By  Will, on May 17, 2013, 5:20 am  Vengeance of a Snow Girl [冰天俠女] (1971)
AKA A Daughter’s Vengeance
Starring Li Ching, Yueh Hua, Ku Feng, Tien Feng, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Paul Chang Chung, Wong Chung-Shun, Lee Kwan, Nau Nau, Lo Wei, Hsu Yu
Directed by Lo Wei
Expectations: Pretty low, but hopeful.
As I slowly approach 1972 and the real rise of the unarmed martial arts film, many of the films in 1971 have been significant in their own right. Vengeance of a Snow Girl is the final Lo Wei film for the Shaw Brothers, and it was released just two days before Golden Harvest released the film that could easily be called the most important film of Lo Wei’s career, The Big Boss. Yup, the film that gave the filmgoing world Bruce Lee, still one of the most popular figures in martial arts history. He’s like the Jimi Hendrix of the martial arts film world. He only finished a few works before his untimely death, but they continue to resonate. But Vengeance of a Snow Girl doesn’t star Bruce Lee, and, as far as I can tell, it didn’t set the world on fire like The Big Boss did. I’m sure the release date was timed specifically to undercut the performance of Golden Harvest’s The Big Boss, but clearly that plan (if it was a plan) backfired. I don’t think anything could keep people from loving Bruce Lee.
Vengeance of a Snow Girl tells the tale of Shen Ping Hong (Li Ching), an orphan on the warpath to kill the four men who murdered her parents in cold blood, and were in part responsible for the crippling of her legs. Yeah, that’s right, Li Ching plays a girl who can’t walk, but is on a mission of vengeance. Her kung fu is strong enough to allow her to fly and float around, and it also allows her to stay standing while she trades blows with her enemies. But before you get too excited about the entertainment prospects that this premise sets up, all four of her targets are all gathered together already, so instead of a rollicking quest around the countryside looking for these devious bastards, everybody just does a lot of talking about the girl that’s going to kill them.
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By Will, on April 5, 2013, 5:20 am  The Shadow Whip [影子神鞭] (1971)
Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Yueh Hua, Tien Feng, Ku Feng, Lee Kwan, Wang Hsieh, Lee Sau Kei, Lo Wei, Go Ming, Lee Ka-Ting, Hao Li-Jen, Tsang Choh-Lam
Directed by Lo Wei
Expectations: Moderately high.
It was with a heavy heart that I sat down to watch Lo Wei’s The Shadow Whip, as this was the final Shaw Brothers martial arts film starring Cheng Pei Pei. Cheng was one of the genre’s first breakout stars, kick-starting the 1960s martial arts film revolution in King Hu’s Come Drink With Me. Her stoic portrayal of Golden Swallow in that film earned her a plethora of quality film roles at the Shaw studio, so The Shadow Whip truly marks the end of an era. The Shadow Whip‘s contemporaries were inching towards the types of films that would fill the company’s future, but this feels like a film rooted in the past (as is to be expected from Lo Wei). No matter the emotions that surrounded this viewing of The Shadow Whip, it’s a fun film, chock full of fights and intrigue.
The Shadow Whip opens on snowy vistas — a rare occurrence in a Shaw film — and they’re stunning. We zero in on a small caravan, traversing the road to town in search of spices and supplies for their inn. A man on a wagon sings us this journey’s tale, lending the film a light tone. This is shattered when a group of three men on horseback (known in the film’s martial world as “The Serial Trio”) ride through the caravan and attack the singing man for being in their way. Later, when everyone arrives in town, the caravan leader wants revenge, but the Serial Trio has met up with a handsome swordsman played by Yueh Hua, and the intrigue has already begun to take shape.
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By Will, on September 14, 2012, 5:20 am  The Twelve Gold Medallions [十二金牌] (1970)
AKA Twelve Golden Medallions
Starring Yueh Hua, Chin Ping, Cheng Miu, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Wang Hsieh, Wong Chung-Shun, Yeung Chi Hing, Ku Feng, Liu Wai, Goo Man-Chung, Jeng Man-Jing, Fan Mei-Sheng, Tong Tin-Hei, Ma Ying, Go Ming
Directed by Cheng Kang
Expectations: High. Cheng Kang returns!
The Twelve Gold Medallions was Cheng Kang’s first feature since the wonderful Killers Five, so I went in hoping that it would live up to the pure, unfiltered awesome laid out there. While The Twelve Gold Medallions definitely doesn’t live up to that kind of hype, it’s a really incredible wuxia film that is sure to delight and excite fans of the genre. It starts out with a bang too, immediately dropping us into the action as Yueh Hua is doing his best to stop the messengers carrying the twelve gold medallions of the title.
The film opens with some text, hoping to frame the events of the film within some sort of historical context. The twelve gold medallions are the ploy of an evil traitor, hoping to thwart the plans of a patriotic general doing his best to preserve the current Emperor’s reign. Yueh Hua, a noble swordsman, takes up the task of stopping these messengers and their false messages. Beyond that, there’s also a romantic sub-plot between Yueh Hua and Chin Ping, the daughter of his master, as well as some drama between Yueh and his master (Cheng Miu) over the fact that Cheng has become the leader of the villainous group trying to deliver the medallions.
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By Will, on July 27, 2012, 5:20 am  Brothers Five [五虎屠龍] (1970)
Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Lo Lieh, Chang Yi, Yueh Hua, Chin Han, Kao Yuen, Tien Feng, Unicorn Chan, Wang Hsieh, Sammo Hung, Ku Feng, James Tin Jun, Lan Wei-Lieh, Chin Chun, Lee Wan Chung
Directed by Lo Wei
Expectations: High, Lo Wei’s been on a role.
As Lo Wei’s first film of the 1970s, Brothers Five comes off as the culmination of everything he had done prior. I said something similar about his previous film The Golden Sword, but this one seems to fit the bill even better. In terms of story, The Golden Sword struck the perfect balance between high-flying fights and martial intrigue, but Brothers Five sets its sights almost completely on delivering action-packed fight after action-packed fight. The film is chock full o’ fights, and while its story definitely suffers for it, no martial arts fan could deny the simple fun of watching a shitload of fights. And when those fights are choreographed by a young Sammo Hung finding his place in the martial arts film world, it’s even better.
I say that the story is thin, and that it’s the weakest point of the film, but Brothers Five does weave a very fun web of intrigue. Five brothers were separated at birth when the evil lord of Flying Dragon Villa murdered their father. The children’s caretaker sliced the backs of their left hands so that they would be able to one day reunite and take their revenge on the evil lord played perfectly by Tien Feng. The majority of the film is the brothers slowly coming together — usually by running into one another when they each venture to make a foolhardy assault on Flying Dragon Villa by themselves — so this means that a good portion of the runtime is devoted to something of a repeating cycle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun cycle and it’s enjoyable as hell, but when you have multiple fights occurring at the same location, it does begin to run together a bit.
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By Will, on July 20, 2012, 5:20 am  Lady of Steel [荒江女俠] (1970)
Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Yueh Hua, Wong Chung-Shun, Fang Mian, Lee Pang-Fei, Goo Man-Chung, Chiu Hung, Lee Wan Chung, Law Hon, Tung Li, Lau Gong, Ho Wan-Tai
Directed by Ho Meng-Hua
Expectations: Moderate, but Ho Meng-Hua’s due for a great one.
Maybe if this film had some out a few years earlier, I’d have had a better reaction to it. Coming out in 1970, though, Lady of Steel is clichéd, derivative and without much to set it apart from the large amount of swordswomen revenge films, most of them starring this film’s leading lady Cheng Pei Pei. The intro sets up a rather adventurous, vengeful tale, but as in many of these early films, the revenge is saved until the end of the film. They’re taking this “best served cold” part of the saying way too literally; there is definitely such a thing as too-cold revenge.
Lady of Steel opens with Cheng Pei Pei’s father and his friends stopping at an inn for the night and getting attacked by bandits. They’re transporting a million taels of silver cross-country and openly talking about it at the small town inn, one might say they were asking for it. A large fight ensues and Cheng’s father tries to whisk his daughter to safety, but not before getting a dagger thrown into his forehead. As you might expect, this is rather damaging for the young Cheng Pei Pei. Her father dies before her eyes and his buddy takes her into the forest and leaves her with an old kung fu master. For anyone who’s seen a lot of these, I’m sure you already can guess that child Cheng Pei Pei grows up and learns martial arts during the credits sequence. I really look forward to the days when these training sequences make up the bulk of the film.
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By Will, on May 18, 2012, 5:20 am  Raw Courage [虎膽] (1969)
AKA Tiger’s Courage
Starring Cheng Pei Pei, Yueh Hua, Ng Fung, Lo Wei, Tien Feng, Poon Oi-Lun, Yeung Chi Hing, Ou-Yang Sha-Fei, Lee Kwan, Tong Jing, Lee Sau Kei, Go Ming, Goo Man-Chung, Hung Lau, Yee Kwan
Directed by Lo Wei
Expectations: Moderate. I have a bad feeling about this one.
My bad feelings were all for naught, as Lo Wei’s Raw Courage is a fun, rollicking little wuxia film. It’s not something that will create genre fans, nor is it anything truly substantial, but it is fantastic entertainment. Raw Courage tells the story of an emperor besieged by an army who entrusts his child to Lo Wei and his Black Dragon Clan. In virtually every other Shaw Brothers film from this period involving a baby, there’d be a twenty year jump in time and we’d pick up the story with the young martial artist out looking to find their destiny or avenge their fallen parents/master. In Raw Courage, the baby actually stays a baby as Cheng Pei-Pei and Ng Fung quickly find themselves in charge of taking the infant prince across the country to meet up with the White Dragon Clan. If trying to transport a baby through enemy checkpoints sounds like a good time, then Raw Courage is your barrel of monkeys.
There’s nothing too special about Raw Courage, other than its ability to rise above the standard wuxia storytelling and remain exciting and interesting throughout. There are loads of problems that contribute to the film being less than it should be, but honestly I only noticed after the film was over because I was having such a fun time with it. One of the major flaws is that the villains, while plentiful, aren’t nearly well-defined enough to make for compelling adversaries to our heroes. Tien Feng plays their leader, but basically sleepwalks through a role where his primary task is to walk from one place to another and say, “After them!” It’s hard to blame him. The villain introduced later in the film, a man with a blue-gray face known only as Old Monster, is awesome and really deserved more screen time too. It’s crazy villains like this that would later populate all kinds of wild and fantastic Hong Kong films, so I’m willing to forgive this one a bit just for including him.
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By Will, on May 4, 2012, 5:20 am  Vengeance is a Golden Blade [飛燕金刀] (1969)
Starring Chin Ping, Yueh Hua, Tang Ching, Kao Pao Shu, Goo Man-Chung, Pang Pang, Lee Pang-Fei, Chiu Hung, Law Hon, Ngai Ping-Ngo, Wong Ching Ho, Hao Li-Jen, Tsang Choh-Lam
Directed by Ho Meng-Hua
Expectations: High. You can’t go wrong with that title, right?
The reason I made it a point to go through the Shaw Brothers films chronologically is because I knew that there was no way that one week I could review some early misstep like King Cat, followed by something akin to heaven like Five Element Ninjas, only to return to the slow-paced, melodrama of the late 60s. Sometimes I do venture outside of the era though, and this time specifically I had seen Merantau, Flash Point and The Raid all in between the last Shaw Brothers picture and this. I’m a professional though, so I didn’t let it undermine the experience of watching Vengeance is a Golden Blade, but it did shine a brilliant spotlight on just how underwhelming an experience it was.
Vengeance is a Golden Blade starts out as another in the long tradition of “the most badass sword” movies, such as The Sword of Swords, The Thundering Sword, etc. The masterpiece sword here is the Golden Dragon Sword, and it is pretty badass, slicing clean through every bit of metal swung its way. The intrigue involves the sword being stolen by a grave enemy, the hero being crippled and eighteen years passing before anyone gets down to any real vengeance. This is where the film gains its true star in Chin Ping, and, to a lesser extent, her childhood friend Yueh Hua. While this might sound like a great setup for a classic swordplay film, Vengeance is a Golden Blade is only merely average. It does tell an interesting story filled with twisty turns and devious betrayals, but for the most part it’s all pretty standard fare.
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