The Fantasy of Deer Warrior

Will Sloan

Movies can be anything!!!!

Justin LaLiberty3.0

didn’t know I needed 60s Taiwanese Hundreds of Beavers until right now — and no, there’s not a beaver in sight but there is a rabbit, deer, bird, turtle and other anthropomorphic delights sure to please the furry set and anyone else with some manic whimsy to spare

Casey Scott3.5

Let Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation restore the works of Edward Yang and leave it to Klubb Super 8/Cultpix to resurrect Taiwanese obscurities like this b&w fantasy film whose very existence is an act of defiant resistance against occupation by the Chinese Kuomintang government. Cornelius Flickenheimer's very well-written liner notes for the new Blu-ray release detail how films shot in the original Taiwanese language, described as "Taiyupian films", were produced well outside of mainstream popular culture enforced by ruling Kuomintang forces. This film, shot entirely outdoors on a low-budget with post-sync sound, is one of very few surviving examples of this overlooked homegrown industry....and it also just so happens to be a film where every character appears in an animal costume. But no, this isn't a K. Gordon Murray-style fairy tale film from Germany or Mexico. There's a sultry woman in a fox costume introduced doing a seductive dance for an old man in a goat costume...but not too seductive because this is for all ages, after all. That said, what appears on the surface to be a children’s film makes pointed reference to a 1947 massacre of native Taiwanese at the hands of the Kuomintang, with a hero Sika Deer (a species native to Taiwan almost made extinct through invader violence) fighting against a brutal wolf threatening his woodland home and the various animals living in it. In addition to the costumes, there are a number of songs (plus an opening frolicking of costumed kids to "Jingle Bells" and the fox lady doing another dance to a cover of "Tequila"), fight sequences, and very cheap special effects to keep the Taiwanese audience of 1961 entertained. It's all such a unique, special experience, and one we're lucky to even be able to watch. As Flickenheimer notes, of more than 1000 films produced in Taiwanese during this period, less than 250 still exist today. They weren't covered or reviewed in newspapers, box office records don't exist, and other documentation is immensely scarce, as anything connected to native Taiwan culture was being actively suppressed by overbearing government power, making the history of these films even more difficult to capture.For anyone who loves wildly obscure genre films, Asian film history, cinema of resistance, and lost film restoration and preservation in general, this is a no-brainer. Kudos to Cultpix and Klubb Super 8 for partnering with the Taiwan Film Institute to get this in front of more eyes, especially through their OCN partnership. This is a beautiful package, too, with those aforementioned liner notes solidly establishing the film's historical significance, a terrific brief history of Taiwanese cinema and its connection to the nation's history from Adrian Smith, and a quite wonderful audio commentary with Cultpix's Patrik von Sychowski and Shih-Ching Tsou (director of 2025's LEFT-HANDED GIRL and frequent creative partner with Sean Baker) offering even more context and history. Don't sleep on that before-and-after comparison video, either, to see just how blessed we are to be seeing this looking as good as it does.