A kung fu master afflicted with a disease that makes beautiful women want to kill him goes on a suicide mission to find true love. Little Vatchel Cho is under a lot of stress. He is the youngest of three bastard sons of a once proud martial arts dynasty that has seen far better days; his kind yet philandering white mother has died and he has been left under the cruel tutelage of his blind kung fu master father (Michael Yama). Mr. Cho, possibly the down right meanest parent ever, grows suspicious of his sons and uses malevolent sarcasm and humiliating tricks to try to get them to cough up what his eyes cannot divine. I suppose... he could have asked someone. Anyway, so as he turns up the pressure, Vatchel relents, fesses up and takes all the blame for being a bastard while his two brothers remain as quiet as mice.
This results in some extra harsh training for Vatchel. So, Vatchel starts dealing with it by compulsively eating paint chips off of the shed he had been dutifully scraping when he first realized his mother wasn't going to make it and the worse it gets in his training the more paint chips he eats. Suddenly, from the paint, he is stricken with a rare disease that makes all beautiful women in his presence instantly go hog wild mad and try to kill him.
Wishing to rid the family compound of the shame of a bastard child, Mr. Cho banishes his little embarrassment to a life of solitude in the desert. Twenty years or so later Vatchel (Colin Miller) is called back from the badlands by his older brother Shang (Gianni Lazuli), who has become just at mean-spirited as the old man. Mr. Cho is feeble, on his deathbed, and Shang has spotted an opportunity to get Vatchel knocked off quick before the family fortune is divvied up in inheritance.
Using Vatchel's affliction and his code never to hit a girl against him, Shang tricks him into following his heart and overcoming his loneliness. What follows is an odyssey of a lamb's journey to slaughter with Shang bringing naive, sweet, if not mildly retarded Vatchel to the doorsteps of beautiful women who, as you might expect, gravely mistreat him. Along the way an oddly familiar family portrait is drawn within the framework of this fantasy, a basic struggle to fit in, to go home, to follow a code or even belong. Some of the funniest lines belong to the middle brother Ling (John F. Schaffer) who seems as ruined by life as any character I have ever seen. A midnight movie, a cult comedy hit if there ever was one with a beautiful earnestness flowing throughout. At the picture's debut at the San Diego Comic-Con there were moments that made the theater shake with laughter as the greedy Cho family dynasty slipped into ruin, knives in backs, and then ultimately took a shot at rising to a vision of former glory. Highly recommended for pervasive sense of silly fun, it cracked my top ten cult list and for that alone I give it a 10.
This results in some extra harsh training for Vatchel. So, Vatchel starts dealing with it by compulsively eating paint chips off of the shed he had been dutifully scraping when he first realized his mother wasn't going to make it and the worse it gets in his training the more paint chips he eats. Suddenly, from the paint, he is stricken with a rare disease that makes all beautiful women in his presence instantly go hog wild mad and try to kill him.
Wishing to rid the family compound of the shame of a bastard child, Mr. Cho banishes his little embarrassment to a life of solitude in the desert. Twenty years or so later Vatchel (Colin Miller) is called back from the badlands by his older brother Shang (Gianni Lazuli), who has become just at mean-spirited as the old man. Mr. Cho is feeble, on his deathbed, and Shang has spotted an opportunity to get Vatchel knocked off quick before the family fortune is divvied up in inheritance.
Using Vatchel's affliction and his code never to hit a girl against him, Shang tricks him into following his heart and overcoming his loneliness. What follows is an odyssey of a lamb's journey to slaughter with Shang bringing naive, sweet, if not mildly retarded Vatchel to the doorsteps of beautiful women who, as you might expect, gravely mistreat him. Along the way an oddly familiar family portrait is drawn within the framework of this fantasy, a basic struggle to fit in, to go home, to follow a code or even belong. Some of the funniest lines belong to the middle brother Ling (John F. Schaffer) who seems as ruined by life as any character I have ever seen. A midnight movie, a cult comedy hit if there ever was one with a beautiful earnestness flowing throughout. At the picture's debut at the San Diego Comic-Con there were moments that made the theater shake with laughter as the greedy Cho family dynasty slipped into ruin, knives in backs, and then ultimately took a shot at rising to a vision of former glory. Highly recommended for pervasive sense of silly fun, it cracked my top ten cult list and for that alone I give it a 10.