Dragon Swamp
Director: Lo Wei
Year: 1969
Rating: 7.0
If you are a Cheng
Pei Pei fan as I am, this should be right down your alley. Not only does
she play the main character with loads of screen time and lots of action
scenes, but we also get two of her! She is terrific here playing the two
different characters – one a young coltish warrior and the other a much
worldlier mature female – and giving them absolutely distinct personalities.
Cheng Pei Pei has never looked better either – her smile is radiating, her
killer stare is chilling and she is fabulously chic in her various choices
of headgear. I suppose she always had her classic film “Come Drink with Me”
looking over her shoulder and here there are a couple clear references to
it – her broad rimmed hat, her male co-star and an action set piece that
takes place in an inn that has strong echoes of the one in her film with
King Hu.
Directed by Lo Wei – who made a number of films with this actress in the
late 1960’s/early 1970’s – this 1969 sword fighting adventure is somewhat
lightweight and poorly scripted but quite fun with a fast moving array of
action scenes along with elements of fantasy, romance, revenge and motherhood.
At best the action scenes are only average – Cheng Pei Pei was always more
about looking good with a sword in her hand and an intense stare that could
wither flowers - but there are a lot of them and they make use of various
implements of death and by the end the body count is fairly high. Only the
ending fails to generate much interest as it disappoints with a whimper when
the viewer might rightly have expected a grand finale of wholesale destruction
with Pei Pei in the middle of it.
In a pre-credit prelude to the film, after three years Master Fan (Lo Wei)
from the Lingshan monastery has tracked down the robber of the Dragon Jade
sword along with his accomplice. The White Faced General (Huang Chung Hsin)
had convinced Fan Ying (Cheng Pei Pei) to betray her order to help him steal
it and in those three years they had two children – a boy and a girl. Master
Fan retrieves the sword, but the White Faced General and the young boy escape.
Not so lucky is Fan Ying who is exiled to the Dragon Swamp for twenty years
– a place of which little is known except that it is ruled by a cruel master
and no one ever returns. The monastery takes in the little girl to bring up.
Jump ahead twenty years.
The girl (Qing-erh also played by Cheng Pei Pei) is now all grown up and
has been trained in all aspects of the martial arts but still retains her
cheerful girlish outlook on life though she has no idea who her mother and
father are. Once again the sword is stolen – it is not all that well protected
considering that it has evil powers and should be kept away from people with
evil intentions – and the monks are sent out to find it. Qing-erh also goes
looking, as she feels responsible for its theft and soon wanders right into
the house of the man who stole it – Yu Jiang (Lo Lieh). There are enough such
co-incidences in this movie to make you wonder if China is much bigger than
a breadbox! She takes on Yu plus his entire entourage and is giving them
a pretty good whacking when he brings out the Jade Sword and turns the balance
of the fight. Into this fray jumps a man who calls himself the Roaming Knight
(Yueh Hua) because he has forgotten his name and he rescues the wounded Qing-erh
and takes her away.
The reason he has been roaming quite so much is that for twenty years he
has been looking for – yup – none other than Fan Ying who he has loved all
this time. I guess nobody mentioned to him that she had been banished to the
Dragon Swamp, which would have made his search a whole lot easier and shorter.
Strangely enough though that is exactly where this duo decides to head –
not to look for Fan Ying but to attempt to get the help of the Swamp Master
to recover the sword. They locate the Swamp – though they had no idea where
it was – and take the dangerous journey inside – where they see giant lizards
running about – I mean prehistorically giant lizards – who have nothing to
do with the plot of this film but Lo Wei must have thought it would be fun
to throw them in anyway.
After crossing quicksand they meet up with the Swamp Master (Kang Hua) who
agrees to help them – not such a bad guy after all – and he lives in this
wonderfully luminescent decorated cave and is served by a bevy of lovely females
who all seem to be quite cheerful to be doing so – where they come from is
left unexplained. After the Roaming Knight leaves though the Swamp Master
reveals his true identity to Qing-erh – he is not a he – but in fact behind
the facemask it is none other than Fan Ying!!! Cool and she looks just as
young as she did 20-years ago due to her diet of Dragon Bladder. Qing-erh
doesn’t quite figure out though that this is her mother, but the two of them
– with facemask firmly back in place – head out to reclaim the sword. Soon
mother, father, daughter and son are all reunited and doing their best to
kill one another. Family reunions don’t get any better than this!
At one point Qing-erh decides to stay over in an inn and one’s mind immediately
clicks to “Come Drink with Me” and that classic scene. This one is very similar
though it is clearly missing the King Hu mystique. She goes in to have a meal
and slowly is surrounded by a gaggle of bad guys who eye her up and wait
to attack. She tries to eat but such swaggarts as Fan Mei Sheng and Han Yingjie
(who choreographed Come Drink with Me though I don’t know if he had the same
duties in this film) make that difficult and soon she is twirling on tops
of tables and taking on a room full of killers – needless to say most of
them lay dead by the end. In the film also are Ku Feng as Master Sun and
Tsang Choh Lam as the waiter in the inn.
