Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The movie "The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go", works on many levels. Here's mine barely on one level. James Joyce was as little understood in 1970 as Buddhism, the Far East (including Vietnam)and MKULTRA. Only MKULTRA notionally survived unscathed because CIA Director Richard Helms destroyed all agency records shortly after this film was made. It alone has escaped the brutal epiphany of the last 40+ years. "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) did not publish "Remember, Be Here Now" until the year after the movie's release. Had he seen it? The Hong Kong Tourist Bureau which contributed greatly and nearly lost its soul to this film knew more about all of the above including James Joyce than anyone in or around the movie. Here are the facts: James Mason wears oral prosthetics and allows his then almost 2d wife (Clarissa Kaye-Mason) to administer a lesbian rape scene. Peter Lind Hayes (The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T)plays himself and appears in a violent homo erotic scene with a very young Jeff Bridges. Irene Tsu gives her acting and substantive all to everyone involved apparently including some Hong Kong hookers replete with excellent Number One Hong Kongs. Broderick Crawford plays the head of the CIA in what appears to be an unintended?, spliced-in unrelated Ed Wood production. He's Broderick Crawford, for Christ sakes! And he's wonderful! You will recognize Jay Adler and Jack MacGowran reprising themselves in roles that they had accomplished many times, but not this time. Buddha appears typecast as himself in Hong Kong tourist stills voiced over by Christopher Lee? as narrator. Oh yeah, Burgess Meredith stars and directed it if Buddha didn't. Rags Ragland composed the soundtrack and songs and I am sure Peter Lind Hayes influenced same with his immortal 1950s Chevrolet jingle. The music at times however, fractures into rather both authentic and thought provoking accompaniment including a brief oriental theme played with a bowed lute Ragland was an arranger for the Dorsey's and provided music for many 40s movies and then this one. There, I wrote it. For YOU!!!! James Joyce was writing--like Bridges says,"For the next 1,000 years." You can watch this prescient epistle throughout the next millennium if you need to. In 1970, the world needed to...

What is wrong with people? Only two reviewers here at IMDb appear to have 'got' this film - etna3 and crankscorner, and I thank them for their insight.The Yin & Yang of Mr Go is probably the kinetic masterpiece of the cold war. It's a film so stoked in symbolism, meditation and nudity that Strindberg himself could have called it a wrap. In the end Burgess Meredith settles for Joyce in his script, which is almost the same thing.Following a voice-over by Christopher 'Bhudda' Lee, we meet James Mason as Mr Yin Yang Go, criminal, murderer, drug-addict and seducer, making ready to move into the big nuclear league. He tricks broke writer Jeff Bridges into a compromising love scene with a male American scientist, then blackmails the scientist to get plans for a new nuclear defence system. But Christopher Lee has other plans for Yin Yang Go - the nuclear plot turns to meditative karma and Go becomes the focal point of all human history, past, present and future. In short, Go goes nuts and becomes a kind of karmic superhero, saves the world etc, you know the score. If this is the effect radiation has on karma we could all use a shot.Throw in Mason's real life wife, Clarrisa Kay, as a butch sort of lesbian, Jack McGowran as nominal CIA, a script that will not come into its own for another 500 years, and you have a classic.This film really needs to be restored directly from the negative, in its true colour and original aspect ratio. If I were a monastic or Bhuddist monk, or alternatively, the leader of the People's Republic of China, I would make the restoration of The Yin & Yang of Mr Go my life's work.A classic.

Burgess Meredith's only attempt at film-making is a strange mesh of Eastern Philosophy and The 60's Batman show. The first thing you should know is that the narrator of this film is actually the Buddha and the premise is, more or less, the Fu Man Chu/Dr. No bad guy Mr. Go is inexplicably "enlightenened" by the Buddha's eye into becoming good. See strange psychedelic homosexual escapades with Jeff Bridges and a nauseating go-go soundtrack that will drill right into your head. All the fight scenes are right out of Batman. Good if somewhat boring movie, but you've got to love the strange premise. It's the ultimate 60's Buddhist experience.

I remember the first time I saw that movie...my jaw was stretch and was probably touching the floor. I didn't know then and I'm still wondering if this was a masterpiece from an unknown director or a huge waste of celluloid. Honest to god I found that film to be one of the funniest I have ever seen. Problem I don't know whether it was meant to be that way !!! Watch it, enjoy it... P.A.D.