Set during the Shang Dynasty in 1000 B.C., The Story of Chinese Gods opens with the poor people of China oppressed by tyrannical King Cheo who is under the influence of his malignant Queen. Unbeknownst to all, the seductive Queen is really a hideous demoness and her fellow demons-in-human guise have taken to snacking on humans in secret. When some of the King’s loyal ministers question the bad treatment of his people, Cheo has them speared or flung into a pit of snakes.
Outraged by his cruelty, the ancient Gods send forth Chung Chi-Na, a wise god in mortal form who spirits the suffering peasants to a far more pleasant land ruled by the Duke of Qi. The benevolent Duke feeds the hungry and awards land and tools so the poor farmers can grow crops, earning the love and devotion of his new subjects. Seemingly irked by the Duke’s goody-goody attitude, King Cheo sends a pair of assassins to murder him. When they fail, thanks to the heroic intervention of a kung fu-skilled woodcutter, he assembles an invasion force led by the fearsome General Wan.
Wan allies himself with Priest Hsien, a rogue immortal who rides a ghost like a motorcycle and brings a demon army including scary-looking but hilariously fey-voiced General Bat, a bratty little imp with awesome magical powers called Yu To, and most terrifying of all: the Four Kings of Evil. As Chung Chi-Na, who arrives riding a chi’i-lin - an auspicious part-dragon, part-unicorn like creature from Chinese folklore - with his feathered friend Eagle Man in tow, discovers this quartet of toothy, green-skinned, black-bearded giants are unstoppable. A heavenly hit squad arrives consisting of four feisty gods including Na Cha, the little prankster who flies on a pair of flaming wheels strapped to his feet, best known from the Shaw Brothers movies Na Cha and the 7 Devils (1971) and Na Cha the Great (1974) where he was played by superstar Alexander Fu Sheng. Na Cha’s splendid aerial battle aginst the shapeshifting Four Kings is one of the highlights of the film, but even he can’t halt their advance. So the heavenly hosts summon the ultimate warrior, the greatest hero in all of time and space, none other than Bruce Lee.
Yes, that’s right: Bruce Lee. Or more precisely an all-powerful fighting deity known as the God of All Powers who somehow chose to adopt the likeness of the world’s most famous martial arts star about three thousand years before he became famous. Perhaps the producers behind Hong Kong’s first animated feature film were trying to imply the real Bruce was some kind of earthly incarnation of the celestial deity, as was often posited of several heroes from Chinese folklore. There were no shortage of outlandish Bruceploitation films around the late Seventies, notably The Dragon Lives Again (1976) and Bruce Lee in New Guinea (1978), which despite that rather prosaic title is actually pretty darn wacky. The Story of Chinese Gods, alternately known as simply Chinese Gods or Bruce Lee and Chinese Gods, is one of the strangest Bruce Lee cash-ins as a possible attempt to get children interested in traditional Chinese tales by including a modern mythological hero.
A veil of frustrating mystery shrouds The Story of Chinese Gods. Even ardent Hong Kong film fanatics know next to nothing about the circumstances behind its making or even who the voice cast were. What we do know is the film ranks among the very few animated films made in Hong Kong, which include the likes of Old Master Q (1981) based on the popular manhua character created in the Fifties and revived on the big screen several times in recent years, A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997) which reimagined the classic live action film, My Life as McDull (2001) with the comical talking piglet who is Hong Kong’s answer to Snoopy, and Butterfly Lovers (2004) based on another classic Chinese fable. Producer Cheung Ying - who directed some notable live action films including the children’s musical The Fantasy of Deer Warrior (1961) and martial arts actioner 5 Kung Fu Daredevil Heroes (1977) - made this pioneering film in collaboration with screenwriter Shen Chiang, who wrote some of the most important swordplay films made at Shaw Brothers, including the studio’s first Temple of the Red Lotus (1964), and also directed some notable genre classics such asSwordswomen Three (1970) and Heroes of Sung (1973).
Chiang’s screenplay is engaging, albeit unfocused and somewhat troubling in its unequivocal equating of masculinity with goodness and femininity with evil. The crude animation cannot compare with Japanese productions made around the same time, or mainland Chinese films from a decade earlier, and is on the level of a mid-Seventies Saturday morning cartoon. Yet what the film lacks in technical expertise it makes up for in enthusiasm, including gleefully gruesome violence, garish fantasy battles and all manner of wacky mythological beings into a consistently lively hour and a half. Naturally, Bruce Lee’s yelping jeet kune do moves make short work of all the bad guys, mortal and immortal. Swallowed by a giant serpent he punches his way out of its stomach, zaps evildoers with laser beams from his third eye, sprouts extra heads and arms, morphs into two different kinds of fire-breathing dragons and has a showstopping shapeshifting duel with Priest Hsien that, as acknowledged by the liner notes on the Region 2 DVD, is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Disney’s The Sword in the Stone (1963). Not something we’ve ever seen Bruce do in any of his movies, though we all know he could have if he wanted to.
