The Bells of Death (1968)

Original title: 奪魂鈴

Some travelling martial world evil doers murder the family of young woodcutter Chang Wei Fu (Chang Yi) just for the heck of it, and kidnap his sister. The distraught young man soon stumbles upon an experienced swordsman who eventually – after some running and shouting by our hero – teaches Chang Wei Fu martial arts so he can avenge his family.

Some time later, Chang Wei Fu begins hounding his psychopathic – other wuxia villains at least have motives for their misdeeds - enemies with his newly developed skills and the tinkling of an anklet with bells his mother used to wear. He will also acquire something of a love interest – it’s complicated – in one Hsiang Hsiang (Chin Ping) and have a reunion with his sister (Chiu Sam-Yin). None of this will get into the way of vengeance, of course.

The other wuxia directed by Griffin Yueh Feng I’ve seen tend to a certain stodginess and aesthetic conservatism (or perhaps a conscious classicism pointing at earlier style of wuxia, in whose production Yueh was also involved in?). So colour me surprised by The Bells of Death, a grim tale of vengeance that looks and feels like an Italian western, and not just because the tinkling of bells stands in for a harmonica. There’s a lot of dynamic editing, close-ups, and hand-held camera here, not just copied like the newest aesthetic fad but used with deliberation and intelligence, always in service of making the fights feel more brutal, the melodrama more intense, and the mood more doom-laden.

From time to time, Yueh Feng adds some of the more fantastical flourishes of wuxia martial arts – Chang Wei Fu’s mastery is so large, he can even use leaves as weapons - but never lets them get in the way of the grimness of proceedings. There’s impressive tonal coherence to the work, not always a strength of the genre.

The Bells of Death keeps to its grimness throughout – there’s never any doubt this will end with the kind of vengeance that leaves nobody standing at all; what the film thinks about this is difficult to say, for this has none of the love for philosophical discourse of a Chor Yuen/Ni Kuang joint nor even just the more thoughtful moments in Cheng Cheh’s filmography, when even he paused and thought about the prize of slaughter.

If that’s a virtue or a flaw will very much depend on a viewer’s mood.

Three Shaw Brothers Wuxia Make A Post

The Silver Fox aka 玉面飛狐 (1968): You can read many, if not most, wuxia as tales of family tragedy, and there’s little more tragic than a Dad who dresses up like a Chinese Phantom of the Opera while mourning your lost Mum and training you as his budding supervillain assistant. Despite this, our heroine Ching Ching aka Silver Fox (Lily Ho Li-Li) does appear to prefer roguish tricksterdom to more po-faced vengeance (until the climax, of course), which leads to a number of delightful scenes of Ho crossdressing as her own, imaginary brother, complex poison and antidote schemes, and many a moment of her and her romantic angle/theoretical enemy flirting by attempting to outwit one another. All of which does make a curious contrast to the more Gothic trappings of the film’s final act, but certainly doesn’t make those any less fun.

The only minor let-down is that director Hsu Tseng-Hung isn’t quite as fun a director as his material deserves.

Village of Tigers aka 惡虎村 (1971): Speaking of not quite as fun, for large parts of its running time this Yueh Hua (who is Elliott Ngok?)/Shu Pei-Pei vehicle about a bland attempt at framing an honourable martial artist for murder as directed by Griffin Yueh Feng and Wong Ping is about the most middle of the road wuxia film imaginable. There’s nothing exactly wrong with the movie: Yueh Hua is as always perfectly serviceable, Shu Pei-Pei convinces in a rare action role, and everybody involved is an experienced professional who was made this sort of film well for a decade or two. The choreography is fine, as well. Yet there’s also very little that’s actually interesting, or weird, or truly fun, or truly involving.

Until, that is, the climax arrives, and things turn into an actual battle between two opposing martial artist forces that’s so great, it seems to come from a totally different movie.

Dragon Swamp aka 毒龍潭 (1969): And with this Lo Wei movie, we’re with the wuxia at its most fantasy-adjacent, full of things like giant lizards, rubber masks that can literally make Cheng Pei-Pei look like Tung Li, green-glowing swords and the kind of complex worldbuilding that suggests you’ve somehow stumbled into the third novel of ten of a generation-spanning fantasy epic. Once the confusion settles, enjoyment can’t help but set in at the mix of increasingly imaginative fights, high emotional stakes and pure imagination. Further attractions are Cheng Pei-Pei in a double role at three different ages, Yueh Hua (him again) being very upright, and Lo Lieh in one of his not completely evil villain roles – which I always prefer to his total bastards, as much as I enjoy those.

Three Films Make A Post: A Scream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Screamboat (2025): In the realm of the PublicDomainsploitation slasher, something like Steven LaMorte’s murderous Mickey Mouse effort is basically a masterpiece. That’s not saying terribly much given a sub-genre that usually makes 90 SOV slashers look brilliant in comparison. So outside of its particular little pond, it’s a basically competent by the numbers slasher with pop culture jokes. Which is to say, it’s a little dull.

Unlike with many a film of its kind, those pop culture jokes are actually standing in dialogue with the thing it has been inspired by – the next step would be to make this dialogue actually interesting, or more of the jokes funny. But I’m optimistic that some day, one of these movies will actually do more than drop jokes and have children’s characters do the slasher thing. This one’s half way there, after all.

Rape of the Sword (1967): Even in 1967, Griffin Yueh Feng’s vengeance-based wuxia must have felt a bit old-fashioned. The film featuring two female heroines in form of Li Ching and Li Lihua as its lead right at the end of this cycle of the domination of female-led wuxia (despite what some writers say, swordswomen leading never went completely away before the next big revival) is the kind of old-fashioned I like, obviously. Yueh’s filmmaking as well as the choreography are a bit dusty as well, though never in a way that lacks in charm when seen from half a century away, while the narrative is very standard and trope-heavy. Again, not unpleasantly so, if one enjoys the genre – I certainly do again, these days.

Burning Dog (1991): This early V-cinema movie directed by Yoichi Sai doesn’t go as heavy on the sleaze and the insanity as one might expect when one has mostly seen more extreme examples of the form. Instead, this is basically a 70s heist movie, starring Seiji Matano trying to look like a badly aged Yusaku Matsuda, and other middle-aged guys of some experience.

The pacing is slow and careful, the action, once it comes, feels rather too methodically staged, but there’s also an unhurried calmness to Sai’s approach to the crime movie which makes it worth watching. Again, as with Rape of the Sword, there’s a lot of joy to be found in somewhat middling genre entries for me.