Past Misdeeds: The Imperial Swordsman (1972)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


As always, the Chinese Emperor is in trouble. The high-ranking official Fu Bing-Zhong (Cheng Miu), who is supposed to guard the Empire's eastern borders, is planning to attack the capital with the help of a bandit army and his Mongol allies. When the Emperor finds out about Fu's treasonous ways, he relieves him of his posts, and orders him to return to the capital. Fu pretends to go along with the Imperial edict, and starts off in the direction of the capital on foot and only accompanied by a lone servant. In truth, he's carrying his attack plan on the capital and a list of names of generals in his pack to bring that information to the heavily fortified mountain base of his army of bandits.

Lord Sun (Lee Pang-Fei), whoever he might be, somehow knows what Fu's plans are and sends out four imperial bodyguards - the sisters Shi Xue-Lan (Shu Pei-Pei) and Shi Xue-Mei (Yue Wai), and the rather dubious looking couple of Zhi Yu (Lee Wan-Chung) and Gu Wan (Liu Wai) - to kill the traitor and get a hold of his plans, and if need be to infiltrate the mountain base of their enemy and break all resistance there. If possible, they are to team up with imperial swordsman Yin Shu-Tang (Chuen Yuen), who walks around the countryside being rude to people while dressing a lot like a certain character out of Yojimbo, and a small group of men lead by Jin Zhi-Ping (Tung Li) who have infiltrated parts of the bandit organization. At least I think that's what the plan is - the film sure isn't making that point very clear, and in the beginning, the characters tend to act in a way that doesn't fit too well with what they are out to achieve. The Shi sisters, for example, pretend to be a pair of sisters on the run from a marriage, and hunted by Zhi and Gu, which certainly makes a degree (but only a degree) of sense as long as they are interacting with Fu and trying to look harmless but doesn't make a lick of sense when they do it towards Yin too.

Be that as it may, before long, everybody knows more or less on which side he or she stands, and a desperate battle can begin.

For the first forty minutes of its running time, Lam Fook-Dei's The Imperial Swordsman seems like a rather minor Shaw Brothers wuxia that features some promising fight scenes but more often than not shoots itself in the foot with a lack of narrative clarity that is remarkable even for a film in a genre not exactly known for such a clarity. The longer it goes on, though, the less interested the film seems in being needlessly confusing (not to be confused with the needed confusion of a Chor Yuen film), and the more interested it becomes in being awesome.

Once the protagonists start their attack on Fu's base, the whole film turns into a long (about thirty to forty minutes), and incredibly intense series of fights and pitched battles that is as good as anything of its type I've seen. Lam (with whose body of work apart from The Imperial Swordsman I am disappointingly unfamiliar) shows a fantastic ability to not only increase the action's intensity from moment to moment, even when he's juggling three or four fights happening parallel to each other in different parts of the base, but to show it in ever changing imaginative ways that at times seem heavily influenced by the way Japanese chambara films used to frame their action. The Imperial Swordsman's fights are often as much about the parts of the fights Lam's camera doesn't show as about those it shows, trading a bit of clarity of choreography (which was by the way created by Leung Siu-Chung) for the ability to surprise from shot to shot.

Lam again and again does things like going from standard wuxia camera set-ups to thirty sudden seconds of a static shot looking from outside into a corridor into and out of which the fighters move, so that we only ever see parts of the battle surrounding the camera's point of view, which again is replaced by a more close and more dynamic set-up for a short interlude with a more individual (and therefore more personal) fight. Somehow, Lam's creative style never gives the impression of belonging to a director just wanting to show off, and never breaks the all-important rhythm - wuxias of course having a lot in common with musicals - of the film. It's a fantastic and altogether unexpected thing to witness in a film that began merely being solidly done.

Lam also shows a fine eye for shooting some well-known Shaw Brothers cave sets in ways I haven't seen before, making the very familiar look new and exciting again. I also approve of a bit of obvious but beautiful miniature work that stands in for locations nobody working for the Shaws could ever have afforded to shoot in; there are some of the standard outside locations every regular viewer of these films know by heart, but the artifice of model work is in many cases better - at least moodier - than nature in any case.


The Imperial Swordsman's mood is somewhat gritty, with an emphasis on decorative blood spatters and some pretty gruesome - yet great - ideas for action set pieces, like the fight where one of the Shi sisters has to avoid being run through with her own sword that's sticking in the belly of her opponent. As that example should make clear, Lam's film may be on the more bloody and gritty side of the Shaw Brothers' output, but it sure is preferring fun gritty violence to the more realistic type. It is, of course, a directorial decision that's right up my alley, especially when the film's idea of fun leads to moments like the one when Xue-Mei gets rid of a whole corridor (there are a lot of corridors in this movie) of guards with the help of her trusty throwing darts, as demonstrated by some fast cuts, a few swishing noises and a lot of falling bodies. And really, that's the thing about The Imperial Swordsman's second half: it's so full of exciting little moments like this, of outrageous ideas and imagination I could go on for another thousand words or so just listing every single one of them.

In short: Avengers from Hell (1981)

Original title: 鬼域

Avengers from Hell is a three story omnibus Shaw Brothers feature directed by Lee Pooi-Kuen from the studio’s decadent late period, though this one’s really more competent and routine than decadent.

The first story concerns a rookie beat cop’s (Alex Man Chi-Leung) intense obsession with a haunted house and the resident ghost of a murdered woman (Lee Yin-Yin), the sort of thing that will need an intervention by his girlfriend (JoJo Chan Kei-Kei) sooner or later.

The second one is another tale of a philandering Hong Kong business man (Phillip Chan Yan-Kin) cheating on his pregnant wife on foreign soil (though it’s the Philippines for a change), killing his mistress (Lily Chan Lee-Lee) over a pregnancy, and soon having to fend off a pissed off ghost you’d probably root for over him if it hadn’t nasty plans for his wife too.

The third one is the comedic close-off of the whole affair with the tale of luckless elderly gentleman Liang Jiu (Lau Hak-Suen) who finds a pair of glasses that brings him in contact with a ghost who will finally help him win at gambling for once. Hot mah-jongg action is of course to follow.

As the basic plots of the film’s segments suggest, Avengers from Hell isn’t a long lost classic of Shaw Brothers horror but rather the sort of quickly shot, competently made film the studio’s exploitation arm excelled at this late in its existence (one could argue throughout it); it’s also the sort of film nobody involved took for anything more than another job to fill some cinema slots when nothing more profitable came around.

Fortunately, everyone involved was at least a professional, so the film might not be all that original, but it is neither lackluster nor boring nor seems too disinterested. Director Lee Pooi-Kuen provides some pleasant moments of lurid fun – although this isn’t the sort of Hong Kong horror film that becomes more than mildly unpleasant and never gets really icky at all -  and keeps everything moving along nicely and not without a degree of visual style.

All the while, the thirty minute segments never overstay the welcome of their basic set-ups, so while it is rather difficult to become very excited about Avengers from Hell, or find hidden depths in it, it’s also rather difficult to not be entertained by it on the basic level it wants to entertain.

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,in short,horror,lee pooi-kuen,shaw brothers

Black Magic 2 (1976)

An unnamed city in South-East Asia. A series of peculiar, medically inexplicable and really rather horrible illnesses (of course featuring worms and ugly sores) and deaths has confused the world view of physician Shi Zhen Sheng (Lam Wai-Tiu) so much, he's now convinced they are caused by black magic. Shi invites his doctor friend Qi Zhong Ping (Ti Lung) and his wife and partner in science Cui Ling (Tanny Tien Ni) to town, in the hope that the couple can help find a way to break the spells.

Not surprisingly, Qi Zhong and Cui Ling are sceptical concerning their friend's talk of magic and spells; instead of going witch hunting, they prefer to investigate the cases scientifically. These investigations don't lead to any results, though, for Shi Zhen is absolutely right - there is a black magician, a man named Kang Cong (Lo Lieh) in town, using his powers to acquire the two most important things in his life, money and breast milk (which he needs to drink fresh from the breast to keep his youthful appearance despite an age of 80). And now, Kang Cong has decided that Shi Zhen's wife Margarete (Lily Li) looks like an excellent breast milk donor to him. Even after the magician has put a spell on Margarete, causing her to get highly pregnant with an ugly lump of flesh ("It's a freak", Ti Lung diagnoses) in just a few hours, Shi Zhen's friends aren't convinced of the existence of magic.

For that, they propose a test: hire Kang Cong to cast a spell on Cui Ling. Would you believe it's not a very good idea put oneself into the hands of a black magician and that consequently, things go very badly for the people of medicine?

Despite its pioneering status when it comes to Hong Kong horror films, I never cared too much for the first of Meng Hua-Ho's Black Magic movies, perhaps because the gross out one looks for in one's HK horror took place well enough, but it and the weirdness that is the other half of this very special horror sub-genre never found a way to work together all that well there.

That's not something I can say about the sequel (also by Meng Hua-Ho, with the same actor base playing different characters). Black Magic 2 brings the gross-out and the weirdness together in the most pleasantly entertaining ways, at least if you're like me and can find entertainment in things like maggots, and worms and pus and Lo Lieh stealing pubic hair to get at that valuable breast milk; "I needed breast milk" is now my favourite new excuse for doing evil.

If these things don't row your boat, how about Lo Lieh's cellar full of zombies he awakens by hammering big nails into their heads? Ti Lung eating the eyes of a self-declared wise man and consequently getting more manly? Lo Lieh throwing his cat at someone to get some much-coveted blood for evil spell-work from its claws?

Clearly, every sane person reading about these elements of joy will want to run awayout and acquire Black Magic 2 as quickly as possible, but wait, there's more!

Like the fact that the acting ensemble is in a pretty awesome mood, with Lo Lieh having a lot of fun with sneering, making bug eyes, and spitting blood at corpses, Ti Lung being his knightly self, Lily Li undressing and Tanny Tien Ni knowing how to use a hatchet.

And the fact that Meng Hua-Ho directs the whole mess of pus, insects, nudity, bad back projection, and a pulp horror finale (complete with a small army of the undead and a burning house) of the highest degree with a great eye for the pretty; seldom has a close-up of a festering wound full of worms looked this photogenic. Some of the more creatively realized scenes of horror hint at an influence of mid-period Hammer and Italian horror through their careful lighting and the moody photography, giving the quite outrageous (yet not as insane as these films would become in good time) pulp horror story the audience witnesses a veneer of class that stands in delightful contrast to Black Magic 2's highly exploitative nature. Do I love the movie and its director for it? I sure do.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,reviews,horror,exploitation,meng hua ho,ti lung,tanny tien ni,lily li,lo lieh,shaw brothers

On WTF: The Imperial Swordsman (1972)

One of the great pleasures of this movie reviewing lark is to stumble upon fantastic films by mere chance. Case in point is The Imperial Swordsman, directed by a director (Lam Fook-Dei) I never heard of before, featuring actors from the Shaw stable I've seldom seen in anything I could remember, and with a beginning that does barely begin to promise what the film's second half then goes on to deliver.

If you even have the slightest interest in wuxia films, or even just in action films that are very beautiful to look at (more in motion than in screenshots, I have to say), you could do worse than to head over to my write-up of the film on WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,reviews,wuxia,lam fook-dei,shu pei-pei,chuen yuen,yue wai,shaw brothers,other places

In short: Ghost Eyes (1974)

When Hong Kong beauty salon employee Bao-Ling (Chan Si-Gaai) gets a pair of contact lenses from a seemingly friendly optometrist in a sharp suit (Si Wai), weird things begin to happen to her. Bao-Ling starts to see ghosts, but that's the least of her problems. The optometrist visits Bao-Ling quite regularly and uses mysterious mind-control powers that just might have something to do with the contact lenses to get her to sleep with him, leaving her behind in various haunted and unpleasant places afterwards. Our heroine becomes pale and drained, just as if the contact lens guy were sucking out her energies.

Which is exactly what is happening to her. Bao-Ling's enemy is a possessed corpse out to drink up as much of her life force as possible. Once he's had his fill of Bao-Ling, the mightily unpleasant ghost compels the young woman to provide him with some of her beauty salon colleagues for further life force sucking.

Bao-Ling's only help with her situation is her friend An-Pin (Lam Wai-Tiu), but it takes quite some time until he believes her stories about dead men walking around and magical contact lenses. And even then, the best of intentions and a Taoist priest might not be enough to save Bao-Ling.

Ghost Eyes is a Shaw Brothers production directed by exploitation and horror specialist Gwai Chi-Hung who would go on to make films like Killer Snakes and The Boxer's Omen for the studio. Defying the expectations one might have of a director like him, Gwai's film is neither very explicit in its sleaze (even the sex is mostly implied), nor does it make use of many gross-out effects, nor is it completely ridiculous. As if to make up for this decided lack in obvious thrills, Gwai provides his film with a visual surface that is glossy and intensely coloured like a comic (or a giallo), and a narrative tone as high-strung as a horror manga by Kazuo Umezu that permanently threatens to spill over into the outright hysteria of the films shock sequences.

Gwai quite admirably keeps control of this tone of a panic barely held in check for the movie's full 100 minute running time, making up for the film's weaknesses like the silliness of the whole contact lens thing or the less than ideal ghost make-up that looks a bit as if the wearer had tried to drown himself in pea soup.

Watching Ghost Eyes, I couldn't shake the idea its director was trying to explore the point where the - traditionally female coded (even if it's not true) - melodrama, and the - traditionally male coded (even if it's not true) - horror genre meet, interpreting both genres as closely related parts of a cinema of intensity that makes them much more similar to each other than many fans of the respective genre might care to admit. I hardly think it is an accident Ghost Eyes' basic plot is that of a melodrama: woman meets man, feels drawn to him, man ruins her life and social standing.

It's also pretty interesting to add how uncommon it is for a Chinese/Hong Kong movie to have the sexually life force sucking monster be a man. That's a role usually filled by women (add your own thoughts about this motive as expression of male fear of female sexuality here please), and therefore one a film like this can't help but bend.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,in short,horror,melodrama,gwai chi-hung,chan si-gaai,si wai,shaw brothers

Three Films Make A Post: The Cyclonic Cavalcade of Electrifying Sensations That Makes Your Eyes Pop Out And Your Heart Skip A Beat!

Black Jack (1968): If ever there was a perfectly mediocre Spaghetti Western without any remarkable elements, then it must be this film directed by Gianfranco Baldanello. Baldanello's filmography as a director is full of boring competence, and Black Jack fits snugly among his other films. I'd love to, you know, actually say something about the film, but there isn't anything there to talk about, except for mentioning my annoyance at the intensely racist way it portraits its Indian character (it's the old rape and scalp thing), and the silliness of the faces lead actor Robert Woods makes when he's getting tortured. Black Jack's certainly watchable, just don't expect to remember anything about it the day after you've seen it.

 

The Swordmates (1969): As if to demonstrate how to make an ultra-generic movie but keep it entertaining, this Shaw Brothers wuxia directed by Cheung Ying and Poon Faan comes along right after the less pleasant example of Black Jack.

Evildoers are planning to topple the Ming Dynasty and have laid their plans down on a practical little scroll that's transported in a jade statue of the goddess of mercy. Do-gooders - as is their wont - do their best to thwart these plans; fighting ensues, long-lost relatives are reunited in an incredibly perfunctory manner and backstory is more ignored than explained. But that the film doesn't seem to care about its own plot isn't much of a problem: it is sprightly paced, the fights are dynamically staged, and an uncommonly high number of handheld camera shots for a Shaw production as well as an at times pretty creative use of environmental objects during the fights are enough to keep even the twelfth fight in twenty minutes fun. Lead actress Chin Ping has at this point in her career gotten so good at the wuxia heroine business (and is of course cute as a button) that not having an actual character to play doesn't hinder her from being impressive, and the older cast members are doing more of the physical action than usual. That might not sound like too much, it is however more than enough to keep me entertained for the eighty minutes the film lasts.

 

Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1988): When its American distributors saddled this film about a group of very old college students looking for an obscure bird but finding…well, not much, honestly and Robert Vaughn financing his new swimming pool, with the Zombie moniker, they were honest in a skewed way. While Killing Birds doesn't contain too many zombies (or killing birds), its snail-like pacing is as zombie-like as anything you'd care to imagine. If you want to suck enjoyment out of this movie where nothing ever happens - but very slowly, you need an unhealthy love for watching people walking through an empty, brightly-lit house for what feels like hours; a lot of alcohol might help, too. In case you need your movies to have any sort of pay-off, or want them to include anything enjoyable, you'll be better off watching a fireplace DVD.

I usually have a high tolerance for this sort of thing, but Killing Birds has me beat: there's nothing at all on screen for me to recommend it to anyone I don't hate for the horrible things he, she or it has done to my loved ones. The best I have is the comforting fact that director Claudio Lattanzi did never direct a film again.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,hong kong movies,shaw brothers,spaghetti western,wuxia,horror,in short,gianfranco baldanello,cheung ying,poon faan,chin ping

King Cat (1967)

Some time in imperial China. The intensely righteous (and very brown-faced) Judge Pao (Cheng Miu) executes a regional governor for embezzlement and being a big meanie, although he knows the governor to be a relative of the highly influential Grand Tutor (Tin Sam) of the imperial court.

Pao's setting of justice before politics does indeed have its first consequence the following night, when the Grand Tutor sends out some of his men to assassinate the judge. Fortunately, the wandering swordsman and hero Zhan Zhao (Chang Yi) is around and uses his remarkable martial prowess to fight off Pao's would-be killers. Pao is so enthused about Zhan Zhao that he asks the hero to help protect the Emperor (Ching Feng) at a parade the next day.

The swordsman agrees, and not only manages to prevent the Grand Tutor's main henchman, Hua Chong (Lo Lieh in an especially evil turn), going under the not really properly evil sounding nickname of "Variegated Butterfly", from assassinating the Emperor himself, but also saves the Emperor's sister Yongan (Carrie Ku Mei) through judicious use of his cat-like ability to walk on walls. The Emperor, like Pao before him, is quite excited about Zhan Zhao, names him an Imperial Guard and gives him the honorific title of "King Cat".

Zhan Zhao doesn't seek this sort of honour, though, and also knows that this sort of public exposure can only bring trouble to a member of the martial world, so he sneaks away from court the next night to continue his heroic wanderings. At least (and after the judge has followed him through the night), the swordsman leaves Pao with a way to contact him when there is need for his service.

Zhan Zhao was just too right about his new nickname being bound to bring trouble. When word of "King Cat" carries to the martial arts brothers known as the "Five Mice of Xiankong Island", the youngest brother, Bai Yutang the Brocaded Mouse (Kiu Chong) is livid about this perceived insult by someone he has never met. So livid in fact, that he insults his fiancée, the swordswoman Ding Yuehua (Pat Ting Hung), by sneaking away to the capital to try and provoke Zhan Zhao into a duel against her wishes. The eldest brother (and the only one of them with a brain larger than that of a mouse, which would explain why these guys are known as the Five Mice) sends the three other mice after him, but a few overheard jokes about mice and cats later, and these three goofs are all too willing to help Bai Yutang in his stupid plans.

He thinks the best way to get in contact with Zhan Zhao is to break into the imperial palace and steal something precious, like that fantastic jade stove Princess Yongan has just been gifted. The theft goes rather well, but just after the brothers have left the palace again, the despicable Hua Chong sneaks in and kills and rapes (and it really might be this way around with that guy) the Princess' three maids. Initially, Hua Chong was just planning to kidnap Yongan to then rape her and become prince consort by default, but this Butterfly is never willing to let an opportunity for rape pass by, as the rest of the movie will continue to demonstrate.

Soon, Zhan Zhao is hunting the Five Mice, helping out Ding Yuehua in a spot of bother, and will in the end have to save Yongan from some rape-drugged incense sticks.

Director Hsu Tseng-Hung isn't one of the best known directors of the Shaw Brothers (he's probably best known for his later Golden Harvest phase), and - not surprisingly - delivers King Cat in the production house's house style of 1967. Of course, while lovers of auteur-oriented movies won't be satisfied by this, the Shaw house style for wuxia movies in 1967 was pretty damn great to look at. So Hsu's film spoils its viewers with a very pleasant mix of colourful costumes, a lot of neat sets, two or three beautifully realized scenes taking place in real-life nature, dynamic editing and fight choreographies of the fun and professional sort with more than enough rubber ball jumping to royally piss off anyone babbling about the need for "realism" in martial arts movies.

I suspect the film's script must have already felt a little old-fashioned in 1967, what with very straight heroes like Zhan Zhao who don't have that much personal emotional involvement in the evil plots they are preventing fastly going out of fashion for grimmer heroes. Despite all that raping and attempted raping (which is all handled off-camera), King Cat is far from grim and instead has a pleasantly light feel. As a viewer, you have the feeling that everything will turn out all right in the end, and even the melodramatic bits will be solved in friendly ways. This is the sort of film that ends without tragic renunciations of love, and half of the cast bleeding to death in the gutter, which makes for a very nice change even for someone like me who likes his downer endings.

Apart from the high level of craftsmanship the film shows on the visual side, and the mostly fine acting (Kiu Chong is a bit too theatrical for my tastes), King Cat also delights through the sort of pacing that threatens to make me use the phrase "merry romp". Hsu and his scriptwriter Ding Sin-Saai manage to control their typically sizeable cast and typically complicated plot so well that everything that might seem preposterous or under-explained in a less well done movie comes together into an actual story. Mostly, the plot even makes sense, or at least as much sense as a film including plans concerning rape-drug-incense can do.

There are also a lot of small, likeable details sprinkled throughout King Cat, like the identity of the person who is allowed to deliver the killing strike against Lo Lieh, or the simple delight of a film that ends with the scene of an Emperor trying to reward the heroes for their deeds, but the heroes declining, not out of the "patriotic" reasons of serving the state being reward enough and so on, but because they don't want to become officials, prince consorts, or that other boring stuff.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,hsu tseng-hung,chang yi,pat ting-hung,lo lieh,reviews

Men From The Gutter (1983)

In jarring contrast to movie cops everywhere else, Hong Kong policemen have to work more than one case at once, so HK cops Qiu Zhenming (Michael Miu) and Sergeant Zhao (Lo Meng) have to be able to cope with two problems at once. Their life is certainly not made easier by the fact that the two men can't stand each other. Zhao thinks Qiu is too soft, while Qiu takes Zhao to be so ruthless and violent that he does more harm than good. In a bizarre turn towards believability, both men won't learn to respect and love each other.

Not that the cases they are working on are leaving them much time for any of that sort of business. Firstly, there's a luckless group of ex-convicts lead by Wang Guangtai (Parkman Wong) planning an armed assault on a jewellery transport for the policemen to cope with. How luckless are they? Wang shoots a police officer even before they have done anything more illegal than buying weapons.

The second case regards the quite single-minded Zi Jian (Jason Pai Piao), a gangster who has come to Hong Kong to take bloody (and he means bloody) vengeance on gangster boss Xu Wen (Wong Yung) for trying to kill him.

Where Wang and his friends are just your typical losers trying to escape poverty and desperation, Zi Jian is a one-man army, and sure enough, the latter will turn out to be a much larger problem for the police than the former.

In 1983, the Shaw Brothers studios were in the beginning of their death throes. Many of their films of this and the following two years were somewhat desperate seeming attempts at becoming relevant to their audience again, at times leading to confoundingly weird films or, like in the case of Men From The Gutter, to films that neither look nor feel like earlier Shaw Brothers movies at all, even if they are part of genres the studio had a lot of experience in, like the "based on a true story" exploitationer.

The film's director Ngai Kai Lam/Lam Nai-Choi is today better known for his weird-o-fu fantasy film The Seventh Curse and the absurd violent thing that is Story of Ricky, but he also had quite a hand for grim and brutal crime films with a helping of HK New Wave hyper-realism like this one.

Men From The Gutter is related to the ripped-from-the-headlines brutalism that would a few years later become a staple of CATIII cinema and stands in marked aesthetic contrast to the pop sensibility the Shaw Brothers news exploitation movies of the 70s exhibited. Where the old films were all artificial colours and stylish ugliness, Lam's movie goes for a less stylish version of the grimy (that is of course just as artificial as the older model, but puts a lot of its artifice into not showing it), all dirt and grime and beautifully photographed poverty.

The film looks at the people running and shouting and killing before that background with cool, distanced sympathy, taking no sides and making not much of a moral judgement on anyone (except Xu Wen, who is obviously too rich to deserve anything more in characterization than "proper bastard"), be he or she cop or robber, but still shows the carnage everybody's life here descends into with a slight undertone of sadness for humanity. Neither this sympathy nor this sadness let Lam forgot that he is supposed to make an action film here, and so much of the film's running time consists of the sort of sharp, short, fast edited, and quite brutal looking violence the director does so well in those of his films that don't include fights against aliens or Fan Siu-Wong punching through someone's body.

The sense of real physicality surrounding the action here is of course typical for the new wave of Hong Kong action of the time, but Lam's film does not share the slightly chaotic feel which is also part of that tradition. Instead, even the most heated sequence of events here (and especially Zi Jian's final fight is as heated as they come) is shown in a way that seems coolly controlled by the director. Again, the film shows a marked friction between the intensity of the things happening on screen and the distance with which director and film seem to regard them; it's as if Lam would like his audience to feel uncomfortable with what he's showing as much as he wants them to enjoy it in his own version of the classical exploitation dilemma of needing to wallow in what one criticizes.

Men From The Gutter is not at all a film I would have expected as part of the late period Shaw Brothers' output, but it's as nice a surprise as I could have wished for.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,action,crime,jason pai piao,lo meng,michael miu,ngai kai lam,reviews

Twin Blades of Doom (1969)

Martial artist Chang Qi Lang (Ling Yun), nicknamed "the Twin Blades of Doom", kills another highly respected martial artist in a duel that wasn't supposed to be to the death.

Struck by guilt, Chang retires from the Martial World and hides away with his parents, doing menial jobs. One night, after Chang had to lift his incognito in one of those random sword fights that always happened in ancient China, and just before the swordsman and his parents can move on to another town, someone kills the nice elderly pair for no good reason the film is willing to impart, leaving behind a ghost mask. Chang - who was basically just around the corner for five minutes - is grief-stricken and very very angry.

A bit of research later, he knows that a group known as the Ghost Gang has killed his parents. Of course, being a swordsman, Chang swears bloody vengeance on them. His first bout with a group of the killers doesn't go too well. Although he is able to slay his enemies, Chang is wounded and poisoned by an expert in piggyback fu.

With more luck than anything else, the wounded swordsman stumbles right into the arms of a group of travelling artistes (whom the subtitles dub "art sellers", but who most certainly aren't). Their patriarch (Cheng Miu) has some skill in and the proper medicines for treating poison, and is too nice a guy not to use them. Yin-erh (Ching Li), one of his daughters, falls in love with the sombre swordsman at once, but Chang leaves the troupe at the first possibility to pursue his vengeance.

Little does he know that just going with them would have shortened the way to that vengeance considerably, for the main force of the Ghost Gang attacks the next village the artistes are visiting. Not many of them survive the attack, but instead of running away, the four surviving artistes (among them of course the patriarch and Yin-erh), travel into the next town threatened by the Ghost Gang to warn them about the Gang's plan to steal some precious jade figurines.

The rest of the film concerns itself with further whittling down Yin-erh's family, with Chang's attempts to take vengeance and a lot of back and forth over the jade figurines. Because a wuxia plot can't get complicated enough, Chang and the patriarch also realize that the artistes would have a good reason to take vengeance on Chang themselves.

Twin Blades of Doom is the final directorial work by Tao Qin (aka Ching Doe and variants of that), a Shaw Brothers contract director since the early 50s who was usually specialized in musicals and melodrama. Going by the titles in his filmography, this seems to be his only wuxia or martial arts film, but you wouldn't think him unaccustomed to the rules and regulations of the wuxia genre after seeing Twin Blades. Stylistically, the film stands between more traditional stylings of its genre and its post-One Armed Swordsman brutalization and loss of interest in female characters (outside of the films of Chor Yuen). Like the Cheng Cheh school of filmmaking of that time taught, Tao Qin's film concentrates on a single male hero, but it has much more time for civilians (that is, non martial artists) and especially its female lead Ching Li than a comparable Cheng film would have.

True, Yin-erh isn't allowed to be a fighter here, but the film treats her as respectfully as a heroine can expect to be treated, as if she were a proper grown-up able to take care of herself and not a simpering idiot only fit for being kidnapped.

I also found it quite refreshing how nice of a guy our hero Chang is. I'm used to seeing the good guys helping people in need by slaughtering the bad guys, but Chang is more than once sparing the lives of lowly henchmen of his enemies. Now that's a brooding hero I can get behind.

The fights are full of only the reddest blood the Shaw studios had to offer, but they are not as insane or violent as those in some of the film's contemporaries. Tao often frames the fights in a way that seems influenced by certain Japanese chambara, at times with objects in the foreground purposely blocking out some of the action. Moments of absolute stillness explode into short bursts of speedy violence.

More problematic than the action is the film's plotting. Twin Blades' first half is very straightforward and simple, but the longer the film goes on, the less sure it seems to be where it wants to go. I don't have a problem with the sudden bouts of melodrama in and of themselves - especially since they allow house favourite Ching Li to put on her very effective tragic face - but they seem to bring the film out of balance. I know, the wuxia genre is not exactly known for its focus, but focus is still what the film lacks.

Thematically, Twin Blades is your typical wuxia. It features the usual mix of guilt, karmic debts that have to be paid, the endless cycle of vengeance, the hero protecting the unwilling - you know, the stuff that's nearly always in there. There aren't any revelations about any of these elements, but that's alright with me.

A bit more revelatory, or at least surprising, is that Twin Blades grants its two lead characters a real Happy End, which is not the ending lovers usually get in a wuxia. For once, this is a film that believes in redemption without the need for a heroic self-sacrifice ending in death, and I, for one, am not going to contradict it.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,reviews,ling yun,ching li

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.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,meng hua ho,lo lieh,lau wing,nancy yen,reviews

The Criminals (1976)

This Shaw Brothers production consists of three episodes by different directors "based on true crimes".

The first one, "Hidden Torsos", tells of the rather unlucky attempt of Jenny (Shih Szu) and her little mute daughter to leave Jenny's lover Rong Sheng (Si Wai). Jenny ends up stabbed, her kid drowned. Rong Sheng bricks their bodies in, but chooses such a stupid place for it that they are found earlier than he had expected.

The second episode, "Valley of the Hange" (sic), is about a worker named Hong the Bull (Kong Yeung) and his troubles with his wife Mei Jiao (Terry Lau). Just think, although he paid enough to marry her to pay for quite a lot of whores, she doesn't want to sleep with him anymore! When Hong finds out that Mei Jiao instead sleeps with his foppish colleague De the Prince (Tin Ching), only deadly violence can be the answer. The film approves.

The last part of the film, "The Stuntsmen" (sic, again) tells the story of Shaw Brothers stuntman Chen Zhong (Lo Lieh). Surprisingly enough, many of the stuntmen we see don't seem satisfied with what the Shaw Brothers are paying and work as gangsters on the side. Chen Zhong meets and falls in love with the prostitute Hong (Tanny Tien Ni), who looks exactly like actress Tanny Tien Ni, whom he of course fancies. He has a glorious idea for Hong's prostitute career - pretend she really is Tanny Tien Ni! The plan works out nicely, but Chen Zhong is sucked ever deeper into the gangster lifestyle and soon has his own gang as well as his own gang wars. He survives his new lifestyle nicely until he takes the homeless Kid Liu (Wong Yu, not the regularly one-armed one) under his wing and in his trust. As it goes in cases like these, Liu falls in love with Hong, their affair gives one of Chen Zhong's enemies a convenient method to blackmail Hong, murder happens.

The exploitation arm of the Shaw Brothers was quite active during the second half of the 70s, churning out lurid films like this one by the dozens. This "ripped from the headlines" portfolio film was successful enough to get three sequels. The reason for its success probably wasn't the film's rather dubious quality, but the siren song of cheap, ugly thrills. Of course, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Seen as a film rather than a money-making device, The Criminals is a bit more problematic. Each of the segments is directed by a different director and goes for a different sort of luridness. This makes the film more than a little disconnected.

Cheng Kang's first segment is probably the best of the three. While it is a bit short, "Hidden Torsos" works very well as a tour de force thrill ride. A certain visual pop sensibility, a wee bit of Poe and merry crassness collide in a nice little heap of cheap yet effective thrills without much substance but with a lot of drive.

Hua Shan's second segment is less satisfying. It is as sleazy as one could wish for, but the "horned husband kills his wife" plot just couldn't keep me interested for a whole thirty minutes. On the plus side stands an ensemble of actors camping it up so much that it's obvious nobody here is taking the whole thing seriously. That doesn't make the episode shorter however.

Where "Valley of the Hange" is too long, Meng-Hua Ho's "The Stuntsmen" is way too short to effectively develop anything that is packed into it. At first, the glorious chutzpah of the Shaw Brothers basing parts of an exploitation film on their own bad reputation is very charming, especially when the film goes as far as to have a doubleganger prostitute of one of the studio's actresses played by said actress herself in it, but the segment soon just ignores the enticing and rather creepy self-referentiality and transforms into a standard gangster film.

Alas one that fails at pressing the plot of a two hour film into barely forty minutes. A few scenes like the two big(ish) murder set pieces do pack a bit of a punch (this is a highly professional production after all), but everything else happens too fast and is too superficial  and jumpy to leave much of an impression.

Of course, The Criminals still is the movie in which the Shaw Brothers show the Shaw Brothers as the cradle of protection rackets and prostitution, so nobody interested in the studio's films or exploitation filmmakers exploiting themselves should miss out on it, even though it is not a very good film.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,cheng kang,hua shan,meng hua ho,exploitation,lo lieh,wong yu,tanny tien ni,shih szu,reviews

In short: The Rescue (1971)

At the beginning of the Mongol Yuan dynasty rule in China, a group of rebels has put it in their minds to free the still loyal prime minister of the Sungs, Wen Tianxiang (Fang Mian) from imprisonment. After some struggles the group finds out that the Mongols are hiding the official in the Celestial Prison, which unfortunately does look more like a very earthly prison.

The rebels, among them their single female member, the young swordswoman Bai Yaerh (Shih Szu), decide that the best way to get Wen out is to get themselves thrown into the jail where some supporters will provide weaponry and keys. Also letting himself into the prison in this very natural way is Le Heru (Lo Lieh). This roguish expert fighter doesn't have heroically dying for his country in mind. Rather, he is using the traditional friendly stalker route trying to win Bai Yaerh's heart.

Le Heru still comes in handy when the plan goes awry and most of the rebels are killed. Thanks to his help, Bai Yaerh belongs to the handful of people who escape the prison with their lives.

Of course, the patriots can't let their project end this way.

The Rescue is a very typical historical Shaw Brothers wuxia. The word typical shouldn't be read as "not worthwhile", on the contrary, the typical (historical or not) Shaw Brothers wuxia of this phase of the studio's life was really a rather good film.

The production line method of filmmaking has a bad reputation (mostly among people who have never seen many films made this way), but in the case of the Shaw Brothers the production line mostly lead to a very solid technical base from which to work. So director San Kong had a solid professional cast, solid professional fight choreography, solid professional sets and so on, and so on. If it sounds as if I was trying to say that The Rescue is a lot like dozens of other Shaw Brothers films, then, well, yes I am in fact saying it. That however is not a bad thing, because I most probably liked these dozens of other films.

A few things here are a little different, though. First and foremost, Lo Lieh wasn't allowed to play heroic roles very often, and seems to relish the possibility. He also works nicely with Shih Szu, who herself is really good as the extremely competent swordswoman with the tendency to upperclass petulance. Besides the mandatory looking pretty, which was not much of a problem for her, she also seems to have done quite a bit of her fighting herself, and did it well, which not every Shaw heroine did or was allowed to do.

Some of the mass fights are also worth mentioning for their well developed sense of controlled chaos and proper use of the typical Shaw-colored blood.

Add to that the more low key way the film treats its mandatory patriotic speeches, a love for people in disguise, a choice misuse of "Also sprach Zarathustra" and a very undignified patriotic sacrificial death for one of the main characters, and you'll find me completely on the side of your film.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,lo lieh,shih szu,in short

In short: The Black Falcon (1967)

A shadowy and evil organization known as "The Black Falcon" terrorizes Hong Kong with unspecified shadowy and evil deeds. The World Insurance Organization (don't ask me) sends in its best man, Zhang Shijie (Paul Chang Chung), sworn brother to James Bond.

The Black Falcon's mastermind is a certain Mister Tan, but nobody in the organization speaks directly to him and nobody knows exactly where he lives. Fortunately, Zhang's superiors have a brilliant plan to find Tan. Our man Zhang will have to charm himself into the trust of Tan's daughter Julie (Jenny Hu) and get her father's whereabouts out of her. The charming part works out wonderfully. Julie hasn't seen her father for several months, though and doesn't have the slightest clue where he might live.

Worse for Zhang is the fact that the Black Falcon is on to his tricks and tries to murder him repeatedly. After a few other complications are dealt with and Julie is in the clear about who Zhang his and how evil and shadowy an evil and shadowy organization the Black Falcon truly is, the two team up to, um, drive randomly around the countryside, I guess.

The Black Falcon, directed by ex-Nikkatsu director Takumi Furukawa isn't exactly the crowning jewel of the spy movies the Shaw Brothers produced in the wake of the James Bond fever that seemed to have gripped Asia (or at least Hong Kong and Japan) especially heavily. The film's problems are twofold. Firstly, The Shaw's favorite secret agent Paul Chang Chung isn't the ideal casting for a super suave, super smart agent (here called a "detective", but who cares). While he knows how to handle himself in a fight and isn't exactly a bad actor, he also isn't all that charismatic or sexy, so that one has to trust the assurances of the script regarding his charisma and sexiness, instead of actually seeing them on screen.

Secondly, the script lacks any feeling of propulsion, and while we get to see a fair share of action, there never seems to be much of a reason for anything that happens except those boxes on the list of "things that belong in a spy film" the scriptwriters used. If our supposed hero has a plan, it doesn't show on screen too much.

While these flaws (and its pitiful lack of Lily Ho) are enough to keep the film from being more than a qualified recommendation, it also has a few virtues.

Furukawa's direction is fast and snappy and more often than not delightfully pop, and while the film isn't a satisfying whole, you can't blame Furukawa's ability for staging fun action sequences and set pieces for it.

There is a lot of fun to be had when the film gets through one of the classical motions of 60s spy films after another, most of them very expertly executed. As long as you are able to go with its semi-cheap, glossy surface charms and don't look for meaning or narrative, The Black Falcon is a fine time.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,spies,paul chang chung,jenny hu,in short,takumi furukawa

Three Films Make A Post As Big As A Battleship

Time Walker (1982): An alien mummy runs amuck on a university campus after an overdose of radiation (damn you, Mister Röntgen!) has woken it up from its death-like sleep. Although it kills quite a few people, it is not an evil alien mummy, but only wants to finally get home. Just like a moldy version of ET.

Well, mildly interesting is what comes to mind here. I have seen films that were much worse in every aspect of the craft of filmmaking (although the script here is exceptionally clunky), but I have also seen films that were a lot more entertaining to watch. As it stands, it's mostly for the hardcore mummy lover crowd or people who have to see everything for themselves (me).

 

The Bride From Hell (1972): A very traditional Chinese ghost story. Man (Yang Fan) unwittingly marries a ghost (Margaret Hsing Hui) and starts to act like an ass when he gets suspicious about her place among the living. Her nightly vengeance expeditions to avenge her family's and her own death and post-mortem rape don't help to lighten the matter.

This is a much more conservative film than your typical Shaw Brothers horror, with only the slightest flourishes of madness. Might be too stuffy for some, but I enjoyed it.

 

Necropolis (1987): 300 years after a botched attempt at gaining immortality, a witch (LeeAnne Baker) is reincarnated and trying for eternal life again. To attain it, she has to kill a few people to "suck their ectoplasm" and feed it through her six breasts to her undead minions. Too bad that the people who were responsible for her earlier defeat are also reborn and trying to stop her.

Apart from the six breasts and ectoplasm business, this is a bog standard 80s variation of ye olde witches' revenge yarn with some choice bad acting and not much else of interest, unless you really like 80s pseudo punk fashion a lot more than I do. On the other hand, it could have been much worse.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,hong kong movies,shaw brothers,horror,sf,yang fang,margaret hsing hui,in short

Bloody Parrot (1981)

Well, let's explain this "bloody parrot" business first, shall we? You see, when the demon king has his birthday (presumably on Friday the 13th), his chief minion demons gift him their blood. The blood takes on the form of a (bloody) parrot and grants everyone it meets three wishes.

Back here on earth, the Prince of Dian somehow loses the treasure he was supposed to send as tribute to the emperor, and his servants have to start a hasty search. While traipsing through the woods at night, one patrol is suddenly bathed in blinding red light. It's that bloody parrot!

After laser parrot has randomly killed a few people, the bad-tempered bird grants the leader of the Prince's men, Guo Fan (Kwan Fung) his three wishes. Guo Fan obviously wishes the treasure back, but hasn't read The Monkey's Paw and does therefore look quite surprised when he not only gets the treasure back, but also finds that his son has been killed. The next logical step is to wish his son back, of course. His wife, gifted with a greater amount of intelligence than her husband, can't hinder him from making this ill-advised second wish, and has to kill hubby before their son can climb out of his urn when he refuses to use his third wish to undo the potential zombie apocalypse. Logically, she then commits suicide. At the same moment as Guo Fan dies, the treasure suddenly disappears again. In the following weeks, hordes of martial artists descend upon the area, all in search of the parrot and/or the treasure, yet also very eager to just kill each other for no good reason.

Also on the lookout for the bloody bird is Tie Hen the Merciless (Lau Wing), who seems to be some sort of cop. Being a cop (and merciless) doesn't safe him from parrot attacks, though, and very soon he is also quite dead, dying in the arms of the swordsman Ye Ting Feng (Jason Pai Piao) who might or might not be an old acquaintance and promises him to take his dead body back to the border. Which Ye Ting Feng probably plans on doing right after he has dragged Tie Hen (in his coffin, don't fret) through half of China in search of parrot and treasure. The film has finally settled on a protagonist! So, granted certain death exemptions by the divine right of the protag, the swordsman starts his investigation following a nonsensical clue into the Parrot Brothel - fortunately not a place where men pay to sleep with parrots. From there, his new prostitute love Xue Nu (Jenny Leung) and he start a series of bizarre adventures, full of people who want to kill Ye Ting Feng and abduct Xue Nu, bizarre poisons, demonic possession, cannibalism, worm boy, a "doll face killer needle lady" (her embroidery needle is deadly), vampires, naked fu, underground mirror labyrinths, the works, until it all finally ends in a perfectly natural explanation for all the nonsense that has been going on. Of course, this "explanation" makes even less sense than most of what happened before, but oh well.

Hua Shan might not have directed many films for the Shaw Brothers, or any film that made much sense, but I find it difficult to call the man who directed this thing here as well as the immortal Super Inframan anything else but a demented genius of hysterical enthusiasm.

Bloody Parrot is part of the effort of the late period Shaw Brothers studio to win back its audience from the younger, sexier Cantonese speaking studios by making wild genre mixtures of dubious sanity. In this case, it's a wuxia in Chor Yuen's style, just much less carefully filmed, but with more gore, worms, vomit, breasts and other exploitative elements,mostly playing out like a horror film with lots of fighting.

The script by good old (N)i Kuang (if you don't know, that's the man who wrote about eighty percent of the Shaw Brothers' output) does not make a lick of sense, but Hua Shan's direction is so giddy, and the pace in which one damn thing after another happens (and then another, and another - it truly doesn't ever stop) so relentless that it's impossible not to just jump with it from a naked kung fu fight with a demon-possessed Xue Nu to the next half a dozen bizarros who want to kill Ye Ting Feng while he's gone out to buy some paint (don't ask) to an improbable (but bava-coloured) underground cave. Resistance to a film that even uses a mirror labyrinth as a reason to undress its female lead is futile in any case.

The rest of the film is mostly an amphetamine driven version of Shaw standards, with acting performances as solid as possible in a film where the viewer mostly never learns who these damn guys are, or what motives they have, and fighting that could probably have been choreographed a little more creatively, but hardly more enthusiastic. The well-known sets used in this completely stage-bound affair have seen better days, though.

And while other films in the Shaw catalogue like Buddha's Palm might be even more bonkers, a film that has dialogue lines like "The skin from the seven of you is just enough to make me a skirt" should be weird enough to make anyone happy.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,reviews,wuxia,horror,hua shan,shaw brothers,weird fu

The Lady Hermit (1971)

A young (and I mean really, really young) woman named Cui Ping (Shih Szu) is searching for a mysterious swordswoman, the Lady Hermit, whom she deems to be the only teacher worth learning from. Cui Ping plans to become a good enough fighter to challenge the current "Number One In The Martial World", Black Demon (Wang Hsieh), who is a right bastard. It's not as if it was personal between Cui Ping and Black Demon - she lacks the expected backstory about murdered parents and is instead driven by a combination of youthful arrogance and just as youthful righteousness. Not a bad combination in a woman brandishing a whip and a sword.

Said woman is more than on the right trail to find her heroine - she has already met her in the form of a maid (Cheng Pei Pei) working at the escort service Cui Ping has made the base for her search. Leng Yu Shuang, as the Hermit's real name is, has been laying low there for a few years to recover from a grievous wound to her hip she suffered when fighting (and losing against) Black Demon.

Also working for the escort service is Chang Chun (Lo Lieh in one of his knightly roles), soon to be one third of a love triangle between the heroines, and really not of much other use.

To make matters a little more complicated, Black Demon's henchmen have slowly closed in on the Lady Hermit and are concocting their own version of a protection money racket - led by someone claiming to be the heroine (just with a lot more beard) to flush the original out. So the rest of the film's plot should be more or less obvious.

If someone could explain the reason for the bizarre differences in quality and style of the films of The Lady Hermit's director Meng Hua Ho to me, it would be very much appreciated. How it is possible that the man responsible for The Oily Maniac and Mighty Peking Man was just a few years earlier making an excellent wuxia like this is beyond me. Who knew how good he was in making the best of location shots? Or making real neat looking action scenes?

Of course, The Lady Hermit is a very formulaic film, but that's one of the reason we call movies like it "genre movies". The question in a case like this is: how well does a film use the formulae of his genre and (if the genre is already getting decadent one way or the other) how does it twist them? The former does not seem to have been a problem for Meng Hua Ho at all - the movie contains everything one expects of a non-mad wuxia, realized in as dynamic and exciting ways as possible. The fights are as well choreographed as they are bloody, which is no surprise in a Shaw Brothers film, of course, but also show a fine sense for action set pieces like a fight on a suspension bridge (including really bad model effects - always a plus) that some people in Hollywood would go on to steal a few years later for that film with the permanently screeching woman, or, as we call it, the Anti-Lady-Hermit.

The twist in the genre formula is the consequent way in which the film substitutes typical male roles with female characters and vice versa - not completely atypical for the wuxia, but seldom played this straight and unflinching. Also, Lo Lieh as Damsel With A Sword In Distress really is something.

And speaking of "really being something", there are our heroines. Cheng Pei Pei was a much more accomplished actress at this point in her career than in her earliest years (and keep in mind she was only 25 when this film was made) and this is surely one of her best performances. Where many wuxia heroes tend to be rather bland, she projects a rare mixture of determination, competence, fragility and humor combined with the ability to kill people with tea cups.

Shih Szu, only 16 here, mostly lives off youthful charm, but what could be a problem in other roles becomes a believable part of her character here.

All in all, there's no reason to miss this, unless you're on of those people who are categorically against watching really good films.

 

Technorati-Tags: cheng pei pei,lo lieh,hong kong movies,reviews,wuxia,shaw brothers,shih szu,meng hua ho

Temptress Of A Thousand Faces (1969)

Hong Kong, poor Hong Kong! When not overrun with midgets shooting acid from their goiters or gangsters shedding blood in a most heroic fashion, the (swinging) city's peace and quiet is disturbed by evil masterminds like the Temptress of a Thousand Faces (Pat Ting Hung). As her name suggests, she is a master of disguise, using those magical latex masks we know and love from a lot of movies to good effect.

As far as evil masterminds go, Tempie's one of the less intimidating ones - she's a big time jewel thief without a proclivity for bloodshed, so the non-jewel-possessing part of the world is safe from her plans.

Her biggest ally is in fact the Hong Kong police itself, here mostly present through The Detective, an older guy who is always barking at his underlings how incompetent they are without ever showing the slightest trace of competence himself, Porn Cop (so called because the film never bothers to give him a name and he has trouble discerning between porn and reality) and our heroine, Chi Ying (Tina Fei Chin).

All would be swell for the Temptress, if she wasn't crushing on a reporter named Yu Ta (Liang Chen), who - what are the odds! - is also the boyfriend of Chi Ying.

What's an evil woman to do when she's in love with another woman's boyfriend? Well, why not start with kidnapping the guy's cop-girlfriend to a) strip her down to her underwear and tie her up nicely and b) tell her that you are not that evil - after all, you are robbing rich people, who are all evil themselves and when you were still poor, nobody helped you; also, men are evil. and c) torture her by spinning her around really fast in something reminding me of a shower cubicle; afterwards torture her some more with electro shocks.

Surprisingly enough, Chi Ying continues her hunt for the Temptress afterwards, which soon leads to another kidnapping. But this time, the Temptress disguises herself as the policewoman to rob some more jewels (really, she has to pay off the cost of her lair) and discredit her enemy.

That goes rather well, what with every copper in town as stupid as one of those damn flies that tries to drown itself in a bowl of soup again and again.

Chi Ying is not willing to give up though, and uses the hypnotic powers of leg rubbing to escape from the watchful eyes of Porn Cop. She's caught again soon enough, but not before she's had a bout of sweet sweet love-making with Yu Ta.

It must have been very very sweet love-making indeed, since the reporter is now absolutely convinced that Chi Ying is not the Temptress. He starts the woman's rehabilitation at once by putting on drag (and hot damn, that's a sight that will sink into my nightmares) and robbing some jewels. He leaves the Temptress' card at the scene of the crime, leaving the Detective not much choice than to let Chi Ying go free.

Alas, she doesn't even have the chance to go and thank her man - the henchmen of the Temptress (some of course in the guise of blindmen) grab her again!

After dressing Chi Ying down to her underwear and installing a TV tuned to the Yu Ta bedroom channel, Tempie (the tramp!) again dresses up as the cop and has some fun with Yu Ta - who is of course oblivious to the fact his girlfriend now has a different body below her face.

The part with the TV is a mistake. A very pissed off Chi Ying punches and shoots (while still in her underwear, obviously) through a whole lot of henchmen and goes off to rescue her men.

 

As you might probably have guessed, this Shaw Brothers epic is one of the studio's experiments with the Eurospy formula, spicing things up with Diabolik-like supervillaindom and as much sleaze as it could get away with. Which, in 1969, was quite a lot, as long as nobody got too naked.

Temptress (directed by the South Korean Chang-hwa Jeong, a typical Shaw house style director without much of a distinctive voice, but the sure hand of an experienced craftsman) pushes all the right buttons of the genre: the cheap but cool sets, the sometimes outrageous outfits (Tempie's got a thing for a wide variety of henchpeople uniforms), the highly dubious plot and so on and so on.

There's enough action to keep everything moving all the time. As usual in this genre, the fight choreography is nothing to write home about, but Tina Fei Chin does much of her fighting herself while dressed in mini-skirts, high heels and wearing gravity-defying big 60s hair, so I'll give her a pass for the effort alone.

Really if this film does not sound fun for you, there's not much I can do - it's probably the perfect Shaw Brothers not-Eurospy film with all the problems and virtues this title brings with it.

(A warning to sensitive people: there is a Wong Jing-like rape "joke" at the end that could make you a little mad. Personally, I am so desensitized that a scene in which Porn cop and another cop are grabbing two of Tempie's harem henchwomen to "have their fun" and the rest of the police and the henchwomen are laughing at those whacky comedy cops does hardly even register anymore.)

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,eurospy,action,comedy,reviews,tina fei chin

Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983)

It's an old story: a pair of star-crossed lovers with two children knows where the secret creed of the Holy Flame of the martial world is hidden. The chiefs of every martial arts clan of mythic ancient China want that secret, so they hunt the two down and kill them in a fit of overenthusiasm. The children miraculously survive some of baby fu (which is the technical term for fighting with a baby on your back) - the male one is rescued by The Phantom (Philip Kwok) who comes too late to be of help to the babies' parents, while the female one has the dubious luck of becoming the adoptive daughter of Tsin Yin (Leanne Lau), head of the Er Mei Clan and one of the killers.

Eighteen years later, the Phantom sends the boy who has (somewhat) grown into the not exactly spectacular form of Max Mok to retrieve the Holy Flame and take vengeance on the killers of his parents.

Nobody knows that there are actually two Holy Flames, a yin and a yang version, one only useable by an eighteen year old male virgin, the other by a female one. Soon each twin has one of the weapons. Will they kill each other with the the things, or will they slaughter the bad guys?

 

Holy Flame of the Martial World is a late period Shaw Brothers film and as such one thing first and foremost: a bizarre construction out of the maddest elements possible.

Sure, the underlying vengeance tale is an old hat in the martial arts and wuxia genres, but moments of earnest melodrama have to take a backseat when scores of bizarre characters attack each other with everything the Weird Fu sub-genre loves (except - inexplicably - midgets). Good old Philip Kwok uses what could very well be my all-time favorite fighting technique, the "Ghostly Laughter". Just imagine him with one of those bad white wigs that are supposed to signify age on his head, sitting in front of his enemies and laughing heartily. So heartily in fact, that his laughter causes an enormous storm which blows his enemies away (unless they "seal their energy flow"). It's enormously silly to look at, and I highly approve.

Most of the film is like that. It throws as much weirdness at its viewer as possible, most of it without anything amounting to an explanation. But really, what explanation could there be for Golden Snake Boy being played by a girl (and who is he/she anyway?) or for the Blood-Sucking Clan whose members are always on the lookout for female virgins to feed them to an English-speaking green corpse?

Or for the fact that the Holy Flames look very much like cheap plastic toys, until they grow and our heroes fly on them, that is? And, now that I think of it, did you know that coming into contact with a special snake bladder will give you the power of the Magic Finger?

With so much bizarre awesomeness thrown at me as fast as possible, I was even able to ignore the obvious flaws of the film - like Max Mok's complete lack of charisma and the ram-shackle state some of the sets were in. I just hadn't time for small change like this while watching a film with flying mirror balls.

 

Technorati-Tags: shaw brothers,reviews,hong kong movies,wuxia,martial arts,weird fu,philip kwok,max mok

The Twelve Gold Medallions (1970)

The Chinese Empire is under attack by the Tartars. While heroic general Yue slowly takes the lost territory back piece by piece, the traitorous prime minister plans on selling out to the invaders. Yue's success is a problem for his plans, so he acquires a royal order that will call Yue back from the front and leave the way open for his newly made allies. To make sure the order really arrives, the minister orders it engraved on twelve gold medallions, each of which will be transported to the frontline by a martial arts expert of great talent and dubious morality.

There's more than one patriotic fighter who wants to prevent the order's delivery. Especially effective in getting rid of the mercenaries is Miao Lung (Yueh Huah), a former student of the sword style of Jin Yang Tan (Cheng Miu). Little does he suspect that his master has heard the siren song of power and influence and has just been awarded the leadership of the martial arts school whose main reason for existence is the delivery of the medallions.

As soon as he learns this, Miao Lung's sense of duty and honor compels him to break up his engagement to Jin Yang Tan's daughter Jin Suo (Chin Ping). Her father uses the opportunity to convince the girl that Miao Lung has fallen in love with another woman.

Both men don't know that Jin Suo herself has also gotten into the medallion interception business.

If you think this should be enough complications for one film, you probably haven't seen many wuxias. The film finds time - without breaking a sweat, I must add - to also concern itself with the destiny of many other honorable and dishonorable fighters, betrayal and tragedies and even with a little comic relief.

But it is doubtful that the story will end in laughter and not in blood and tears.

Cheng Kang may not be as well known a Shaw Brothers director as Chor Yuen or Chang Cheh, but this doesn't make his films necessarily less interesting or less individual efforts.

The Twelve Gold Medallions for example is a film that tries to re-invent the classic wuxia formula in a way very different from Chor Yuen. Where Chor opts for conscious artificiality and stylization, Cheng uses a more naturalistic approach with as much location shooting as possible and stages that are (quite effectively) filmed to look as natural as possible.

The fight choreography is in part done by Sammo Hung and has a certain grittiness even in its more wacky moments. Most of the fights are relatively short, but bloody and intense. The high amount of different fighters helps to keep each battle unique, while Cheng's dynamic and fast camera work adds a further dimension of intensity to the proceedings.

The action is of course not all that's important in a wuxia. The Twelve Gold Medallions is not stingy with its melodrama and entwines it nicely with the action. Where weaker genre entries too often keep the emotionally tense moments and the action divorced from each other, here the melodrama lends additional tension to the action and is used to up the stakes so that more interesting things than the fate of a nation are in the center of the movie.

Acting and production values are as good as one can expect from a Shaw Brothers film. I must say I would have preferred less hissy fits by Jin Suo, whose childish behavior is unfortunately not untypical for women in films like this, but if it says something very positive about a film when that's the worst criticism I can come up with.

 

Technorati-Tags: reviews,shaw brothers,cheng kang,hong kong movies,wuxia,yueh huah,ching ping