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.

To Kill With Intrigue (1977)

Original title: 劍花煙雨江南

The Martial World. A group known as the Bee Faces (because they really love to put human-faced bees on tattoos and poison darts, as one does) attacks the birthday of Martial World big muck Lei Chi Fung (Ma Chi), in revenge for an attempt at wiping out the Bee Faces fifteen years ago Lei Chi Fung instigated.

Lei’s son Hsiao Lei (Jackie Chan) learns of the attack plans early on, and does his best to drive birthday guests and peers alike away by acting like an ass, instead of, oh, telling them the truth. He does the same with Chin Chin (Yu Ling-Lung), the servant girl carrying his child. He has secretly asked his friend Chen Chun (Shin Il-Ryong), the Vagabond of the Martial World, to take care of her if he doesn’t make it, so we can’t blame him for lacking foresight as well as emotional maturity.

In something of an ironic twist, Hsiao Lei is going to be the only survivor of the massacre of his family, for the leader of the Bee Faces – whom we later learn to be called Ting Chan Yen (Hsu Feng) – spares his life. She also tells him that his father may not always have been the pillar of virtue he knew him as, a deep scar on her face he gave her during the death of her parents, the leaders of the Bee Faces, when she was just five years old speaking to that.

Her reasons for sparing Hsiao Lei despite her far superior kung fu are complicated. In part, she appears to see how much her own act of killing his parents mirror the acts she kills them for; in part she’s rather smitten with him; and in the part she’s actually saying out loud, she’s going to watch him suffer under the sad fate of his family.

During the following weeks, she’s certainly going to stalk Hsiao Lei, in turns declaiming dramatically, repeatedly saving his skin, or just watching him longingly, creepily.

Hsiao Lei for his part is hell-bent on returning to Chin Chin. However, it turns out his good friend Chen Chun might not be as trustworthy a man as he believes him to be. The characters will also get involved in the troubles of the Dragon Escort group of Dragon Five (George Wang Chueh), the nicest guy in the martial world. You can imagine what he’ll eventually get for that.

Much of what has been written about this Jackie Chan wuxia made shortly before Chan would start developing his distinctive screen persona (well, actually two personas, if you ask me) is focussing on blaming Lo Wei’s film for not being “A Jackie Chan Movie”. It certainly isn’t, but once you’ve got over the shock that Jackie was working as a martial artist/actor here and not as the movie star he’d turn into, you should be able to appreciate the film for what it is.

Particularly since “what it is”, is a fantastic late 70s wuxia, full of characters whose internal life is fully externalized through larger than life melodrama, martial artists that are all so utterly committed to their fighting bits that dressing in colour-coded group togs or using floating coffins for one’s entrance just is a normal Tuesday for them. Everybody has a fantastic sense of fashion and style as well, starting with Ting Chan Yen’s generally mono-coloured gowns and certainly not ending with even random assassins walking around with the most striking red hats, all the better to get a dramatically shot entrance.

The martial arts choreography is wonderful as well, combining some great “realistic” skills with moments of fantastic imagination. Ting Chan Yen going at a group of villains with knives is a thing to behold, as is a moment concerning an assassin, a tree, a sharp object and a Jackie kick you have to see to believe. Things are appropriately brutal when they need to be – the main villain’s death is particularly gruesome in that regard.

All of this takes place in front of impressive backdrops. Lo makes incredible use of South Korean locations that are a real selling point for the cinema of a small place like Hong Kong, where the regular viewer often feels acquainted with every nook and cranny a wuxia could be shot in. Lo uses the opportunity to get properly wide-screen staging fights in the most spectacular surroundings he can find, and really making every shot count there.

On a narrative level, this is very much a wuxia where the easy distinctions between good and evil tend to be unclear and shifting, and even good deeds like what Ting will eventually do for Hsiao Lei will be done in the cruellest possible way. In this world, the woman who killed one’s parents can be much more trustworthy than one’s best friend. Of course, the film knows that the death of Hsiao Lei’s parents is the end of Ting’s very own revenge flick, and shows us what happens after the revenge, or rather, the confusion when one survives the only act one has lived for.

Hsu Feng’s portrayal of Ting is highly effective, hitting the high melodramatic notes the film’s tone needs but also showing the nuances of her deeply complicated feelings. There’s an intensity to her performance Chan at this stage can never quite reach, and while he certainly isn’t bad here, he simply can’t match the complexity of anger, longing, and sadness his co-star exudes, and often comes over as just as bit sulky in comparison.

So, instead of reading this as an unsuccessful Jackie Chan vehicle, I rather see To Kill with Intrigue as an excellent Hsu Feng film, and one of Lo Wei’s visually most arresting films.