Based on Wu Cheng’en’s novel Journey to the West — specifically the story of Red Boy — The Fantastic Magic Baby. Chang Cheh pretty much makes Peking opera — there’s even an entire filmed version of one after the main movie — in which Red Boy (Ting Wa-Chung) comes to collect a tribute from the humans who worship the gods Princess Iron Fan and Ox Demon King, who are his parents. He ends up kidnapping Tripitaka (Teng Jue-Jen), a monk whose flesh is said to add thousands of years to your life when consumed, which means that Monkey King (Lau Chung-Chun) and Pigsy (Chen I-Ho) need to fix things.

I tell you that synopsis and it doesn’t matter, because this is basically an hour of long fights, musical sequences, little speaking, wild costumes — stone men and tree people! — and gorgeous visuals filmed against solid colored backgrounds. There’s also so much fog that Lucio Fulci would say, “This is almost enough fog.”

This just washed over me, delighting my senses with its gorgeous visuals and athletic fights. It moves so quickly that you can just sit back and take it all in and feel good in the knowledge that you’re seeing something unlike any other film out there. I love that so many Shaw Brothers movies are shot on sets and this is the extreme version of that, as there’s not even an actual physical location as much as these are shot within a candy colored, misty wonderland.

With fights put together by Peking opera star Li Tong-Chun and Lau Kar-Leung, this is all the action you want in addition to all that arty feel. You can tell people you’re watching high culture.