The Mad Monk is a film that seems to take all of these problems to an utter extreme. The plot verges on near incoherence – chopping and changing, introducing so many new elements – that it is almost impossible to follow from one moment to the next. The pace is one of demented excess – the dialogue is delivered at a shout the whole way through and many of the cast play at a level that to call it over the top might be an understatement. The worst offender here is the character of Tiger Fighter played by Paul Chun who plays the entire film as a bawling baby.

The joys of The Mad Monk are its wild imagery – the dazzling (although relatively restrained in comparison to some of the other films in this cycle) martial arts and sword fights, including at one point the hero fighting the villain on top of a ladder that is impaled in the villain’s head. Or else the scenes with giant demon Heh crushing the hero under a single foot, sucking out souls and chasing through the streets after the hero at the climax, smashing entire houses in his path. The vision of the Eastern afterlife offered – Heavenly bureaucracies, reincarnation, golden bodies for transportation between astral planes, demons and multiple Heavens and Hells – is truly amazing and the film equally so for treating it with an irreverent sense of humour. This is probably not enough to salvage The Mad Monk from almost total incoherence and an abominably OTT pace but it at least stands it in good stead.