Starring Liang Hsiu-Shen, Richard Kiel and Betty Pei Ti.
Directed by Sadamasa Arikawa and Chang Mei-Chun for 21st Century Film Corporation.

Also known as THE PHOENIX, this Taiwanese production, detailing the discovery of a magic ‘vessel of plenty’ in old China, is theatrical and pantomime-like, with brightly coloured sets, cell-animation magic FX and a multi-coloured puppet phoenix.

The movie starts slowly, but the finale is an enjoyably silly spectacle, as Ty, the hero, rides the phoenix, which is a stiff-winged cross between a stuffed peacock and THE GIANT CLAW, to the island retreat of the evil sorceress Flower Fox. Here the silver-caped, sword-wielding do-gooder confronts a giant, goofy-headed rock monster! A Toho-esque battle ensues between the man-in-a-boulder-suit thingy and the big peacock-on-a-wire, which only ends when the rock-man has his head blown off by our hero’s magic sword! But, even then, the headless rock-man keeps pacing towards Ty, so Ty zaps the creature with his sun-powered, heat ray-projecting mystical sword, finally totally obliterating the ol’ boulder beast in a big explosion!

After beating big Richard Kiel (who would go on to appear in the Hong Kong action-comedy MAD MISSION 3: OUR MAN FROM BOND STREET), Ty has to fight ghostly replicas of himself generated by the vessel of plenty. This involves some less than top-notch optical effects, you’ll be surprised to learn.

Tidal wave miniature effects and a paper fan that can create powerful gusts of wind also find their way into this movie, but these cool elements aren’t enough to outweigh the rather prosaic direction, bargain basement effects (despite the fact Arikawa used to be the special effects supervisor on many Godzilla movies) and flat lighting.