The Super Inframan (1975)

The Super Inframan is a very uncharacteristic Shaw Brothers movie from 1975. The Japanese had had great success with science fiction monster movies and this movie shows that the great Hong Kong studio could do just as well in that genre. But this is not just a science fiction monster movie, it’s a superhero movie as well.

Earth has been invaded by monsters. They may have come from outer space but Professor Liu believes they’re led by people from Earth who lived before the last Ice Age, 20 million years ago. OK, they’re almost 20 million years wring in their dating of the last Ice Age, but hey this is a movie and you’re not watching this one because you want boring scientific accuracy.

The monsters are led by the beautiful but evil Princess Elzebub (Terry Liu). Fortunately Earth is not without hope - the Professor has been working on the Inframan for quite a while. The Inframan is like the bionic man, only more so. The man who is transformed into the Inframan will have awesome super powers. He should be a match for any monster. The Professor’s assistant Rayma will become the Inframan.

Unfortunately the monsters have kidnapped one of his assistants, Zhu Min, and have turned him into a kind of zombie. This gives the monsters an ally within the Professor’s own secret laboratory.

Things get even worse when the Professor’s daughter is kidnapped by the monsters. Only Inframan can save them!

This movie has everything you could possibly ask for. The monsters are incredibly cheesy - they’re all guys in rubber suits. But they’re great fun. The good guys all wear cool blue jumpsuits, except for Inframan himself who goes for classy red vinyl. The special effects are much of the 70s but they’re extremely well done. The sets are superb.

By western standards this might not have been an expensive movie but it looks expensive.  One of the great strengths of Shaw Brothers movies is that they always look good - they put a huge emphasis on the visual impact of their films, an element that is often even more impressive than the action. They really excelled themselves with this one - the visuals are not just stunning, but they’re also absolutely right for the type of silly but fun movie that this is.

There’s non-stop action and of course there is kung fu as well. There is copious use of laser beams. And lots of explosions. There are motorcycle chases. The monsters can suddenly make themselves gigantic (in which case they are still men in rubber suits but filmed against miniature backgrounds). There’s Princess Elzebub’s bikini-clad assistant. And lots and lots of monsters.

This movie is all about fun. Director Shan Hua keeps the mood light, and he keeps the action rolling. This is not a movie that makes any great demands on the actors but they enter into the spirit of the thing. Their acting may not be sensational but it’s energetic.

The end result is a fascinating and wonderfully enjoyable blend of Shaw Brothers spectacle with Japanese monster movie silliness.

Image Entertainment’s DVD release offers a superb anamorphic transfer making the most of the Shawscope widescreen aspect ratio.  The DVD offers both an English dub and the original Mandarin soundtrack with English subtitles.

This movie is simply non-stop silly cheesy fun. Highly recommended.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972)

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan might sound like a softcore porn movie but it isn’t. In fact it’s a Shaw Brothers martial arts flick.

The Hong Kong studio was going through a phase of trying to snare a wider market by making more genre crossover movies. At around this time they made the surprisingly excellent Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires in partnership with Britain’s Hammer Films. Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan was an attempt to take the kind of period swordplay movies they usually made and add a fairly generous helping of sleaze. It’s a reasonably successful combination.

It takes place at some unspecified time period in China’s imperial past. Ainu is one of a shipment of kidnapped girls being delivered by brigands to Lady Chun’s brothel. This is a very exclusive and very expensive brothel, its customers being a good cross-section of the rich and powerful. Ainu is very uncooperative and her unwillingness to submit earns her a thorough beating after which she is raped by a number of very wealthy men who have paid  high prices for the privilege of breaking in the new girl.

Ainu (Lily Ho) becomes a very successful prostitute but she has a long memory. She intends to take her revenge. And this she does, in violent and spectacular fashion. She has become an expert swordswoman and she has a knack for conceiving elaborate plans to make her vengeance as satisfying and as fitting as possible.

Lady Chun (Betty Pei Ti) has meanwhile fallen hopelessly in love with Ainu. The brothel owner isn’t overly worried by Ainu’s campaign of revenge as she has convinced herself that Ainu returns her love. It all leads to a spectacular and gory finish with a nasty little sting in the tail.
There’s quite a bit of nudity but nothing very graphic, although the sexual violence might be disturbing to some viewers.

The sets and costumes are as lavish as you’d expect in a Shaw Brothers production. They were a bit like Hammer in their heyday in that they could make movies that looked a whole lot more expensive than they were. Add the usual gorgeous cinematography that characterised the studio’s efforts and you have a very handsome-looking movie.

The fight scenes are spectacular and quite gory.

More impressive even that the visuals are the performances by the two lead actresses, especially Betty Pei Ti as the beautiful but wicked lesbian madam (who is also an expert swordswoman).

It’s a tale of obsessive love and obsessive hate done with style and energy. If you don’t mind sleaze with your martial arts movies then there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had.

Golden Swallow (1968)

Golden Swallow (Jin yan zi) is a kind of sequel to Come Drink With Me, the ground-breaking 1966 Hong Kong martial arts classic.

What made Come Drink With Me so interesting was not just the female protagonist but the emphasis on relationships and emotions as well as on action. Although it has a different director Golden Swallow follows a similar pattern. This is not just an excuse for lots of spectacular fight scenes and general mayhem. It does have plenty of excitement and lots of sword fighting scenes and even a surprising amount of gore for 1968, but it’s really a story about love and about friendship and rivalry, the rivalry being both romantic and professional.

Pei-pei Cheng again plays the great swordswoman Golden Swallow. She finds herself hunted by a large and varied assortment of bad guys all of whom blame her for killing large numbers of their relatives, friends and hangers-on. Since Golden Swallow has been living quietly in her cabin in the mountains with her boyfriend Han Tao she’s rather puzzled by this. She hasn’t actually been killing anybody at all. She’s been blamed because her signature swallow darts have been found at the scenes of the various massacres. When she starts hearing stories of the local adventures of a particularly ruthless swordsman named Silver Roc she starts to wonder if this is really her long-lost friend Little Roc. She and Little Roc had been involved romantically, but he had disappeared after taking a bloody revenge on bandits who had killed his family.

In fact it is the same man, and he’s perpetrating these spectacular acts of violence as a way of forcing Golden Swallow to seek him out. He loves her, and alway has loved her, but he can’t just tell her that. His pride can’t stand the idea that she may have forgotten him.

Golden Swallow and Han Tao both set off in search of the mysterious Silver Roc, whose only home is a series of brothels. Inevitably Han Tao and Silver Roc will fight a duel over Golden Swallow, but the really interesting conflict is that which is occurring within Silver Roc himself. His violent acts are his way of dealing with a world that has left him emotionally crippled. He craves recognition as the greatest of all swordsmen, and as a just man (he kills many people but justifies this on the grounds that they are all evil people). And he desperately craves Golden Swallow’s love, although he already has a woman who loves him, the prostitute Meh Niang. Meh Niang is in fact the woman who could make him happy, if only he could realise that fact.

The duel between the two rivals in love is interrupted by what is almost a full-scale war between the three main characters on one side and the numerous and powerful Golden Dragon gang on the other. The bad guys follow the usual pattern of these movies, with the chief of the Golden Dragon sending hundreds of underlings to be mercilessly slaughtered by the three heroes before we finally get to a showdown between the main good guys and the main bad guy.

The action sequences might not compare to those in later Hong Kong movies but they’re still quite impressive. Director Cheh Chang does a stylish job. Like most Shaw Brothers movie it’s colourful and visually lush. The three leads (Pei-pei Cheng as Golden Swallow, Lieh Lo as Han Tao and Yu Wang as Silver Roc) are all very competent. This is a classy production, and highly entertaining as well. It offers an effective combination of action, human drama and romance.

The Golden Lotus (1974)

The Golden Lotus (Jin ping shuang yan) is a bit of an oddity. It’s a 1974 Shaw Brothers production, so you expect king fu and/or swordplay. What you get is sex. You also get corruption, deceit and intrigue, and you do get several murders.

It was based on a 16th century Chinese classic of Chinese erotic literature, the Jin Ping Mei, although it’s set much earlier. Ximen Qing is a wealthy young merchant, and as we later find out he’s also less than scrupulous in his business dealings. He’s even less scrupulous in his dealings with women. He collects women the way other men collect paintings or other beautiful objects. Especially women with very tiny feet. Nothing gets him more excited than tiny dainty feet.

Pan Jinlian is the wife of the local pancake seller, the dwarf Wu Dalang. And she has very tiny feet indeed. With the help of the notorious procuress Madame Wang he seduces the rather naïve Pan. Pan may be naïve, but her sexual appetites are well and truly awakened by this first encounter and soon they’re carrying on a torrid love affair. Her husband is a bit of a nuisance though, so they’ll need to get him out of the way. Soon Pan finds herself installed as Ximen Qing’s fifth wife.

But Ximen Qing has no intention of stopping at five wives (plus sorted concubines). He is soon pursuing another married woman. Pan decides she might as well have some sexual adventures as well, but this earns her a brutal beating from Ximen Qing. He is gradually revealed as a rather nasty piece of work, with a vicious temper and a generally selfish and childish outlook on life.

The main interest of the film is Ximen Qing’s household. Entirely dominated by women, whether they be wives, concubines or servants, it is a hotbed of domestic intrigues and power struggles. Survival in this household depends on developing the skills of manipulation and deceit to a fine art. A woman’s only power comes from her beauty and her sexual allure, and these must be used ruthlessly. Especially when dealing with a man as powerful, cruel and corrupt as Ximen Qing. Pan Jinlian becomes a skillful and ruthless intriguer.

The movie’s main problem is that the plot is immensely complex, and as it progresses events become more and more compressed and it can be difficult to follow exactly what is happening with so many plots and counter-plots and and affairs and seductions and shady business deals.

Shaw Brothers movies invariably look good, and renowned director Li Han-Hsang has made The Golden Lotus a very handsome film indeed. The movie’s greatest strength though is the performance of Hu Chin as Pan. She is equally convincing as the innocent victim of a shameless seducer and as the skilled artiste in intrigue that she becomes. She is very wicked and very sexy. Look out for martial arts star Jackie Chan in a small role, very early in his film career.

Despite the subject matter the sex is not very explicit and there’s not a great deal of nudity. But there’s certainly more of both than you generally expect in a Shaw Brothers movie. And some scenes do achieve a genuine erotic intensity. It’s certainly a treat for foot fetishists! It’s reasonably entertaining and represents a fairly successful attempt by SHaw Brothers to widen their appeal to a broader exploitation market. It’s a movie that is as much about power and corruption as it is about sex.

The Region 4 DVD presents the movie in its correct Shawscope aspect ratio and includes a featurette on director Li Han-Hsang.

Mighty Peking Man (1977)

Mighty Peking Man (Xing xing wang) was Shaw Brothers Studio’s homage to King Kong. Well perhaps blatant rip-off of King Kong would be more accurate, but it’s done in such a good-humoured way you can’t possibly object. And they improved the original by adding a jungle girl sub-plot. What’s better than a giant gorilla movie? A giant gorilla movie that is also a jungle girl movie.

Our hero (played by Danny Lee) is an explorer suffering from depression after finding his girlfriend in bed with his brother. The best cure for depression is of course to mount an expedition into the steamy tropical rainforests of the Himalayas. And since there have been reports of a monstrous 50-foot gorilla being sighted in that area, what better excuse for an expedition? He’s interested in advancing scientific knowledge, but the backer of the project, the nefarious Mr Lu, sees it as a way of becoming very rich by displaying the giant gorilla in the Hong Kong Stadium.

It turns out that the jungles of the Himalayas are populated by other fascinating creatures in addition to gorillas, elephants, tigers and orang-utans. They are also home to a beautiful blonde jungle girl named Ah Wei. No matter what part of the world you may find beautiful jungle girls in, they will always be blonde. It’s a rule. Her parents were killed in a plane crash and she was raised by the giant gorilla, whose name is Ah Wang. Our intrepid hero naturally falls in love with her, and his feelings are warmly reciprocated. He persuades her to accompany the gorilla back to Hong Kong. Of course things don’t turn out well for our giant ape friend, and the stage is set for a very King Kong-style ending.

This is a movie that has not the slightest intention of taking itself seriously. Making a movie that deliberately aims for camp, that is consciously played tongue-in-cheek and that celebrates its own cheesiness and does all this successfully isn’t as easy as you might think. It’s so easy to end up with something that is too contrived and too clever for its own good. And when there’s the potential for major cuteness (Ah wei has lots of loveable animal friends) and huge servings of sentimentality the dangers multiply. In this case director Meng Hua Ho and scriptwriter Kuang Ni effortlessly avoid all these pitfalls.

They’re helped considerably by the two leads. While I would hesitate to claim that either Danny Lee or Evelyne Kraft (who plays jungle girl Ah Wei) are great actors, they know what’s expected of them and they deliver the goods. Lee is handsome and brave without being annoying, while Evelyne Kraft manages to be everything a jungle girl should be - blonde, pretty, likable and very scantily clad - while also not being annoying. And they have good chemistry between them.

The movie is also careful not to strain too hard for laughs. The premise is silly enough to provide more than enough amusement. It’s also mildly sexy, but in a thoroughly cheerful and good-natured way. The pacing is spot-on, with not a single wasted scene.

The special effects work perfectly for the type of film this is. If you remade it with expensive CGI you’d simply spoil the fun. Traditional giant monster movies are supposed to de done with not overly convincing models, and this is a movie that is very much aware of being part of that tradition. And the effects are spectacular enough, even if you don’t for one minute believe they’re real. They’re fun, like everything else in this film. You expect to see Hong Kong get stomped in model form the way Tokyo gets stomped in model form in Godzilla movies, and that’s what you get.

The addition of a major romantic sub-plot adds an extra dimension to the ending, and at the risk of being accused of heresy I think it’s superior to the ending of the original King Kong, although it is at the same time very much a homage to the ending of that film.

The Region 4 DVD is totally lacking in extras but it looks marvellous. This is an insanely enjoyable romp, and I really can’t recommend this one too highly. It’s an absolute treat.

Human Lanterns (1982)

Human Lanterns (Ren pi deng long) was an interesting 1982 attempt by legendary Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers to widen their net to take in a broader exploitation audience. The movie does this by adding fairly gory horror to a standard king fu revenge saga. The end result is a bit like a cross between a king fu movie and a slasher film but it works more effectively than you might expect.

Master Tan and Master Lung are wealthy and influential citizens but also bitter rivals. Their rivalry causes them to go to extreme lengths to win the annual lantern contest, and even extends to the affections of the beautiful Yen-Chu, the most highly sought-after high-class prostitute in the town. Master Lung’s effort to win the lantern contest cause him to employ the services of another man who had once been a king fu master and is now the most skillful lantern maker in the district. Chun-Fang and Lung had been rivals in the past as well and had fought bitterly over a woman named Chin, a woman who is now Lung’s wife.

The enmity between these two men becomes more complicated when women start to mysteriously disappear. The woman are all connected with these men in some way and so suspicion falls on both of them. The fate of the women is tied up with a local legend about lanterns, and about the way the ultimate lantern can be created (the title more or less gives this plot point away). Master Tan’s sister (herself a formidable exponent of king fu), Master Lung’s wife and Yen-Chu are all numbered among the missing women.

There’s plenty of action and some reasonably gruesome horror sequences. There’s not a huge amount of suspense since most of the plot twists are exceedingly obvious. The movie is sufficiently fast-paced to make this only a minor problem however. The mood is quite dark, and the darkness comes not so much from the actual horror scenes as from the consequences of rivalry taken to extremes of hate. This hatred is the fuel for all the horror in the movie.

The period setting provides some impressive spectacle and director Chung Sun adds some effective gothic touches as well which combine to provide an interesting look to the film. The fight sequences aren’t as breath-taking as those in some other martial arts movies I’ve seen (not that I’ve seen a vast number of such movies) but they’re still well executed. The acting is perfectly adequate.

It’s an interesting hybrid of genres and it works surprisingly well.

The Region 4 DVD doesn’t have much in the way of extras but the widescreen presentation looks very impressive, with a crystal sharp image and exceptionally vibrant colours. A slightly off-beat movie that is definitely worth a look.

Come Drink with Me (1966)

Come Drink with Me (Da zui xia) is one of the legendary movies in the canon of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. This Shaw Brothers production is also arguably the first of the great Chicks with Swords epics. Dating from 1966 it naturally can’t compete with later movies of this type when it comes to breath-taking action sequences. It does however have its own very definite charms.

I don’t claim to be an expert in this genre but to me it seems even more stylised than later Hong Kong action movies. It has a very operatic feel to it. The characters are types rather than people. The sets look artificial. That’s not to say the movie looks cheap or shoddy. Far from it. It looks magnificent. The artificiality appears to be deliberate, especially the scenes in the house near the waterfall. At one point the heroine is supposed to be disguised as a man. In fact she’s not disguised at all and still looks completely female but the other characters are all fooled by her. Again, all very operatic and stylised, and rather appealing.

The action sequences are neither as fast nor as spectacular as later movies, but they have a wonderful elegance to them. There are also several songs, adding a wonderful touch of strangeness to the proceedings!

Cheng Pei-pei stars as Golden Swallow, a famous and exceptionally formidable swordswoman whose task it is to bring to justice a gang of notorious bandits who have kidnapped the son of the provincial governor. This unfortunate young man just happens to be Golden Swallow’s brother. The bandits are demanding the release of one of their own men. Golden Swallow manages to find herself an unlikely ally in the form of a disreputable alcoholic beggar known as Drunken Cat. The bandits discover to their cost that there is more to this shabby beggar than meets the eye. There’s also an evil Buddhist abbot, and an army of women warriors.

The plot is simple to the point of minimalism, but this is a movie that relies on style, and style is something it has in abundance. I caught up with this movie on cable on World Movies although I believe it’s also available on DVD. The print screened by World Movies looks absolutely superb. I found myself loving this movie.