Hei tie

A rare bird: a Wushapian with a story!!! Great set, costumes and performances by all, expecially the main star and action coreographer Pai Ying as the underrated guy who saves the day. The cast is filled with many familiar actors like Sit Hon, Ma Kei, Ko Hsiang Ting and others. Camerawork and photography are top-notch. Even if the action department is low and outdated, the whole movie is very interesting if you're not looking just for flying people. Produced by the glorious Lianbang (Union) that brought us DRAGON INN, RAIDERS OF REVENGE, A GIRL FIGHTER and many others big and little (but always entertaining) Wushapians.

It opens with extortion letters delivered to the doors of the wealthy. The bad guys write a letter demanding what they want and the rich give it up. This avoids the unpleasant confrontation of a robbery. I must admit this is a more civilized means of thievery. In the targeted home, a young scholar has been kept innocent of the problem but he demands to be treated as an adult and told what is going on.

I recognize many of the faces in this movie as they are established Taiwan stars. The only name I recognize is Pai Ying. He made some of my favorites including 1967 "Dragon Inn", 1971 "A Touch of Zen", and 1971 "The Eunuch". In this movie he returns as the wayward son in one of his few good guy roles.

The story develops slowly with the first fight nothing more than a beating. I dislike "beatings" and do not consider them as martial arts action. There are more than one of these beatings in this movie. The fight action is minimal. One the good side there is variety to the fights using weapons plus props used as weapons. The fights are not that good despite that.

My copy is the DVD release. It is wide screen and English subtitled. The resolution is as good as any DVD. The film print was not restored but the quality is above average compared with other films of this genre.

This movie had a theatrical release in 1969. The production company, Union Film, began with a hit "Dragon Inn" and continued into the early 1970s with many other hits. This company was a big deal in its time but by 1977 it was all over. How does it happen that a movie, which would have consisted of about five reels of film taking up the shelf space of five large pizza boxes, sit on a shelf somewhere undisturbed for over forty years and then come to be transferred to digital and released as a DVD in 2008? Many of these movies were simply discarded after their last theatrical run. Others did survive to be made into VHS tapes despite their condition. I can't help wonder how this movie somehow survived forty years of storage.

I can only rate this movie as average for the year and genre. I might be generous about that though considering the good quality of the video. For fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984 my recommendation is a simple take it or leave it.