Tian Hou Chuan
1975 / 87m - Taiwan
Fantasy, Action
1.5*/5.0*
The Legend of Mother Goddess poster

Watches

December 14, 2020

1.5*/5.0*

Hong Kong's fantasy spectacles from the late 80s/early 90s are pretty great, many of them are personal favorites of mine. I was quite interested to discover the roots of this niche, with that in mind I decided to watch The Legend of the Mother Goddess. That turned out to be a pretty bad gamble.

Mak-Leung is a young woman destined for greatness. From the moment she was born, fate has smiled upon her. When she's a little older a dragon emerges from a well in her garden and grants her a wordless book. With this book, Mak-Leung sets out to save the world. So far so good.

The effects are so incredibly drab that it's really hard to take the film serious. That itself is not without a certain appeal, but there are quite a few scenes where the film was just too cheap for me to enjoy. Silly costumes, crappy action and some Kaiju-like nonsense make for light entertainment, but overall this was only borderline acceptable.