Directed by Chang Hsin-Yi, starring Liu Shang-Chien, Chang Yi and Hsia Ling-Ling.

A small fireball zips from space, falls to Earth and enters the belly of a pregnant queen during childbirth. This kills the queen, unfortunately, as a large, red, veined blob of flesh instantly shoots from her womb. The distraught king chooses not to destroy the meaty ball and has it floated away down a river in a basket instead. Seven dwarves living in Happy Forest discover the throbbing flesh-glob, which splits open and becomes a cute baby, who the dwarves adopt and call Yaur-gi. Years later Yaur-gi, now an attractive young woman, encounters Prince Yur-juhn, who is travelling through the forest on his way to visit the king of the Ku Shien kingdom.

Yaur-gi falls in love with the prince and eventually discovers that she’s the daughter of the Ku Shien king, but many trials and tribulations lie in store for her and the prince, as foxy witch-exorcist Gi-err and shifty sorcerer Shiah-ker set out to usurp the kingdom and take over Yaur-gi’s mind.

Also known as THRILLING BLOODY SWORD, there’s much to enjoy in this Taiwanese fantasy flick, including a cyclopean demon-monster and a multi-necked, fire-breathing dragon-beast known as the Nine-Headed Siren, which are actually the creations of Gi-err and Shia-ker, who secretly unleash the creatures so that they can look like saviours by destroying them.

We also have a fun development involving the prince being turned into a bear, then transformed back to his normal self, after which he attains some flamboyant black armour and a weapon called the thunder sword. He subsequently goes on a quest to retrieve a magic box, which involves him fighting a winged monster resembling a low-rent Mahar from AT THE EARTH’S CORE (1976), some folks with flippers called Frog Sirens, some ‘immortal’ warriors who all have a fatal weak spot, a kind of ghost-blob, a giant, floating, gnashing pair of teeth and a couple of disembodied, fleshy monster feet! After a pacy fight with these feet, the limbs finally connect with other body parts to become a bizarre flying figure… that is blown up!

There’s a real crudeness to the effects, that’s for sure, but this doesn’t really detract from the quite charming fairytale nature of the colourful production, which borrows some story beats from Snow White and adds outlandish elements including a genie-like character with a head resembling butt-cheeks, a rabbit which turns into a fairy, a giant devil statue with glowing eyes, plus some perspex weapons you’d expect to see in a THUNDERCATS show.