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.

 

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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.

 

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