Though he has only helmed nine films, Kirk Wong is still one of the most interesting directors to work in Hong Kong cinema over the past twenty-five years. Productions like Crime Story, which was Jackie Chan's first credible entry into the realm of "serious" (as in comedy-free) cinema, and Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, a film that became one of the pinnacles of the police procedural sub-genre, have made Wong a well-known name despite his small output compared to his contemporaries.

So it was with some excitement that I popped in the DVD of Wong's second film, 1983's Health Warning, into my well-worn player. Well, to start with, I should note that the DVD was actually for the English language version, Flash Future Kung Fu, via a budget Tai Seng "Martial Arts Theater" release that was sourced from a well-worn Ocean Shores print, which is the only legitimate release of the film currently available. In fact, this version seems to be the only one that has ever been released to home video.

Any sort of concrete and credible information about Health Warning seems hard to come by, with nary even a scan of the original poster art being available out there in the nether regions of the internet. What we do know is that this movie tanked at the box office, yet still managed to snag several Hong Kong Film Award nominations, including one for best picture. As for the film itself, even putting together the story is an uphill battle, since many of the elements are laid out via title cards that apparently have never been translated.

As it stands, the happenings here seem to take place in the future, or at least the sort of low-budget Robotussin-induced future noir common in B-level productions of the early 1980's, where people still play Donkey Kong and get down to synthpop while smoke machines bellow in the background. There's a neo-Nazi group called the Axe Gang that is running roughshod over the local populace. Yes, Chinese neo-Nazis. Anyway, they bust up a kung fu school led by Eddy Ko Hung, and so it's up to the best student, the imaginatively named Killer (Johnny Wang Lung-Wei) to kick ass and get revenge.

Taken as a narrative, Health Warning fails miserably. Scenes comes and go with all of the cohesion of a fever dream. There is a screenwriter credited here, but one has to wonder if this production falls into the "flying paper" category -- i.e., it looks like Kirk Wong was pretty much just making up things on the fly. You'll be continually asking yourself questions during this movie. Who is this person? Why are they oiled up? Is that a Bump N Jump machine they're playing?

The production design, which most likely was made out of necessity due to a lack of any sort of budget, does keep things together -- at least to an extent -- and is Health Warning's biggest strength. If one takes Health Warning simply as a display of interesting cinematic images, there's a lot to chew on here. Hell, you're not going to see too many movies out there where a Chinese version of Devo noodles out something resembling a song while ballerinas drown a portly woman in a kiddie pool.

Besides the oddity factor, though, there's really not too much here that is of note to the Hong Kong movie viewer, whether they are a neophyte or well-versed in the art. It's always fun to watch Johnny Wang Lung-Wei chow up scenery, and the few actual fight scenes are solid enough, but as a whole, Health Warning is too slap-dash and schizophrenic for its' own good.

After finishing watching Health Warning, one might get the feeling that with this production, Kirk Wong was more focused on practicing and perfecting new techniques. In that sense, it totally worked, because you can definitely see the seeds of the style that would be Wong's trademark planted here. It's just a shame that things couldn't have been perhaps reigned in a bit in order to create a product that was more coherent and possibly more exciting.

RATING: 6