Another Three Shaw Brothers Movies Make A Post

The Deadly Knives aka Fists of Vengeance aka 落葉飛刀 (1972): This is a very standard tale of dastardly Japanese and traitorous Chinese getting vengeanced by a virtuous stand-up Chinese guy. Director Jang Il-Ho doesn’t add much to the Shaw house style, and often stands in the way of getting to the good parts of the material or even in the way of framing those good parts as effectively as he could.

Not that the choreography is that great: like a lot of work that Yuen Woo-Ping did for the Shaw Brothers, this may not be standard Shaw choreography, but it’s not that great at actually being different – quite the contrast to what he would get up to only a few years later. On the plus side, this features Ching Li (though a lot of actually good Shaw movies do as well, so…).

Duel for Gold aka 火併 (1971): This is Chor Yuen’s first film made for the studio, and this wuxia version already shows some of the hallmarks of my favourite director of the studio’s wuxia output – the less heroic view of the martial world that still leaves space for acts of traditional heroism, the love for multi-way climactic fights with shifting allegiances, the strong hand for characterization even in movies that take place in a pretty damn weird world, the re-emphasis on women as important players in the martial world, and the ability to get the best from his cast – here featuring Ivy Ling Po, Wang Ping, Lo Lieh and others.

Visually, this wuxia version of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre with greater gender parity doesn’t quite feel like a Chor Yuen wuxia yet but keeps closer to the Shaw standard of 1971. Fortunately, that standard’s so high, the film’s still great.

Shadow Girl aka 隱身女俠 (1971): Come for the ultra-traditional tale of clashing martial arts families and stay for the practical effects shenanigans of an invisible Lily Li Li-Li - invisible by day, visible by night thanks to experiments conducted by her crazy grandma, no less.

Taiwanese director Hsin Chi’s film is generally good fun – the practical effects alone should warm the coldest of hearts – but a little uneven with a somewhat slow middle and a few more characters hanging around than is good for it. On the other hand, this also features a floating evil legless hermit and his just as evil brother, whose martial arts powers are based on the magic of jump cuts, so there’s no way for me not to have fun with it.

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.

Pursuit of Vengeance (1977)

Original title: 明月刀雪夜殲仇

Melancholy wandering swordsman Fu Hong-Xue (Ti Lung) meets wisecracking wandering swordsman Ye Kai (Lau Wing). The latter does his best to hit it off with the former with limited success.

Various other martial artists/assassins seem to be rather interested in killing one or the other, for reasons that’ll become clear eventually. For now, the odd couple are invited to the party of the local martial arts clan, the Mas. It’s a bit of a peculiar shindig, for the evening before, six empty coffins were delivered to the Ma Mansion – not before Fu Hong-Xue and Ye Kai had fought off a team of assassins who also arrived in coffins, but that’s par for the course in the martial world of a Chor Yuen film.

Can it be an accident that Ma clan leader Ma Kong-Qun (Paul Chang Chung) has invited six martial artists?

As it turns out, twenty years ago, Ma was involved in the killing of the hero Bai, and everybody believes that twenty years after the fact – which is to say now – Bai’s son is going to take vengeance on the group of martial artists who killed his father. Ma suspects this son is one of his six guests.

Things become rather more complicated from here on out and will also include a delightful anti-hero turn by Lo Lieh – dressed in what we have to assume is a bathrobe throughout travels, travails and fights –, an evil mastermind who produces life-like masks for others to add to the confusion, hordes of martial artists totally committed to their respective fighting gimmicks, and the most astonishing finishing freeze frame of any Shaw Brothers film, particularly if you’re a fan of Lo Lieh’s ass.

I’ve been loving the films of that great master of Shaw Brothers wuxia Chor Yuen for actual decades. And yet, the first proper – or what goes for “proper” around here these days – write-up I make of one of his films is for this, definitely one of the director’s minor wuxia, sharing a protagonist (and lead actor Ti Lung, of course) with the masterful Magic Blade, though very little of that film’s tone.

Well, it does share that part of its predecessor that’s wildly weird, often bordering on the goofy, the love for sarcastic dialogue wuxia on screen usually lacks, and of course Chor Yuen’s eye for the beauty of the artificial, the proper contrast between set and location work, and the artful framing of the beautifully improbable action. So let’s say it doesn’t share in its predecessor’s sense of melancholia and futility.

Pursuit features by far not the best action choreography Tong Kai did for a Chor Yuen wuxia, but there’s still enough magic for anyone who is even mildly into this sort of thing.

Just don’t expect the general weirdness of everything and everyone except our wonderful protagonist/straight man Ti Lung to be balanced with a sense of melancholia or even horror at the things these people do to one another. This case of mystery and vengeance, while having the body count to be expected of this sort of thing, is decidedly on the emotionally light side – often getting down to a downright comedy version of the martial world. Which does take particular getting used to in a film that follows the tonally very different Magic Blade but does give one a breather after all those Chor Yuen wuxia that end in doom and gloom.

It does help that the film’s jokes are generally pretty damn funny, the dialogue is joyfully absurd and dry. Lo Lieh and Lau Wing in particular seem to delight in this. But then, the curiously moral assassin Lu Xiao Jia introduces himself first by somehow dropping a gigantic bathtub into a street, getting naked, and mocking Fu and Ye from that bathtub, which is not something any actor will get to do very often during their career.

Dirty Ho (1979)

Original title: 爛頭何

“Dirty” Ho Ching (Wong Yu) is a pretty enthusiastic thief with a certain penchant for self-taught kung fu. He’s just managed a great jewel heist and is in the process of spending some of his ill-gotten gains on some high class courtesans (one of whom is played by house favourite Kara Hui Ying-Hung) in a brothel situated on a river boat when a man in a neighbouring pavilion we’ll soon enough learn is named Wang Chin Chen (played by yet another house favourite, Gordon Liu Chia-Hui), is starting to get in a not terribly subtle bidding contest for the ladies’ interests. The size of jewel chests is compared and Ho’s found wanting, until the latter clearly wants to start a more physical kind of fight. The brothel owner calls the police who arrests Ho. However, Wang secretly shows the police a seal that identifies him as part of the Imperial Court, and orders them to let Ho go as soon as possible, while he himself takes care of the thief’s jewels.

Obviously, once released, Ho wants to get back at Wang, but loses a fight against Crimson, whom Wang declares to be his new bodyguard. Well actually, Ho loses against Wang who puppets Crimson while pretending to hide behind her back, but Ho not being terribly bright he’s not going to notice subtleties like this.

Ho does go on to further attempts at getting back at Wang, but the latter needs little effort to have things go his way. Eventually, Ho finds himself poisoned and blackmailed into the role of Wang’s martial arts student.

Unlike Ho, the audience at this point knows what’s going on: Wang is the eleventh son of the Emperor, spending his time on art, fine wine, women and martial arts training while roaming the country, and shows little interest in becoming the next Emperor. However, one of his brothers believes exactly this will undoubtedly make Wang the Emperor’s candidate of choice, and has set in motion various plans to kill this most unwilling of rivals.

Which leads to a couple of incredible scenes during which Wang is invited to sessions with other friends of the arts who try to murder him while both sides pretend to only be interested in wine or paintings. Ho, as usually not getting it, blithely pokes around the edges of these scenes.

Eventually, Wang is hurt badly enough in one of those fights that he needs to intensify Ho’s training as his body guard.

Dirty Ho is a particularly fun example of director and martial arts director Lau Kar-Leung’s ability to make deeply physical kung fu comedies that still don’t have as much of an affinity to slapstick as the Golden Harvest model (which I have grown to love over the years) shows. Instead, his Shaw Brothers comedies have a certain restraint in their physical comedy that can express uproarious humour through the incredible precision of Lau’s brilliant choreography given life through a fine cast of martial artists and actors, but that feels more like Fred Astaire than Buster Keaton (who I both love, as regular readers will know).

There’s a great sense of invention in the film’s fights, even when Lau uses ideas you will also have seen in earlier films of the genre (and that will be repeated ad nauseam in the future). There’s just such a perfection of comical timing and elegance in something like the the puppetting sequence with Liu and Hui, it can leave this viewer quite breathless. Not only from laughter but also in admiration for the intelligence of choreography, visual staging and performance on display. Liu never repeats a trick in the movie, and so every fight scene is of equal brilliance but also absolutely distinctive from the next.

The wine and arts assassin sequences are particularly fine as well, with the mix of physical violence and verbal politeness making for some poignant bits of humour.

This being a Hongkong comedy, there are also moments of outrageous weirdness – some of which might be seen as problematic for some contemporary tastes – as well as a transition to some more serious – and still incredible – fights in the climax, all of which Lau and his cast and crew handle with the same aplomb, elegance and off-handed visual class.

King Boxer (1972)

aka Five Fingers of Death

Original title: 天下第一拳

When kung fu master Sung (Ku Wen-Chung) finds that his best disciple Chao Chih-Hao (Lo Lieh) has nothing of worth to learn from him anymore, he sends the young man off to the school of Master Suen (Fang Mian), whom he deems superior to himself as a martial artist. The point isn’t just to better Chao’s abilities, but to turn him into the future winner of the Regional Kung Fu Tournament, an event so important, the school of the winner basically rules the (regional) martial world. Should the title fall into the hands of a school not as morally upright as those of Sung and Suen, a reign of terror over the non-fighting populace may very well commence.

Turns out that isn’t just two old kung fu masters being melodramatic, for the insidiously evil – and hilariously hypocritical – Master Meng (Tien Feng) is indeed planning on having his son, the also pretty vile Tien-Hsiung (Tung Lin), become the new champion to then indeed start on that reign of terror business. To that end, Meng invites every morally dubious fighter he can get his claws into to his school, and is certainly not averse to murdering Suen’s disciples when the opportunity arises.

Once Chao becomes established at Suen’s school, tensions mount further, for the young man, once completely trained even in the secret Iron Palm Technique, is certainly going to beat Meng Tien-Hsiung’s murderous behind handily. So Meng decides to get really serious with his intrigues, even going so far as to invite a trio of Japanese – gasp! – killers to his school, letting them kill, mutilate and be dishonourable to their hearts content, while Tien-Hsiung grins from the side-lines.

Cheng Chang-Ho’s (a Korean director more properly named Jeong Chang-Hwa who worked for the Shaw Brothers for decades) King Boxer was one of the breakthrough movies for kung fu cinema in the West, or at least on the US grindhouse circuit.

Working from a plot that was old when kung fu cinema was still in its infancy, it’s at first difficult to make out why exactly this of all films of the genre hit particularly hard. Cheng’s direction seems very state of the genre in 1972: the zooms come when you expect them to, the editing style is perfectly of its time and place, and everything looks and feels much like every other of the bloodier martial arts films made in Hong Kong of the era.

However, once the film gets really going, its attraction becomes very much clear – Cheng has an impeccable sense of timing, hitting the sentences of action and the punctuation of melodramatic revelations with absolute perfection (and very ably assisted by Wu Da-Jiang’s score). The escalation to increasingly bloody violence is just as perfect, until we hit on the kind of mutilation that really must have sold to the grindhouses; the choreography is of course impeccable. There’s such a perfect sense of timing, so much of the very specific kind of artistry experienced filmmaking hands can put into a genre movie that just wants to be a genre movie, and damn deconstruction, irony and cleverness on display in it, King Boxer takes on an archetypal quality. That the people involved were in reality probably just trying to churn out another Shaw production matters little when you look at the finished product of their labours.

This archetypal quality can also be seen in the character work. Of course the characters and their psychology aren’t deep, but they aren’t deep in exactly the right way, embodying their one or two character traits in exactly the right way (even if it’s being pretty but boring like main love interest Wang Ping) to feel like moving parts in an old tale that have been polished to be singularly perfect expressions of these traits.

Or, if you think I’m really laying it on a bit thick here: this is also a film full of joyfully intense bouts of kung fu, some great eye mutilation, a fantastically tense fight in the dark that’s just one of four connected climactic fights, and that wonderfully unsubtle score Quentin Tarantino borrowed a piece of for Kill Bill.

Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave (1982)

One fine ghost month night, martial arts student Chun Sing (Billy Chong Chuen-Lei) has his Hamlet moment when the oatmeal-faced ghost of his father appears and reports that he has been murdered by a certain Kam Tai Fu (Lo Lieh) in a town not far away.

Ghost dad orders Chun Sing to make his way there, retrieve his bones and take vengeance on his killer. Our hero is a filial person, and so quickly takes off to the weeping sounds of his mother to do as he is told.

Alas, taking vengeance on Kam Tai Fu is not going to be easy, for the guy is the big man in his town and commands a gang of kung fu fighting henchmen - some of whom are quite a bit better than Chun Sing is. Even worse, the villain has his own private black magician who is just in the process of making his master impervious to damage with a process that consists of spitting blood taken from fresh human hearts that have been harvested from non-evil persons during intercourse on Kam Tai Fu's chest (oh black magic, why do you have to be so icky and complicated?). Kam Tai Fu isn't impervious to damage yet, but it seems only a question of time.

After his first attempt at a direct assault goes awry, Chun Sing uses a magic manual he's found - and which the black magician really would like to own - to sic a bunch of irregularly hopping dead at his enemies. This again meets with less than satisfying success.

Fortunately for Chun Sing, he and the dead aren't the only ones out to end Kam Tai Fu's reign, and some locals and two government agents willing to help him out may be the solution to his troubles.

Lee Chiu's Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave is one of those martial arts movies that do not believe in dialogue scenes or characterization at all, and consequently try to not include a single minute where somebody isn't hitting or kicking somebody else. The thinking behind this particular brand of minimalism seems to be that the audience is there to see people fight, so everything else is superfluous, making this school of martial arts movies quite as single-minded as porn, and equally difficult to write about beyond a general: the choreography is quite satisfying and the camera focuses on the important things, which is to say, the fighting.

Still, like all purity, this purity of only fighting all the time would get monotonous fast (there is a good reason why many movies of the genre do include scenes of people not fighting). Fortunately, much of the endless fighting here is imbued with the never pure spirit of weird fu, too, spicing up the hitting and the kicking with many moments of the awesome and the bizarre.

Among my favourite moments of "what the hell am I watching right now?" in Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave is Chun Sing's first attempt to beat his enemies with his undead gang. After Chun Sing has shot two long-tongued guardians of hell (I think) with the mandatory cartoon beams from his sorcery manual, the poor evil sorcerer finds his final resort in holding hell money into the air and asking Dracula for help, who - mercenary that he is - appears at once and gives Chun Sing's ghosts trouble until he is dispatched with exploding garlic cloves. That's probably the film's most transcendentally insane moment, but there are many other flourishes of this sort, like the sorcerer being beaten with magical lampions, the power of female hygiene products and what I suspect is meant to be menstrual blood. And who wouldn't want to see Lo Lieh get beaten up by a coffin, see a son rescued from a ghost with telescope arms by his skeletal father, or learn that evil people literally have black hearts that are unusable for black magical ceremonies?

These bizarre moments taken right out of Chinese mythology and classical literature turn what would be a competent yet also exceedingly monotonous martial arts movie into a piece of riotous fun where the unexpected is generally to be expected, and make Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave a film not to be missed even though the film's only available print (as far as I know) is a panned and scanned abomination dubbed into English in the usual horrifying manner.

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Black Magic 2 (1976)

An unnamed city in South-East Asia. A series of peculiar, medically inexplicable and really rather horrible illnesses (of course featuring worms and ugly sores) and deaths has confused the world view of physician Shi Zhen Sheng (Lam Wai-Tiu) so much, he's now convinced they are caused by black magic. Shi invites his doctor friend Qi Zhong Ping (Ti Lung) and his wife and partner in science Cui Ling (Tanny Tien Ni) to town, in the hope that the couple can help find a way to break the spells.

Not surprisingly, Qi Zhong and Cui Ling are sceptical concerning their friend's talk of magic and spells; instead of going witch hunting, they prefer to investigate the cases scientifically. These investigations don't lead to any results, though, for Shi Zhen is absolutely right - there is a black magician, a man named Kang Cong (Lo Lieh) in town, using his powers to acquire the two most important things in his life, money and breast milk (which he needs to drink fresh from the breast to keep his youthful appearance despite an age of 80). And now, Kang Cong has decided that Shi Zhen's wife Margarete (Lily Li) looks like an excellent breast milk donor to him. Even after the magician has put a spell on Margarete, causing her to get highly pregnant with an ugly lump of flesh ("It's a freak", Ti Lung diagnoses) in just a few hours, Shi Zhen's friends aren't convinced of the existence of magic.

For that, they propose a test: hire Kang Cong to cast a spell on Cui Ling. Would you believe it's not a very good idea put oneself into the hands of a black magician and that consequently, things go very badly for the people of medicine?

Despite its pioneering status when it comes to Hong Kong horror films, I never cared too much for the first of Meng Hua-Ho's Black Magic movies, perhaps because the gross out one looks for in one's HK horror took place well enough, but it and the weirdness that is the other half of this very special horror sub-genre never found a way to work together all that well there.

That's not something I can say about the sequel (also by Meng Hua-Ho, with the same actor base playing different characters). Black Magic 2 brings the gross-out and the weirdness together in the most pleasantly entertaining ways, at least if you're like me and can find entertainment in things like maggots, and worms and pus and Lo Lieh stealing pubic hair to get at that valuable breast milk; "I needed breast milk" is now my favourite new excuse for doing evil.

If these things don't row your boat, how about Lo Lieh's cellar full of zombies he awakens by hammering big nails into their heads? Ti Lung eating the eyes of a self-declared wise man and consequently getting more manly? Lo Lieh throwing his cat at someone to get some much-coveted blood for evil spell-work from its claws?

Clearly, every sane person reading about these elements of joy will want to run awayout and acquire Black Magic 2 as quickly as possible, but wait, there's more!

Like the fact that the acting ensemble is in a pretty awesome mood, with Lo Lieh having a lot of fun with sneering, making bug eyes, and spitting blood at corpses, Ti Lung being his knightly self, Lily Li undressing and Tanny Tien Ni knowing how to use a hatchet.

And the fact that Meng Hua-Ho directs the whole mess of pus, insects, nudity, bad back projection, and a pulp horror finale (complete with a small army of the undead and a burning house) of the highest degree with a great eye for the pretty; seldom has a close-up of a festering wound full of worms looked this photogenic. Some of the more creatively realized scenes of horror hint at an influence of mid-period Hammer and Italian horror through their careful lighting and the moody photography, giving the quite outrageous (yet not as insane as these films would become in good time) pulp horror story the audience witnesses a veneer of class that stands in delightful contrast to Black Magic 2's highly exploitative nature. Do I love the movie and its director for it? I sure do.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,reviews,horror,exploitation,meng hua ho,ti lung,tanny tien ni,lily li,lo lieh,shaw brothers

Three Films Make A Post: She's Waiting To Love You…To Death

Twelve Deadly Coins (1969): I'm usually pretty alright with the genre conventions of 60s wuxia, but this Shaw Brothers production lays the knightly goodness of its protagonist (ironically played by professional bad guy Lo Lieh) on so thick it's nearly nauseating. The film's plot only works if everyone on screen is so dumb they should have problems putting on their clothes in the morning and tends to lose itself in scenes that just don't need to be there at all. So I don't think it's mere chance that this is the only script written by director Hsu Tseng-Hu.

Wearing his director's hat, Hsu (typically) does the usual Shaw house style dance, but isn't able to transcend the weakness of his script too well.

On the plus side, there's the always delightful Ching Li playing the adopted daughter of the main bad guy who falls for Lo Lieh's preposterous heroism. I also always enjoy it when Lo Lieh is allowed to be a good guy. It's almost as if people who aren't pretty can be heroic too.

 

Jonah Hex (2010): Looks like Uwe Boll is working under the pseudonym of Jimmy Hayward now, or - and what a terrible thought this is - there are now directors working in Hollywood who have been influenced by the German anti-maestro's "direction style".

The parallels between Hayward's film and a Boll ejaculation are truly shocking: there's the needlessly jittery camera movements, the puzzlingly idiotic framing, the script lacking even the slightest hints of intelligence, or sense, or flow, and a bunch of actors I know can do better giving performances they should be ashamed of. It's decidedly unpleasant, and not even funny in its complete crapness.

 

Have A Good Funeral, My Friend…Sartana Will Pay (1970): Sartana (Gianni Garko). Murder. Gold. A small town full of people with secrets. You know the rest.

Despite its ridiculously awesome (or awesomely ridiculous) title, this is probably the least entertaining or interesting Spaghetti Western by Giuliano Carnimeo I've seen. It's not a really bad movie, it's just routine where it should be lively and utterly devoid of the little moments of silliness that make Carnimeo's better films so watchable. There's nothing directly wrong with the film - it's just so generic I'm not completely convinced it really exists.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,american movies,italian movies,wuxia,ching li,lo lieh,hsu tseng-hung,western,fantasy,spaghetti western,gianni garko,giuliano carnimeo,in short

King Cat (1967)

Some time in imperial China. The intensely righteous (and very brown-faced) Judge Pao (Cheng Miu) executes a regional governor for embezzlement and being a big meanie, although he knows the governor to be a relative of the highly influential Grand Tutor (Tin Sam) of the imperial court.

Pao's setting of justice before politics does indeed have its first consequence the following night, when the Grand Tutor sends out some of his men to assassinate the judge. Fortunately, the wandering swordsman and hero Zhan Zhao (Chang Yi) is around and uses his remarkable martial prowess to fight off Pao's would-be killers. Pao is so enthused about Zhan Zhao that he asks the hero to help protect the Emperor (Ching Feng) at a parade the next day.

The swordsman agrees, and not only manages to prevent the Grand Tutor's main henchman, Hua Chong (Lo Lieh in an especially evil turn), going under the not really properly evil sounding nickname of "Variegated Butterfly", from assassinating the Emperor himself, but also saves the Emperor's sister Yongan (Carrie Ku Mei) through judicious use of his cat-like ability to walk on walls. The Emperor, like Pao before him, is quite excited about Zhan Zhao, names him an Imperial Guard and gives him the honorific title of "King Cat".

Zhan Zhao doesn't seek this sort of honour, though, and also knows that this sort of public exposure can only bring trouble to a member of the martial world, so he sneaks away from court the next night to continue his heroic wanderings. At least (and after the judge has followed him through the night), the swordsman leaves Pao with a way to contact him when there is need for his service.

Zhan Zhao was just too right about his new nickname being bound to bring trouble. When word of "King Cat" carries to the martial arts brothers known as the "Five Mice of Xiankong Island", the youngest brother, Bai Yutang the Brocaded Mouse (Kiu Chong) is livid about this perceived insult by someone he has never met. So livid in fact, that he insults his fiancée, the swordswoman Ding Yuehua (Pat Ting Hung), by sneaking away to the capital to try and provoke Zhan Zhao into a duel against her wishes. The eldest brother (and the only one of them with a brain larger than that of a mouse, which would explain why these guys are known as the Five Mice) sends the three other mice after him, but a few overheard jokes about mice and cats later, and these three goofs are all too willing to help Bai Yutang in his stupid plans.

He thinks the best way to get in contact with Zhan Zhao is to break into the imperial palace and steal something precious, like that fantastic jade stove Princess Yongan has just been gifted. The theft goes rather well, but just after the brothers have left the palace again, the despicable Hua Chong sneaks in and kills and rapes (and it really might be this way around with that guy) the Princess' three maids. Initially, Hua Chong was just planning to kidnap Yongan to then rape her and become prince consort by default, but this Butterfly is never willing to let an opportunity for rape pass by, as the rest of the movie will continue to demonstrate.

Soon, Zhan Zhao is hunting the Five Mice, helping out Ding Yuehua in a spot of bother, and will in the end have to save Yongan from some rape-drugged incense sticks.

Director Hsu Tseng-Hung isn't one of the best known directors of the Shaw Brothers (he's probably best known for his later Golden Harvest phase), and - not surprisingly - delivers King Cat in the production house's house style of 1967. Of course, while lovers of auteur-oriented movies won't be satisfied by this, the Shaw house style for wuxia movies in 1967 was pretty damn great to look at. So Hsu's film spoils its viewers with a very pleasant mix of colourful costumes, a lot of neat sets, two or three beautifully realized scenes taking place in real-life nature, dynamic editing and fight choreographies of the fun and professional sort with more than enough rubber ball jumping to royally piss off anyone babbling about the need for "realism" in martial arts movies.

I suspect the film's script must have already felt a little old-fashioned in 1967, what with very straight heroes like Zhan Zhao who don't have that much personal emotional involvement in the evil plots they are preventing fastly going out of fashion for grimmer heroes. Despite all that raping and attempted raping (which is all handled off-camera), King Cat is far from grim and instead has a pleasantly light feel. As a viewer, you have the feeling that everything will turn out all right in the end, and even the melodramatic bits will be solved in friendly ways. This is the sort of film that ends without tragic renunciations of love, and half of the cast bleeding to death in the gutter, which makes for a very nice change even for someone like me who likes his downer endings.

Apart from the high level of craftsmanship the film shows on the visual side, and the mostly fine acting (Kiu Chong is a bit too theatrical for my tastes), King Cat also delights through the sort of pacing that threatens to make me use the phrase "merry romp". Hsu and his scriptwriter Ding Sin-Saai manage to control their typically sizeable cast and typically complicated plot so well that everything that might seem preposterous or under-explained in a less well done movie comes together into an actual story. Mostly, the plot even makes sense, or at least as much sense as a film including plans concerning rape-drug-incense can do.

There are also a lot of small, likeable details sprinkled throughout King Cat, like the identity of the person who is allowed to deliver the killing strike against Lo Lieh, or the simple delight of a film that ends with the scene of an Emperor trying to reward the heroes for their deeds, but the heroes declining, not out of the "patriotic" reasons of serving the state being reward enough and so on, but because they don't want to become officials, prince consorts, or that other boring stuff.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,hsu tseng-hung,chang yi,pat ting-hung,lo lieh,reviews

The Dragon Missile (1976)

Sima Jun (Lo Lieh) is the favourite henchman of an unnamed high official (Ku Feng) of a very nasty disposition. Whenever someone displeases the lord, he sends out Sima Jun to behead the perpetrator with his Dragon Missile, a pair of metal boomerangs that explode through solid objects (and make an awesome singing saw sound).

Now, destiny has put in motion some karmic payback for Sima Jun's boss. He has developed an impressive, painful and quite lethal boil on his back, and no doctor seems to be able to cure it, which - given the lord's tendency to mood swings - leads to a lot of headless physicians.

Quite bothered by the thoughts of his death, the lord lets his people kidnap the imperial physician Dr. Fu (Hao Li-Jen). At first, the doctor is quite reluctant to help, but finally identifies the lord's illness as "100 birds worshipping the phoenix" (cue gasps here), a sickness that can only be cured by something called the longevity rattan. Fortunately, Fu's old associate, the hermit Tan (Yeung Chi-Hing) is in the possession of the root, and Fu is willing to write a letter to convince his old friend to part with it. He's even lying in it about whom the cure is supposed to help in the knowledge that Tan wouldn't give his magical root to someone as evil as the lord. Of course, Fu also signs his own death letter writing this. This lord guy really is a bit of an arse.

The lord sends Sima Jun out to fetch his cure, but his ambitious underling Yang (Man Man) has had quite enough of his bosses' love for someone played by Lo Lieh, so he sends a group of jobless martial arts experts to "help" Sima Jun - to kill him after they have acquired the root, of course.

Obviously, this can't end well. Sure enough, the bad guys have to kill the hermit to get the herb, leaving his daughter Xiao Li (Nancy Yen) with a mighty hankering for vengeance. Then, Sima Jun's old brother-in-training Er Long (Lau Wing), steals the longevity rattan (who knows why) and hides it with his blind, kung fu fighting mother. One dead mother later, Er Long also swears vengeance on Sima Jun.

Before any of that sweet, sweet vengeance can take place, there's first time for the other martial artists and Sima Jun to squabble and try to kill each other, for the seekers of vengeance to ally themselves with one of those martial artists, Miss Sha (Terry Lau), and for development of a way to counter the mighty dragon missile.

The Dragon Missile's plot sounds much more complicated than it actually is. In fact, it is mostly an excuse for some excellent fight scenes and for having Lo Lieh play the bad guy, yet still get first billing. Most of the weird stuff - like the dragon missile itself, or Miss Sha's use of Wolverine's claws - is just the kind of flourish Ni Kuang (the guy who wrote this and seemingly every other Shaw Brothers film) couldn't help but put into his scripts, and that is bound to make any film quite a bit more entertaining.

Besides being full of pointless (and therefore wonderful) details, Ni Kuang's script is also on the cynical side of the Shaw Brother's wuxia/martial arts output (the studio's exploitation films always were like that), far from the rather romantic point of view many wuxia films have at their core even when they are about bloody vengeance.

The Dragon Missile's central figure is without any conscience, but most of his enemies aren't any better either. Yang's martial artists are mercenaries who don't have a problem with stabbing someone in the back if it helps their career and even our nominal heroes Er Long and Xiao Li don't think twice about allying themselves with someone as morally dubious as Miss Sha. The film never directly comments on any of this, but I can't help but feel there's a good reason for the fact that the final fight ends with Sima Jun struck by his own dragon missile in his back.

Apart from its more cynical (some would say realistic) disposition, the movie is produced to the typically high Shaw Brothers standard of '76, which means stock actors playing stock characters with agreeable solidness, bloody and fast fights shot so that the audience can actually see what's going on in them and a delightful sense for the silly that isn't yet ready to drift into the direction of the batshit insane.

How this film fits into the larger body of work of its director Meng Hua Ho however is anybody's guess. The man's filmography is all over the place, going from this, the Black Magic films, four Journey to the West films, to an excellent wuxia like The Lady Hermit, and I've never been able to get a fix on him. Sure, you could call him a work-for-hire-director who did exactly what the studio was paying him for and be done with it, but his best films are a bit too lively for me to accept that conclusion. As people like Joel Schumacher or Uli Lommel show again and again, there's just no need to put any effort into your films if your just working for a paycheck, so I tend to suspect a bit more ambition behind the films of someone who is putting some effort into them.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,meng hua ho,lo lieh,lau wing,nancy yen,reviews

The Criminals (1976)

This Shaw Brothers production consists of three episodes by different directors "based on true crimes".

The first one, "Hidden Torsos", tells of the rather unlucky attempt of Jenny (Shih Szu) and her little mute daughter to leave Jenny's lover Rong Sheng (Si Wai). Jenny ends up stabbed, her kid drowned. Rong Sheng bricks their bodies in, but chooses such a stupid place for it that they are found earlier than he had expected.

The second episode, "Valley of the Hange" (sic), is about a worker named Hong the Bull (Kong Yeung) and his troubles with his wife Mei Jiao (Terry Lau). Just think, although he paid enough to marry her to pay for quite a lot of whores, she doesn't want to sleep with him anymore! When Hong finds out that Mei Jiao instead sleeps with his foppish colleague De the Prince (Tin Ching), only deadly violence can be the answer. The film approves.

The last part of the film, "The Stuntsmen" (sic, again) tells the story of Shaw Brothers stuntman Chen Zhong (Lo Lieh). Surprisingly enough, many of the stuntmen we see don't seem satisfied with what the Shaw Brothers are paying and work as gangsters on the side. Chen Zhong meets and falls in love with the prostitute Hong (Tanny Tien Ni), who looks exactly like actress Tanny Tien Ni, whom he of course fancies. He has a glorious idea for Hong's prostitute career - pretend she really is Tanny Tien Ni! The plan works out nicely, but Chen Zhong is sucked ever deeper into the gangster lifestyle and soon has his own gang as well as his own gang wars. He survives his new lifestyle nicely until he takes the homeless Kid Liu (Wong Yu, not the regularly one-armed one) under his wing and in his trust. As it goes in cases like these, Liu falls in love with Hong, their affair gives one of Chen Zhong's enemies a convenient method to blackmail Hong, murder happens.

The exploitation arm of the Shaw Brothers was quite active during the second half of the 70s, churning out lurid films like this one by the dozens. This "ripped from the headlines" portfolio film was successful enough to get three sequels. The reason for its success probably wasn't the film's rather dubious quality, but the siren song of cheap, ugly thrills. Of course, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Seen as a film rather than a money-making device, The Criminals is a bit more problematic. Each of the segments is directed by a different director and goes for a different sort of luridness. This makes the film more than a little disconnected.

Cheng Kang's first segment is probably the best of the three. While it is a bit short, "Hidden Torsos" works very well as a tour de force thrill ride. A certain visual pop sensibility, a wee bit of Poe and merry crassness collide in a nice little heap of cheap yet effective thrills without much substance but with a lot of drive.

Hua Shan's second segment is less satisfying. It is as sleazy as one could wish for, but the "horned husband kills his wife" plot just couldn't keep me interested for a whole thirty minutes. On the plus side stands an ensemble of actors camping it up so much that it's obvious nobody here is taking the whole thing seriously. That doesn't make the episode shorter however.

Where "Valley of the Hange" is too long, Meng-Hua Ho's "The Stuntsmen" is way too short to effectively develop anything that is packed into it. At first, the glorious chutzpah of the Shaw Brothers basing parts of an exploitation film on their own bad reputation is very charming, especially when the film goes as far as to have a doubleganger prostitute of one of the studio's actresses played by said actress herself in it, but the segment soon just ignores the enticing and rather creepy self-referentiality and transforms into a standard gangster film.

Alas one that fails at pressing the plot of a two hour film into barely forty minutes. A few scenes like the two big(ish) murder set pieces do pack a bit of a punch (this is a highly professional production after all), but everything else happens too fast and is too superficial  and jumpy to leave much of an impression.

Of course, The Criminals still is the movie in which the Shaw Brothers show the Shaw Brothers as the cradle of protection rackets and prostitution, so nobody interested in the studio's films or exploitation filmmakers exploiting themselves should miss out on it, even though it is not a very good film.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,cheng kang,hua shan,meng hua ho,exploitation,lo lieh,wong yu,tanny tien ni,shih szu,reviews

The Stranger And The Gunfighter (1974)

The thief and expert safe-cracker Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) is trying to steal the fabled riches of the Chinese-immigrant businessman Wang. To his disappointment, Wang's safe only contains four pictures of the backs of Wang's four mistresses. Worse still, the pictures' owner stumbles onto the burglary and falls down dead (I suspect four mistresses weren't such a good idea for a man of his age). Poor, semi-innocent Dakota ends up sentenced to death for murder.

A little later somewhere in China, a warlord presses Wang's nephew, the martial arts expert Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh), into his service to travel to America and get him his uncle's money. The fabled riches weren't actually Wang's own, but belonged to the warlord who used Wang as intermediate to invest money in the US. Now, the rather rude man has gotten impatient and gives Ho Chiang exactly one year to return with his money, or the fighters' father and sister will die.

Once arrived in America, Ho Chiang soon realizes that Dakota didn't steal his uncle's money. It also becomes clear that uncle Wang was quite the fetishist and had the whereabouts of his treasures tattooed onto his mistresses backsides.

Since Ho is a nice guy and thinks himself in need of a traveling companion who knows the lay of the land, he frees Dakota from the gallows and offers him a little money for his help. Dakota agrees to the proposal, very un-Spaghetti-like without showing any sign of ulterior motives.

Together, the two men travel the land to stare at female asses everywhere. It's just too bad that they aren't all that good at secrecy, so they soon have to compete against an insane preacher only known as The Deacon (driving a mean mobile church) to get at the behinds.

As the film's fascination with female backsides (not that it is actually showing any of them) should demonstrate, The Stranger And The Gunfighter is not to be taken seriously. It's a film built - in the glorious Italian tradition -  to cash in on the short popularity of Lo Lieh in American grindhouses as a martial arts hero (which of course blissfully ignored the fact that he more often than not played the bad guy in his Hong Kong films) and the absolute willingness Lee Van Cleef's to do any damn thing for a movie (see also Captain Apache), and it succeeds admirably as a silly piece of fluff.

Many among the surprising number of Spaghetti Western/martial arts crossover films aren't too entertaining to watch, but most of these films weren't directed by house favorite Antonio Margheriti, who always had a sure hand when it came to directing silly adventure movies. And at heart, The Stranger And The Gunfighter is a deeply silly adventure movie outfitted with the trappings of a Spaghetti Western and a little Kung Fu more than it belongs to those other two genres.

Watching the film, I found it hard to shake the feeling that everyone involved had a hell of a time - Van Cleef shooting, singing (alas) and drinking and Lo Lieh staring at female bottoms with scientific earnestness and a looking glass and kicking male asses when necessary. I imagine Margheriti giggling with glee behind his camera, as I often do when watching the man's films.

All this is obviously far from that mysterious thing experts call "good taste", but I stopped caring about that a long time ago when I decided that I'm not that bourgeois. While the bottom business and the not completely enlightened interpretation of Chinese culture (which isn't as bad as in other films I've seen, mind you) might offend some people, that will mostly be a problem for those looking to be offended.

For my tastes, the film is much too good-natured and light to deserve anything but laughter, and much too fast-paced and silly not to be entertaining.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spaghetti western,comedy,martial arts,lo lieh,lee van cleef,antonio margheriti,reviews,adventure

In short: The Rescue (1971)

At the beginning of the Mongol Yuan dynasty rule in China, a group of rebels has put it in their minds to free the still loyal prime minister of the Sungs, Wen Tianxiang (Fang Mian) from imprisonment. After some struggles the group finds out that the Mongols are hiding the official in the Celestial Prison, which unfortunately does look more like a very earthly prison.

The rebels, among them their single female member, the young swordswoman Bai Yaerh (Shih Szu), decide that the best way to get Wen out is to get themselves thrown into the jail where some supporters will provide weaponry and keys. Also letting himself into the prison in this very natural way is Le Heru (Lo Lieh). This roguish expert fighter doesn't have heroically dying for his country in mind. Rather, he is using the traditional friendly stalker route trying to win Bai Yaerh's heart.

Le Heru still comes in handy when the plan goes awry and most of the rebels are killed. Thanks to his help, Bai Yaerh belongs to the handful of people who escape the prison with their lives.

Of course, the patriots can't let their project end this way.

The Rescue is a very typical historical Shaw Brothers wuxia. The word typical shouldn't be read as "not worthwhile", on the contrary, the typical (historical or not) Shaw Brothers wuxia of this phase of the studio's life was really a rather good film.

The production line method of filmmaking has a bad reputation (mostly among people who have never seen many films made this way), but in the case of the Shaw Brothers the production line mostly lead to a very solid technical base from which to work. So director San Kong had a solid professional cast, solid professional fight choreography, solid professional sets and so on, and so on. If it sounds as if I was trying to say that The Rescue is a lot like dozens of other Shaw Brothers films, then, well, yes I am in fact saying it. That however is not a bad thing, because I most probably liked these dozens of other films.

A few things here are a little different, though. First and foremost, Lo Lieh wasn't allowed to play heroic roles very often, and seems to relish the possibility. He also works nicely with Shih Szu, who herself is really good as the extremely competent swordswoman with the tendency to upperclass petulance. Besides the mandatory looking pretty, which was not much of a problem for her, she also seems to have done quite a bit of her fighting herself, and did it well, which not every Shaw heroine did or was allowed to do.

Some of the mass fights are also worth mentioning for their well developed sense of controlled chaos and proper use of the typical Shaw-colored blood.

Add to that the more low key way the film treats its mandatory patriotic speeches, a love for people in disguise, a choice misuse of "Also sprach Zarathustra" and a very undignified patriotic sacrificial death for one of the main characters, and you'll find me completely on the side of your film.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,wuxia,lo lieh,shih szu,in short

The Lady Hermit (1971)

A young (and I mean really, really young) woman named Cui Ping (Shih Szu) is searching for a mysterious swordswoman, the Lady Hermit, whom she deems to be the only teacher worth learning from. Cui Ping plans to become a good enough fighter to challenge the current "Number One In The Martial World", Black Demon (Wang Hsieh), who is a right bastard. It's not as if it was personal between Cui Ping and Black Demon - she lacks the expected backstory about murdered parents and is instead driven by a combination of youthful arrogance and just as youthful righteousness. Not a bad combination in a woman brandishing a whip and a sword.

Said woman is more than on the right trail to find her heroine - she has already met her in the form of a maid (Cheng Pei Pei) working at the escort service Cui Ping has made the base for her search. Leng Yu Shuang, as the Hermit's real name is, has been laying low there for a few years to recover from a grievous wound to her hip she suffered when fighting (and losing against) Black Demon.

Also working for the escort service is Chang Chun (Lo Lieh in one of his knightly roles), soon to be one third of a love triangle between the heroines, and really not of much other use.

To make matters a little more complicated, Black Demon's henchmen have slowly closed in on the Lady Hermit and are concocting their own version of a protection money racket - led by someone claiming to be the heroine (just with a lot more beard) to flush the original out. So the rest of the film's plot should be more or less obvious.

If someone could explain the reason for the bizarre differences in quality and style of the films of The Lady Hermit's director Meng Hua Ho to me, it would be very much appreciated. How it is possible that the man responsible for The Oily Maniac and Mighty Peking Man was just a few years earlier making an excellent wuxia like this is beyond me. Who knew how good he was in making the best of location shots? Or making real neat looking action scenes?

Of course, The Lady Hermit is a very formulaic film, but that's one of the reason we call movies like it "genre movies". The question in a case like this is: how well does a film use the formulae of his genre and (if the genre is already getting decadent one way or the other) how does it twist them? The former does not seem to have been a problem for Meng Hua Ho at all - the movie contains everything one expects of a non-mad wuxia, realized in as dynamic and exciting ways as possible. The fights are as well choreographed as they are bloody, which is no surprise in a Shaw Brothers film, of course, but also show a fine sense for action set pieces like a fight on a suspension bridge (including really bad model effects - always a plus) that some people in Hollywood would go on to steal a few years later for that film with the permanently screeching woman, or, as we call it, the Anti-Lady-Hermit.

The twist in the genre formula is the consequent way in which the film substitutes typical male roles with female characters and vice versa - not completely atypical for the wuxia, but seldom played this straight and unflinching. Also, Lo Lieh as Damsel With A Sword In Distress really is something.

And speaking of "really being something", there are our heroines. Cheng Pei Pei was a much more accomplished actress at this point in her career than in her earliest years (and keep in mind she was only 25 when this film was made) and this is surely one of her best performances. Where many wuxia heroes tend to be rather bland, she projects a rare mixture of determination, competence, fragility and humor combined with the ability to kill people with tea cups.

Shih Szu, only 16 here, mostly lives off youthful charm, but what could be a problem in other roles becomes a believable part of her character here.

All in all, there's no reason to miss this, unless you're on of those people who are categorically against watching really good films.

 

Technorati-Tags: cheng pei pei,lo lieh,hong kong movies,reviews,wuxia,shaw brothers,shih szu,meng hua ho