Iron Swallow
Director: Chang Pei-cheng
Year: 1978
Rating:
5.5
Dubbed
Sometimes a girl just has to have her revenge
and the entire film is about her getting it. Ten years previously Master
Chu (Yi Yuan) killed a man and raped a woman and he had three friends cover
it up. Ten years is nothing in terms of time for revenge. You just have to
wait for the young daughter to grow up to be Chia Ling. She comes to town
looking to mete it out, but not with death - just with gruesome cuts of her
blade. Master Chu has a son Tu-lung (Don Wong-tao) and a student Ko Fang
(Ting Wa-chung - the kung fu servant in The Crane Fighters) who are the best
of friends. Ko Fang is the son of one of the men that Tie Yan (Chia Ling)
is coming for.
The revenge feels rather cruel - the three
men are all into their 50s or 60s and not martial artists - so her revenge
is easy and in slow-mo. She cuts the eyes out of one, the ears off of another
and the arm of the third. They all say better off crippled than dead. Well,
for a while. She is methodical and I suspect her choice of disfigurement
had a purpose - see no evil, hear no evil and write no evil. A couple other players enter the game - a stranger
(Li Hai-hsing) who wants to protect Tie Yan and an assassin (Wang Yung-sheng)
who has been hired by Master Chu to kill everyone with any knowledge of his
past crimes - including his friends. Basically, there is fight after fight
between different characters - all quite nicely done. Disappointingly, Wong-tao
doesn't get involved in much of it till the end. Fast, furious with a ton
of acrobatics. And there is zero comedy relief in the film! Serious from
the moment she rips out the eyes and blood gushes like a broken fountain.
And the ears had me turning away. A cruel mistress. But the heroine of the
film. Loyalties get complicated as the truth is revealed and as one after
another is killed. Rule number one in my book of revenge is go for the main
target first. Don't save him for the final fight. Take him out when he is
not ready because Master Chu turns out to be one tough customer. A
fairly crummy version on YouTube that clearly was put together from a couple
copies.
