When 90-degree weather slammed into most of the northeast U.S. last week, I muscled an 8,000 BTU Frigadaire unit into my bedroom window like every other chump lacking central air conditioning. Once I was assured that my LCD monitor wouldn’t combust spontaneously or melt like Arnold Ernst Toht, I fired up what I thought would be a compelling documentary about basketball legend, George Gervin. Instead, I got Clarence Fok’s 1989 film, The Iceman Cometh. Golden-era Hong Kong action film is not unlike a strong mojito: refreshing, intoxicating, and gently muddled. I have no idea what that metaphor was supposed to mean, but there are people out there who know what I’m talking about. (They’re passed out, drunk on rum).
My introduction to Yuen Biao as a leading man was 1981’s The Prodigal Son, and I’m not sure that a better entry point for his solo filmography exists. True, I’ve seen far more Jackie Chan films. I’m more consistently amazed by Sammo Hung’s choreography. But as someone who had braces as a teenager, I established an empathic connection with Yuen Biao due to his imperfectly crooked teeth. It doesn’t hurt that he tangled with Keith Vitali, Cynthia Rothrock, and Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham in different Hong Kong film productions. Those cats are kinda in my wheelhouse.
For The Iceman Cometh, an action fantasy film made during the height of visual bombast in Hong Kong action cinema, you need a relative equal who can hang with Biao during fight scenes and provide a counterpoint in personality to his everyman. Yuen Wah, a hardened veteran and frequent villain of Hong Kong action film, and a fellow member of the Seven Little Fortunes, was more than up for the task.
The two play rivals during the years of the Ming Dynasty; one is a sadistic bandit-rapist-murderer, the other is the Royal Guard leader charged with his capture. When Feng San (Wah) goes on a violent spree and attempts to harness the power of a mystical buddha, Feng Sau Ching (Biao) gives chase, leading to a spectacular cliffside sword fight in the snow. One epic dummy fall later, and both characters are frozen in time like Ted Williams’s head or those fancy organic burritos that have fallen off the shelf and are stuck behind the Cherry Garcia in the supermarket freezer.
Approximately 300 years pass before a group of scientists dig them up and transport their ice-block tomb to Hong Kong for analysis (LASER BEAMS + Apple IIe). A bungled break-in leads to an accidental electrocution, and the reanimated corpses escape to begin life anew, free of the trappings of middle-ages inconvenience like typhoid and forcible castration. Feng San picks up where he left off – robbing, stealing, killing, and raping – but Ching has a much harder adjustment. He lives briefly as a vagrant before being taken in by a model and prostitute named Polla, played by Maggie Cheung.
Ching’s fish-out-of-water and man-out-of-time routine is played for (forced) comedy. He drinks water out of the toilet! He carries on conversations with a woman on TV as if she were really talking to him! He builds a fire in Polla’s apartment to cook! He calls a female phone caller a bitch because he sees Polla do the same thing and just wants to fit in! The routine gets a little stale but Biao plays it straight and sincere and the early dynamic between Polla and Ching plants the seeds for their changing relationship later on. Whether or not you buy this dynamic will go a long way in determining how much tolerance you have for the downtime in this film. (There’s a lot of it).
The best parts of this 1980s Hong Kong movie were the fight scenes and stunt set pieces. Crazy, right? Because it wasn’t impressive enough to have Yuen Wah and Yuen Biao fighting in an open-top jeep being dangled from a crane about 50 feet off the surface of a harbor, Biao ends up in the drink and Wah jumps and rolls into a pile of boxes. Their climactic sword fight is a little lumbering but gives way to a spectacular hand-to-hand fighting sequence in which no less than two priceless museum artifact displays are smashed to bits. The special effects are dated, but we can forgive that because it’s the 1980s and everyone is high as a kite on cocaine and slap bracelets.
For those of you who like your martial arts romantic comedies with steady doses of misogynistic violence, Fok has you covered. Most would agree that murder is bad, rape is horrible, and violence against women is reprehensible. So giving Feng San the sadistic signature of breaking his victims’ appendages before the aforementioned acts was the horse vomit garnish on the crazy shit sandwich. It gives the character a darker streak than this otherwise light film really needs.
The Iceman Cometh, while engaging in its way, is probably going to whiff with those expecting an action-packed throwdown. The comedy is a bit try-hard at times and at 109 minutes, it feels like padding more often than not. While not exactly a feast for the eyes, the film is fairly well-shot and the color palette relies quite a bit on purples and blues, especially towards the back end. If you’re looking for something a bit more under the radar from Yuen Biao’s filmography, this is a solid pick. Especially if you need some downtime to make more mojitos.
