There's unrest in the martial arts world, involving on one hand a book
by martial arts chronicler Fong (Lau Siu-Ming) - which is actually a
forgery) - on the other mysterious murders at Shum Castle, apparently
committed by a swarm of killer butterflies.
So martial arts master Tien (Wong Shu Tong) travels to Shum Castle at
Shum's (Zhang Guozhu) express request with Green Shadow (Michelle Mee), a
female martial artist who's just intrigued by the mystery and persuades
Tien to take her along for the ride.
At the castle, Tien finds out that everybody lives in fear of the
butterflies and has hidden underground - but to Tien's dismay, Shum has
also invited Fong to help so9lving the mystery, and soon enough Fong and
Green Shadow team up and find out quite a few things, including a secret
undergroung lab in which someone obviously tried to develop a gun. But
before any of that can lead to anything, Shum is killed as well by the
killer butterflies, right in front of everyone. His last will invites two
martial artists (Wang Jiang, Eddy Ko) to the castle, who are soon enough
at each other's throats plus have their quarrels with Tien. But as if that
wasn't enough, an armoured killer starts roaming the catacombs beneath the
castle as well.
Eventually, Fong and Green Shadow find out quite a few things, like
that Shum was never really killed by the butterflies but faked his own
death to gain control of the martial arts world with a gun he has
developed, and he has only invited all the martial artists to his castle
after his staged death to have them kill each other - oh and of course,
there are no killer butterflies in the first place, that's another little
detail Shum has merely made up (but convincingly so).
Somehow all the martial artists involved ultimately manage to dispose
of Shum, but somehow Shum's plan succeeds nevertheless, since all the
martial artists kill one another and even Green Shadow is killed in the
proceedings, and at the end, Fong, merely a chronicler not a martial
artist himself, is left the last man standing.
In plot, The Buterfly Murders is reminiscent of Chu
Yuan's Ku Lung adaptations, though in style, director Tsui
Hark, whose debut feature this was, departs considerably from Chu Yuan's
almost excessive direction and opts for something closer to the Italian
giallo and Hitchcock's The Birds - but mixed of course with Chinese period setings and lots of
martial arts - which are often quite inventive too. The result is a very
entertaining and satisfying martial arts mystery full of exhilarating
plottwists and a refreshingly light-footed approach to the genre.
Recommended, actually.
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