The Lady Assassin (1983)

Original title: 清宮啟示錄

The Qing emperor (Ching Miao) has come to his final years and is beginning to think about his successor. His favourite for the role is the 14th Prince (Max Mok Siu-Keung). Fourteen is young, he’s inexperienced and, as events will show, more than just a bit of a shallow idiot, whose more interested in looking righteous than the difficult business of actually being it. But least, he appears to not be actively malevolent. This can’t be said about the 4th Prince (Lau Wing) – he’s a man deeply in love with himself, palace intrigue and more often than not being evil for evil’s sake. Four has gotten wind of who his father plans to make his successor, and is not at all against murdering his own brother (well, half-brother, one hopes for the women involved).

The 4th Prince’s problem when it comes to assassinating his rival is that his brother has a very capable bodyguard and advisor in form of virtuous and highly efficient martial arts expert Tsang Jing (Norman Tsui Siu-Keung) – coming pre-packaged with his two female servants/martial arts students/probably lovers Jade (Yeung Ching-Ching) and Pearl (Daisy Cheung King-Yu) – and Tsang Jing isn’t just making the 14th Prince look like a better man than he actually is, he’s also easily thwarting most assassination attempts.

Eventually, the 4th Prince will acquire his very own martial arts expert in form of the ambitious Min Gen Yiu (Jason Pai Piao), but even then, a successful assassination seems doubtful and risky. So much so, the 4th Prince seeks out the help of Han revolutionary leader Lui Liu Liang (Ku Feng), promising him to get rid of the laws that suborn the Han Chinese under their Manchu conquerors. If, that is, Lui Liu Liang, or rather, his redoubtable martial artist niece Lui Si Niang (the incredible Leanne Lau Suet-Wah) help him access the decree in which is father has set down his designated successor.

Of course, helping out a man like the 4th Prince might not turn out as happily as one would want.

And that’s only about half of the plot of Tony Lou Chun-Ku’s breathless Shaw Brothers palace intrigue/wuxia mix The Lady Assassin, a film that somehow manages to run breathlessly through an amount of narrative that would provide for three or four seasons of a modern streaming TV show, features about a thousand different fights, yet still has room for rather a lot of complicated characterisation.

In most wuxia films, Lau Wing’s villain would be a one-note moustache twirler, but here, the guy’s abhorrent but also much more nuanced than you’d expect. As an example, the scene in which he convinces Lui Liu Lang and his family to throw their lot in with him by perfectly emulating a man of honour and conscience is a perfect portrayal of the kind of narcissist who always appears to believe in his own lies and empty promises a little (if you’ve never seen such a thing in real life, I can’t recommend the experience), and always finds a bad excuse for not acting on them he also appears to believe, however untrue it may be. Still, enjoying his own ability to pretend to be an honourable man, he will even try to implement his promises, until he gets the tiniest pushback. Then, he folds like the utterly weak man he is at his power-grubbing core.

As a whole, this is one of those wuxia where the most honourable characters – Tsang Jing and Lui Si Niang are genuinely good people – find themselves tied to the will and plans of characters whose nature is abhorrent to them once revealed, and can only break free from obligations, rules, and lies through acts of insane violence. Being in any contact with power can apparently only be cleansed through blood and vengeance.

Speaking of acts of violence, the martial arts choreography by Poon Kin-Kwan is absolutely insane – fast, vicious and only occasionally totally fantastical, this is all about speed and movement. Director Lou stages the fights – like everything else in the film – exclusively in angles and shot compositions of maximalist dramatic impact. There’s not subtlety to the direction, but as Lou uses his hammer here, everything doesn’t just look like a nail but indeed is one. It’s pretty incredible, as is how powerful much of the acting is – Lau Wing is a particular standout, but the burning fierceness of Leanne Lau’s gaze, or the dignity only slightly marred by the cynicism of permanent defeat of Ku Feng’s performance, are just as impressive.

To my eyes, The Lady Assassin is an absolute classic of the late period Shaw output, a film as perfect as its final freeze frame.

Pursuit of Vengeance (1977)

Original title: 明月刀雪夜殲仇

Melancholy wandering swordsman Fu Hong-Xue (Ti Lung) meets wisecracking wandering swordsman Ye Kai (Lau Wing). The latter does his best to hit it off with the former with limited success.

Various other martial artists/assassins seem to be rather interested in killing one or the other, for reasons that’ll become clear eventually. For now, the odd couple are invited to the party of the local martial arts clan, the Mas. It’s a bit of a peculiar shindig, for the evening before, six empty coffins were delivered to the Ma Mansion – not before Fu Hong-Xue and Ye Kai had fought off a team of assassins who also arrived in coffins, but that’s par for the course in the martial world of a Chor Yuen film.

Can it be an accident that Ma clan leader Ma Kong-Qun (Paul Chang Chung) has invited six martial artists?

As it turns out, twenty years ago, Ma was involved in the killing of the hero Bai, and everybody believes that twenty years after the fact – which is to say now – Bai’s son is going to take vengeance on the group of martial artists who killed his father. Ma suspects this son is one of his six guests.

Things become rather more complicated from here on out and will also include a delightful anti-hero turn by Lo Lieh – dressed in what we have to assume is a bathrobe throughout travels, travails and fights –, an evil mastermind who produces life-like masks for others to add to the confusion, hordes of martial artists totally committed to their respective fighting gimmicks, and the most astonishing finishing freeze frame of any Shaw Brothers film, particularly if you’re a fan of Lo Lieh’s ass.

I’ve been loving the films of that great master of Shaw Brothers wuxia Chor Yuen for actual decades. And yet, the first proper – or what goes for “proper” around here these days – write-up I make of one of his films is for this, definitely one of the director’s minor wuxia, sharing a protagonist (and lead actor Ti Lung, of course) with the masterful Magic Blade, though very little of that film’s tone.

Well, it does share that part of its predecessor that’s wildly weird, often bordering on the goofy, the love for sarcastic dialogue wuxia on screen usually lacks, and of course Chor Yuen’s eye for the beauty of the artificial, the proper contrast between set and location work, and the artful framing of the beautifully improbable action. So let’s say it doesn’t share in its predecessor’s sense of melancholia and futility.

Pursuit features by far not the best action choreography Tong Kai did for a Chor Yuen wuxia, but there’s still enough magic for anyone who is even mildly into this sort of thing.

Just don’t expect the general weirdness of everything and everyone except our wonderful protagonist/straight man Ti Lung to be balanced with a sense of melancholia or even horror at the things these people do to one another. This case of mystery and vengeance, while having the body count to be expected of this sort of thing, is decidedly on the emotionally light side – often getting down to a downright comedy version of the martial world. Which does take particular getting used to in a film that follows the tonally very different Magic Blade but does give one a breather after all those Chor Yuen wuxia that end in doom and gloom.

It does help that the film’s jokes are generally pretty damn funny, the dialogue is joyfully absurd and dry. Lo Lieh and Lau Wing in particular seem to delight in this. But then, the curiously moral assassin Lu Xiao Jia introduces himself first by somehow dropping a gigantic bathtub into a street, getting naked, and mocking Fu and Ye from that bathtub, which is not something any actor will get to do very often during their career.

The Dragon Missile (1976)

Sima Jun (Lo Lieh) is the favourite henchman of an unnamed high official (Ku Feng) of a very nasty disposition. Whenever someone displeases the lord, he sends out Sima Jun to behead the perpetrator with his Dragon Missile, a pair of metal boomerangs that explode through solid objects (and make an awesome singing saw sound).

Now, destiny has put in motion some karmic payback for Sima Jun's boss. He has developed an impressive, painful and quite lethal boil on his back, and no doctor seems to be able to cure it, which - given the lord's tendency to mood swings - leads to a lot of headless physicians.

Quite bothered by the thoughts of his death, the lord lets his people kidnap the imperial physician Dr. Fu (Hao Li-Jen). At first, the doctor is quite reluctant to help, but finally identifies the lord's illness as "100 birds worshipping the phoenix" (cue gasps here), a sickness that can only be cured by something called the longevity rattan. Fortunately, Fu's old associate, the hermit Tan (Yeung Chi-Hing) is in the possession of the root, and Fu is willing to write a letter to convince his old friend to part with it. He's even lying in it about whom the cure is supposed to help in the knowledge that Tan wouldn't give his magical root to someone as evil as the lord. Of course, Fu also signs his own death letter writing this. This lord guy really is a bit of an arse.

The lord sends Sima Jun out to fetch his cure, but his ambitious underling Yang (Man Man) has had quite enough of his bosses' love for someone played by Lo Lieh, so he sends a group of jobless martial arts experts to "help" Sima Jun - to kill him after they have acquired the root, of course.

Obviously, this can't end well. Sure enough, the bad guys have to kill the hermit to get the herb, leaving his daughter Xiao Li (Nancy Yen) with a mighty hankering for vengeance. Then, Sima Jun's old brother-in-training Er Long (Lau Wing), steals the longevity rattan (who knows why) and hides it with his blind, kung fu fighting mother. One dead mother later, Er Long also swears vengeance on Sima Jun.

Before any of that sweet, sweet vengeance can take place, there's first time for the other martial artists and Sima Jun to squabble and try to kill each other, for the seekers of vengeance to ally themselves with one of those martial artists, Miss Sha (Terry Lau), and for development of a way to counter the mighty dragon missile.

The Dragon Missile's plot sounds much more complicated than it actually is. In fact, it is mostly an excuse for some excellent fight scenes and for having Lo Lieh play the bad guy, yet still get first billing. Most of the weird stuff - like the dragon missile itself, or Miss Sha's use of Wolverine's claws - is just the kind of flourish Ni Kuang (the guy who wrote this and seemingly every other Shaw Brothers film) couldn't help but put into his scripts, and that is bound to make any film quite a bit more entertaining.

Besides being full of pointless (and therefore wonderful) details, Ni Kuang's script is also on the cynical side of the Shaw Brother's wuxia/martial arts output (the studio's exploitation films always were like that), far from the rather romantic point of view many wuxia films have at their core even when they are about bloody vengeance.

The Dragon Missile's central figure is without any conscience, but most of his enemies aren't any better either. Yang's martial artists are mercenaries who don't have a problem with stabbing someone in the back if it helps their career and even our nominal heroes Er Long and Xiao Li don't think twice about allying themselves with someone as morally dubious as Miss Sha. The film never directly comments on any of this, but I can't help but feel there's a good reason for the fact that the final fight ends with Sima Jun struck by his own dragon missile in his back.

Apart from its more cynical (some would say realistic) disposition, the movie is produced to the typically high Shaw Brothers standard of '76, which means stock actors playing stock characters with agreeable solidness, bloody and fast fights shot so that the audience can actually see what's going on in them and a delightful sense for the silly that isn't yet ready to drift into the direction of the batshit insane.

How this film fits into the larger body of work of its director Meng Hua Ho however is anybody's guess. The man's filmography is all over the place, going from this, the Black Magic films, four Journey to the West films, to an excellent wuxia like The Lady Hermit, and I've never been able to get a fix on him. Sure, you could call him a work-for-hire-director who did exactly what the studio was paying him for and be done with it, but his best films are a bit too lively for me to accept that conclusion. As people like Joel Schumacher or Uli Lommel show again and again, there's just no need to put any effort into your films if your just working for a paycheck, so I tend to suspect a bit more ambition behind the films of someone who is putting some effort into them.

 

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