Kate Zambreno

Before the artsy stylings of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" martial arts films had always tended toward camp, with their shakily dubbed voice-overs, cliched morality, fight-for-your-honor drama and deadly serious intent to save the world from thickly caricatured villains.

Kung fu movies -- they're so bad they're good, so hyperbolically serious they're hysterical.

In 1999 Fred Mowery was basically "sitting on my haunches and twiddling my thumbs" in his Rogers Park apartment, watching "Enter the Dragon" for the nth time, when it dawned on him how his guilty cinematic pleasure was ripe for parody.

And screaming for some singing and dancing. "I just thought it'd be funny to have a martial arts musical," he says.

The real-life computer technician already respected the kung fu greats not only for high kicks, but a knack for hijinks. "In my mind, Jackie Chan is as much of a gifted comedian as a martial artist," he says.

Taking the tools of fifteen years of karate and Chicago improv training, Mowery recruited Matt Larsen, a college friend from Miami of Ohio, to form Sulacco Productions. The duo collaborated on "True Deadliest Game of Death," a musical tournament to the death that ran for five weeks at Angel Island. "Half of all martial films out there are a tournament of some sorts, with some Dungeons & Dragons moments," Mowery says.

But all was not over for Sulacco Productions. After concentrating on children's shows, like last fall's "Kid Mystery" at the Playground, Mowery and Larsen have teamed up again for some adult fun, the kung fu musical sequel to "True Deadliest Game" -- "The Shadow of the Master."

"The Shadow of the Master" is a fight to the death (aren't they all?), with the lofty eye-rolling goal of saving the world. It's good versus evil, with evil lead by Dread Lord Andrew Vaile and his team of misfits -- ranging from the vampire Lance and Trash, a vixen villain with a potty mouth, to Vaudevillian, who clumsily attacks with balloon animals.

The bad guys are attempting to piece together an Aztec artifact that will unleash a chaotic Tower of Babel and eliminate speech from the world. The good guys, symbolized by their varsity V letters, are students from the Temple of Annuran and consist of the earnest puppies Judy Swift-Punch, Gadfry Worth and Jenny Quick-Kick, a returning character from the original. But as with all really good, really bad camp, all other rhyme and reason stops there.

Sold-out audiences, solely from word of mouth, have crammed into the tiny box space at the WNEP Theater to watch the twenty-person cast fall over each other in their claustrophobic fighting space. ("In 'Drunken Master II,' Jackie Chan actually fights an entire fight underneath a railroad car," defends Mowery.) With an appeal that can only be described as a combination of "Mortal Kombat," a "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" episode and the cult devotees who act out the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Shadow of the Master" is so earnestly goofy and devoutly clumsy that it's delicious.

Off-key belting of songs, cheesy props, weird anachronisms, awkwardly choreographed dances, slapstick fight sequences where the characters grunt like tennis players, Disney-fied morals, like Dread Vaile, destined to be immortal until he accomplishes an "original" act -- you just can't get enough of it.

In "Shadow of the Master," sound effects are as off as the kung fu films that inspired them and sometimes the lights go up as a just-murdered character gets up and walks offstage. Coupled with the cast's studied seriousness, the little mistakes make for the biggest laughs of the night. Not to mention the corny dialogue, rife with snorting pre-adolescent humor, much like you'd picture seventh graders would stage Dungeons & Dragons with each other. "Look alive, fuckstick!" Trash yells poetically before pulverizing a victim. Jenny Quick-Kick trying to make conversation: "So... how does it feel to kill someone?" Dread Lord Vaile swearing: "Jiminy Crickets." The obvious "Xena" psuedo-lesbian overtones between Judy Swift-Punch and Jenny Quick-Kick. The good guys use frog speech to secretly communicate (one-hand clapping while mouthing waawaawaa with taped-over voices). "Can you feel it? The power, dark and seductive," intones Judy Swift-Punch as they approach the "Island of Death."

"It's characters in ludicrous situations taking themselves too seriously," says Mowery. "It's kind of why the 'Naked Gun' or 'Airplane!' movies work." And anyway, they're not really trying to save the world. "We aren't trying to achieve any deep goal," says Mowery. "It's an adventure show, and everybody has something they get through and it's fun."

"The Shadow of the Master" runs through April 13 at WNEP Theater, 3209 North Halsted, (773)905-9385. (2001-04-05)

Also by Kate Zambreno

FASHION SUICIDE
In "Cleansed," the hope of love still blooms underneath grim oppression, rapes, sadistic science experiments, the unlivable brutality. "It very much has this '1984' thing of can love provide freedom from oppression or is love what really cages you in?" Rothschiller says.
(2001-03-22)

BRANDING ANNOYANCE
Asked by Second City owner Andrew Alexander to take his improv schtick to the Strip, Napier departed in late February to direct a group of nine bandits in the new Second City venue in Bugsy's Celebrity Room at the Flamingo Hotel. But never fear, the mild-mannered yet mischievous Napier, who's become a Chicago improv icon, isn't ditching us for good.
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ENTERTAINING DON HALL
It was the most amazing prank on Earth, or at least in the Chicago theater scene. The year was 1995, and, under the auspices of a traveling avant-garde German clown troupe called Die Hanswurste (translated, "Jack Sausages," or, explains Hall, "basically an idiot who knows nothing but thinks they do"), four improvisers from Chicago made audiences leap through flaming hoops.
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GOING APE
Thursday night on the LSD and there it is -- a giant purple gorilla, perched on the front stoop of one of those swanky drive residences.
(2000-11-23)

EAT ME
(2000-11-16)

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