frozen!"
"Excellent! I doubt The Borrowers will even notice the tiny explosives I've installed in each piece!"
"I want to ride my bi-cy-cle, I want to ride my bike... the next stage in my life-cycle, I'll tell them all to take a hike..."
"I've done it... now I just hope the arson investigators find no trace of accelerants..."
"--And the Road Warrior? That's the last I ever saw of him. He lives now, only in my memory..."
They all laughed when Bruce Banner sat down at the piano and started to play...
As you can see from the screen captures, this is an amazing-looking
film... essentially like a top-level children's book brought to life, with a very strong
sense of design. Everything has a stylized flatness, though with fairly
smooth animation, where characters move either in a straight up-down,
left-right plane, or in isometric perspective. A lot of it looks like vintage travel posters. It's difficult to get the theme music out of your head, once heard.
Imported and distributed to U.S. classrooms in 1971
by Columbia Pictures' educational film division, Learning Corporation of
America, Sametka ("The Velvet Caterpillar") was retitled as, simply, "Caterpillar". For me, this whimsical little animated tale is a very early memory from the
beginning of my public elementary school years... back when the
kindergarten teacher wanted to take a break (or give us a little
classroom treat, on the eve of a holiday vacation) by wheeling out the
16mm sound film projector and having us watch something cute and
harmless for 15 minutes. I saw it two or three times, at a couple of
different schools (in different eastern U.S. states), between 1974 and
1976, enough to have it lightly burned into my brain, waiting as a
latent, half-remembered recollection for several decades, until freed as
a glorious nostalgia buzz, when I stumbled upon it on YouTube a couple
of years ago... one of those things lost to time, that you assume you
would never see again, if you even remember it at all.
As far as I can tell, from doing some searches, Sametka isn't available on home video in any of the Czech animation collections widely available, so YouTube is pretty much your only option, at this point....
Why not give it a look?
*Update (7/18/15): Reader rnigma correctly points out that, despite my initial solo crediting of the tale to Norman Corwin, the true creator of "Once Upon a Time" was actually author and fellow radio playwright, Lucille Fletcher. Fletcher was most famous for writing one of the greatest radio plays of all time, "Sorry, Wrong Number", performed perfectly by Agnes Moorehead in the long-running radio series, Suspense, and on the big screen by Barbara Stanwyck in the 1948 Paramount film. She also wrote the creepy cross-country tale, "The Hitch-Hiker", as well... which was performed on radio by Orson Welles, and later adapted (with some changes) for television by Rod Serling, as one of the more memorable episodes of the original Twilight Zone, with Inger Stevens encountering the same sinister, shabby man thumbing a ride. During the 1940s, Fletcher was married to the musical maestro of radio, film (and later, television), Bernard Herrmann.
As our story opens, Prince Tuan Zhengchun (Si Wai) and Qin Hongmian (Gam Lau) are indulging in some sweet, adulterous lovin', when Qin vomits in her mouth a little, and admits that she's two months' pregnant...
Not a problem for our horndogging Prince Tuan, who advises her to tell her husband, the sartorially-monikered Yellow Robe Man (Shut Chung-Tin), that it's his baby.
"--Or maybe you could tell him the baby was sent to the wrong address!"
Genius plan there, Johnny One Time... except her hubby's been away for six months, and...
"What? 6 > 2?!? I don't understand math... I HATE math!!"
Oh, look-- speak of the devil, he's just come home, sword in hand, ready to lop off your head for assisting his wife in cuckolding him! Oops!
"Hi, honey... evening, Prince... I believe we can resolve this infidelity bugaboo like calm, rational adults, but first...."
No worries, though... after some nimble sword-dodging-fu, Prince Tuan makes a finger-gun and --pyew! pyew!-- shoots blue lasers (!) into Yellow Robe's knees, crippling him. Ah, yes... the old Yang-Yi Finger Technique [tm]! Understandably upset over this unfortunate turn of events, Yellow Robe Man vows revenge, "--Even if it takes twenty years!" (foreshadowing, perhaps?), and nevertheless manages an impressive escape-jump, fifteen feet up from the ground to the top of the garden wall... but not before Prince Tuan zaps him a couple more times, severing both legs! Yet, incredibly, it still doesn't stop the Yellow-Jacketed One from getting away.
"Eureka! I just invented the laser pointer!"
"Ah, there's your trouble, Fred... Water-Margin-on-the-knee!"
"This calls for some Martial Art-throscopic surgery!"
"Dammit, this isn't how I wanted to learn about the Massacre at Wounded Knee..."
--Ask Yellow Robe. For weeks, he was being played by his wife, Qin,
the concubine... but to Qin, he was damaged goods, leaving him
without a leg to stand on.
"These legs are made for dropping... and that's just what they'll do..."
"...one of these days these legs are gonna drop clean off of you..."
"Don't you dare make a comedy golf video! I'll leave you for good!!"
With that, Prince Tuan nonchalantly decides to call it a night --after all, how could anything possibly top what's just happened? He brushes off Qin's pleas to leave with him, when Shu Baifeng (Hung Ling-Ling), Prince Tuan's fiancee, instantly pops in... because she just heard he was in a fight (apparently the housemaid, whom we see briefly, is a blabbermouth).
"Oh very well... have your Date Debate, girls... guess I'll have to act as arbiter..."
Shu lets it be known that she and Prince Tuan are to be married within a month, and snootily tells Qin that he's too high-class to bring home a tramp like her. This is all news to Qin, who doesn't take it well (and notices a conspicuous red mole on Shu's wrist). Double-oops! All of this stuff takes place in just over four minutes of screen time.
"Sorry, kid... the next show's at eight."
Twenty years after the opening credits, in an undisclosed cavern lair (with back-projected disco lighting), an aging, long-haired Yellow Robe Man tells his balding, green, fang-faced monster minion --who sports a huge metal claw for a right hand (!),Canglong (Chiang Tao, who steals the show), to kidnap the now King Tuan's grown-up son...
David Crosby has seen better days...
...and then briefly displays his own mechanical, stalagmite-busting, telescoping chicken legs [tm] (!), for the benefit of the audience...
Cheer up, Old Yeller... maybe someday you'll meet a nice gull and settle down...
--That is, if you put your best foot forward. No, wait! Stop!! You're overdoing it!!!
"Hmm... 'WANTED: Sheltered Fop for full-time position as Human Punching
Bag. No prior experience required. Must be willing to part with teeth'..."
Meanwhile,the king's son, Prince Tuan Yu (Danny Lee) is introduced as a bookish lad, immersed in studying poetry. A pacifist, he's completely disinterested in martial arts and fighting, much to the chagrin of his parents, who feel he needs to master his fighting skills to properly rule, when the time comes for him to inherit the throne. Dad gives him a month's ultimatum to train, but Tuan Yu decides to leave the palace and wander off into the countryside, instead. His idea is to see if he can randomly get into trouble, and maybe learn to handle himself that way, by osmosis. Sounds like a plan that can't possibly fail.
Elsewhere, the still-resentful Qin has her grown daughter, the lovely Mu Wanqing (Tanny Tien Ni), demonstrate to her the culmination of ten solid years of training in the art of fighting. Naturally, this involves picking off coins (dangling on strings) with a semi-automatic dagger-shooting plastic femur (!), The Bone-Cutting Sword [patent pending]!
"Skeletor, you are AVENGED!"
Suitably impressed, Qin sends her off into the world, telling her to be a stone-cold ruthless bitch, as well as making her promise to A.) kill Shu Baifeng on sight ("Just look for that red mole on her wrist!") and B.) keep her face covered with a mask, because "--all men (like, for instance, her biological father... that no-good, cheatin' King Zhengchun) are worthless trash"! She also gives her a jade talisman thing as a keepsake.
"Those aren't loaded, are they?"
Back to Tuan Yu, strolling through the woods... who happens upon pretty, high-jumping Zhong Ling-ehr (Lam Jan-Kei), playing with a fistful of deadly snakes. They "meet cute", after she slaps him, for trying to "save" her from her slithery pets. Oh, and she also has a deadly-to-the-touch glowing toad that she carries around in a little ornamental box, just because. Despite Tuan Yu's protests, Ling-ehr lingers, offers friendship, and strikes a deal where she'll teach him to fight if he'll teach her to read... which is fine with him, as long as she keeps her snakes to herself.
"Hey, want a semi-deadly phosphorescent gummy worm?"
"No thanks, I'm trying to cut down..."
Lance Link... what'cha gonna do? Prince Tuan's about to kung-fu you!
Moments later, the first (and, as it turns out, final) fight lesson lasts all of about five seconds, when Tuan Yu proves to be a useless, uncoordinated weakling. But that's okay... Zhong tells him that she knows a short-cut to total invincibility that requires no practice: find a fabled giant red snake and drink its blood! Hey, if it's good enough for Macho Man Randy Savage, it's good enough for Tuan Yu. So his quest begins... along the way, he encounters a clan of poison-drinking bandits, snake-fu, the mysterious (well, not really) Xiang Yaocha, a giant crimson rubber python, crazy battles galore and probably the most laughably paltry killer ape in cinema history, as the various plot-lines eventually converge.
Louis Cha, aka Jin Yong
One of a quartet of gonzo Shaw Brothers sci-fi/fantasy films starring Danny Lee, all released between 1975 and 1977, which includes The Super Inframan (a.k.a. The Super Inframan), The Oily Maniac, and The Mighty Peking Man (a.k.a. Goliathon), the smaller-scale The Battle Wizard (Tian Long Ba Bu) may be the strangest of them all, packing all the plot I've described (and more) into just under 73 minutes. Goofy as it appears at face value, the film was actually based (loosely, one would assume) on a portion (the story of "Duan Yu") of the novel, "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils", written in 1963 by best-selling wuxia (Chinese swordplay drama) author, Louis Cha Leung-yung, under his nom de plume, Jin Yong. It was originally serialized in the pages of Ming Pao, the daily Hong Kong newspaper he had both co-founded and on which he had served as editor-in-chief. In the 1990s, a few of Hong Kong's more popular cinematic exports-- Kar Wai Wong's Ashes of Time (1994) and Sui-Tung Ching's Swordsman trilogy (1990-1993) --were likewise based, as were several others, on Louis Cha's novels. Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, itself, was adapted several more times, including a 1982 film using the novel's proper title, in 1994 as The Dragon Chronicles - The Maidens (starring Brigitte Lin and Gong Li), and four TV series incarnations, in 1982, 1997, 2003 and 2013. There have even been some video games loosely sourced from the novel, in 2002, 2007 and 2012, the best-known probably being 2007's Dragon Oath.
Despite my jokey plot description above, the title of
the source novel helps to explain some of the strange goings-on in the
film. We're dealing with mythology here, a world where magic and
half-gods are almost commonplace, so things like drinking the blood of a
giant snake for invincibility isn't all that different from Achilles
achieving the same result when dipped in the River Styx as a baby...
it's just that, in this movie, all of it comes from out of left field, with
no explanation, in what would otherwise be assumed to be a standard,
period-set martial arts film. Combined with the (intentionally)
broadly-played characters, --which is a tradition in popular Chinese
cinema-- the colorful and kinetic (if rarely convincing) special effects, plus the
typically sloppy, slapdash "old-school" English dubbing... and you have a kooky
kung-fu cocktail, guaranteed to provide an amazing and amusing good time.And,
at a trim 73 minutes --with nice fight choreography, as well as camerawork and
editing that rarely takes a breather-- there's little opportunity for
boredom to set in. At the very least, fans of John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (1986) should give The Battle Wizard a look, for the
bizarre, effects-laden magical fighting scenes; one could easily picture
Kurt Russell's "Jack Burton" spouting one-liners as he's trounced by the
likes Yellow Robe Man and the jovially evil Canglong.
Director Pao Hsueh-Li began as a cinematographer, joining Shaw Brothers in 1966 to shoot films such as Trail of the Broken Blade (1967),Golden Swallow (1968), The Bells of Death (1968), The Magnificent Swordsman (1968) and The Twelve Gold Medallions (1970). Before long, he would make the jump to directing with Finger of Doom (1970, a.k.a. Tai Yin Zhi, though actually released in 1972), involving a vampire-esque sorceress who shoots toxic darts from her metal fingers, which change her foes into zombie slaves... sort of a warm-up for the craziness of The Battle Wizard. He kept busy throughout the 1970s, co-directing a number of action films with veteran director Chang Cheh, including The Water Margin (1972), Man of Iron (1972), The Delightful Forest (1972), The Boxer from Shantung (1972), The Iron Bodyguard (1973), as well as solo efforts, like Oath of Death (1971), Five Tough Guys (1974, a.k.a. Kung Fu Hellcats), The Imposter (1975), Hero from Shanghai (1977, a.k.a. Lay Out) and the Charlie's Angels knock-off, The Deadly Angels (1977), among others. The Battle Wizard was his last effort for Shaw Brothers, though he continued his directing career independently, with such films as The Hero Tattoo with Nine Dragons (1978), Bloody Treasure Fight (1979), Revenger (1979) and Wu Tang Clan (1980). Branching out, he formed a production company, Yu Fung, with his wife, Katy Chin Shu-Mei, a screenwriter, and made a handful of films, including Night of the Assassins (1981), Beauty Escort (1981, a.k.a. Samurai Bells of Death), Ninja in the Deadly Trap (1981, directed by Philip Kwok), etc.
Danny Lee as Prince Tuan Yu... A big name in Hong Kong and Taiwanese popular cinema for over a quarter-century, Lee began as a Shaw Brothers star and supporting player in the early 1970s, including, most notably, The Water Margin (1972), River of Fury(1973), The Iron Bodyguard (1973), All Men Are Brothers (1975); as the legendary martial arts star in the title role of the exploitive Bruce Lee and I (1976, a.k.a. Bruce Lee... His Last Days); a bionic superhero in the previously-mentioned The Super Inframan (1975); as a vicious (and viscous!) vigilante in the bizarre horror sleaze-fest, The Oily Maniac (1976); and as the male lead in the King Kong rip-off, The Mighty Peking Man (1977), opposite the blonde and beautiful Evelyn Kraft. After tiring of period kung fu roles, and given the opportunity to produce and direct, he was most often seen in the 1980s and 1990s as a determined cop in a succession of crime thrillers and police procedural stories, such as Law with Two Phases(1984), Organized Crime and Triad Bureau (1994) and Asian Connection (1995). From this latter period, Lee is probably most familiar to modern Western audiences for co-starring with action star Chow-Yun Fat in director John Woo's breakthrough hit,The Killer (1989), and as gangsters in Ringo Lam's heist thriller,City on Fire (1987, with a plot that Quentin Tarantino later borrowed for Reservoir Dogs (1991)) and John Woo & Ma Wu's gangster drama Just Heroes (1989, made to benefit the directors' debt-ridden mentor, Chang Cheh, and current Hong Kong superstar Stephen Chow's film debut).
Tanny Tien Ni (a.k.a. Ni Tien) as Mu Wanqing... Tien was a popular actress at both Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, who began her film career with Sword of Endurance (1969), after working in television. The sleepy-eyed beauty had female leads and supporting roles in a diverse array of genres, including three roles in the comedy anthology The Happiest Moment (1973); as a pickpocket in the crime comedy The Rat Catcher (1974); the revenge-seeking fiancee of an undercover policeman in John Woo's solo directorial debut, The Young Dragons(1975); as the detective who helps Tamara Dobson discover what happened to her missing friends, in the cross-cultural blaxploitation epic, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975); the manipulative beauty, "Moon Heart", in the fantasy-adventure, The Magic Blade (1976); the murder victim who won't stay put in the Les Diaboliques-like Hex (1980) and was cast in several other horror films: A Haunted House (1975), Black Magic (1975), Black Magic 2 (1976), Crocodile (1979), Corpse Mania (1981) and Human Lanterns (1982). She's long been married to Hong Kong film star Hua Yueh (Come Drink with Me (1966), Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972), Killer Clans (1976), etc).
Lam Jan-Kei (a.k.a. Chen Chi Lin) as Zhong Ling-ehr... A cute, spunky ingenue in a brief run of Shaw Brothers productions in the latter half of the 1970s, she can also be seen in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975); as the title con-artist's accomplice-in-drag in The Spiritual Boxer (1975); the female lead opposite star Ti Lung in the musical adaptation of Madame White Snake, The Snake Prince (1976) and as the "Lady in Red" (with major bangs) in the Hell segment of Chang Cheh's strange fantasy of the afterlife, Heaven and Hell(1980, a.k.a. Shaolin Hellgate). Just prior to her retirement from acting, she had a strong role as a sadistic blackmailer of three students involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident, in Tsui Hark's early directorial effort, Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980, a.k.a. Don't Play with Fire), and finished up, interestingly enough, as part of the cast of the aforementioned 1982 feature film adaptation of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.
Shut Chung-Tin (a.k.a. Chung Tien Shih) as Yellow Robe Man... A fixture in many kung fu and swordplay films of the 1970s, a highlight being a starring turn in Rivals of Kung Fu (1974), as real-life figure Master Wong Fei-hung (later portrayed by both Jackie Chan in his Drunken Master films, and by Jet Lee in the Once Upon a Time in China series of the mid-1990s), along with Iron Man (1973), Spiritual Boxer (1975), Challenge of the Masters (1976), Shaolin Temple (1976), as the evil "Captain Pa" in The Iron Monkey (1977), and many others. He was often cast in Battle Wizard director Pao Hsueh-Li's other projects, including Five Tough Guys (1974), The Taxi Driver (1975), The Imposter (1975), Hero from Shanghai (1977), The Hero Tattooed with Nine Dragons (1978), Duel at Tiger Village (1978), with Danny Lee in Mask of Vengeance (1980), Beauty Escort (1981) and The Kung Fu Emperor (1981). Beyond the early 1980s, his career pace slowed down, but was still seen in a few lower-budget features, like Godfrey Ho's crazy hopping-vampires-and-gangsters opus, Devil Dynamite (1987), Young Kickboxer (1990), The Dignified Killers (1991), The Killer from China (1991) and Country Side Hero (1995).
Chiang Tao (a.k.a. Kong Do) as Canglong... Chiang Tao was a very busy guy from the early-1970s onward, his prime years almost exclusively in kung fu films, such as Man of Iron (1972), Chinese Hercules (1973), one of the villainous quintet matching the Five Shaolin Masters (1974), Shaolin Martial Arts (1974), Disciples of Shaolin (1975), with Shut Chung-Tin in Challenge of the Masters(1976),Executioners from Shaolin (1977), Pao Hsueh-Li's Hero from Shanghai (1977), 10 Magnificent Killers (1977), Shaolin Abbot (1979), Return to the 36th Chamber (1980), with Lam Jan-Kei in Heaven and Hell (1980), the comic book adaptation Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983), Fighting Madam (1987, a.k.a. Iron Angels), with Danny Lee in Just Heroes (1989), and tons more. In one of the weirder movies in his filmography (apart from The Battle Wizard, that is), he played the trainer of Bruce Lee clone #1 (Dragon Lee) in the wacky 'Bruceploitation' oddity, The Clones of Bruce Lee (1977).
Gam Lau (a.k.a. Lu Chin) as Qin Hongmian... Another ingenue from the era, though with a slightly colder, tougher sheen than usual. Aside from The Battle Wizard, her highest-profile role to Western audiences was undoubtedly as the sultry drug connection, who makes out in a bar with grope-happy former 007, George Lazenby, before luring him (under orders from future star/director Sammo Hung) to a back alley beat-down, in Stoner (1974, a.k.a. The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss). She can also be seen in The Association (1974), Death Duel (1977), The Mad Monk Strikes Again (1978) and Challenge of Death (1979)
Si Wai (a.k.a. Wei Szu) as Prince Tuan Zhengchun... Si Wei had an eight-year run in films, mostly modern-set crime, horror, drama and soft-core erotic tales, including Ghost Eyes (1974), the first segment ("Haunted House") of the ghost story anthology Fearful Interlude (1975), The Drug Connection (1976), the first story ("Hidden Torsos") of the crime anthology The Criminals (1976), The Forbidden Past (1976), Dreams of Eroticism (1977), with Danny Lee in The Call Girls (1977), Pao Hsueh-Li's The Deadly Angels (1977), The Psychopath (1978), Return of the Dead (1979), Shaolin Abbot (1979), etc.
Hung Ling-Ling asShu Baifeng... In a film career that spanned twenty years, beginning as an extra in the early 1960s and graduating to mostly smaller supporting parts from the 1970s into to the early 1980s, she played a multitude of maids, nurses, wives, village girls, gamblers, best friends, and especially prostitutes and madams. She can be seen as star Lo Lieh's courtesan in The Magic Blade (1976), a jurist in the Danny Lee monster movie The Oily Maniac (1976), and in King Boxer (1972, a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death), Fists of Vengeance (1972, a.k.a. The Deadly Knives), Gambling Syndicate (1975), Mantis Fists and Tiger Claws of Shaolin (1977), The Boxer from the Temple (1979), The Brothers (1979), Possessed II (1984), and loads more.
Keung Hon (a.k.a. Han Chiang) as Sikong Xuan (leader of the Poison Drinking Cult)... A familiar face in Hong Kong action films of the 1970s and early 1980s, Korean-born Keung Hon was mainly seen, as with The Battle Wizard, in roles as second-string bad guys and/or fighters, appearing with Tien Ni in The Rat Catcher (1974), as a Korean boxer in the Shaw Bros/Hammer Studios co-production Shatter (1974, a.k.a. Call Him Mr. Shatter), with Lam Jan-Kei and Shut Chung-Tin in The Spiritual Boxer (1975), Killer Clans (1976), King Gambler (1976), with Danny Lee in The Oily Maniac (1976), The Chinatown Kid (1977), The Vengeful Beauty (1978), The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), Dirty Ho (1979), The Boxer from the Temple (1979), Monkey Kung Fu (1979), Abbot of Shaolin (1979), The Deadly Breaking Sword (1979), with Lam Jan-Kei and Chiang Tao in Heaven and Hell (1980), with Chiang Tao in Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983), and Bloody Parrot (1981), to name but a few.
San Shu-Wa (a.k.a. Shu-hua Hsin) as Chief Zhong (Ling-ehr's father)... There's not much background info (in English, anyway) to be found on this character actor, who apparently acted mainly in smaller roles in films, sporadically, between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, which leads me to believe he was probably a lot more active in television and/or on the stage. His feature career peak was easily 1977, when he appeared in seven films, playing parts like middle-aged film directors, party guests, aging fathers, a police sergeant, and a royal court member or two. His magic-wielding elder in The Battle Wizard may well be his showcase role. He can be spotted in The Yellow Muffler (1972), King Gambler (1976), The Deadly Angels (1977), The Call Girls (1977), The Mad Monk (1977), The Dream of the Red Chamber (1977), Gambler's Delight (1981), Hex After Hex (1982), Passing Flickers (1982), Winner Take All (1982) and the sci-fi comedy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (1983).
Here's the original trailer for The Battle Wizard, designed for the international market:
Like a good number of Shaw Brothers films, The Battle Wizard has gotten a decent DVD presence in several territories. Well Go USA released it here in North America in 2008, as part of their Sword Masters series, and it remains in print, available fairly cheaply from the usual online retailers. It's a nice, colorful remastered print, in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The language options for the Region 1 release include both Chinese (with some newly-added stereo sound effects) and English (an old-school dub) soundtracks and removable subtitles in either language. The only extra feature is a brief, modern trailer for the film (not the vintage one shown above), which is par for the course with these Celestial Pictures-licensed releases of classic Shaw Brothers titles. Sadly, none of the major, legitimate streaming services in North America seem to offer the film at the moment, but Netflix has it as a disc-by-mail rental, which is how I first got to see it, back in early 2009.
Now... feast your eyes on more amazing sights from The Battle Wizard!
Sametka, released in 1967, is based on an original story by Lucille Fletcher* (see update at the bottom of this article), adapted by eminent author, poet, screenwriter and radio storyteller, Norman Corwin, previously filmed as the Cary Grant feature, Once Upon a Time (1944). In that version, the caterpillar is never shown (it is always either in its box, or is reacted to, off-camera), its act left to the viewer's imagination. Cary Grant plays the entrepreneur/manager as a slick, fast-talking character; almost a scam artist.
Sametka's director, Zdenek Miler (1921-2011), was born near Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, and had a background in painting and illustration. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was nearly sent off to a concentration camp, for taking part in anti-Nazi student demonstrations, but instead managed to continue to study and pursue a career in graphic design, and eventually, animation. By the mid-1940s, he was working for the Bat'a animation studio, under the famed Czech animator (and co-founder of the studio), Jiri Trnka, who himself was a skilled illustrator and cartoon animator, and who was beginning to branch off into the dimensional puppet animation he would become famous for.
Miler worked his way up to directing his own animated films by 1948, eventually became the head of the studio. He was best-known for his character Krtek, The Little Mole, who debuted in a theatrical short Miler directed in 1957, How the Mole Got His Pants, and continued on in 48 more short films, made over the course of 45 years. Though not very well-known in America, Krtek was otherwise seen worldwide, primarily on television. The series did well for the Bat'a Studio while under the communist regime, and eventually made Miler a wealthy man, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Miler also directed some individual cartoon films, as well as a brief 1960s series featuring a puppy character, and late-1970s series involving a cricket, before ultimately retiring from animation in 2001.
