Tag: angela mao

Broken Oath

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★★★★
“Lady Snowblood, Hong Kong edition”

I guess, the old saying “just there for Godzilla” definitely applies to me. This movie is far from perfect, but as long as I see some skilled fighters in fancy costumes battling it out, I’m in. Additional points are given if the respective dub is at least tolerable. Broken Oath is actually an interesting movie. It is kind of a remake of Japanese classic Lady Snowblood with Meiko Kaji from 1973. The difference is that this Golden Harvest production, from producer Raymond Chow, stars Angela Mao.

She was probably the biggest female martial arts star at the time in Asian movies and had the status of a female Bruce Lee. She had starred with Lee in Enter the Dragon and one-time James Bond George Lazenby in two other movies, and also worked with classic directors like Chang Cheh and King Hu. Some of her famous films include Lady Whirlwind, When Taekwondo Strikes, Hapkido, The Fate of Lee Khan and many others. In the seventies. she could hardly walk down a street without being instantly recognized.

Broken Oath was to be her last movie for Golden Harvest which is quite inexplicable because she was a major star – did they let her go or was that her own decision? After that, she began working in Taiwanese movies with obviously lesser budgets. She lasted in movies for quite some time until the early 90s when she retired from film business. In a way it’s a pity that her golden era more or less ended in the 1970s, considering the success stars such as Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Donnie Yen would later enjoy – and continue to do so – in the West.

Broken Oath follows the story beats of Lady Snowblood quite closely – until it slowly becomes its own thing. It’s comparable to how Temptress of a Thousand Faces freely emulated the French Fantomas movies of the sixties. Like the Japanese original, it starts with a woman sent to prison where she gives birth to a child. On her death-bed she reveals her story of how her husband, General Liu, was killed by a gang of hoodlums; after resisting a rape attempt by one of them, she was sent to prison because the police didn’t believe her. 

She gives birth to a girl and asks her “sisters” (inmates) to take care of the child, and to raise it to take revenge for the death of her parents. Instead, one of them, subsequently referred to as the girl’s godmother, gives her to a Buddhist nunnery with the blessings of the abbess who doesn’t think that the cycle of violence should continue. In the English dub, the little girl is called “Lotus”; the subtitles call her Jie Lian, though her original name was Xiao Mei. In any case, she has violent tendencies, though for some unspecified reason these Buddhist scholars are constantly fighting when not listening to the wisdom of Buddha. Lotus ends up killing three drifters in the wood when they try to rape her.

As she has “broken her oath” (to Buddha, I guess), she has to leave the nunnery and goes to live with her godmother, from whom she learns how to become a pickpocket and gets to know her friend and colleague Ah Shu. From there on, the movie loses connection to the original movie which I see as a good thing. Jie Lian finds the murderers, though the plot is essentially hardly more than the bones of a story, rather than a fully fleshed-out narrative. It unnecessarily complicates itself with the introduction of new characters and side-stories, but in the end the overall simplicity is indeed for the better of the movie.

For some time, I wondered if this movie was really worth my attention: I just wanted to see Angela Mao show me how hard and high she could kick. Fortunately, the film didn’t let me down. But it has to be said, it needed more than half of the movie until the whole martial arts machinery kicked – as it were! – into high gear. After being saved by an old, wise man named Qi Feng from the poisonous dust of one opponent. and his subsequent death at the hands of uber-villain Zhao Cai (both took part in the raid on Jie Lian’s parents, with Qi Feng now getting redemption by saving Lotus), things escalated quite quickly.

I have to say, I personally still prefer the melancholic elegiac beauty of Lady Snowblood and Meiko Kaji’s unmistakable charisma (I’m aware that Jim gave that movie a low rating, but for me that Japanese chanbara movie is an absolute high-ranking classic. To each their own, as they say), but the sheer number of ideas that this movie here bombards you with is remarkable. Let’s see… Steel claws as weapons; a liquid, one villain uses to spit fire and burn his victims to death; blades on a string used like a yo-yo. by an opponent played by Sammo Hung; a hat that goes over the whole head of Master Yun (later revealed to be Zhao Cai); sword fights; butterfly needles; group attacks, attack scorpions; and secret passages through stone caves hidden behind book shelves.

Really, the last 30-40 minutes of this go like gangbusters! I only wish the first half of the movie would have been like that, too. Granted, a story needs time to be built up, but let’s be honest: there is not much of a story here. Just the outspoken will for revenge, and that only happens after the godmother tells Lotus about her past. It is revealed at the end that the villains had planned to overthrow the government 20 years ago; General Liu discovered their treachery and was therefore killed. Better a good reason late than never, I guess. These things can’t quite disguise some carelessness in the story-development.

For example, Ah Shu seemed to be built up as a love interest. But he is killed off in a way, as well as the heroine’s reaction to it, which is so casual I wondered why he was even in the story. There is another character supposedly killed – silly me, believing that – who is suddenly back there to support the combatants in their fight again. The whole “she is poisoned and has to be cured” episode feels like a pointless story element, with no good reason except for extending the movie’s run time (admittedly I saw the theatrical version at 98 minutes; there is an extended version around 5 minutes longer), and giving Mao the chance to lay down and take a short break.

The actors here… well, they are Chinese actors in seventies wuxia and act accordingly. One shouldn’t expect Oscar-worthy performances here. The evil villains are evil and the rest of the actors hardly make much of an impression. Angela Mao is adequate as expected, though of course I’m more interested in her fighting skills than her acting talents. She moves elegantly and swiftly and I do believe she can fight off and kill more than half a dozen men, attacking her all at once. She is great “hero material”, and I applaud every action of hers. But I can hardly detect any burning pain underneath, or an insatiably hot appetite for revenge. Comparing that with the painful, tragic, almost longing for death portrayal of Kaji might be unjust. But it is also inevitable.

Of course, the dubbing doesn’t help. Yes, one should see movies like this in the original language version with subtitles, but I prefer a dub when I can get one. I don’t know from when this one comes (possibly the movie’s release in 1977), but the performances aren’t Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster acting, to say the least. I’m just happy to get lip-synched dialogue. It mostly plays inside buildings, temples or halls, giving the impression this is first and foremost a studio production. There are only a few scenes on location, though these are nice to look at. While I don’t rank the movie lower for it, I liked the beautiful, natural surroundings of Lady Snowblood much more. It’s just a matter of taste.

That said, as a whole I liked the production design, which makes you feel that the movie’s budget went into it, along with the historical Chinese costumes and some effects. It’s in contrast to Mao’s later Taiwanese films, where I can confirm she was working on a notably lower quality standard. This movie definitely has its qualities. As an old saying (incorrectly attributed to Oscar Wilde) goes: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. This might be true not only for Lady Snowblood, which Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to in Kill Bill – Vol. 1,  but also for Broken Oath, as the fight between Sammo Hung and Angela Mao is definitely mirrored in the one between Chiaki Kuriyama and Uma Thurman.

Dir: Chang-hwa Jeong
Star: Angela Mao, Michael Wai-Man Chan, Siu-Lung Leung, Shan Kwan

Scorching Sun, Fierce Wind, Wild Fire

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★★
“May the fierce be with you.”

The first thing which will hit you about this 1979 Taiwanese co-production is the utterly shameless way it hijacks John Williams’s soundtrack to Star Wars. 93 minutes later, as the end credits roll, accompanied by more unauthorized liftage… That’s probably still going to be the main element of this you will remember. For the rest is largely a confusingly-plotted and not very well executed bit of chop socky. Despite Angela Mao’s presence, second on the list of participants, she is a long way behind the main character, in terms of both screen time and action.

It’s supposed to be set in the 1920’s, though at least one of the vehicles on display looks extremely post-war. At the time, it appears China was divided into a lot of territories, ruled over in a feudal fashion by warlords. One such man is having a problem with a rebel who goes by the nomme de guerre of “Violet”, and he is desperate to find out who is disrupting his operations. In particular, his plan to acquire some heavy weaponry from Japan, that will end all rebellions. Seems Violet had stolen the guns’ firing-pins, rendering them useless. The cause of his angst is a great deal closer to home than he things, because Violent is actually his daughter (Mao), in a hat and veil. Other plot elements include a pair of escaped convicts, a treasure map which has been split into two halves, and the warlord’s right-hand man, Second Master (Yi), who is plotting a coup.

Unfortunately, it’s much more  the movie of Pai Tien Hsing  (Peng), whose character has an ambivalence a little like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. He initially appears to be on the side of the warlord, and insists on Violet putting her skills to the test against him. However, the further into proceedings we get, the more aligned he is with her, until the final battle, where they both go up against Second Master and his poisoned knives. I must say, they have a very gnarly effect on the victim, though it’s likely no spoiler to say, the film operates in line with the kung-fu version of the old pro wrestling adage: “He who sets the table, gets the table…”

The fights are only occasionally up to much, and mostly feel like they date from a picture made a decade or more previously. Mao is her usual, reliable self, and shines in the moments she has; there just are not enough of them, and they don’t last for long. There’s a horribly cropped and dubbed version on Amazon Prime, as Dragon Connection, which I got three minutes into before discovering the letterboxed, subbed version on YouTube. Mind you, that had its issues too, not least referring to a mute character on multiple occasions as “a dump.” One for the Mao completists only. Having checked it off the list, let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Sheng-Yuan Sun
Star: Peng Tien, Angela Mao, Yi Chang, Tao-Liang Tan
a.k.a. Dragon Connection or Any Which Way You Punch

Dance of Death

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★★★★

“Not backwards in high heels, yet still highly impressive”

This one might sound familiar, as I did previously review it about four years ago. But it deserves, and gets, a fresh analysis, due to my having recently had the chance to watch it in a way much closer to how it was originally meant to be seen. This version was purely subtitled, rather than dubbed, and in particular, had a 2.35:1 ratio print, rather than the previous 4:3 atrocity which meant that half the time, one or other fighter in the (numerous) battles was cropped off the side of the screen. This made it feel such a radically different movie, it took an hour for me to realize I’d actually seen it before. And it was all the better for the new look.

There were aspects which still befuddle me, such as most of the plot. Why, exactly, is Angela Mao pretending to be a boy? It’s completely unconvincing, and entirely unnecessary to the story-line. No-one ever discovers her true gender: it’s almost as if this were originally written for a man, then they got Mao, and in all the excitement, forgot (or, alternatively and equally credibly, couldn’t be bothered) to change the script. The rest of it is an odd mix. It’s partly vengeance with Fei Fei (Mao) out to pick up enough martial arts skill to take revenge on those who killed her family. Yet this sits alongside slapstick comedy which you’d not expect given the title, such as the two kung fu masters – one drunk, one stoner – whom she tricks into sharing her talents, or the villain with the world’s tiniest fan whom she defeats on her way to the big bad.

This time, those elements didn’t bother me anywhere near as much, and even if they had, I’m willing to forgive an enormous amount when the fights are so acrobatically inventive – the hand of Jackie Chan, who was a stunt co-ordinator here, might have something to do with this. Yes, it’s almost retro, even for its time. For by this point, in 1976, Bruce Lee’s shooting star had already blazed across the sky of martial arts cinema, and the Peking Opera approach was quickly being replaced by films based on his harder hitting style. Yet the long takes and fluid choreography used here have an undeniably elegant rhythm to them. I previously wrote that this movie reminded me of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and that’s one element which hasn’t changed between these viewings.

The steady progression in Fei Fei’s talents also remains notable, as does the blizzard of different styles of kung-fu, from crane through dragon to monkey, as well as less traditional approaches such as the.. ah, “flatulence fu” which shows up at one point. The graceful skill which Mao demonstrates in virtually all of these – save the intestinal variety, I’m pleased to say! – is truly a joy to behold, especially in this format, which allows you to appreciate it all the better. If there’s a more impressive vehicle for her talents, I’ve yet to find it.

Dir: Chuan Lu
Star: Angela Mao, Shih Tien, Shiao Bou-Lo, Chin Pey

The Tournament (1974)

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★★½
“Face off.”

There’s a lot of chit-chat about face, honour and respect here. It begins when the master of a kung-fu school, Lau, has his daughter kidnapped by local hoodlums, after he won’t cough up protection money. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than using his skills to kick their arses, he sends two students to Thailand, including his son, Hong (Wong) in an effort to win the necessary funds. Hong loses, the other student is killed, and Lau is drummed out of the local Kung-Fu Association for having disgraced the name of Chinese martial arts by losing to foreigners. He’s so devastated, he hangs himself, leaving it up to his daughter, Siu Fung (Mao) to restore the family name, learn how to mesh Chinese kung-fu with Thai boxing, and rescue her sister. Quite the “to-do” list, I’d say.

There are 10 extremely good minutes in the middle of this, beginning when Siu Fung has to fend off a predatory takeover bid from a Japanese karate school, and their top fighter, played by Korean kicker Whang In Sik. This is immediately followed by a visit from the Kung-Fu Association, who are intent on testing her skills. Repeatedly. And against a range of opponents, including a particularly impressive battle against a young, fairly long-haired Sammo Hung. It’s glorious, and probably just about justifies the rest of the film. Because the remainder is likely only of interest if you are really into Thai boxing bouts, and since the great majority of these do not involve Mao, I was severely unimpressed.

The story is particularly poorly-written, to the extent I still couldn’t tell you with any degree of confidence what the competition proclaimed in the title actually was. Similarly, the kidnapping with which the film opens, is entirely forgotten about, for what seems like forever. Even by the low standards of plotting for the time, this is particularly weak sauce. Not least, because it’s clear that Mao is a better fighter than Wong, both in storyline and cinematic martial-arts terms – and that’s even before heading off to learn Thai boxing. For example, the sequence described above starts when Siu Fung has to rescue her brother from the Japanese, after their master has beaten Hong up. So why is she stuck on the sidelines for so much of the film? It’s immensely frustrating.

Random trivia note: the home of the Kung-Fu Association is located at 41 Cumberland Road, which in reality, was the last house Bruce Lee bought. He purchased it in July 1972, and lived there until his death a year later. Barely 12 months further on, this movie came out in Hong Kong: seems a little tastelessly quick by Golden Harvest to turn Lee’s home into a location. This nugget is likely more interesting than a good 80% of the film – specifically, the 80% which does not feature Angela Mao kicking ass. But as my gift to you, the YouTube video below is paused to start at the beginning of the best bit. You’re welcome!

Dir: Wong Fung
Star: Angela Mao, Carter Wong, Wilson Tong, Sammo Hung

Stoner

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★★½
“On Her Mao-jesty’s Secret Service”

This production had a long, convoluted and quite interesting path to the screen. While Lazenby was always on board, the original plan was for him to be a Western bad guy, going up against Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba. But Lee’s death – oddly, he was supposed to have had dinner with Lazenby that night – resulted in Chiba quitting, and Warner Bros then also backed out of their worldwide distribution deal. It was reworked as a much smaller film, at less than one-tenth the original budget (although at around $850,000, was still very expensive for the time, location and genre), with Lazenby now teaming up with Angela Mao.

He plays rough, tough Australian cop, Joseph Stoner, who heads for Hong Kong after his sister gets hooked on the new, super-powerful aphrodisiac “happy pills” created in the laboratory of evil drug kingpin, Mr Big (Hwang). She’s Taiwanese cop Angela Li, sent undercover to bring him down. Eventually, they join forces, but this isn’t until well over an hour into the film. To that point, they are each investigating in their own way Mr Big’s activities. Stoner’s approach appears to involve doing an impression of a bull in a china shop, while Li uses a smarter approach, to infiltrate the temple which is the distribution hub, posing as an innocent vendor of soft drinks. Both eventually end up in the same place – a cage in Mr Big’s lair – leading to a creepy scene where she has to fend off a happy pill-crazed Stoner.

It’s interesting that, in both the dubbed and subbed versions, Mao gets top billing ahead of Lazenby, despite the latter’s fame for having played 007 a few years previously. It is very much a two-hander, with each getting their own share of screen time. Lazenby does a surprisingly impressive job with the more physical aspects, and apparently put in a great deal of training. The problem is – as with his portrayal of James Bond – the actor’s inability to convey any emotions with the slightest degree of conviction. Even when talking about his sister, he might as well be reciting sports scores. Still, there’s plenty of funky seventies style to appreciate, such as the rotating desk apparently bought by Mr. Big from a yard sale at a local TV news-room.

Mao is, for our purposes, the true star, and I’d be hard pushed to say this would have been improved by the presence of Sonny Chiba. You have to wait quite a while for any significant action from her though, coming when she sneaks into Mr. Big’s headquarters. This unfolds in a way which suggests Bruce Lee’s foray from Enter the Dragon, and you wonder if this was part of the original script, intended for him before his untimely demise. On the whole though, I’d rather have dispensed entirely with Lazenby, and given the entire film to Mao, for this demonstrates that brains is often more interesting to watch than brawn.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Angela Mao, George Lazenby, Betty Ting, Hwang In-shik
a.k.a. The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss

The Fate of Lee Khan

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★★★½
“Out of the frying-pan, inn to the fire…”

leekhanProbably best to start with a quick history lesson. In the fourteenth century, part of China was under Mongol rule, but there was a growing movement to oust the occupiers. Leading the battle against the rebels is the titular general, and it appears he has a mole inside their headquarters, who has arranged to pass Khan a crucial map that could derail the rebellion entirely. Learning in advance that Khan will be staying at the Spring Inn, a venue owned by one of their own, Wendy (Li), the freedom fighters set in motion a daring plan to steal back the map, and assassinate Khan before he can take advantage of the information. However, it turns out – as usual! – that there are others at the inn who have agendas of their own, operating undercover on both sides. So when Khan and his sister finally show up, they may be  well-aware of what lies in wait for them…

A lot to enjoy here, not least Wendy’s newly-recruited four-pack of waitresses, who all have shady pasts of their own, including a bandit, a pickpocket, a street performer and a con artist, and who are no less adept than Wendy with their fists and feet. The pickpocket, who swipes a pearl off the front of a customer’s hat as he plays dice, is played by Angela Mao in a small but significant role, as it’s her attempt to steal the map out of Khan’s locked case that triggers the climactic outburst of violence. There’s also Khan’s sister, Wan’er (right), played by another King Hu regular, Xu Feng, though this is Hu’s only work to be so heavily femme centered. The first half reminds me of Dragon Inn, made by Hu six years previously (and remade in the nineties), with its tale of shenanigans at a remote inn, on which a motley crew of heroes and villains descend. While generally entertaining, it’s somewhat hard to keep track of who’s doing what and for whose side.

When Khan shows up, the entire dynamic changes, with this movie developing a much clearer focus. Wendy and her allies try to regain control of the key map, while unsure how much Khan and Wan’er know about their plans, and who is on their side. Eventually, one of the rebels is caught in an untenable position and is summarily executed – though Wan’er “charitably” donates a hundred taels of silver “in order to bury her properly.” Such an obvious act of provocation will not go unpunished, and it’s time for all martial arts hell to break lose (or, at least, as close as it could given the era – this was just before Bruce Lee blew the doors off the genre). All of the women here have a strict zero-tolerance policy for nonsense, and are entirely capable of handling themselves. To have one such character would be impressive, but the full half-dozen we have here, indeed pushes this into the stratosphere for its time.

Dir: King Hu
Star: Li Lihua, Han Ying Chieh, Roy Chiao, Angela Mao

The Invincible Eight

  By

★★½
“Clearly one-up on The Magnificent Seven.”

TheInvincibleEight+1971-85-bThis early Golden Harvest ensemble piece focuses on a plot for communal revenge against the evil General Hsiao (Han Ying Chieh), who was responsible for killing the fathers of the titular octet during his rise to power. However, he’s not all bad, as he raised a couple of his victims’ children as his own, who are now on his side, unaware of his involvement in their status as orphans. Three of the eight are women, a solidly respectable ratio given the 1971 provenance. They include both relative newcomer Mao as Kuei Chien Chin, who disguises herself as a man – as thoroughly unconvincingly as these things usually are in Hong Kong movies! – to infiltrate Hsiao’s camp, and the more established Miao as Chiang Yin, one of the previously mentioned surrogate offspring adopted by the general. The third is Lydia Shum, who is perhaps actually the most memorable, being loud, abrasive and larger than life in a very physical way.

While clearly not as gifted, she reminded me of Sammo Hung, which is interesting, since he was one of the action directors on this file; he and another well-known future face of Hong Kong cinema, Lam Ching-Ying of Mr. Vampire fame, are among the general’s nine whip-wielding bodyguards. This does at least allow for a touch of variety among the fights, since it makes a nice change to see whip vs. sword rather than an endless parade of sword vs. sword. However, it is still fairly limited in its own way, even if does force our heroes and heroines to come up with a special pair of double swords, which can be used to counter the menace. Hsiao is, as villains go, a bit less cartoonish than you’d expect, his killing having been for purely pragmatic reasons, and his desire to take care of some of the children indicates the acts were not entirely guilt-free. There’s a case his right-hand man, Wan Shun (Pai) is worse, though by the time the eight get past him and fight their way into his chambers, Hsiao is not exactly pleading for mercy.

It is a bit of a mixed bag, both in terms of action and in characters; this kind of thing has a tendency to feel over-stuffed, as if the makers are touting the quantity of characters more than their quality. This also has a negative impact on some of the fight sequences, particularly later on, when you have, literally, eight fights going on simultaneously, and as an early Golden Harvest film, they are still clearly finding their feet artistically. Lo Wei would go on to help more memorable movies such as The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, though how much of their success was down to him is, naturally, open to question. Certainly, they had something this film unquestionably lacks; a central star who can command the audience’s attention for the entire length, even if it’s passable enough, as a kung-fu version of Ocean’s 11.

Dir: Lo Wei
Star: Nora Miao, Tang Ching, Angela Mao, Pai Ying

The Angry River

  By

★★½
“A bridge too far.”

angry riverNot just Angela Mao’s feature debut, it was also the first film produced by then-fledgling studio Golden Harvest, who would go on to become arguably the premier name in Hong Kong Film production, up until the colony’s handover back to China in 1999. Even discounting their work with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Tsui Hark, Stephen Chow, Donnie Yen, etc. and sticking purely to the action heroine field, Golden Harvest were the company behind She Shoots Straight, the Inspector Wears Skirts series and Naked Killer. Their commitment to our field is apparent right from this inaugural movie, where Mao plays dutiful daughter Lan Feng, whose father becomes one of the victims of ‘Poison Dart’, whose name pretty much explains what he does. Cursed to a long lingering death, the only cure is a rare herb.

Lan sets off to find it, crossing the fiery Angry River, going through the Merciless Pass, and encountering another couple of dangers without names, but we might as well call them the Cave of Really Bad Optical Effects, and the Giant Gecko That Knows Kung-Fu. The latter actually defeats our heroine (though she does save 15% on her car insurance), but impressed by her filial piety, she is given the herb, albeit at the cost of losing her kung-fu skills. She then has to make her way back home, which is even more perilous now she can’t fight, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers to protect her, because there are a lot of other people who are also very keen to get their hands on the mystical plant, whose powers extend beyond being merely an antidote to poison. And when she finally returns to her home, a nastier shock awaits.

Maybe it is just me: I kept being reminded of Homer’s Odyssey, with Mao playing the hero, whose objective, simply to get back home is endlessly diverted and derailed by external forces. I suspect any such similarity is, as they say, purely coincidental, and they just share the same basic plot of the hero’s journey, as introduced by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. But there are elements where you can tell it was a debut film, such as the rubber-suited lizard which, it’s charitable to say, presumably worked better on the page than the screen. It’s also a mis-step to rob the heroine of her powers for almost the entire second-half, leaving her a spectator to her own story – even Odysseus only spent a bit of time tied to the mast. Particularly early on, Mao’s fights feel stilted – punch-pause-block-pause-kick – though there actually is a storyline reason for why she has to be reined in to start with, in order that Mao can go full-throttle at the end [like I said, the herb has other uses…] You can see where they were aiming – slightly to the side of the then-dominant Shaw Brothers studio – yet overall, there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement here. As a first effort, I guess it’s okay.

Dir: Feng Huang
Star: Angela Mao, Kao Yuan, Pai Ying, Han Ying Chieh

When Taekwondo Strikes

  By

★★★½
“The Angela Strikes Back”

7242870.3There’s more than a hint of Hapkido here, with many of the same cast, and more less the same thirties setting, with Korea again laboring under the yoke of Japanese occupation, etc. Things kick off when Jin (Wong) seeks sanctuary from the occupying forces in a local Catholic church. The Japanese soldiers rush in, but get demolished by Uncle Li (Rhee), a rebel topping their wanted list who has been hiding out as the priest’s gardener. Jin and Li depart, along with the priest’s niece (Winton), but the priest himself remains, and is captured and tortured for information about Li’s whereabouts. Wang Lin Ching (Mao) is drawn in when Li asks her to check on the cleric, causing her to become targeted by the Japanese too. An attempt to rescue the priest goes wrong, ending with Li being captured, and the others having to flee Korea for mainland China. However, that may not be far enough, and when the Japanese figure out where they are, they us Li as bait to lure Wang and the others out of hiding.

Despite being considered the father of American Tae Kwon Do, and a good friend of Bruce Lee, this was Rhee’s only released film (rumors of another have been heard). Seems a bit of a shame, as he makes his presence felt here, particularly toward the end. For action heroine fans, the focus will naturally be on Mao, and we’ll get to her shortly. However, we shouldn’t forget Winton, also in her only film role, who makes an immediate impression as an martial arts trained nun  Going by her clothing, anyway; the film is kinda loose on Catholic ritual. Man, The Sound of Music would have been so much cooler, if Julie Andrews had only known kung-fu…

As for Mao, she has a couple of absolutely stellar fight scenes, including a church brawl [after the soldiers realize she isn’t Catholic, because she didn’t cross herself on entering!], a battle in a forest, and the final fight. However, in terms of her action, things perhaps peak when she returns to her family restaurant to find a long-haired Sammo Hung, playing a Japanese henchman, roughing up her mother, along with his goons. The last is embedded below – it should start at the correct time, but if not, 39:20 is where you want to be. I just love the way she casually flicks her pigtail round the back just before things kick off, as if to say, “I am serious Angela Mao. This is serious business.”

The one thing that stops the film from getting a seal of approval is a disappointing slump in the middle, after the (fairly lame) effort to rescue the priest. Nothing much happens for what feels like a good half-hour, and that’s a shame, since the action elsewhere is both copious and often excellent. Many fights are virtually the equal of any Bruce Lee film, not least because there are half a dozen excellent martial artists involved here, rather than Bruce being far and away the best. This adds a real sense of balance to proceedings, and if you’re looking for an introduction to the movies of Angela Mao, this is certainly recommended.

Dir: Huang Feng
Star: Angela Mao, Jhoon Rhee, Carter Wong, Anne Winton

Angela Mao: Lady Kung-fu

  By

angelamao“Now you can die, too. Because I’m going to kill all of you!”

Mao Lin Ying, better known in the West as Angela Mao, may not have been quite the first “Queen of Kung-fu” – Cheng Pei-Pei probably beat her to the punch there, as it were. But with a slew of excellent work in the seventies, she certainly paved the way for those who were to follow, from Cynthia Rothrock to Michelle Yeoh. Mao is probably best known in the West for her small role in all-time martial arts classic, Enter the Dragon, where she played the sister of Bruce Lee, Su Lin, who is attacked by Han’s minion, O’Hara, and commits suicide rather than be raped by him. [Mao was paid the princely sum of $100 for her performance!] But that just scratches the surface of a career which included nearly thirty films during that decade, with Mao the star of many, rather than a supporting character.

She was born in Taiwan, less than a year after its establishment as an independent state, following the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek by the Communists. In her early year, she took a similar route to Jackie Chan, being enrolled in a school for Chinese Opera at the age of five, where she trained for the next 14 years – among her classmates for a time there was another future Taiwanese action heroine, Judy Lee. Around the end of sixties, she was introduced to Raymond Chow, who was then attempting to get his fledgling movie studio, Golden Harvest, off the ground, and was looking for a female star who could headline its slate of pictures, in the same way as Cheng was being used by the rival Shaw Brothers. The combination of dramatic and physical skills which Mao brought to the table proved a good fit, and she was cast as the lead in Angry River, the debut production from the new company.

“You want some more?”

angelamao2In it, she plays Lan Feng, who goes in search of a rare, much sought-after herb needed to cure her sick father. Shot in Taiwan, and using music in large part ripped off from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it’s clear Angela’s martial arts talents were still evolving; you really need to remember she was still a teenager when she made it. Mind you, the sequence where she takes on a giant rubber-suited “lizard” that knows kung-fu, appears to come from the imagination of a six-year-old. As well as the first film for Angela and Golden Harvest, it also marked the beginning of a frequent collaboration between Mao and Sammo Hung, who was the action director as well as playing a supporting role. They’d work together another dozen or so times over the subsequent decade, and it seems fair to credit Sammo for helping Angela develop, coming up with a style which meshed with her balletic training and flexibility.

It was two subsequent films, Lady Whirlwind (a.k.a. Deep Thrust – surely one of the finest exploitation retitlings of all time) and Hapkido, which elevated Mao’s star, particularly in the West, where she broke through in a way that none of her sisters could quite equal. That helped lead to her supporting role in Enter the Dragon, and her career continued to roll for the rest of the decade, both for Golden Harvest and in work for other studios. Perhaps the most notable – if not, it has to be admitted, the best – is Stoner, a.k.a. The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss, which was originally intended to star Bruce Lee. In this, he would team up with both Sonny Chiba and one-time 007, George Lazenby, who had signed on for a three-picture deal with Golden Harvest.  The story had Lee taking down a gang of drug-smugglers headed by Lazenby [with the tagline, “It’s Lee! It’s Lazenby! It’s Bruce Versus Bond!”] but Lee’s death derailed the project. Chiba and co-producers Warner Bros. both backed out, and it eventually became a vehicle, with a budget just a fraction of what was originally intended, for Lazenby as the cop, with Mao stepping in to provide a local box-office draw.

angelamao3“Killing you is going to be a real pleasure!”

She married relatively young, in 1974, and had a child two years later. It was this that led to her abandoning her film career in 1982, barely into her thirties, so she could devote more time to her family. It was a decision she apparently never regretted, going by the lack of any effort at a comeback – much though many people would have loved to have seen it. It certainly did Cheng Pei-Pei no harm; her turn as the Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was one of the highlights of an extremely good movie, and introduced her to a whole new generation of movie-lovers. But, hey, perhaps there’s time yet: Mao is still only 64!

For now, we have to make do with her films, and there has been a recent surge of decent releases of many, Golden Harvest having apparently realized the value of what they hold in their vaults. So, rather than necessarily having to endure poorly-dubbed entries, cropped to oblivion and taken from prints that appear to have spent several decades at the bottom of a cat’s litter-box, we get to enjoy them in a pristine format. Particularly recommended is the six-film set, The Angela Mao Ying Collection, which contains six of her features, including Stoner and the thoroughly entertaining When Taekwondo Strikes.

It’s easy to see the influence of Mao on those who came after, for example in the shapes of Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan and Michelle Yeoh, who share Angela’s agile grace and earnest, fresh-faced wholesome charm. What they all have, Mao perhaps more than any of them, is the ability to play to their strengths. You don’t see Mao going toe-to-toe with bigger, heavier opponents, trying to outslug them. Sure, her punches have impact, but it’s the speed of them, and the variety of angles from which they arrive, which is her strength, rather than her… ah, strength. The size differential is always an issue when you have women taking on men, and some films do a better job than others, of addressing this issue in a credible manner. With Angela Mao, it’s never a problem; even when going up against someone like Sammo Hung, you never get the sense she is physically over-matched. Forty years on, they are still some of the best example of female martial arts made, and Mao’s title of “Lady Kung-fu” remains entirely justified.

Our Angela Mao reviews

Below, you will find a playlist containing more than twenty Angela Mao features, all of which can be enjoyed on YouTube. Some are dubbed, others subbed; some are beautifully widescreen, others… not so much. You take what you can get! They’re in chronological order, and I’ll update the playlist with new or upgraded entries as appropriate.