What the HECK was I thinking when I saw this cheesy offering sitting on the shelf of my local Blockbuster and decided to rent it over some new, cooler releases? Maybe it was the colourful video cover or the promise of some BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA-inspired action that led me to take this home and pop it in the VCR. It was only then that I discovered the movie was ten years old and had a budget so low to make it amateurish in nature. Now, the occasional low-budget (and I mean REALLY low) movie can be good - such as LOOK WHO'S TOXIC - but I'm really not a fan of all that wannabe-campy Troma movie fare. So it was with some trepidation that I started watching this movie.
The problems are immediate from the start, with poor lighting, no sets because the film is so cheap, and dodgy camera-work. The (few) special effects used are generally poor, like a moving severed hand being pulled along with a piece of string or simply being the hand of a guy who's buried. For good measure there are some cheap prosthetics, a little gore and even a few dodgy computer effects for good measure, but thankfully they don't appear too often. On the plus side, THE MASTER DEMON offers up an almost constant stream of martial arts action, for those who enjoy that sort of thing, and you have to admit that the film is never boring. Some of the martial arts is good, some bad, but at least there's so much that the good outweighs the bad.
There are a weird bunch of characters in this movie. To start with we have Eric Lee's kung fu warrior hero, a Bruce Lee wannabe type yet again who really isn't too bad for a low budget film; he's quite likable and even gets a couple of Schwarzenegger one-liners to himself. Unfortunately the scene in which he pretends to be a monkey is a little too much. Then there's the P.I., a Robert Ginty-lookalike who has some amusing voice-over narration, and the Medusa, a bizarre female bodybuilder who apparently died soon after the film's completion. And who knows what the voluptuous Ava Cadell - apparently a "sex therapist" nowadays - is doing in the cast as a love interest. There are a few comic moments to make this mildly amusing, like the cheesy gag involving a falling building. THE MASTER DEMON is harmless entertainment and even mildly enjoyable at times, but just be wary of the really cheap budget.
The problems are immediate from the start, with poor lighting, no sets because the film is so cheap, and dodgy camera-work. The (few) special effects used are generally poor, like a moving severed hand being pulled along with a piece of string or simply being the hand of a guy who's buried. For good measure there are some cheap prosthetics, a little gore and even a few dodgy computer effects for good measure, but thankfully they don't appear too often. On the plus side, THE MASTER DEMON offers up an almost constant stream of martial arts action, for those who enjoy that sort of thing, and you have to admit that the film is never boring. Some of the martial arts is good, some bad, but at least there's so much that the good outweighs the bad.
There are a weird bunch of characters in this movie. To start with we have Eric Lee's kung fu warrior hero, a Bruce Lee wannabe type yet again who really isn't too bad for a low budget film; he's quite likable and even gets a couple of Schwarzenegger one-liners to himself. Unfortunately the scene in which he pretends to be a monkey is a little too much. Then there's the P.I., a Robert Ginty-lookalike who has some amusing voice-over narration, and the Medusa, a bizarre female bodybuilder who apparently died soon after the film's completion. And who knows what the voluptuous Ava Cadell - apparently a "sex therapist" nowadays - is doing in the cast as a love interest. There are a few comic moments to make this mildly amusing, like the cheesy gag involving a falling building. THE MASTER DEMON is harmless entertainment and even mildly enjoyable at times, but just be wary of the really cheap budget.