The 3-D Army – review

Director: Chen Chun-Liang

Release date: 1989

Contains spoilers

Although it isn’t titled as such, this could be classed as Hello Dracula 5. It does not follow the previous films but it does have kyonsi and Chin Tu (Magic of Spell) reprising his role of Grandpa Chin (sometimes subtitled as Grandpa Gold), along with his ward Tien Tien – who has become a young girl again. In this he seems to be responsible for two boys, Blackie and Dragonfly, whose background and status are not explained.

the race

The film starts with the kids racing, as part of a rite, in two teams. There are both the wards (plus another couple of kids) of Grandpa Chin and also a group of kids under the tutelage of Magician An (Huang Chung-Yu), including his son An An. The final race sees the teams riding the street on unicycles (with the ability to push and grapple, but not hurt) until reaching a small assault course of some netting and a climbing frame. The first to have a team member reach the flag at the top of the frame wins. It is Grandpa Chin’s kids who win, though An An accuses them of cheating and challenges them to meet him that night.

Tien Tien

The three main kids do enter the forest that night but before they get to the meeting point they hear what sounds like a girl crying. They find a cage, covered in spell scrolls, with a fox in it and so release the fox. They get to the meeting point and An An challenges them to fight (but not Tien Tien, who he has a crush on) and has 4 older fighters with him. They do fight and, eventually, An An comes off worse, his defeat helped by a young girl who fires fabric at him.

kyonsi

The girl is clearly a spirit but the kids don’t realise as they speak to her – her name is Mimi and later she admits to being the fox. Elsewhere Magician An goes to his master, a morally dubious sorcerer, and admits that he had captured the fox but someone released it. The sorcerer is not really bothered, he will get her eventually and is focused on getting hold of another magician called Hung Kun… who is already dead. Cut to a corpse herder (and Chin’s brother) who is taking 7 corpses to the mortuary. One is chained with bells as well as having a spell scroll, he is Hung Kun and is so powerful that they need the extra resource to control him.

the little vampire skimming 

To avenge An An for his beating in the forest, one of Magician An’s household steals one of the corpses from the mortuary, so as to make Grandpa Chin look bad. Of course, he choses Hung Kun and the kyonsi gets out of control and kills. The kids try to cover up the vampire being missing, so they can retrieve it, but it is eventually discovered. A remorseful An An admits it was down to him. Following this An An and the other kids hang out together. Mimi also makes herself known to the kids and she has a little vampire friend who she also introduces them to. However the sorcerer still wants Mimi, Hung Kun and, when he finds out about him, the little vampire. He captures them in a spirit house, eventually, and it’s down to the kids to rescue them, and An An being in danger also puts Magician An onto a redemption arc.

Hing Kun

This suffered from not backgrounding the characters well. Of course those who know the series will recognise the general strokes and the main characters but, especially as this is not listed as part of the series, it needed more character exposition. The spirit house section pushes the film further into strange – the ghost kids are not utilised in this but the sorcerer has constructed life-sized dolls that come alive and fight and these are kind of the equivalent (but villainous). The kyonsi has the additional power of being able to become invisible – it takes child urine or black dog’s blood to force him to become visible (and the urine damages him). Otherwise it is fairly standard lore. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.