Director:
Lo Wei
Year: 1972
Rating: 6.0
Golden Harvest was still getting its feet on the ground when it produced
this film in 1971, released in 1972. The company was formed in 1970 when two
senior executives jumped ship over at Shaw and formed their own film company.
Initially, it was really women and sword fighting that drove their film output.
The women were Angela Mao and Nora Miao. Both were to go on to very successful
careers and be much beloved. Miao is primarily remembered today by Western
audiences for being the The Girl in the Bruce Lee films, but she was a star
in her own right. But at first GH didn't really have the budget to compete
with Shaw Brothers in the Wuxia genre - Shaw was knocking out lavish Wuxia
films with Chang Cheh and then Chor Yuen. So films like this just feel a
little cheap when compared to the Shaw Brothers output. It was in the same
year as this was made that The Big Boss was released and starting bringing
in the money. It also pushed Golden Harvest towards making kung fu films
which became their bread and butter for years to come.
The Hurricane teams up Nora Miao and a huge Cantonese star of the 1960's,
Patrick Tse-yin. They had co-starred earlier in The Blade Spares None and
The Comet Strikes. Neither were particularly trained in martial arts or had
the physical prowess to fake it - so they stick pretty much to sword play
which they do fine. Swing, duck, jump, swing. The film has a number of action
scenes of this type - often with loads of combatants on hand - and they are
decently choreographed but fairly standard for the period. The narrative of
the film though is fairly good.
Traitors - headed by Chia, who is usually surrounded by women giving him
a massage - need to get a letter through enemy lines. Chia is played by Lo
Wei, who also directed the film, and had struck gold with The Big Boss. As
a distraction the traitors - also Sek Kin and a future comedy star, Stanley
Fung, spread fake news that a man called The Hurricane was taking the letter.
The Hurricane is Patrick Tse-yin, a great fighter but as we find out later
not undefeatable. People come after him in particular The Phoenix Trio consisting
of three woman - two in red, one in white. The one in white is Nora Miao.
Tse has to fight them off as well as the real bad guys - and in the meantime
the real traitor with the letter is getting closer to his contact - Mongols!
This falls into the Good Enough category.
