No one expected Fung San (Wah Yuen) to come out of the monastery and immediately turn to debauching and murdering women, but that’s exactly what he did. Dude flew into a princess’s chambers and had his way with the lady and her handmaidens, using wuxia techniques to catch them with curtains and whatnot so he could have his murderous way. When loyal guard Fong Sau-Ching (Biao Yuen) is offered twenty days to find his monastery brother and bring him to justice, he leaps at the chance. The man needs killing. As it turns out, Fung San has found a set of mystic artifacts that once allowed the Devil to escape his sins and now offers the same option to the killer. However, a backfire launches both Fung San and Fong Sau-Ching three hundred years into the future, where they duke it out and both wind up crushed in ice and snow. Justice has come guised as the death of the guilty …
Or has it?
When a research team uncovers the bodies, they opt for a revolutionary technique to reanimate the corpses (!). However, other nations have better technologies for doing so (!), so they transport the corpsicles to Hong Kong. There, an accident involving three bumbling crooks ends up thawing out both men and launching them into the glitz and glamor of 1980s Hong Kong. Fong Sau-Ching tries to eke out a living while understanding this new hell he finds himself in—first as a bum and then as the bodyguard and servant to the unlikeable Polly (Maggie Cheung). Polly, however, is lying to Fong about her profession (she calls herself a model, instead of the hooker she actually is) and uses him to cheat her clients out of the sex they are paying for.
When Fong Sau-Ching discovers Fung San is also alive and in Hong Kong, he abandons his new role for his original calling. A showdown will ensue! And since Fung San is still passionate about debauching and butchering women, what are the chances that call girl Polly will wind up in his sights? Pretty good, of course. When she does, Fong Sau-Ching must come to terms with his own burgeoning feelings for this terrible woman while also battling it out with his nemesis. Director Clarence Fok helms a weird blend of comedy, martial arts action, gritty crime, and romance in The Iceman Cometh (1989).
Hong Kong movies from the 1980s have a certain kitchen sink quality to them, blending all kinds of genre elements together alongside some truly breathtaking stunt work and action. There’s comedic touches, there’s over the top villainy, there’s crime, and there’s wuxia wire work aplenty. A movie like The Iceman Cometh exemplifies this and adds in a lot of influences as well.
The title is a cheeky spin on the fame Eugene O’Neill play about a bar and the people who go there. The situation is a kind of combination of the resuscitated pre-historic man yarn Iceman (1984) meets the unbelievably cool H. G. Wells (Malcom McDowell) vs. Jack the Ripper (David Warner) in 1970s San Francisco movie Time After Time (1979). There’s a distinct sense of humor at play here, a love of absurdity and human foibles that keep us from getting too creeped out by the suspense/horror subtext. It’s played larger than life, over the top, and way, way, way out there.
And it’s certainly an entertaining experience.
Mostly because of Maggie Cheung. Prior to this film, she was known for her turns as the sweet, charming, much put upon girlfriend. That was her breakout role in the wonderful Police Story (1985), later reprised in Police Story 2 (1988). It was a role she could play in her sleep. The fact that she went against type for a character who is a heartless, smart talking, chain smoking, borderline abusive hooker that no one in their right mind would possibly like once they got past the breathtakingly gorgeous exterior took some serious guts. However, she not only took on the role, but she also makes it breathe and swagger. She embraces all the awfulness and plays it to perfection. The character is such a terrible person, but fun to watch. Oh yes. And when Polly has that moment of clarity and decides to make a fresh change in her life, it feels earned and real and powerful. That is Cheung’s talent, disappearing into the character and still managing to make that character her own, still finding the human components and making them sing.
The headlining lads do a good job as well, of course.
Of the two, I rather adore Wah Yuen’s wildman approach to the villain. He cackles, he exaggerates his movements, he wears outrageous wardrobe, but he somehow never stops looking lethal. He’s an unrepentant killer, and he’s a giggling psycho maniac, but the actor’s charisma shines through regardless. And the dude is fearless, taking a flying leap off a crane-suspended car to a platform four five stories below …
Biao Yuen does the strong jawed, determined leading man thing with ease. Here, he’s allowed to be conflicted as well, falling for a fallen woman that he could never dare to touch. When he’s doing the martial arts stuff, his work is seamless. When he’s doing the emotional, humanizing stuff, his work is also quite good. Although he’s probably going to be best known as the actioner who kicked much butt in movies like this or Righting Wrongs (1986), Yuen, is also quite believable as the straight man and the romantic love interest.
The martial arts sequences are terrific to watch. The Yuens perform some brilliant work in a very cold snow sequence in the opening, which is breathtaking and delightful (and a difficult thing to shoot for many involved thanks to icy temps, thin clothes, difficulty reaching the Korean shooting site, and whatnot). The movements are clean and captured beautifully. Fok sets the scenes, the Yuens choreograph their own fights, and Hang-Sang Poon captures the images.
And because this is the tail end of NOIRvember, it’s worth noting that Fok includes a perfectly realized, full color noir sequence, which follows Maggie Cheung’s character on an evening out. She’s already one of the most memorably awful femme fatales neo-noir has to offer by that time, but when we follow her through this mostly dialogue free sequence, Fok and cinematographer Hang-Sang Poon are really playing with all the tools of cinema to capture a grimy, gritty moment that is so neon drenched and moody that it would make Michael Mann envious. This is Party Girl (1958) with the cynicism and color palette turned up to eleven.
All told, the picture is a meaty Hong Kong actioner with enough character, incidents, and mayhem for a dozen American movies of this era. And it’s one of many that appeared back then.
That said, the picture’s approach to sexual abuse has not aged all that well. This is not necessarily a movie that Trigger Warnings were made for, but they are nevertheless necessary. It’s seldom explicit about this stuff, but rape is as often a subject of humor as well as suspense, and that’s more than a little unsettling. The opening sequence’s deflowering is all done through metaphor, for example, but it’s still rape/murder. When we meet Maggie Cheung, she is being braced by a group of gangsters, paying off a friend’s debt by performing in a boss’s rape-in-car fantasy (which turns out to be comedy gold thanks to her utterly bored facial expressions). There’s a sketchy scene when Fung San comes into his own agency in the modern day, throwing off his association with a crook from that period, which involves the most explicit moments that includes no nudity and only a wiggling foot or slumped hand to communicate what’s happening. However, the subtext is still kind of off-putting to anyone sensitized to the subject. So, heads up prospective viewers who might fall into that category!
Apart from that material, The Iceman Cometh is a wonky, wonderful actioner. A little crude in terms of individual sequence lighting, but it more than makes up for this with some terrific stunts, some involving romance, and more than a few laughs. A fun ride … if you can deal with the unsettling relationship the film has with sexual assault.
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The Iceman Cometh is available in DVD and Blu-ray editions.
Next, we kick off a look at holiday weirdness, starting with the wonky UK slasher Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984), which features a maniac who stalks men dressed as Father Christmas. It is available in DVD and Blu-ray editions.
Writing for “I Have Crossed Oceans of Time to Find You: The Iceman Cometh” is copyright © 2022 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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