Lady of Steel
Director: Ho Meng-hua
Year: 1970
Rating: 7.5/10
Four years after starring in King Hu’s groundbreaking
Wuxia film Come Drink with Me, Cheng Pei-pei had established herself as the
biggest female actress in that genre of films having gone on to make another
eight in quick succession with a few stops along the way for two musicals.
But the Shaw’s knew a good thing when they had it and kept her in Wuxia films
till she left the studio a few years later.
Here she again co-stars with Yueh Hua in this very enjoyable Wuxia with more
sword fighting in it than all the Robin Hood movies put together. It clearly
is influenced by Come Drink (as all these films were for years) as Yueh once
again plays a martial arts beggar and an inn is again a major set piece for
two action scenes though neither can approach the brilliance of Hu’s exposition.
Cheng Pei-pei was of course trained as a dancer and not as a martial artist
(as was the same for later action actresses like Michelle Yeoh and Moon Lee)
and so it is her grace and athletic skills more than her kung fu chops that
matter. And a pretty good stare of hatred.
The Fang family are security guards transporting cash for refugees when Han
Shi Xiong (Huang Chung-Hsin) and his gang (including Smiling Tiger from Come
Drink) ambush them in an inn and kill the entire family except the small
daughter who escapes with the help of her dying uncle who has a flying dagger
in his head. He dies but she is found in the forest by a martial artist who
in true Wuxia tradition trains her to revenge her family one day. Nothing
like growing up with a goal. To kill.
But before she can do that her Master sends her on a mission to contact a
band of patriots who have banded togther to fight the invading Jins. Who
it just happens have a spy within the camp – the guy who killed the Fang
family. Funny how things work out. On her way Cheng Pei-pei meets up with
Yueh – in an inn of course – and after they court one another by flying around
the town trying to kill each other they become allies - and from that point
on it is just one large sword fight after another against a ton of bad guys
running into a sword. The finale against the main bad guy is very well done.
This is directed by Ho Meng-hua who was a veteran in the film business but
would really hit his stride and become famous later on for some Shaw horror
and sleaze films – Black Magic 1 & 2, Oily Maniac, Dreams of Eroticism
– as well as a few female revenge films – The Vengeful Beauty and The Kiss
of Death – and we can’t forget The Mighty Peking Man.
