TWELVE ANIMALS (1991) is a Taiwanese fantasy that tells the story of the Chinese Zodiac and how each of the twelve animals of the zodiac gets recruited by Buddha's representative on Earth. The film opens with a funny cartoon sequence showing how the twelve animals were chosen by a race to see which animals got to the finish line first and how the animals cheated and tricked the others to get there. Buddha's rep is an angelic young girl, Bai Ma (played by Su Ling Lu), who is accompanied by a mute kung fu-fighting boy monk-in-training. The most notable cast member is young female fighting star Lin Hsiao Lan, who plays Dragon, the first recruit. Lin starred in the similarly-styled fantasies, MAGIC OF SPELL, MAGIC WARRIORS and KUNG FU WONDER CHILD, all of which made good use of her considerable martial arts and acrobatic skills (and all of which are reviewed on this site). She plays male parts in all her films and Dragon is no exception. However, she has a much smaller part here and doesn't get to do as much.
The film simply follows the party as they find human incarnations of each of the animals. A mailman who runs swiftly from village to village is the horse. A fat prison guard is the pig. A muscular prison inmate is the ox. A guy who scurries around and can dig through the ground is the rat. A fighting man they encounter is the tiger. You get the idea. As the party grows, the members form cliques and constantly bicker with each other. The sweet Bai Ma has to use her calming influence to intervene at various points. Eventually they all converge on Devil's Island to battle assorted demons and monsters, including a giant green demon.
It's all pretty amusing, although the plot never progresses much beyond the task of recruiting all the animals and getting them to the island for the final battle. There are plenty of magical effects, but performed mostly on behalf of Bai Ma in the process where the animals are "chosen" to join her. So there's not exactly a lot of action or suspense. It is, however, a little too intense at times for kids under ten and displays some rough, vulgar humor in a prison scene where two of the recruits have their pants pulled down for some humiliating attention from the pig guard. This scene aside, it's still an entertaining and unusual film and not at all like the Hong Kong fantasy films that fans of this fare may be more familiar with (A Chinese GHOST STORY, GREEN SNAKE, THE MAGIC CRANE, etc.).
