Starring Yee Tung-Shing, Cherie Chung, Ku Kuan-Chung, Lung Tien-Hsiang and Ai Fei. Directed by Chu Yuan. Produced by Mona Fong for Shaw Brothers.

Shue Sang is found as a baby in an ice cave and later discovers that he is actually Yuen Ying (Yee Tung-Shing), a being from the Da Lor fairyland, a place situated between the spiritual and physical worlds. Imbued with special powers, he falls in love with a princess (Cherie Chung) and battles an evil villain, also originating from Da Lor fairyland, who has reincarnated on Earth.

There are the usual spacious Shaw Brothers sets on view in this fu flick, but these don’t really make up for the shoddy direction and lacklustre action choreography. Some of the effects are pretty poor too, including store-bought dolls on wires used to represent transcendence!

Even so, there’s stuff that keeps you watching, like the unexpected, ghoulish introduction of the Intelligent Kingdom, where young children on conveyer belts are checked over and, if it’s deemed their brains are too small, are nonchalantly tossed away into a furnace!

Plus there’s Yuen Ying’s bizarre selection of powers to look out for: he can fly, of course, he has the ability to turn into a giant pair of scissors, can duplicate himself, and he even transforms into a large axe to chop down the villain, who, during one fight, becomes a monster tree! Wild!

There’s also the novelty of seeing a Chinese mythological riff on the Superman/Clark Kent/Lois Lane story, complete with a clumsy alter-ego for the hero and his own version of the Fortress of Solitude.

If nothing else, DESCENDANT OF THE SUN really pulls out all the stops for an ending chock-full of cell-animated hand beams, flame-breathing, flying, stormy winds, and an attack by ghostly corpses that chew on the golden-garbed hero. This finale is not quite well enough done but, damn it, the result overflows with a crazed energy that manages to make it entertaining to watch anyway, especially when Yuen Ying makes all the zombie-ghosts explode!