It starts with footprints in the snow. Three guys track a woman and child. A girl in red watches. The guys and the woman engage in a sword fight. She is beaten but just vanishes and is safe with the child. There is a note with something important written on it in Chinese. The guys and woman fight again and she is killed. Yet another woman appears and tries to make off with the child. The girl in red and child run off. The men appear again and surround the child who falls off a cliff. The child lands in the arms of someone else in red, an older woman not the girl.
Are you confused yet? I had to watch the first six minutes three times. Roll credits. It gets worse.
Wang Lai (the older woman who caught the child) is now in a house. She seems to have an argument with her servant and releases bugs to bite the servant all over her face. Her son returns home and she is in bed pretending to be helpless. After they talk he goes off. Servant returns, unharmed, and Wang Lai walks off with her staff. The son arrives in a town where everyone seems to be frozen in place.
My copy is a digital file made from a VHS recording of a television broadcast. There is no English. The quality is typical poor VHS with pixellation blobs and tracking scars. Yet there is color and I have tried to watch much worse.
Let me just sum it up by saying the fights are also incomprehensible. Perhaps I was missing the point because I don't speak Chinese but I doubt it. To the best of my knowledge no subtitled version of this movie exists. If there is a bilingual fan of martial arts movies from the golden age 1967 to 1984 who wants to review this I encourage the effort. Until then I cannot recommend this movie at all and I'll never watch it again.
