Legend Of The Owl (1981)

Super-thief The Owl kidnaps the Emperor's 36th wife, and 3 hapless heroes get tasked with ensuring her return.

Legend of the Owl is a very silly film, a wuxia spoof that is often quite hilarious. I never really bought David Chiang as a handsome hero, but as a clown he is compelling.

The film is clearly influenced by AIRPLANE! but mostly sends up Chor Yuen style wuxia and other local cultural flavours. The humour is very reminiscent of Stephen Chiau's later parodies like the ROYAL TRAMP films. It was directed by David Chiang and written by his younger brother Derek Yee, both of whom had probably had their fill of doing the serious version of this sort of film and must have relished the opportunity to lampoon the genre. Eldest brother Paul Chun has a role too, making it a rare family collaboration.

You can mostly ignore the plot - they seem to forget there is supposed to be one for much of the runtime. There's not much action but Yasuaki Kurata shows up to do a little crab fist at one point, and it culminates in a final battle that is appropriately silly but also pretty good.