Tag: kung-fu

Angel Warriors

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★★½
“Jungle boogie.”

After reading some particularly scathing reviews of this, e.g. “stunningly atrocious”, I was braced for something truly terrible, and I guess was therefore pleasantly surprised. Oh, don’t get your hopes up: this is still not very good. It’s just closer to mediocre than dreadful. A group of five “extreme backpacker” young women, go to Thailand for a trip into the unexplored jungle, alongside a video crew. However, it turns out the video crew thing, is just a cover for a mission sent by an evil industrialist to separate the local tribespeople from their precious natural resources. After they witness a massacre, the girls become part of the problem, and team up with the natives to fight back against the corporate raiders.

Let’s start with the positives, which include crisp photography, making good use of the South-East Asian locations. Some of the action isn’t bad either, especially when Andy On, leader of the bad guys, and Chou get involved. The latter plays a soldier who used to be a comrade of the brother of Bai Xue (Yu Nan, who was in The Expendables 2), the leader of our backpacker babes – when not running some global multinational company, apparently. That last sentence more or less exemplifies the problems with the script, which manages both to be needlessly complex, and painfully underwritten. I mean, do we really care that Bai Xue’s cousin Dingdang sells outdoor clothing on the internet? We probably have to, because that’s about the limit of the development we get for her. Having one heroine, or at most two, would certainly have helped.

Certainly, the less we saw of most of their model-wannabe performances, the better, and the skimpy costumes seem designed mostly to provide an all-you-can-eat buffet for the local insect life. Yu is about the only one to do anything approaching actual acting, rather than the shrill shrieking which is the only “extreme” thing about their characters. Not making things any better are the additional subplots tacked on to the story, such as the one involving a tiger, mixing an actual cat with unimpressive CGI, or the remarkable plant capable of curing any poison which the subtitles call, I kid you not, “blah blah” grass. I don’t think I’ve seen such lazy, “We’ll come up with something later” writing since (the not dissimilar in overall plot, now I think about it) Avatar named its mineral “Unobtainium”.

The narration in poorly-written pidgin English is another cause for complaint, being so over-used it goes from quirkily endearing to actively annoying.  And those who care about such things (which does not include me), might object to having a Chinese actress playing the Thai jungle princess. Yes, there’s no shortage of things to complain about, and re-reading the above, can see why this was critically eviscerated. However, it’s mostly low-key irritants: the unquestionably slick production values help elevate it from cinematic crap to merely cinematic fast-food, being largely forgettable and thoroughly disposable.

Dir: Fu Huayang
Star: Yu Nan, Mavis Pan, Collin Chou, Shi Yanneng

The Invincible Swordswoman

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★★★½
“Women are vicious. This is very true.”

We’ve previously written about Pearl Ling Chang’s mad Wolf Devil Woman: this is considerably more straightforward, yet is perhaps the better for it. The villain is General Ma Tang, who is imposing a brutal reign of terror on the region under his control, largely through his masked band of kung-fu masters. He ruthlessly takes out all those who oppose him, leaving the country in a state of fear. There remains a small band of rebels, who have evidence of Tang’s misconduct, but need someone who can take it to the authorities. The leading candidate is Pai Yu Song (Chang), a woman whose father was one of Tang’s victims, so has every reason to help, and whose martial arts skills are legendary.

Unfortunately, Pai has vanished, so before anything else can happen, she has to be located. There are quite a few people keen to do so, on both sides and even for entirely separate reasons. Leading them is the one-eyed Tu Yueh Pian, who still holds a candle for Pai, despite an unfortunate rape accusation which led to the loss of his eye. [Hey, it happens] Fortunately, there is an upcoming kung-fu tournament, to which everyone knows Pai is going to show up. The resulting sequence occupies a good chunk of the middle, and is impressive for its sheer scale, since the battleground is a gigantic set of spears and bamboo spikes, on which the participants must balance. Impalements ensue, for obvious reasons.

Finding Pai is just the first step. Even after she’s convinced to work with them, and is given the evidence, the journey is not without incident, shall we say. Indeed, the entire plot is more or less a saga of deception, impersonation and hidden agendas, right up to the final battle. There, we discover that Tang’s own martial arts skills are not be sniffed at. He proves capable of just about beating his opponents without even needing to get up from his throne, which whizzes around the palace courtyard like a kung-fu Dalek. This final battle is where everyone gets to show off their skills to best effect, and is embedded below.

Chang is largely notable by her absence over the first half, yet even when not on screen her presence is still a driving force, and when she shows up, there’s no denying her skills (there’s another heroine here, who is also good, and whose fighting triggers the quote at the top. I haven’t been able to locate her name for sure. It may be Frances Fong). That was something of a surprise, since Wolf Devil Woman didn’t exactly showcase them. Here, there’s no doubt, Chang is capable of holding her own, and makes it even more of a shame we don’t get more chances to appreciate them – there’s likely almost as much fighting screen-time for Tu. Still, one of the more impressive Taiwanese productions I’ve seen. The original title translates as “Cold Moon Orphan Star Needle Not Love“, and yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Dir: Chen Ming-Hua
Star: Ling Chang, Yuen Hua, Zung Hua, Chin Meng

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Tigresses

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★★★
“A woman’s grudge can make the snow fall in summer!”

After their parents are killed by Ji-Gyeum Yoon (Kim Y-i), who wants to take over their father Sung’s position, sisters Su-Yung and An-Yung are split up and sent off for their safely, each owning half of a jade pendant. Fifteen years later, An-Yung (Shang Kwan) begins to take her vengeance on the usurper – not just physically, but also waging psychological warfare, sending him notes to ensure he knows he is being targeted, although not initially why or who. Though I’m a little surprised Yoon doesn’t figure it out immediately, given he’s still so paranoid about Sung’s daughters coming out, he freaks out when left alone with a maid, stating the position given in the tag-line above.

Yoon responds to An-Yung’s requests for a meeting by sending his bodyguards out to take her down. She defeats them, despite their interesting range of special powers – one can hypnotize with his gaze, another turns invisible, and a third can shoot an apparently endless jet of flame from his mouth. He must be popular at barbecues: I guess this either inspired Dhalsim’s special power in Street Fighter II or, probably more likely, shares a common origin with it. Fortunately, An-Yung’s talents include being a human fire extinguisher. Eventually, having run out of minions, Yoon hires a nomadic fighter (Kim J-N) to replace them, a black-clad warrioress, whose skills are the equal of An-Yung’s. If you can’t figure out who this mysterious anti-heroine is, you clearly have not seen enough kung-fu films. Particularly, ones about separated sisters… Similarly, you won’t be surprise to learn that, once the truth comes out (remember that jade pendant?), Yoon’s new employee switches sides.

The film focuses mostly on An-Yung, which makes it somewhat strange that she isn’t the one who gets to take the final revenge. Perhaps this is to make up for her getting the lion’s share of the fighting over the first 75 minutes? It’s mostly in the latter stages that we really get to see Shang Kwan to best effect; for earlier on, it seems that most of her action scenes seem to involve her wearing a hood, a mask or a really large hat. All of which – while concealing her character’s identity, so making sense in the story – also potentially conceal the actress being doubled, leaving it difficult to be sure exactly whose skills are on display.

Still, there’s just about enough going on with her face on display to be worthy of credit. The pace is quick enough to be entertaining, although the structure is wonky, with a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand until I read a YouTube synopsis, such as that Yoon is a local magistrate. Not that this matters, since the film works competently enough as a straightforward revenge pic, even if the two sisters subplot is similarly forgotten for much of the time, and is arguably little more significant than Yoon being a magistrate. A decent showcase for one of the second tier of seventies action heroines from the Far East. Just not to be confused with another Polly Shang Kwan film, A Girl Called Tigress.

Dir: Lee Hyeok-Su
Star: Polly Shang Kwan, Kim Jeong-Nan, Choe Bong, Kim Young-in

A Daughter’s Vengeance

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★★
“S’no good.”

Look, I tried. I really did. When I found my attention had drifted away from watching the film, in good faith, I rewound the film to the point where I’d lost interest, and took up the movie again the following day. After all, maybe it was me. But when I still could barely bring myself to finish this leaden lump of poorly-crafted revenge-fu… No, having gone above and beyond the required effort, it’s really not me. This is lacklustre stuff, to put it mildly, even by the generally low standards of Taiwan.

The heroine (Chen), seems only to be referred to as the Snow Maiden,  and is an orphan, brought up in the mountains by the Snow Woman (Tiu); I kept wanting to call her Mrs. Narwhal, due to her striking snaggletooth, which is remarkably distracting. When the Snow Maiden discovers the truth about her orphanness – namely, that her pregnant mother was betrayed and abandoned by her father – she vows vengeance on the man responsible. While she’s looking, she adopts a “Robin Hood” like persona, rescuing the oppressed and making the oppressors pay for their crimes, in a range of (usually) non-lethal ways.

She eventually finds the family responsible: in about the film’s only interesting twist, her father is old, feeble, and largely filled with regret about having abandoned Maiden’s mom, which does present her with a bit of an ethical dilemma. Complicating matters further, his son (Wu) falls for Ms. Maiden; despite trying to keep herself emotionally distant, so that she can carry out her mission, she begins to have feelings for him too. So, will love triumph over vengeance? And, more importantly, will anyone care? At the risk of spoiling this for anyone, I can reveal the answer to the second question is a fairly conclusive “No”.

Chen isn’t a bad heroine, with a reasonable degree of screen presence – at least when standing still and glowering at people. And she does this a lot – about the only thing there’s more of in this movie is probably maniacal laughter, which appears to sit just behind Mandarin as the preferred method of communication. However, the novelty of this wears off rapidly, and the feeble excuse for martial arts this offers is a long way short of an adequate replacement. Neither the ability nor the quantity of action is acceptable, and any quality there may have been in the performances is destroyed by terrible dubbing, including atrocities such as the son being given a posh British accent. I would have been better off to cut my losses and not bother, after my first attempt to watch this failed.

[Worth noting, there was a movie released the following year, Vengeance of a Snowgirl – a very similar title to the alternate here. Don’t confuse them: while both are about orphans seeking revenge, the other was the last movie Lo Wei directed for Shaw Brothers, and has a crippled heroine who can’t use her legs. Not that this stops her, naturally…]

Dir: Chou Hsu-Chiang
Star: Chen Chen, Wu Chia Chi, Tiu Shut,
a.k.a. Vengeance of Snow Maid

Guardian Angel

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★★★
“Bad, but not bad.”

To explain the above, there are significant chunks of this which are terrible: make no sense, or are flat-out dumb. Its depiction of policing, in particular, is awful. Apparently, if you’re on a stakeout and a deal between two gangs has turned into a Mexican standoff, the best way to defuse the situation is to run downhill towards them, firing your gun in the air – and not bothering, at any point, to identif yourself as a law enforcement officer. I laughed like a drain at that, and there are innumerable other moments of such character stupidity or cinematic incompetence. Yet, none of that stopped me from being adequately entertained.

Rothrock stars as LAPD officer Christine McKay, who is investigating a counterfeit money ring. During an attempted (and very poorly-planned, if I may say so) sting operation, her fiancé is killed by Nina Lindell (Denier), one of the people at the head of the ring, before she is subsequently arrested. Christine attacks Nina at court, and quits the force in disgust before she can be suspended, becoming a bodyguard for hire and living in a trailer with her pet dog – who arguably emotes more convincingly. She is hired by Hobbs (McVicar), a rich playboy, in need of protection from a stalker ex-girlfriend: his choice of McKay makes sense, because said ex is Nina, who has also just helicoptered her way out of prison. It turns out Hobbs’s brother was part of the counterfeiting ring, and is the only person who know the location of the printing plates.

If the above doesn’t sound like it makes much sense… trust me, it doesn’t. Neither heroine nor villainess behave in ways indicating the possession of any notable intelligence. We are deep in “necessary to the plot idiocy” here, and as for whoever wrote the script, their knowledge of police procedure was entirely taken from other low-budget nineties action flicks. But can you realistically complain about such things, in a film whose climax involves gratuitous multiple jet-skis and power-boats, as well as a helicopter? The film exists to show Rothrock kicking butt, and when it sticks to this, certainly does enough to pass muster. Although I’d recommend scheduling a bathroom visit when her boyfriends bites the bullet, so you can avoid the less than adequate efforts at showing distress.

Denier chews the scenery to better effect and, must say, with a female front and centre on both sides of the screen, it’s surprisingly gynocentric. It doesn’t stop there – McKay’s boss on the force is also female (Dalva), as is her first partner – though she dies with even less impact than the fiancé! There are occasional beats where comic relief Hobbs isn’t entirely irritating, and given the low standards of the genre for wit, that’s praise indeed. If still some way short of Rothrock’s best Hong Kong work, this likely rates above average among her American films (again, a back-handed compliment!), and as undemanding throwbacks to a less sophisticated era go, is certainly… undemanding.

Dir: Richard W. Munchkin
Star: Cynthia Rothrock, Daniel McVicar, Lydie Denier, Anna Dalva

Deadly Silver Angels

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★★
“Hong Kong. A paradise of adventures. And a centre of scum…”

That’s the voice-over with which this starts, segueing into a bit of nude interpretive dance – well, semi-nude, the guy keeps his Y-fronts on, for which I am grateful – that has absolutely no relation to the rest of the film. At its core, this is a battle of triad versus triad: one overseen by Lau, the other by Fung. The former is assassinated, and his daughter, Angel (Yeung) takes over – she’s also keen to track down the perpetrators, with the most obvious beneficiary being Fung. But not so sure is Fung’s right-hand man, Jimmy Lee (Lee), who was there for the killing, and helps Angel’s investigation.

She also has her own team of henchwomen. Their numbers are doubled after a training session on the beach – complete with swimming caps, which makes the whole thing impossible to take seriously – intercut with random dirt-bike footage. Their practice (though quite what this is practice for, remains unclear) is interrupted by the five lady venoms, a girl gang who all have tattoos of birds on their backs. This has a bit of a mixed impact: an eagle is one thing, but an owl suggests more you’re a hardcore Harry Potter fan than a lethal lady. Anyway, after Angel takes on their leader in a beach brawl, the gang agree to join forces – though I would presume, the lady venoms draw the line at having to wear those swimming caps.

It’s all extremely fragmented, makes little sense and generates little interest. There are some cheap laughs to be had, such as the trip by Angel and her team to rescue a couple of women from a brothel. I mean, it’s called the Virgins’ Hell whorehouse, what exactly did you think was going on there? Or there’s the (entirely unauthorized, I strongly suspect) cover of Earth, Wind and Fire’s Boogie Wonderland which shows up for no apparent reason, with other music also stolen from better movies. But generally, this is the kind of film where most of the amusement value to be found has to be provided by the viewer, and it’s quite a lot of work.

There’s some slight interest in Angel being a gangster of honour e.g. a main bone of contention with the Fungs is their willingness to go into the burgeoning drug trade. But nicking plot elements from The Godfather does not make you a good film. Indeed, in this case, it’s likely more of an unwanted diversion from what you want to see, which is Angel and her crew kicking ass. The same goes for the “long-lost siblings” subplot, which comes out of nowhere near the end. Yeung carved herself a niche in the fairly esoteric “female group kung-fu” sub-genre of production during the first half of the eighties (this one dates from 1984), most notably Golden Queen’s Commando and Pink Force Commando. Those were, at least, mad enough to be entertaining. This? Not so much.

Dir: Cheung Chi Chiu
Star: Elsa Yeung, Eagle Lee, Ma Sha, Kong Do
a.k.a. 5 Lady Venoms a.k.a. Virago

Warrior Savitri

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★★½
“BollyNotVeryGood”

This is a modern update of the story of Savitri and Satyavan, originally found in Indian epic saga the Mahabharata [and when I say, “epic saga”, it’s 1.8 million words long!]. The tale has been an immensely popular topic for Bollywood, Wikipedia saying there have been thirty-four different film versions, dating back over a century to 1914’s Satyavan Savitri. The basic story is of a woman, Savitri, who defies a prediction that her chosen husband, Satyavan, will die in a year, and marries him anyway. She then has to talk the god of death out of collecting him.

The director’s day job is as a California dentist, which may explain why a good chunk of this is set in Vegas, and this was his first foray into Bollywood. It was a bit of a jarring introduction, since Gill apparently received death threats as a result of this film and was burned in effigy. Hey, everyone’s a critic… But it was actually religious fundamentalists who were responsible, sending him an email which said, “Self ban your film Warrior Savitri. It shows Goddess Savitri in poor light. If this film is released, you will be beheaded in public.” He still appears to have his head: perhaps the fundamentalists saw the film and realized it wasn’t worth a fuss. While I can see what it’s trying to do, the bulk of it doesn’t work.

That’s largely down to poor execution, though the plot has enough of its own problems. For example, the scene setting has Savitri (Raizada) learning martial arts after nearly being abducted as a child. However, this is then all but forgotten in the particularly tedious middle portion, as she meets Satya (Barmecha) and elopes with him to Vegas after a poor astrological prognosis of imminent doom causes her father to nix the marriage. After some more messing around – and, of course, the inevitable (and not very good) musical numbers – the predicted doom occurs, with Satya critically injured in a poorly-staged car-crash. Savitri gets involved with the evil Money John (Smoorenburg) and his sidekick, Candy (British page 3 girl, Lucy Pinder), to whom Satya owes money, while also having to bargain with Yama (Puri) for her husband’s soul.

Raizada isn’t actually the issue here; indeed, most of the performances are fairly serviceable and occasionally good. Puri is particularly impressive, his portrayal of the Grim Reaper as a world-weary, avuncular type being both against the obvious approach, and almost endearing. The scenes with the god of death chatting to Savitri are the best in the movie. The problems are more technical: most notable are some really bad digital effects, from green screen work to CGI explosions, and horrendously awful foley work during the martial arts fights. Really, when you’ve got a lengthy cat-fight between two women like Savitri and Candy, and all that sticks in your mind is how bad the sound effects were… something has clearly gone horribly wrong somewhere.

Dir: Param Gill
Star: Niharica Raizada, Rajat Barmecha, Om Puri, Ron Smoorenburg
a.k.a. Waarrior Savitri [yes, with two a’s!]

Girl Fights Back, by Jacques Antoine

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

I’ve come to the conclusion I prefer bad films to bad books. A bad film can be appreciated and offer entertainment in unexpected ways. I’ve rarely found that to be the case with literature, which just… lies there, dully. If a movie sucks, then you can at least allow it to drift into the background, while you check your phone, play with the cat, or do household chores. A bad book, on the other hand, requires every bit as much effort as a good one: the return on that investment is just a great deal less.

Not that Girl Fights Back is truly bad. There are few books that are the publishing equivalent, say, of Plan 9 From Outer Space. But it is strikingly mediocre, with a heroine whose name might as well be “Mary Sue” rather than “Emily Kane”, since she’s so idealized. I mean, five minutes in the company of this teenage girl, and a hardened professional espionage agent melts like butter: “He must have glimpsed in her eyes just then the immense wellspring of compassion and forgiveness that made its home there, and sighed as his shoulders visibly sagged, perhaps under the weight of the knowledge that she could indeed forgive him.” Damn. That’s a sentence and a half. He’s not the only one: Everybody Loves Emily, it appears, whether it’s her school-friends or lethal ex-CIA operatives.

She is the daughter of George Kane, a man with a murky past, who works as a chauffeur/bodyguard for a former government executive, who also appears to have been involved in his share of previous shenanigans. To cut a long story short, their past comes back to haunt them: the estate where they live is attacked one night, by a group seeking information about a research project into “super soldiers” with which both George and his employer were involved. The attackers think Emily is part of it; fortunately, she is out in the woods that evening, and is able to return later and rescue her father, who clues her in to the situation. So, what does she do, after overcoming the shock of all these traumatic events, to foil those hunting her?

If you guessed, “Return to school, as if nothing had happened,” you are the author of this book.

Seriously. I know she’s a martial arts wizard, and there’s such a thing as “hiding in plain sight.” Still, this ranks as among the most baffling of decisions I can remember a character making. She could have hidden out with the rest of her family, or gone on the run independently. Nope. Back to class and hanging out at the dojo it is. There’s also the striking way in which a major character is suddenly disposed of: “____ died that night, having never regained consciousness.” Well, that’s a shocker, especially since they had been quite chatty over the preceding hours.

The martial arts heavy nature of the action is also somewhat problematic, since this kind of things is hard to describe: reading about kung fu, tends to be a bit like reading about juggling. It’s nowhere near as exciting as seeing it, unless the writer is particularly good. Antoine is not, and we get sentences such as, “Emily slid one hand along her arm, until it became a ridge-hand strike to the side of her headgear, and in the ensuing confusion jabbed to the center of her chest.” Not exactly painting a thrilling word-picture, is it?

The book does possess a philosophical tone, which occasionally hits on some nuggets of interest. I particularly liked this one, on gender differences: “Boys fight for dominance, she thought, which means that at some level they understand they must preserve their defeated enemy. Otherwise dominance will not have been achieved. But girls fight to injure or eradicate. They have no use for a defeated enemy, which makes them much more malevolent than boys, she concluded.” Overall, however, that’s the exception rather than the rule, and I reached the end with absolutely no interest in seeing what happened next.

Author: Jacques Antoine
Publisher: Amaterasu Press, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and a paperback.
Book 1 of 7 in the Emily Kane Adventure series.

Revengeful Swordswoman

  By

★★½
“Can’t argue with the title, certainly.”

There’s no hanging around here. Virtually as we meet our heroine, Hsiang Ying (Lee), she’s getting tossed off a cliff by her kung-fu teacher, into a pack of wolves. Having survived that and made her way back – perhaps assuming this was all some terrible misunderstanding – her master then disavows her, announces he was the man responsible for killing her father, and locks her up in a cage. This all happens within, literally, three minutes of the film starting. Fortunately, a passing stranger sees fit to free her from the cage, and the ‘Heartless Lady’, as she becomes known, can go on her way, with the eventual aim of being exactly what the title suggests: revengeful.

Not much in the way of surprises either, although there’s no shortage of action, some of which might possibly be quite good. I am, unfortunately, not able to speak with authority, as there does not appear to be any version of this available which comes close to approximating the correct aspect ratio. This is “pan and scan” at its most annoying – and making matters worse, there’s no panning. You simply get the middle chunk of the screen, regardless of relevance. Which leads to a surreal moment later on, where there’s a discussion between two characters, both of whom have managed to be cropped out of the picture, leaving an entirely unoccupied frame. Antique still life: Chinese room, with conversation.

I might be inclined to give the film the benefit of the doubt, except for the hideous attempts at “comedy” – and, please, take the quotes there as necessary. For some reason, the script decides to give Hsiang a buffoon for a side-kick: he’s named “Clown” in the English dub, more in hope than an accurate reflection of any amusement gained from his presence. For virtually any scene in which he appears, will have you wishing the cropping of the print had been even more extreme. This reaches the pits in a scene at a brothel, where he and Hsiang are seeking information about their target, and is so painfully unfunny as to be borderline offensive. When one aspect of a film sucks so badly, it’s harder to believe it’s good anywhere else.

Yet, there are occasional moments – maybe no more than three or four consecutive seconds, when Lee is shot from far enough way that she fits completely on the screen – which are almost impressive enough to make you go. “I should try and track a good-quality copy of this.” Lee is fluid and graceful in motion, not dissimilar from her Hong Kong contemporary, Angela Mao, although the supporting cast here is more knock-off, and fails to make anything of an impression. In the end, this is all just too generic, from the title through the environment to, pretty much, the entire plot. As noted elsewhere, I watched this the same day as another film made in approximately the same time and place: the two have already merged into one Taiwanese blob of fu.

Dir: Artis Chow
Star: Judy Lee, Wen Chiang-lung, Man Kong Lung, Li Tung

Red Heroine

  By

★★½
“The more things change…”

Tied somewhat to our March feature on the earliest action heroines in cinema, is this Chinese film, It’s not just the oldest surviving action heroine film from that country, it’s the oldest martial-arts film of any kind. This silent feature dates from all the way back in 1929 – I had to keep reminding myself that the “red” in the title was not a Communism reference, this being from well before such things. It’s most likely an attempt to cash in on The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, a now-lost film series whose highly successful release had begun the previous year.

Heroine, like Temple, was a serial, in this case consisting of 13 feature-length episodes. This was #6, and I’m not sure quite how it fitted into things – it stands on its own perfectly well. The heroine is Yun Ko (Van – for all character names and credits, I’m using the names given in the intertitles), whose village is threatened by the approach of an invading army, under General Chiny Che Mang (San). While trying to flee, her blind grandmother is killed and Yun Ko captured.

She’s just on the edge of being forced to become one of the General’s scantily-clad harem – an aspect which seems very racy for the twenties! – when she is rescued by a Daoist monk, the White Monkey (Juh). He had met Yun Ko’s cousin (Wen), who informed Monkey of her plight. After being taken to her grandmother’s grave, she vows that those responsible will pay, and becomes a pupil of the monk. Three years later, with the invaders now in full control, the General is still up to his lascivious tricks, arresting a girl’s father on trumped-up charges, to get her to accept his sordid demands. It’s time for White Monkey and Yun Ko finally to strike.

In some ways, it’s most impressive how little has changed in the almost 90 years since this was released. The most standard of all martial-arts movie plots – “You killed my (insert family member), and you must pay” – is clearly in play, as is the student who must learn from a master in order to take that revenge. I also note that crappy subtitling was there, right at the birth of the genre. On the other hand, I’m quite impressed a print with any English-language content survived at all, even if it’s at the level of this exchange between Yun Ko and White Monkey:

“Are you not care to revenge?”
“As I am so weak, how could I to revenge?”
“Don’t kill yourself. I’ll teach you my military skill.”

The first third of this is very solid, with Van making for a good heroine. She has the extraordinarily expressive eyes essential to a silent star, putting across the horror of what has befallen her, and the “worse than death” fate yet to come. However, once she teams up with her kung-fu guru, they both vanish from the film until the very end: clearly the concept of the “training montage” had still to be invented. What replaces them – the General’s conniving against a completely different target – is far less interesting, little more than silent soap-opera, draining the film of almost all its energy.

Our revengeful duo finally return, sailing briefly through the air in an early and extremely primitive version of flying fantasy or wuxia. Equally primitive are the fight scenes, which certainly remind the modern viewer we’re still four or more decades before Bruce Lee showed up. This is still a somewhat interesting watch, for anyone with an interest in martial arts films. However, it’s really only of note for being the first of its kind, and this aspect is purely a result of circumstance, rather than its own inherent merits.

Dir: Wen Yeh Ming
Star: Van Shih Bong, San Kwan Wu, Juh Yih Fong, Wen Yih Ming
a.k.a. Hongxia