The Proud Horse in Flying
Sand
Director: Siu Muk
Year: 1977
Rating: 6.0
For a martial arts
film this has an unusually complicated plot full of strange twists and stranger
characters. In fact, I’m still not entirely clear what the story was about
and who is who. Still, it was enjoyable and different and it seemed to possibly
be influenced by The Fate of Lee Khan.
As in Lee Khan, much of the film takes place in an inn and nothing is as
it appears. The story opens in a small town in China at some point in the
far past and there is a big horse race occurring in a few days. The town is
full of strangers and many of them are staying at the inn run by Angela Mao’s
father. Under the pretense of being there for the horse race a number of
characters stop by but all of them have some other scheme going on and no
one is who they appear to be. I mean no one.
During the film, these characters keep shifting their allegiance from one
person to another and trying to make under the table deals with one another.
At the end all the dirty tricks and dirty laundry float to the surface. There
is fighting interspersed within all this double-dealing, but it isn’t until
the end when a good fight comes along.
The fight scenes are far from great – lots of sound effects – with clearly
very little contact being made. Angela is only in a few short scenes though
in the last fight she does some nice flips, cartwheels and a snake like attack.
One of her opponents is her constant film nemesis – Pai Ying. She looks great
though, but watch her closely!
