Shi wan jin shan

Elaborate sword fantasy out of Taiwan. Similar to many films from the Shaw studios especially the Yuen Chor epics from the late 1970's.

The film opens with a duel on a beach between two master swordsman. An elderly master looks on as the two battle. He stops the duel and proclaims one swordsman the winner and awards him the coveted Purple Light Sword making him the new Sword King. He returns home to show his sickly teacher the treasure but they are attacked by the weird minions of evil King Gold who wants to combine the power of the sword with his developing Fire Ball power. The Sword King loses the sword, his master is killed and is forced to join forces with his opponent from the duel to retrieve it. Along the way they are joined by the daughter of the Blind Master and later the Beggar Army.

The film is very colorful and the action is non-stop for the 90 minute length. The evil characters are very strange with all sorts of odd spiked weapons. One villain throws poison letters, King Gold has a spiked club instead of his left hand, plus he likes to bath in boiling oil. The powers possessed by the heroes are sometimes odd as well. Unfortunately as the film progresses the set bound action starts to take it's toll especially when the heroes have to pass thru the 10 gates of Hell Mountain, the fortress of King Gold. The budget runs out and it shows. The opening beach duel is very well shot and the only fight scene actually filmed outdoors. Some of the fights are sped up by cutting out every other frame which looks really strange.

Enjoyable and wacky. The sound effects are very funny at times. Not great but if you enjoy wuxia fantasy films this is a good example.

It opens on the beach with "Who are these two swordsmen and why are they dueling?" A third man stops the fight and gives the man in brown the Purple Light Sword. Both men seem surprised by this decision. I did a frame by frame over and over to determine the winner. The man in brown stopped fighting after a sword swipe that came close but did not make contact. It seems he stopped because it would have been a deadly blow, fight over I win. The man in blue did not acknowledge this strike and kept fighting. He swung and stopped before making deadly contact. Therefore, an undisputed winner cannot be determined. The big question is: Why did the man in brown look surprised when called the winner when he deliberately stopped as if he had won? The referee then does a playback and shows the man in brown actually scored many winning strikes. After that, I agree with man in brown wins. The movie continues with conflict and conflict is good in movies.

I found ChungMo's review helpful because with all the different characters coming and going and no English subtitles I had a hard time following the story.

The costumes, sets, characters, hokey weapons and strange powers in this movie made the sloppy martial arts look real, relatively. Though the pace was good and the action frequent I still started to lose interest in this movie. After that I looked at it as a parody and that helped my attitude.

Suitable only for hard core fans of the genre and rated as average only.

Shan Mao died violently in 1977. I have never been able to find more details other than he died in a fight involving a screwdriver and a gun. I have to think he carried the screwdriver.

Polly Shang-kuan goes to Hell in this fanciful follow-up to Swordsman of All Swordsmen. Polly again portrays Fei Yen-tzu (aka Flying Swallow), and Tien Peng again portrays the heroic Tsai, while David Wei Tang takes over the "Black Dragon" role previously played by Nan Chiang. Together with several others (and a full 7 years before Gordon Liu Chia-hui would descend into the famed 36 Chambers) this trio descends into the treacherous 10 Chambers of Hell in an effort to seek revenge on Lord Chin, the reigning "Yanlou Wang" ruler of Hell (go ahead, take a minute to look that up and while you're at it, look up the various demons and judges listed in the next paragraph too).

Why is this revenge being sought? Because Lord Chin had Polly's blind father and Tien Peng's sword-coveting "Misty Light Master" murdered by his underworldly minions, namely - the Left & Right (Red & Green) Death-amulet-throwing Judges, the Ox Head Demon, the Black & White Wuchangs, the Murdering Wonder Child and the Soul-Hunter Yaksha. Oh, and also the less spectacular Huashan Dragon, Tiger and Phoenix.

Thankfully, while Polly, Tien Peng and David Wei Tang's gang is not quite as colorful, they do have a band of beggars, a Just Cause, and a surprise or two to bring to their battle.

In short, there may be way too many characters, but there's also non-stop action and twisted spectacle. How are our heroes able to literally walk to Hell and Back? You got me! How bad ass is Lord Chin? He bathes in boiling oil when not pulling his servants into his bath with him in order to watch them char to a crisp. Has he any kindness? Well sure, he does seem to have a thing for his daughter (the striking Han Hsiang-chin). Perhaps too much of a thing, however.