Polly want your blood!
Bloody Parrot is a 1981 wuxia-action-horror-thriller Genre Mashup movie directed by Hua Shan, produced by Shaw Brothers and starring Jason Pai Piao and Tony Liu.
An urban legend of a deadly omen of death, called the "Bloody Parrot", emerged shortly after an Imperial Escort transporting a cargo of treasure is brutally murdered and the treasure stolen, days after the death of a reputable martial arts master, Master Guo Fan. With the escort's leader, the mercenary swordsman Yi Ting Feng, being a prime suspect, Ting Feng must uncover the mystery of the Bloody Parrot to clear all evidence of his involvement with the theft in an unnecessarily convoluted, Mind Screw-inducing, conspiracy laden wuxia flick loaded with twists, turns, and a generous dose of random twists and turns mashed into eighty minutes of Shaw entertainment.
Contains Examples of:
- Blood from the Mouth: Most of the victims who witnessed the Bloody Parrot, and never lived to tell the tale, suffers by throwing up blood. It was later revealed their blood puke is caused by a toxin used by Guo Fan.
- Defeat by Modesty: Ting Feng's fight against the pimp in the abandoned temple had him winning by using his sword to expertly remove most of his opponent's clothing (by slicing them into ribbons), save for the pants. Which Ting Feng left just enough to barely cover his butt.
- Empty Eyes: Xue Nu, after falling into a curse. It's depicted on the front cover.
- Epic Flail: Lord Chang, one of the many kung fu fighters in the film, uses a chain whip, which he's very good at.
- Ms. Fanservice: Xue Nu, who spends much of her screentime in a Modesty Bedsheet, and is scantiliy clad and either half-or all-naked every time she shows up.
- Faking the Dead: Master Guo Fan fakes his alleged suicide early in the film, then fabricates the legend of the Bloody Parrot as an omen of death, spreading fear and chaos throughout the martial world. While everyone's freaking out about the legend, Guo can then escape with the jewels he had looted from the authorities.
- Full-Frontal Assault: When Xue Nu falls under the parrot's curse, she lunges to attack Ting Feng while in the nude. With the camera offering several low-angle shots so that the audience can see everything.
- Genre Mashup: Wuxia-horror-slash-whodunnit thriller that keeps the audience guessing between all the fight scenes.
- Gorn: Besides the standard Sword Fight scenes in typical wuxia films with gory results, there's also a dissection scene where a corpse is graphically sliced open to retrieve the pearl grafted in it.
- Hall of Mirrors: The duel between Ting Feng and Guo Fan in the latter's lair takes place in a mirror maze. What's even more distracting is that there are random shots of the naked Xue Nu being reflected on the mirrors, interspliced between the duel. Yes, really
. - Infodump: The film's opening, which throws a Wall of Text onscreen narrating the backstory behind the legend of the Bloody Parrot.
- In a Single Bound: Mostly during fight scenes. Ting Feng leaps around a lot, even summersaulting several feet into the air unassisted. It's a standard wuxia (between all that gore and mystery stuff) after all.
- Mind Screw: To say the least. Plot points are brought up at random, characters comes and goes, and seemingly inconsequential / minor roles suddenly shows up after several scenes with major impacts. That's not getting into all the trippy imagery in-between...
- Out of the Inferno: Ting Feng at the end of the movie, exiting a burning chamber with every villain dead behind him.
- Portrait Painting Peephole: The scene in the whorehouse where Ting Feng is making out with Xue Nu, the latter with jugs-hanging-out, when he suddenly noticed one of the murals having eye-holes spying on him.
- Step into the Blinding Fight: Most of the movie takes place at night, and more often than not Ting Feng will end up engaging opponents indoors in abandoned temples, caverns, and the whorehouse whose candles are blown out after dark.
- Three Wishes: Allegedly, as the legend states, the bloody parrot comes to earth on the devil king's birthday and grants three wishes to anyone who finds it. Master Guo Fan, the unlucky Imperial Swordsman, was said to have witnessed the parrot and made his wishes, only for those wishes to backfire resulting in his death and a massive conspiracy to descend into the martial world... or so he claims.
- Title Drop: "Those who witnessed the Bloody Parrot will never live to tell the tale!"
- The Reveal: The Bloody Parrot is just a myth, fabricated by Gun Fan as a cover while he goes on a killing spree. Ting Feng managed to uncover the truth, moments before finally confronting Guo for the final duel.
- Sword Fight: Peppered throughout the film.
- Urban Legends: The titular parrot is a Ming Dynasty version of an urban legend, said to be a harbinger of death to those who witnessed it.
