a.k.a. A Mi De Dao
company: Lin Hop Production Company
year: 1979
runtime: 92′
country: Taiwan
director: Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung
cast: Chin Lung, Au-Yeung Ling-Lung,
Kao Yuen, Lung Tien-Hsiang,
Chang Chi-Ping, Wong Fei,
Chi Yuk-Sang
writer: Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung
and Kuk Yun
cinematographer: Cheung Tak-Kon
original music: Wong Mau-Saan
not on home video in the USA
Plot: A lucky shape-shifting stone monkey escapes the village it brings good fortune to just before a major disaster destroys it. It is captured in a bottle by two thieving practitioners of the dark arts, who use it to strike it rich.
The Merciful Buddha is just one out of the teaming multitude of odd low-budget Taiwanese period fantasies produced from the late 1970s onwards, and a particularly boring one at that (especially when compared to off-the-wall craziness like Thrilling Sword or War of the Wizards, both to be reviewed here shortly). It’s not that the film doesn’t have weirdness to offer – there’s quite a bit of it, in fact, most of which will be revealed here in due course. It’s just that said weirdness is too easily lost in the brick-dense melodrama that surrounds it.
The proceedings get off to a promising enough start, with an extraordinarily brief bit of kaiju-emulation. The giant stone monkey overlooking a village decides that it’s had quite enough of this living-in-a-mountain business and escapes, briefly threatening to destroy a reasonably constructed period miniature. Instead it shrinks to the size of a young chimpanzee (switching from a man-in-suit to, surprise surprise, a young chimpanzee) and lets an explosion of unknown origin do the work for him. Either way, the miniature is left a fiery ruin, the giant monster fan in me satisfied, if only momentarily.
Aside from a reverse shot of the stone monkey taking its rightful place back atop a mountain at the end of the story, the rest of The Merciful Buddha is woefully monster free. The focus is on a pair of thieves, who use the escaped stone monkey as their own special sort of get rich quick scheme. They force the creature to shape shift into a black bear that, in turn, roams around town stealing everyone’s prized possessions. The pair get richer and richer while those around them grow poorer and poorer – needless to say, something’s gotta give.
Eighteen years pass and a young fairy woman miraculously born just before the stone monkey escaped is on the hunt for her long lost mother, whom she hasn’t seen in the years since her village was destroyed. Helping the young woman is a young man, raised by the two thieves after they, unbeknownst to him, killed his statesman parents.
From there the story is relatively predictable. The young man discovers his adopted paretns’ thieving ways and sets out to make things right, stealing all their accumulated riches and dispersing them to the poor. The two thieves soon turn on each other – one kills the other after he is caught trying to steal what little treasure is left behind. The other is poetically slaughtered by a flock of sparrows in a bit of heavenly retribution (the man had previously prayed to Buddha, agreeing to a death by sparrow flock if he didn’t change his greedy ways). The young fairy woman eventually finds her mother and ascends, along with her elderly father and newfound lover, to heaven.
The Merciful Buddha is more a period melodrama with fantasy trappings than an out-and-out fantasy picture, though its story is punctuated with typically bizarre elements of the genre (at least as it exists in mainland Asia). The nature of the two thieves is revealed to the young man by, of all things, a horse with a human head that can see through time, and the end ascension shows the cast walking up to heaven on a rainbow. The young fairy woman frequently exercises her fairy powers, most amusingly to convince a pair of hoodlums to slap themselves silly, and she is protected by an immortal who likes to exercise his own magical slapping powers. It’s fun, to be sure, but not enough to keep the picture interesting as a whole.
Writer / director Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung had seen reasonable success as a martial arts director for years before The Merciful Buddha went into production, and it’s a pity that the few hand-to-hand fights to be had here are so fleeting. His handling of the drama is pretty dull all around – I doubt this was one of the high points of Tien-Yung’s (The Red Phoenix) career. Other elements of the production are pretty standard. Wong Mau-Saan provides the so-so score while an uncredited special effects crew does the best it can with the budget provided.
Though fun at times, The Merciful Buddha as a whole is average at best and dull at worst. Given the relative difficulty to be had in tracking it down, genre enthusiasts are encouraged to spend their time hunting for more worthwile efforts. Not recommended.
